🚀 go-pugleaf

Och!  You tell me this *AFTER* I have spent my life shelling out money
for products like, oh, GURPS, Bunnies and Burrows, etc.?!?!?!?

Actually, I once ran a more or less free-form game along these lines
(ages ago, when I had the time to invest in running games).  I think
the only rule specifically stated was "the GM's word is final" or
something like that.  It was played more or less for laughs, as a
breather from "real" systems.  The plot that evolved out of it had the
motley assemblage of heros (ranging from a caveman to a "Spaceman
Spiff"-type) saving the Earth from a raving madman (whose name
alternately begins with a "Q", "K", or "G", depending upon the time
and source of news) who had accidentally come into possession of some
arcane "Book of True Names" that gave him power over the denizens of
the underworld.  My only regret is that we didn't record the
session--it got pretty crazy, but never even approached collapsing
entirely--everyone was more or less "on a roll" that night.  We used
dice, but neither excessively nor consistently.  (Since it was a
rather silly session, there *was* one incident when I forced a player
to collect every single 6-sider he could find for one mammoth roll
that nowadays seems rather the norm in Shadowrun... ;)

Still, a more-or-less free-form system of the type Steffan outlines
need not be used merely for comic-relief games.  Given reasonable
players, and a reasonable-and-fair GM, it could work quite well for
the soberest of campaigns.  It really requires the GM to be more of a
storyteller, and the players to be more imaginative and innovative,
IMHO.  But there are those for whom RPG's should meet those very
requirements, and a free-form system could be the stepping-stone they
may be looking for.

-- 
 R. Cliff Young --/\/-- Work: cliff@sfn.ORG | Fun: nukenin@access.digex.com
 Phone: (703)573-0913 (USA) | GEnie: R.YOUNG52 | AOL: RogueBard@aol.com
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 "I'll teach you to laugh and to cry // They're really the same you'll see..."