Or, Adventures in Systemless Gaming
When I found gaming, I fell into it wholeheartly, and wanted to be gaming any time that I could. The problem was that I started Gaming with Rifts from Palladium Books and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, 2nd Edition, two systems that were heavy on books and needed charts and tables to create characters and adjudicate rolls. Neither were condusive to bringing new players online in an improvised location or play while on the go. I'd often run into friends and acquaintaces who'd be interested in gaming but the setup or infrastruture prevented getting started.
So I began freestyling. I'd start with a prompt, usually shamelessly stolen ieead from TV or movies, and get the perosn or people I was with to role-play. If I had some dice we'd roll those, but often i'd be using coin flips, Odd/Even calls or Rock-Paper-Sissors for random resolutions. This works pretty well for killing time in waiting rooms or on a walk or sitting in a car while someone runs an errand.
Eventually this lead to the may iterations of RPG: On The Go, the never finalized rules systems that I'd like to boil down to a single sheet of paper and character sheets that can be made on a 4x6 index card.
The downside to this is that it's really hard to keep a story going, and easy to have a story end up in a dead end. You and the your players have to be OK with stories without resolutions, of characters played and abandoned. Addtionally, this requires a GM that is good with go-with the flow improvisational play. GMs that are at their best with modules and maps will have a hard time with this system.
Similarly, it's easy for playsers to work themselves into a corner or lose the plot. It's up to the GM to try and bring it back around. It's also important to communicate and make sure the game stays fun and be ready to drop or refocus at any time.
These prompts are standard scenarios that I've used and abused. But any half-remembered adventure module, neat dungeon idea, anime episode, movie plot or other idea can turn into a fun game. It's OK that it's not perfect, the point is to have something to do and practice flexiblity and thinking on your feet. All of these games should be cooperative. Often Freestyle Gaming will be one-on-one with a GM and a single player, and it's important to remember athat a game is a conversation, mot a lecture. Practice "Yes, and..." and ocasionally "No, but..." back and forth, and only use the dice when it's fun or needed.
If I was to try and write actual rules for Freestyle Gaming, it's look something like this. There are a lot of tradeoffs and it should go without saying that these are guidelines to get things started, rather then hard rules. In any confusion err towards good time. This guide is primarily for the GM, as it's assumed that players will likely be new or inexerpienced, or simply players of opportunity.
A D12 in a Chessex dice container. A simple shake of the container rolls the die, but it's not likely to get lost, it doesn't need a flat surface, and the d12 allows both an easy read and a fairly granular set of results. The D12 can be divided by 2 to get D6 results, Divided by 3 to get D4 results, Divided by 4 to get D3 results and divided by 6 to get simple 50/50 odds. Call it a die-in-a-box.
If you are using the D12 as I would, the rolls are made agaist a difficulty. Since most target number style games don't use a D12, I've included a chart of Target Numbers for you.
In addition to a die-in-a-box, we recommend a printout of these guidelines, a handful of pencils or pens and a pack of 4x6 index cards.
Once the group agrees to play a game, and agrees on a setting, the GM hands out cards and pencils, and the players create a character card. Characters cards can be reactionary or proactive. A reactionary character is notes taken as a character is revealed to the player. This is common in Amnesiac stories. A proactive character is designed by the player to play the game. Most character sheets in most games are proactive. A reactive character can still be steered by the player to the abilities they want.
Players should be encouraged to write down brief summaries of their characters, jsut a quick sentence or notes, nothing dramatic. a character sketch is always fun for those that like them and be sure to leave space ifr Items and lot and things. there is only one rules-based thing that needs to be written, a list of Features.
Most of Character Creation will be describing the character and notes of what the character has. But actual mathmatical Stats are somthing that most games incorporate and you need something to modify plain dice rolls.
This game uses a vague descriptor of what makes a character special as Features. A character can have no more then 7 Features. Features can be stats, skills, backgrounds, abilities, superpowers, modifications, unique gear, Magic abilities, special vechicles, companions, whatever. A player can make a proactive character and define all 7 up front, Outline a character and place some fraction up front and add more as the game goes, or crate reactive character where they add all Features as the game goes.
What sort of things can be a Feature and what's just notes or flavor? Ultmately that's up to the GM and the group, but if you can buy it in a store, it's probably not a Feature. If you would have spent points on it, rolled dice for it, or chosen a class that it was exclusive to in some other game, it's probably a Feature. If you have experience with D&D 5e, any Race, Class, Class Feature, Feat, Stat, Skill, School of Magic or Clerical Domain is definately a Feature. For those Familiar with White Wolf or U5D, anything that costs points at charcter creation, any merit or Flaw, or anything that you can spend XP on, is a Feature.
Features are defined as Positives "+" or Negatives "-". most features are Positives, and are marked Like "+Strong" or "+Cyberarm" or "+Fire Magic". A Positive means your character has a +1 to all rolls regarding their positive, meaning that a "6" counts as a "7". A character can have up to 2 Negatives. Written as "-Weak" or "-Techonlogically Impared" or "-Oblivious", these Negatives take one of the 12 spots of all Features. In balance, a character can add a second "+" to an existing Positive Feature, giving it a +2 to all rolls, thus a 5 would be a 7.
Characters and NPCs cannot use more then 1 Feature on a roll. This also applies to Negative Features. If a Character has more then one applicable Feature, the one the Character or GM chooses flavors the action.
For example; A character with the Features of "+Barbarian", "+Strong", and "+Magic Sword" might choose to add the Barbarian Feature to an attack roll: "On this success, you let out a mighty roar and in your rage cleft the attacker in twain." or they might choose the Strong Feature, "You muscles rippling in the sun, dewed with sweat you power through your attacker, ripping them into two bloody pieces." Or they could choose the Magic Sword Feature, "You activate the magic in your sword and it glows in an unearthly light, splitting the attacker like a rotten fruit."
