Free-Form Roleplaying Advise

[StickMan]

I'm planning to start a new game with some friends and this time do away with rules altogether. Their no fun anyway.

But realistically I know this format is a risky one and I'm looking for any advise that others may have to give.

At most when it comes to game mechanical elements I may including rolling of percentile dice just to give the players a judgment of where they should go from, but still leave it fairly self judgment.

[Ravens_cry]

The main trouble with free form is combat. If your just going to sit around and talk with each other, then it can work great. But when you get into combat, you get into the reason role playing games HAVE rules, god modding. Basically, it can quickly devolve into " 'I shot you, your dead', 'Na-ugh', 'Ya-huh', 'Na-ugh!' 'Ya-Huh!' 'Na-UGH!'" et cetera.

[DementedFellow]

I played a one-on-one free-form with a DM once. She would say guess a number between 1 and 100. She would think of a number and if I succeeded over that number then whatever action I would do would succeed or fail. Yes, it was random but sometimes she would want a number below X or a number above X, so I couldn't automatically succeed by saying 89 over and over.

Was this a flawed system? yes. Was it fun and exciting to add a bit of randomness in a game? YES.

So if you tell the players that, and write down a number on card, followed by an up arrow or a down arrow, then show them that they won or lost after they guessed I don't see how they would be too offended.

That said the game I played was by no means serious and rule of cool was encouraged.

[Noircat]

Freeform is a lot of fun. That said, it benefits greatly from a simple system for combat. Simplicity is being the key word.

A damage track system with armor as absorbing damage is usually good. A simple opposed d20 check with modifiers for conditions like cover and concealment and equipped items is good. Establishing the values of weapons and armor and items before combat is good.

If you want to go with even less stuff for combat. Even better.

[Aik]

There are also some systems of a style known as 'structured freeform', which have a very lightweight framework. Just enough to keep things on track. Archipelago II is a good example - playing it gave us basically the same feel as our old freeform games only a lot more repeatable. Proper freeform is hard to get right consistently.