Freeform or Systems?
-
What’s your preference and why?
Does it matter on which ‘genre/game/etc’ it is?
Like, you’d play on a freeform vampire game but never a freeform werewolf game?
This question/curiosity came about in the superhero and Star Wars threads. (Some) people said freeform superhero is great but a freeform Star Wars game is ICK?
-
Not yucking on anyone’s yum, you do you, this is just a me thing, but:
Personally, freeform>>>>>>>>>
I don’t even like roster games. Half the fun, maybe even more than half the fun for me on any game, is building my own character, my own concept, my own ideas, doing a lil worldbuilding, customising everything I can, I wanna flex those creative muscles. I like seeing what other people come up with, sometimes doing a lil collaborative improv (like hey seems our characters have some backstory features in common, what if they knew each other from before?) etc.
The more creative freedom I have, the happier I am. I’ve invented entire cultures/societies with a bit of an amateur conlang on games that let me.
-
I guess I’m the oddball, because I almost think it works best the other way around. I don’t really care for freeform in superhero games, but I think it can work well in other genres. I know freeform is the standard for superhero games, and has been for 30+ years, but given the huge power disparities in those games, I’ve never been a massive fan of it.
I think some of that can be mitigated with a rating or benchmark system, but I’m not a big fan of straight-up narrative traits.
I do think it could work better in lower-powered games, though, like Star Wars. Even then, I’d still want some kind of rating system, even if it’s narrative in nature(novice, expert, professional, that sort of thing).
I’m also an RPG system nerd. To the point where I’ve coded up numerous web-based systems for Ares for no other reason than to see if I could do it. I like RPG systems because character sheets give you a ton of information about a character at a glance. They also provide a neutral way to arbitrate conflicts and similar situations.
I also think mechanical systems give a game a useful tool for keeping things “even,” or as close to even as these things can get.
-
I like systems, to the extent that they support the story and the players and encourage RP. I like the element of random chance that dice bring, I like that +sheets force people to pick what their character is good at and what they’re not good at. To me RP is improv and the system/dice is one of several things giving you new prompts to improv with. I like that.
My forays into MUCK RP and Discord RP where there were no systems were not satisfying to me. A little bit of “you can’t fight this character because it is IC for me that I never lose so you will die,” lots of “I got you” “nuh uh, no you didn’t” like kids playing, and lots and lots of characters who are the best psycho killer in the entire universe at every single weapon that there is AND the best at persuasion and social skills AND the best pilot AND the best mechanic AND the best doctor, etc. I think that stays on the rails a little more with a +sheet/dice.
Many of my friends have long experience with freeform games wherein the players all seem to have been pretty mature and did accept losses/failures, did pick a lane for their skills, etc. I just personally don’t have that experience, so “at least some mechanical systems” is my personal preference.
-
It depends on who I’m playing with. If it’s someone (or a group of someones) who I’m in sync with on a roleplay level and who I’ve established a baseline level of trust with, then there’s a lot to be said for freeform. I enjoy adding some randomness into the success/fail decisionmaking process using dice, because fairly often this ends up generating a result that’s interesting and fun to play that I might not have opted for if I eliminated dice/cards/RPS/etc. entirely – but under these circumstances then I’m happy to do things freeform. No need to roll dice for every little thing, you know?
When I don’t have that, it’s useful to me to have some game mechanics to fall back on that put some level of restriction on the ability of players to bigfoot any and every challenge that comes by. That doesn’t always happen even with game mechanics; we’ve all witnessed that one person who absolutely insists on handling everything they’re even remotely qualified poor rather than occasionally cede the spotlight to someone else. But it does seem to make it a little less frequent?
Of course, whether I’m playing system-light or system-heavy I will inevitably end up creating all sorts of additional details surrounding the characters I write up, to the degree that the game permits it. Extended families, in-character organizations, backstory details that I didn’t think to include in the character creation phase, subcultures that the character’s part of, stuff about where they came from if it’s a fantasy or sci-fi game – I’m an inveterate backstory expander. But that doesn’t seem to me to be so much system-dependent as setting-dependent (or maybe staff-dependent), since I’ve gone off on wild tangents of this sort even in games that use World of Darkness or D20 as their RPG system.
-
Both?
I like to improv into a scene and see what happens. I like to be able to write a story without saying X attempts to … then wait the roll to continue. Although, I value the roll system too for people who never want to lose. That just becomes no fun.
Also, I like to randomize things. Let’s see if I fail X. Do we go left or right, looks like the dice say this…
I like the combination. Which means this post was super unhelpful, but I guess it’s just what mindset I’m in for the day.
-
It depends on the people I’m RPing with. If it’s either of my regular RL groups, freeform is fine. If it’s a game with a bunch of relative strangers, I’d rather have some sort of structure to the task resolution and character sheets. I’ve had several bad experiences in the past with freeform games with strangers (a PBEM and a couple of forum games) go absolutely haywire because everybody had a different interpretation of how capable given characters were.
-
Systems add impartiality (and wonderful randomness!) to conflict and challenge. I’ve been doing freeform lately and I’m really not a fan because all it takes is one powerplayer with an ego to muck it up for everyone else.
If everything goes right and everyone is trustworthy and willing to write collaboratively towards a common end goal of a great encounter, yeah sure freeform is good. But when Barry Supervillain says “nuh uh I am an expert in your kung fu ways so I instantly win” and the dice rolls otherwise, well, numbers don’t lie.
I may be getting cynical lol.
-
I am pro-system for almost anything not at my dining room table. If I can’t pelt you with dice, meeples, pencils, or wads of paper for being a nuisance or coming up with inane drivel, I want some rules in place to govern our characters’ interactions.
-
I like a mix of both - dice for resolution of your stuff, but stick some narrative-bending things in the dice. Prime examples here are the FFG dice, both the Genesys rules and L5R.
-
I want a robust system that lets me do Cool Things. I’ve been trying out various system-light games over the last couple of years, and even in a tabletop environment, I really want a game where I know what resources I have, what skills make my character unique, and a bit of randomness to keep the tension high.
-
I wonder how well Index Card RPG could translate to MU*. It’s been my favorite tabletop system for years because it is sufficient to distinguish your character and handle power scales while also staying out of the way and being blessedly lightweight.
