Observations of the Fox

There are some great freeform writers in Australia, but generally a writer will consider their work to be a piece of art, something that they like to keep under their control. This is an overgeneralisation, but it might help explain why there is so little information about Australian Freeforms on the internet. The work is often kept close to the writer's chest, and in a little bit of ego sensitivity a lot of writers feel that their work might not be done justice when they aren't present to shepherd the results. It also doesn't help that a lot of freeforms are written with ad hoc notes and marginalia through the text offering suggestions on how the event might be run best. An often cited resource for Australian Freeforms is a set of minutes from a seminar held in 1995 at the Necronomicon Convention. The first set of links I had to those minutes is dead, but this seems to be a new set of those notes (possibly posted by the Jacinta who is currently the 'writer wrangle...

It took a while to find the old lexicon of 'East Coast Australian Gaming Terms', because a few of the old links were dead. Finally, I managed to find a copy of it that still exists ( http://gamingknack.blogspot.com/2011/06/australian-convention-roleplaying.html ).The 'formal' definition of a freeform according to this lexicon is... Freeform Theatrical roleplaying events in which a large number (up to two hundred and fifty!) roleplayers simultaneously interact in a single area with minimal plot or gm intervention. In a freeform, one assumes a character and goes for broke! Freeforms are characterised by a low GM to player ratio and by a large degree of player independence - participants being free to characterise, plot, scheme or generally wheel and deal according to simple character sheets or game mechanics. Freeforms may or may not be driven by external plot events. Freeforms are an Australian invention. The world's first freeform was run by Peter Quinton at Octocon...

Having studied linguistics, I fully understand that language is an evolving construct. What might have a certain meaning at one time or in one context might take on a new meaning in a new context, or might develop into a new form as time passes. My understanding of the term "Australian Freeform" is anchored in the east cost Australian convention scene of the mid 1990s, I didn't know of it as "Australian Freeforming" at the time, is was just "Freeform"... It was only in contact with the American form of "freeform" gaming that I even realises that this was a roleplaying artform specific to the game conventions of Australia's east coast. Sure, there are a number of similar game types around the world now (larger "jeep-forms" may fit this mould, as may the form known in some circles as "theatre-form"), there is probably quite a bit of overlap in these game forms, but I'm not familiar enough with the other to make a con...

There are many styles of roleplaying, from the traditionally understood tabletop variety, boffer LARPs, and Computer RPGs which seem to get all the attention among non-gamers, but there are plenty of other styles of play that draw a bit of interest because they aren't so easy to pigeonhole. Ov the past few years, I've been asked many times on the story-games.com forum to describe the style of gaming known as the 'Australian Freeform', I've written articles and papers on the topic, and have responded numerous times for information about it. I don't claim to be an expert, but I have become a defacto source of information. (For an example article see issue 3 of Playground Magazine at  http://www.magcloud.com/browse/magazine/452504  ) After a recent conversation on G+, I've decided to gather my conversation responses into a series of blog entries. This way when someone asks again, I can just point them to this series of posts and have the answers ready to go. I...

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 ...

I've seen this used in a few games previously, I've touched on it in a few of my Game Mechani(sm) posts, and I've toyed with it in a few ways within the games I've been designing. The ways characters relate to one another is a fundamental part of the roleplaying experience in my mind, at least as important as a character's relation to the world around them. But there are a few schools of thought about character's relations to one another. Should you apply specific formulae to the dynamic of players interacting with one another through their characters? Should you let players evolve the dynamic for themselves? It's like a lot of things, different groups will work better with different answers to the question. At one end of the spectrum there is the tradition of Australian Freeforming, purely about intercharacter connections. At the other end of the spectrum you get traditional tabletop play, where characters are defined by what they can do to the world around...

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 ...

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 ...

Today I intended to spend an hour or two watching a roleplaying game being played out over a Google+ Hangout. It was being hosted by  +Kyrinn S. Eis , pretty similar to something that I've run at conventions before (characters with little understanding of who they are, waking up from cryostasis, we then explore the characters as we explore the world), but using her own system (something that I offered some suggestions on during the week). In her time, it was 8.30pm on Saturday night, which made it 10.30am on Sunday for me. My wife Leah was sick, so I didn't go along to my regular Sunday LARP, and the recent upgrade to our internet has made Google+ Hangouts vaguely possible. I hadn't really participated in one before, but watching it seemed a good way to put my toe in the water. I engaged the hangout just after the starting time, and became swept away in the game, with two other players ( +Ethel B  and  +Keith Bailey ). The biggest issue I had was a sick wife at the...

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 ...

Magic in LARP gets a bad reputation, which is hardly surprising because I've seen it done badly so many times over the past 25 years. In parlour LARPs (the types that Sydney and Melbourne conventions called freeforms, much to the confusion of the rest of the world when we finally became connected by the web), magic was often ceremonial, dramatic and integral to the storyline. Fast casting may have happened through the revelation of an effect card to nearby players, but since games like this tended to be socially driven affairs where combat was frown upon in the narrative set up and every freeform tended to be written as a one-off event, there was nothing to compare it mechanically with anything else. Games like this didn't care about balance, in fact they'd actively flaunt it in many cases. In boffer LARPs, things were different. People could play warriors, and occasionally people could play magic users. I remember reading through the pages and pages of arcane documen...

I've had an interest in the Sydney gaming phenomenon known as Raven's Nest. It seems that the concept is forgotten across most of the world, but it was a marvelously ingenious concept. A combination of miniatures and live action play, developed twenty years ago. A concept that has been left by the wayside as a quaint curiosity in the annals of Australian roleplaying, and a notion that is all but unheard of throughout the rest of the world. My homage to it can be found here . A page about it can be found here . The conversation I started on story games led to someone challenging me to create a goblin labyrinth game, using the ideas found in Raven's Nest. Perhaps as a bit of a homage to it, updating certain elements of the concept, and refining the play. It's something I've toyed with a couple of times, at least in a cursory manner; and it's something that a few of my recent game ideas could easily consolidate into. I've started drawing some pictures for the c...

What is it about scandinavian gamers? I've been reading through the Manifesto of the Turku school , and the first thing that comes to mind is that we've been doing a lot of this stuff in Sydney since the late 1980s. Live gaming and immersion are such an intrinsic part of the Australian-style freeform that we just never bothered to formulise the proceedings. As far as we were concerned, it was all a part of the word free-form. Just like most Australian endeavours, we innovate, but no-one can be bothered ritualising the details or refining the patents. Aussie attitude, probably...sheer laziness, maybe. I've played games under The LARPers vow of Chastity , and have had really great times doing so. Often adding immensely to the theme of the session for other players. In fact I spent the L5R freeform at Gencon 2008, simply sitting in the corner painting pictures in character, not following agendas because I didn't have any, I simply painted and had other players approach me,...