Re: free-form vs. non free form rp
Free-form, in its most extreme sense, is a game where the players make up the story as they go. There's not really a GM, as such, there's just the player who happens to be responsible for the game on here. And it takes a special variety of players to make a 'pure' free-form game work...the temptation becomes very strong for some people to adopt a 'Well, I said that's what happened, so, yes, I did in fact spit watermelon seeds so hard that they killed all the zombies' (or something equally ludicrous) mentality.
Most games listed as free-form on RPOL are, in my experience, actually guided free-form, where there's a GM who has a storyline, and will intervene if someone starts abusing the freedom of not having to worry about attributes, stats, skills, etc. Many of these, in my experience, have a loose outline of a plot for the game, and they let the players determine the course of the game through their decisions, as opposed to steering them toward this event or that confrontation, etc...
Non-free-form games have a specific rules-set that they follow, and often have a more detailed plot. There are specific rules for conflict resolution, and definite protocols established for utilizing skills and gaining new skills. It's not enough to say, for instance, "Well, my character has a decade of military training, so naturally he'd know how to use communications gear;" you actually need to sink some points into the appropriate skill in order to use that gear correctly.
Most games, in my experience, fall somewhere on the spectrum between the two...a lot of system-based games incorporate some free-form elements, and a lot of free-form games actually have some kind of defining guidelines as to what is and is not valid within the game.
