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Pocket Guide to American Freeform
Pocket Guide to American Freeform is a 24,000-word monograph written especially for [Bundle of Holding's American Freeform Bundle] by Lizzie Stark, game designer and author of Leaving Mundania (Chicago Review Press, 2012), a nonfiction treatise on live-action roleplaying.
Available nowhere else outside this offer, Pocket Guide to American Freeform is a concise introduction to and survey of the form, with practical advice as well as historical information. The introductory section includes sections on the development of the style, as well as some titles to check out (many of which are also in this bundle). Next comes a section on basic safety practices, with some explicit advice for players, facilitators, and designers. Three Quick and Dirty Guides, aimed at facilitators, players, and designers, get you running, playing, and writing scenarios as quickly as possible. The book concludes with advanced tips and longer discussions about workshops, debriefs, and meta-techniques.
Cover by Jason Morningstar.
Available nowhere else outside this offer, Pocket Guide to American Freeform is a concise introduction to and survey of the form, with practical advice as well as historical information. The introductory section includes sections on the development of the style, as well as some titles to check out (many of which are also in this bundle). Next comes a section on basic safety practices, with some explicit advice for players, facilitators, and designers. Three Quick and Dirty Guides, aimed at facilitators, players, and designers, get you running, playing, and writing scenarios as quickly as possible. The book concludes with advanced tips and longer discussions about workshops, debriefs, and meta-techniques.
Cover by Jason Morningstar.
- GenresNonfiction
80 pages, ebook
First published February 12, 2014
1 person is currently reading
8 people want to read
About the author
Lizzie Stark
9 books47 followersLizzie Stark is a participation designer and the author of three nonfiction books, Egg: A Dozen Ovatures , Pandora’s DNA and Leaving Mundania. Her writing has been featured in the Washington Post, the Daily Beast, i09, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, among other publications. She lives in Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 17, 2014
This book is currently an 80-page (+/-) PDF that can only be had from The Bundle of Holding1's American Freeform2 Bundle. Since Lizzie Stark has published some of the information before, in previous form, on her blog, and since she has published at least one more fuller monograph on a similar topic, Leaving Mundania, I will generally assume that this book will rise again in some form or another outside of the Bundle. My review is for the Bundle'd edition, though.
It is clear that Stark has a passion for the live action, dramatic form and it is clear that she has experience with the genre. Reading this is reading an informed hobbyist's take, which is generally the best sort of thing to read about roleplaying games. The editing is well done, especially considering the fairly different set of publishing circumstances, though there are times where it is clear this was partially a series of disparate blog posts, as chapters occasionally reuse some text or feel sort of rough against one another, like they have not quite blended into a textual whole.
More impressive about the editing is Stark's grasp of reader expectations. She starts off building up the genre and selling it quite well to the reader, tantalizing us with tastes of possibilities—there are scenarios designed around strange tales with just a couple of of people and there are those designed around a pair of couples confronting hereditary breast cancer3—before diving into the sloggier bits where she deals with the mechanics of setting up, hosting, playing out, and the aftermath of such games. By the time the reader has gotten to the later sections, it is because the reader is interested in the art form and is ready to learn more about the fuller picture. Her handling of the playing and facilitating of the sessions is especially rewarding, backed with years of experience and tips from both herself and others, with further reading suggested based on sub-topics. One does not always have to agree with her, for instance I find "war stories" to be a vital part of players winding down after an intense session4, but one cannot argue with the practical side to her experience.
Though I gave the book four stars, there are a couple of big issues that I feel hold it back. First off, Stark's intention of exposing American Freeform is more in line with the first portions of the book, while the later portions drift back to the Nordic Freeform/Jeepform/LARP (etc) mode. A lot of American Freeform seems to be playing with odd mechanics and methods of constrained-yet-free play, a topic at which she only hints. Playing out something like Jason Morningstar's Out of Dodge—where four people sit in an imaginary car after a crime and the stakes get higher based on cues on a card—or Josh Jordan's Doll—where two players sit across from one another while one plays a doll [and holds an actual doll to which the other play is to talk directly] and the other plays a traumatized child asking the doll big questions about life—feels different than the sort of affair that the bigger chapters of this book cover.
Secondly, maybe more minor, the game design section feels a bit flat compared to the play/facilitate sections. I can understand why, but I hope that if Stark plans to pursue this as a fuller monograph in the future that design [backed up with mechanics and ideas from current American Freeform games] gets a boost.
The book gets strong props, though, for being a thorough introduction to the field and what it offers. It is hard to read it and to not try and rush out and buy everything it mentions and arrange a half-dozen sessions. I'm looking forward to adding more live-actiony bits to some of my RPGs, even as I constrain them to mechanics, to see what comes out of it. It should be fun...
---------------
Footnotes:
1: Just in case you don't know what Bundle of Holding is, see http://bundleofholding.com. If you know what Humble Bundle is, it is like that, for tabletop RPGs.
2: It is the purpose of this book to explain the term, but for now think somewhere between Live Action RPG (LARP), tabletop RPG [in that they tend to have some built in mechanics], and improvisational theater [which may or may not be a redundancy with LARP depending on how you play them]. See http://lizziestark.com/2013/11/18/int... for further details.