GMs should balance how much they describe for the character and how much they let the character describe for themselves. In the early part of the game, the GM can do the describing to get the standards set and gthe game flowing, but as the game progresses fall back onto "Success! Describe what happens," and let the player narrate how things happen. Clearly the GM alwasys narrates for NPCs and other global effects.
Features are inherently unequal, and broad Features are more likely to be used more often then narrowly defined Features. Usually, this is fine, a +1 or +2 on most-all rules isn't going to wreck the game. The real damage is people who want to choose Features like "Ancient SuperWizard" or "World Eating Dragon" or other Features that either destroy all conflict, or is drastically unsuitable for the game that the GM is trying to run. There are several ways to deal with this, the easiest is to say "That won't work, come up with something else" and make suggestions that will fit the story you want to tell.
The other Feature inequality is Powers. While "+Power Word; Kill" is bad enough, it's hard to build a hierarchy of spells or abilities to scale as weapons do. One way to help gatekeep massive spells is to maximize damage by the number of Magical Features a character has, and you can further limit this by requiring characters wth a power (magical or otherwise) to take a prerequiste Feature.
For Example: "+Magician" is needed before taking any spells or magic powers as Features. the "+Magician" power allows the character to make small effects like cantrips level 1 and maybe level 2 spells with Small Weapon Damage. If they then take "+Magic Missile" they can now do Medium Damage. If they add "+Ice Storm" they can do Large Damage and adding a 4th Spell would enable huge damage for any Magic Feature they choose to employ. A character who has unlocked a higher level of damage may opt to only use a lower level.
In order to max out their magic power, more then half of the Features are spent. That leaves them with, at best, 3 futher Features to round out their character. Similar schemes for supernatural creatures like "+Werewolf" and then adding "+Claws", or Cybernetic people "+Cyborg" abnd then add specific parts onto that.
for Prerequisite Features, sheilding or armor would scale the same way.
as this game is designed to be improvisational, ther's little GM Setup. If anything GMs who want to run a Game like this should develop a setting and stock characters in their head ahead of times, or take a page from the fanfic crowd and use fictional characters, possibly with the serial numbers filed off.
If you are a "Gotta prepare" GM, Start with your setting. Once you can imagine the place you want to set the game, figure out your basic idea or prompt and generically where you want the game to go and if you want a twist, what it is. Be ready to pivot and if you are trying to tell a story, steer the characters without railroading them. Next create your Big Bad (or Evil Organization), any Tough sub-bosses, and a couple of types of reusable generic enemies. The cards are pretty useful for organzing notes for all of that and more. A prepared GM might even have prefilled loot and equipment cards to hand to players to save them the hassle of writing it on a 4x6 card and
The GM should use cards to keep track of generic bad guys, monsters, and major NPCs, ideas, places, and other notes. Generic bad guys or "mooks," and monsters should have no more then 2 Features, major NPCs may have the total 7. All the other stuff the GM should handle as they see fit.
Not all NPCs are equal to the characters and there is an explicit hierarchy in order to try and keep the game moving appropriately. Regular folk, Generic bad guys, and monsters without a Feature that toughens them up, have 2 hits before they are out of the fight. Topughened (by whatever Feature) should have at least 4 hits and not more then 12 hits. Major NPCs and Characters, have 6 Hits to start, and this can be modified by Features.
Combat is a very common activity in RPGs and it's one of the places that dice and rules are most needed. Combat has to feel fair, even though for enjoyment, combat should gently favor the players. A ghame does not have to include combat, but combat is should be expected and prepared for.
Characters should have appropriate access to items, weapons and materials depending on the game you are playing. Weapons do damage as per their size for simplicity. That said, improvization is the name of the game. Take the action into account before applying the guidelines and describe what feels right. It's not about winning or losing, it's about applying just enough challenge to have fun.
Bigger weapons should be handled by narrative, rather then dice rolls. things like "you dodge the rocket attack and take no damage" or "the Dragon's Fire was too fast and incinerated the Queen's party." Not everything needs a number, and hopefully the Small to Huge framework is easy to remember and use, while allowing different divisions of the D12 for other ideas. There is no breakdown between lethal and non-lethal damage, combatants are "knocked out of the fight," and the narrative can handle if they survived or not.
Armor can have muitiple functions, It can reduce the damage of strikes that would not have knocked the character out by 1 (light armor) or 2 (heavy Armor). and the armor can prevent a character from dying from a damage roll that would have killed them once per combat encounter. The character is reduced to 1 Hit.
Healing should be handled by the narrative, but healing spells or other effects should heal on the same chart of Damage. a Small Heal heals 2 hits, a Medium Heal heals 1-4 hits, A Large Heal cures 1-6 hits and a Huge Heal heals 1-12 hits.
Freestyle games are inherently ephemeral, character advancement isn't really a thing. If you are in a situation where people might wnat a campaign that lasts more then a session or 2, I'd recomend only allowing 1 Feature to be added per session. Perhaps they have to reach story milestones to unlock Features. Perhaps Feature slots are awarded for roleplaying or innovation or other laudable behavior. Experience Points and the like don't really have a place here. Motivating and rewarding players with loot and equipment is the best systemic solution to this question.
Eventually, I'd like to collect and rewrite this as a One Page Game, and that is the other thing the GM should have. Folded in quarters to hold the Character cards seperate from the GM notes and blanks. In such a case the examples can likely be left out.
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