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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SuStel" data-source="post: 3436395" data-attributes="member: 28997">Then it should be easy for you to demonstrate it!You are not following the text of the article you quoted. Here is the first sentence of the article: "Freeform role-playing games, also called freeforms, are a type of role-playing game which employ minimal or no rules; occupying a middle-ground between traditional role-playing games and improvisational theatre."I make the claim that original D&D employs minimal rules. While I wouldn't go so far to say that it is literally a "freeform" game, and I didn't, I do say that its rules are quite minimal.Let us also note that even improvisational theater has <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvisational_theatre#Improv_process" target="_blank">rules</a>.Now we're playing with semantics. A "role-player" isn't necessarily playing a "role-playing game." He may just be "play-acting," which may not be a game at all.There was no such thing as a "rules-lite" RPG when D&D was first published! It was simply "the rules," and they were simple, vague, and permissive. The actual "rules" of D&D boil down, mostly, to just the concepts of hit points, choosing a character type, determining characteristics, alignment, what experience points do, and how to cast spells. Everything else is simply lists (lists of character types, lists of equipment, lists of spells, lists of monsters, lists of treasure) and possible systems to determine outcomes (how to play out combat, how much do hirelings cost, who lives in that castle?, how to conduct naval combat, and so on). None of the lists or systems are rules. The actual rules only build the game's playing pieces (the characters) and then the rest is guidance on how to resolve the situations that will come up.As time went on the the D&D supplements were published, this wide-open game started to get filled in with actual rules. Greyhawk added several of them that stuck, like variable hit dice and weapon damage and significant adjustments due to ability scores. Other supplements (like Blackmoor) suggested rules that went in different directions. These supplements were the writers saying, "I think this is a good rule to fill in this silent area of the rules. Use it if you agree."Original D&D was a new game form. It gave you extremely basic rules, and a bunch of "objects" to plug into the game. Those objects were not rules. You can swap or replace them at will and not change the framework of the game. But change the few rules that there are (like spell casting) and you do change something fundamental in the game.</blockquote>

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