Freeform/Sandbox RP

Why do you guys stick to these archaic rule sets that are incredibly limiting? Modern video games provide limits already so if I want to play a fun game why would you limit yourselves with these rulesets like DnD? Why am I told I can't be a race or a class because its not in some overpriced book? Freeform/Sandbox is inherently superior because of this.

>frogposting

>no one can answer the question so we'll just call out posting a pic of a frog

Nice. Just what I expect,

Because "my shield blocks all attacks!" and "no it doesn't, that's cheating!" gets pretty fucking tiresome once you stop being 10 years old.

Fuck off, frogposter.

>memefrog image
>vidya comparison
>meaningless declaration of superiority for Cowboys & Indians vs. some sembalnce of rules and authority

Even for a troll, you are pathetic.
Have you tried getting some proper hobbies? You should pick up D&D, I hear it's pretty fun.

It inevitably ends up a dick waving contest as everyone tries to be the strongest character in the setting, and I have to play the fool just to keep everyone else from wanking about how edgy their characters are.

Dumb frogposter.

Literally does not matter one bit since games are always coop. Who cares if his shields block all attacks? And GM has final say whether it does or doesn't.

D&D is silly and one of the worst hobbies imaginable right behind Magic the Gathering. Nothing but a money suck just to stifle your own creativity.

Same thing in your rule based games, people will cheat the rules and try to powergame. There is no difference really. Key is to play with mature players and not babies.

Right you could at least try.

I legitimately don't know why. My friends and I used to do this all the time. Having a sleepover? Fuck, dudes, lets RP! Crap that was comfy.
>just a two or three dudes chilling around the bedroom, in their spots
>switching off describing what's happening while the active "player" reacts/takes action
>come out mostly on top every time
>new game every week
Though I can't tell you how many times some Die Hard style terrorists would roll up on our high school for some nefarious reason or other and we would step up reluctant action hero style, kill the bad guy, save the world, and get the hot teachers...
You know? I think I see why we switched to a game with rules and such. That sense of "legitimacy."

>And GM has final say whether it does or doesn't.
Some would call that... a limiting ruleset.

Depends on the setting.

In my game, they went from being lowly pirates to being literal gods among men, fighting the true source of the illithid threat by engaging flesh and mind agaisnt the terrors of the Far Realm, where the elements WERE Flesh and Mind, rather than the usual ones.

A setting is as limited as the imaginations of those who play in it, regardless of ruleset. Your very premise was flawed before you finished typing the first eight words.

Since any post with a frogpost is here specifically to shitpost, I can only assume you are trying to make freeform roleplayers look like dumb, dirty frogposters.

Low blow, shitpost frogger.

>Bunch of dudes "RPing" in a bedroom to see who will "come out on top"

Did you guys know there's a Veeky Forums chat on f-list.net
They cyber and shit, it be gross

i know you're shitposting but i'm bored enough to respond
>Why do you guys stick to these archaic rule sets that are incredibly limiting? Modern video games provide limits already so if I want to play a fun game why would you limit yourselves with these rulesets like DnD?
Because rulesets provide neutral arbitration on how things work. In freeform, how is it supposed to be determined if i can throw my sword 100 feet and instantly cut off the villain's head?

TTRP are - in essence - collaborative storytelling.
For storytelling to be interesting, engaging and immersive, it needs boundaries and themes.
Because that creates atmosphere.

That is also why some people (often misguidedly) hate casters. Magic removes boundaries, and boundaries are essential to a story. It is a common reference frame.
And the excitement of magic comes from its ability to occasionally burst that reference frame.

You may dislike it as a player, but as a DM it is a quintessential lesson that limits and boundaries CREATE story and atmosphere, and roleplay dies without it.

So, that is the simple answer.

You make rules sound like a crutch for people with no self-control. In my times freeform rp'ing, everyone involved could be counted on to do what was necessary for decent narrative flow.

Bro I've been doing freeform on the internet and tabletop RPGs both since 1995 and let me fucking tell you, freeform is a trash style for trash people.

Freeform attracts the absolute worst roleplayers whose stupid ideas are too goddamn stupid to fit into an actual ruleset, and it attracts people whose infantile tempers can't handle the idea of failure or even challenge. If you can't create something compelling and interesting within a set of rules, then your creativity is broken beyond repair.

You know how some bad D&D players just slap together classes and prestige classes and templates and races and subraces and other shit to make a character that isn't a character, just a pile of abilities meant to break the game or be a power fantasy? Imagine entire games with dozens of players where everyone did that, at all times. Every character is pic related. That's the end result of freeform.

Freeform is something roleplayers grow out of. Continuing to use freeform after leaving your teenage years is the roleplaying equivalent of refusing to leave mom's house, it's the equivalent of not cleaning up after yourself and whining when you have to cook your own food.

>Be me
>Play on Warcraft RP server
>Everyone godmodes how other characters react to them
>Everyone constantly yells at and antagonizes each other to goad barfights
>Barfights are all /emote spam where players just one-up each other
>Everyone is a fake OC class or a member of a race actively hostile to player characters
>Most interaction is "Let me tell you about my character" or "Please, let me let you tell me about your character".

Freeform is stupid as hell.

Maybe you were playing with people who had an intuitive sense of narrative and happened to really work together.
That is very far from being everyone, though.

When you decide to have dungeon master, you hand over some narrative control to that person. Maybe he wants to roll low fantasy. Maybe he wants to do a story about plane-travels.
The formal ruleset as written in the PHB is only relevant as far as the DM respects it, after all. A lot of DMs will happily let you play your homebrewed race of toadninjas from the Acidbog, but some don't even allow drows.
You just gotta respect that narrative control is ultimately in the hands of the DM, and try to meet him/her halfway, if nothing else.

If youre gonna do freeform at least do apocalypse world or some other pbta game to keep things interesting. You only roll like 3 times a session anyway.

Oh jesus, I forgot about MMO "roleplaying." I was thinking about my experiences on IRC, but holy shit, what you went through sounds fucking awful.

There were a few highlights, like the guy who gave me the gronnling mount for letting him break my nose IC, or the Worgen Death Knight who went full on fedora-wearing Nice Guy around me.

But most of the time it was just fucking awful. I probably would've enjoyed the later expansions more if I had focused on finding a good guild instead of just loitering in the RP areas waiting for dungeon pops.

>be me
>play on WoW RP server
>be completely normal, realize my character's level is what he's got
>make a female alt
>proceed to erp, charging money
>transfer gold to main
My warlock essentially pimped out his sister. I feel dirty, but also got mad money.

Are you talking about pic related and similar systems or just literal playing pretend? Because if it's the latter then you might as well just be playing house.

Doubles advocate, what makes "playing house" any less legitimate than doing something with dice rolls?
They're both sitting around playing pretend.

Rules that outline who is allowed to make what up keeps the game more organized than just everyone playing pretend.

The dice and paper make it a game, without the dice and sheets it's more like a collaborative work of fiction than a game.

>Literally does not matter one bit since games are always coop. Who cares if his shields block all attacks? And GM has final say whether it does or doesn't.

What? Have you ever actually played a ttrpg? Are you telling me your games never have at least one person who makes it their goal to have their character overshadow everyone else's?

>The GM
The very concept of a Game Master means that there is an authority and the roleplay is not freeform, friend.

Let me guess, someone vetoed your half-angel half-demon 3/4-shadow hermaphrodite wereplatypus-kin.

>be on warcraft RP server
>tanky ass warrior
>spend my time hanging around blood elf skank. She was a good sport
>Death puns
>Bone puns
>cannibalism puns
>eating dudes every time timer is up instead of just eating bread
>stop oppressing my culture

Man, I don't know how you guys had such a bad time. I had a lot of fun dicking around being the comedic foil to the straightman elf.

About what I expected from someone frogposting.

About the butthurt faggotry I'd expect from a frogposter.

And what do you know, three posts in and there's the answer.

A good thread died for this you retard, I hope you're happy.

Because 9 times out of 10, it turns into an endless circlejerk of
"I attack u with my katana!"
>Nuh-uh! I activate my everything-proof shield!
"Yeah? Well, my sword was can cut through everything-proof shields!"
>Nuh-uh! I went back in time to before you were born and killed your mother!

>Literally does not matter one bit since games are always coop
t. never seen a freeform rp forum in his life

I guess you just got lucky, though having a dedicated friend helps.

Most RPers take everything too seriously. Their OCs are just vehicles for their powerwank or waifufaggotry.

I actually didn't know them before I started playing that server.
We met by being tankbros, and thus instantly having an understanding with each other how awful damage classes are.

Yes they do thats why these people can't even have fun with great freeform games. They start to freak out if someone plays something they don't like. So they spend hundreds or thousands on books written so their autism doesn't leak out since rules will keep them from losing it. A true RPer loves freeform, structure less, creative, meanwhile the angry autists required structure or they cannot function.

No, a "true" RPer hates freeform because he isn't interested in a method of play which is literally just "my steel donut is better than yours".

Freeform shitters don't want roleplay. They want complete control over everything that happens to their characters, including how other characters perceive them. There's a reason it's so popular with Sonic autists, you know.

Go write a book if you just want a showcase for your power wank characters. An RPG is a GAME, not a circle jerk.

Dumb frogposter

Having structure and rules means there's the danger of loss and challenge in having to actually use the options available to you -- sometimes in creative or unexpected ways -- to overcome a challenge. Besides, working within limits to create something compelling or interesting provides a fun challenge. When people are allowed to make whatever they want, they usually end up making the exact same fucking thing: In freeform, on the rare occasion when it's more than just sitting in the corner or rafters of a tavern and preening while lamenting / bragging about how dark and tortured you are, then it's just watching the control-freak GM make the villain (inevitably a horrible amalgamation of the villains from the last dozen animes he watched) escape from the heroes, and the only reason they succeeded at all was because they're from his group of friends -- the characters played by people outside his clique had their contributions slapped down or outright ignored, if they were even allowed to participate at all.

And is right. For the vast majority of these people, especially the ones who participate in public games that are open to anyone (which are the worst of the worst), it's almost exclusively power wank and control freak. Each and every player sees their character as the protagonist, and everyone else participating in the game is at best an NPC designed to make their character look better. That's how freeform players think.

>not playing the robot programmed for surgery and piano playing that, due to manufacturing error, was shipped with horrible cut-rate claws
>not playing the chaz, sunglasses wearing backward hatted coolkid on a skateboard who just sort of drifts through the adventure on obscene luck and gamebreaking tony hawk bugs
>not playing a good old fationed bone pun undead

I don't know what to tell you, man.

Though, I usually wind up having to cram these characters into a system anyway.

None of those characters are really incompatible with any system (though genre might limit them to some level).

The problem with Freeform RP isnt outlandish character concepts. It's the fact it attracts spotlight-hungry spergs who just wanna treat other players like a captive audience.

>It's the fact it attracts spotlight-hungry spergs who just wanna treat other players like a captive audience.
This is exactly right. It's why the delightful examples posted would result in highschool-style ostracizing and exclusion and accusations of "not taking the game seriously" which in many places is enough to outright get you banned. It's better to play with close friends who get your sense of humor and keep the game private and/or secret, because hoo boy, making or joining a public game is like taking a swan dive into an open sewer.

I get that there are bad players in tabletop games with proper systems, I get it, but even the worst of them is an order of magnitude more tolerable than the worst I've seen in freeform.

t. guy who has never played a freeform sandbox RP

It very, very quickly turns into a dick measuring contest with constant bitchfights and back and forth "nuh-uh I don't lose you lose!" unless you're playing with a group of people who are very close, respectful, and mature. At which point you could literally pick up any RPG and do the same thing, so the point is moot.

>these niggers think the games are challenging
>when they are literally designed so you win

LOL