3: This last one, The Curse, can be found on Stark's blog if you are interested.
4: And I say this as a man once slapped by his wife, in character [but upon my actual face], due to an intense roleplaying scenario about failed dreams in modern America that had everyone else [in character and out of character] fairly stressed out.
It is clear that Stark has a passion for the live action, dramatic form and it is clear that she has experience with the genre. Reading this is reading an informed hobbyist's take, which is generally the best sort of thing to read about roleplaying games. The editing is well done, especially considering the fairly different set of publishing circumstances, though there are times where it is clear this was partially a series of disparate blog posts, as chapters occasionally reuse some text or feel sort of rough against one another, like they have not quite blended into a textual whole.
More impressive about the editing is Stark's grasp of reader expectations. She starts off building up the genre and selling it quite well to the reader, tantalizing us with tastes of possibilities—there are scenarios designed around strange tales with just a couple of of people and there are those designed around a pair of couples confronting hereditary breast cancer3—before diving into the sloggier bits where she deals with the mechanics of setting up, hosting, playing out, and the aftermath of such games. By the time the reader has gotten to the later sections, it is because the reader is interested in the art form and is ready to learn more about the fuller picture. Her handling of the playing and facilitating of the sessions is especially rewarding, backed with years of experience and tips from both herself and others, with further reading suggested based on sub-topics. One does not always have to agree with her, for instance I find "war stories" to be a vital part of players winding down after an intense session4, but one cannot argue with the practical side to her experience.
Though I gave the book four stars, there are a couple of big issues that I feel hold it back. First off, Stark's intention of exposing American Freeform is more in line with the first portions of the book, while the later portions drift back to the Nordic Freeform/Jeepform/LARP (etc) mode. A lot of American Freeform seems to be playing with odd mechanics and methods of constrained-yet-free play, a topic at which she only hints. Playing out something like Jason Morningstar's Out of Dodge—where four people sit in an imaginary car after a crime and the stakes get higher based on cues on a card—or Josh Jordan's Doll—where two players sit across from one another while one plays a doll [and holds an actual doll to which the other play is to talk directly] and the other plays a traumatized child asking the doll big questions about life—feels different than the sort of affair that the bigger chapters of this book cover.
Secondly, maybe more minor, the game design section feels a bit flat compared to the play/facilitate sections. I can understand why, but I hope that if Stark plans to pursue this as a fuller monograph in the future that design [backed up with mechanics and ideas from current American Freeform games] gets a boost.
The book gets strong props, though, for being a thorough introduction to the field and what it offers. It is hard to read it and to not try and rush out and buy everything it mentions and arrange a half-dozen sessions. I'm looking forward to adding more live-actiony bits to some of my RPGs, even as I constrain them to mechanics, to see what comes out of it. It should be fun...
---------------
Footnotes:
1: Just in case you don't know what Bundle of Holding is, see http://bundleofholding.com. If you know what Humble Bundle is, it is like that, for tabletop RPGs.
2: It is the purpose of this book to explain the term, but for now think somewhere between Live Action RPG (LARP), tabletop RPG [in that they tend to have some built in mechanics], and improvisational theater [which may or may not be a redundancy with LARP depending on how you play them]. See http://lizziestark.com/2013/11/18/int... for further details.
3: This last one, The Curse, can be found on Stark's blog if you are interested.
4: And I say this as a man once slapped by his wife, in character [but upon my actual face], due to an intense roleplaying scenario about failed dreams in modern America that had everyone else [in character and out of character] fairly stressed out.
March 10, 2017
I purchased this book after writing and running my first freeform LARP last month at Dreamation, a gaming convention Lizzie Stark mentions in her book. "American LARP" means many things to many people here in the US and abroad, and as a player and game designer, I find it very hard to divorce myself from all of that noise to just sit down and write.
The most valuable insight in this book in terms of writing and designing games involves the difference between a coordinator and a director. Even though my games don't really involve exploratory cut scenes, I see the immediate need for the differentiation instead of just having "3 GMs." This will help me a great deal in future gameplay and development.
I read "Pocket Guide" in three sittings, considering it as a reader, organizer, and designer. (It was also helpful for me to learn to separate my roles as organizer and designer when conceptualizing games.)
This book doesn't have fluff, but it's still totally friendly to beginners, which is really the ideal spirit of American freeform. Stark also covers physical and emotional safety - an important starting point for anyone new or practiced.
The most valuable insight in this book in terms of writing and designing games involves the difference between a coordinator and a director. Even though my games don't really involve exploratory cut scenes, I see the immediate need for the differentiation instead of just having "3 GMs." This will help me a great deal in future gameplay and development.
I read "Pocket Guide" in three sittings, considering it as a reader, organizer, and designer. (It was also helpful for me to learn to separate my roles as organizer and designer when conceptualizing games.)
This book doesn't have fluff, but it's still totally friendly to beginners, which is really the ideal spirit of American freeform. Stark also covers physical and emotional safety - an important starting point for anyone new or practiced.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews