Lizzie Stark’s creation of an “American freeform” brand now has the Brits trying to create their own:
I’ve read a lot of UK games, and there’s nothing really distinctive about them, other than the usual UK/US split in style of humour. The difference between this and what FairEscape calls “pop-larp” (which is also a good description of the usual style of play here) are miniscule.
My thoughts are: Unless it’s actually practically important to categorise something, don’t.
Categorisation only really helps with getting an idea across quickly, but it usually limits creativity and sometimes even divides people.
But UK Freeform has been a term for years. Decades even. It really is a distinct tradition. Just as Australian Freeform is distinct and has been around for decades.
American Freeform on the other hand is a neologism, which seems fair enough as American Nordic Larp is a bit of a crap description. Seems like they want to distinguish themselves from US Theatre Style, even though there is probably a lot of overlap in style.
I can’t really comment on Oz, because very few of their games are extant to judge from - but UK freeform is just what we call theatre-style larp. Useful to know that to prevent miscommunication, but that’s about it.
“American freeform” mainly seems to be distinguished on who is doing it. In practice it seems to cover everything from Danish-style freeform (of the Fastavaal tradition), JeepForm, and theatre-style. And unlike Nordic, it brings nothing new to the party. It is a marketing brand only.
US theatre style and Australian freeform are historically both quite rules-heavy with tabletop-derived rules, although some of them have evolved away from that. This is mentioned in that “Pop larp” writeup. Rules to Live By being an example in the US, and I’ve seen some rules-heavy Oz games too with their first recorded freeform literally being Traveller standing up.
UK freeform is historically rules-light or rules-free. Other traditions may now be converging towards the UK freeform approach, but it’s fair to say that UK freeform got there first I think, well before even Nordic larp.
Nordic larp is notable for metagame mechanics which tend to be absent in other traditions. Fateplay, all those jeepform mechanics and such. And being less pop culture derived, with more challenging subject matter.
NZ theatreform was more like UK freeform from the start, I think.
There may be other differences with UK freeform, but deliberately sparse rules is the one that stands out to me.
From what I’ve made out in various discussions, in the UK “freeform” means free of rules. In Oz, it means “free from the tabletop”, i.e. doing tabletop standing up. In some Nordic countries, it seems to mean “free from the distinction of tabletop and larp”, a kind of tabletop-larp hybrid, but the hybrid is with rules-light storytelling tabletop, and with jeepfrom having evolved from that. In the US, “freeform” has traditionally sometime been used to mean “free of everything”: no rules, no pregen characters, just get together and make it up as you go. Now they seem to be trying to re-brand it as new type of theatre style with fewer conflict resolution mechanics and an openness to more challenging or arty subject matter.
The term “freeform” is pretty… freeform.