Observations of the Fox

The ideas posed in the first part of this post would be the point where I'd leave things for an Aussie Freeform. A few archetypal ways of manipulating the situation, a few goals that point certain characters in certain directions...then you just let the players go. A GM per 5-10 players (plus a head GM), and if decisions need to be made, the outcome is determined by whatever is best in the context of the overall story, even if things look like they should head a different way at the immediate scale. Maybe throw in some egg timers for specific effects that require delicate work (like hacking the server, tending to someone's wounds, fixing the power, or adjusting the oxygen-beds). Players can't do anything else while the sands in the timer are running through; and if they are disturbed, the count resets. Combat would be enacted through basic wrestling, each player has a literal bottle on them representing their oxygen supply (maybe attached by loop velcro to a hook velcro ...

This idea was posted on Facebook. From Joe MacNamara... Game idea: it's a one-off freeform. It's bleak-as-fk sci-fi; the PCs are asteroid miners, and they need a constant personal supply of oxygen, represented by poker chips or something like that. Every 30 minutes, a GM comes around and collects a poker chip from each PC; any PC who can't produce a chip dies in 30 seconds. The chips represent bottles that can be screwed into your gear and are therefore tradeable; some PCs have far more than they need, some of them won't last the 3 hours. If I did this, I'd do it worth hard player elimination; no replacement PCs, if you die that's it. What are people's thoughts? Frakkin' brilliant! I rewatched Danny Boyle's Sunshine last week, so this idea instantly sent my mind racing. It's got built in tension, where there might be enough oxygen for everyone to survive, but might not...and if anyone exerts themselves (such as combat), they'd find th...

There was a concept common on the convention circuit a few years back...actually, now that I think about it, it was a few decades back. Like many concepts, it didn't have a name when it was in vogue, and it was only when people stood back to analyse it that it was categorised with a title. It was generally called a "pieces of paper freeform", "paper-chase LARP", or some combination thereof. A true "Australian Freeform" (a misnomer because it's a vague concept that I've discussed previously ( here , [ pt2 ], [ pt3 ], [ pt4 ], here and here ) has no rules. Well it has the social rules of human interaction, the rules of etiquette appropriate to maintaining genre convention, and the rules of an imposed space of shared imaginary narrative facilitated and guided by the GMs...but it typically has no written rules. Instead, this style of game may have elaborate character kits with a page describing the setting (everyone gets one of these), a page ...

Continuing with the Greendale "Community" posts... This idea seems to have a bit of traction. I've played in a Red Dwarf freeform, where multiple versions of Lister, Cat, Rimmer and Kryten were running around in a reality bubble on the edge of a black hole. This game had all of the alternate versions of the characters encountered during the show...the ultra-good, the ultra-bad, the gender swapped versions, and then a few characters who are integral to the plot but who don't make up a big part of the show "Kuchanski", "Peterson", etc. It was a great game in the Aussie freeform style. Everyone has a half dozen agendas to fulfil during the course of a three hour session, each of those agendas may be working with members of their team, working with alternate versions of themselves, or working against people. Often tasks require careful planning to orchestrate and may only be viable at certain times within the session (eg. Only when the ship's f...

I love the idea of player driven storylines and player led factions within a setting. The biggest problem with the concept is the requirement for high player count. A faction needs at least three players; typically one to lead, one to act as second in command, and one to do the dirty work (but another valid option might be the one who publicly leads, the one who leads from the shadows, and the one who is overlooked but who gets the faction ahead). This means a minimum of six players for two factions, but factions really start to get interesting with five or more players in each...and cross factional politics starts getting fun with three or more factions that are capable of playing off against one another. So for my liking, this means a minimum game with three factions of five players, preferably more players in each faction, more factions, or both. Once we start wandering down this path, the "non-leaders" can develop their own niches of value. A faction might need s...

When running a big game, such as a LARP, you can do it in a couple of ways. Some of them are intensive, require a lot of hard work from multiple GMs but produce deeply intimate stories; some are less intensive, require a communal effort on the part of the players, and are capable of producing self sustaining play environments. I've been a part of both. What I'm trying to develop for the Goblin labyrinth game fits squarely in the second category of play. This means that there will be quite a few players with conflicting agendas, there won't be much need for NPCs in a game like this because players will find their antagonism and political interplay where they intersect with the story-lines of other player characters. The key to creating this style of game is to develop a functional ecosystem in which one player character's choices have repercussions across a variety of story-lines in play. Every choice becomes a moral decision where a player needs to decide whether ...

FUBAR is my exercise in designing a game according to the principles of Vector Theory. Where-in players get the chance to manipulate the effectiveness of their characters, or manipulate the direction of the story. They must choose between these options when proving successful in their die rolls. Players also choose how well their character is able to resist negative effects imposed upon their characters, or choose to buffer the direction changes in the story (they are rarely able to do both). I'm not sure completely how successful the game is in that regard, but it has gotten me thinking about a lot of other games and gaming styles. The American indie roleplaying community (with links to the English and the Norse) has recently had a fascination with the style of play known in Australia as "Freeforming"...it's an annoying name because freeform means completely different things in the roleplaying communities from other parts of the world. I'll try to ensure I refer ...