FU: Freeform Universal RPG

FU: the Freeform Universal RPG is a lightweight, super-flexible, super-fun roleplaying game that puts your characters at the centre of the action. It is a roleplaying game of action, adventure and fun! FU lets you quickly create characters, settings and situations with a minimum of fuss, or even preparation.

The core of FU comes down to this:

• Characters are described with evocative descriptors – no “stats” or other numbers!

• Only players roll dice, letting the Game Master focus on guiding an awesome story

• Conflicts and obstacles are approached with closed questions – “Can I leap the chasm?” “Do I disarm my opponent?”

• The dice answer your question with some combination of YES / NO / AND / BUT which you use to drive the story forward

Thumbnail cover image of Freeform Universal RPG

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A community of players and creators

Downloaded more than 10,000 times since 2010, FU has gathered an enthusiastic community of players, “hackers” and publishers who have embraced the streamlined system that puts the focus on story, action and entertainment.

The classic FU rules are released under a creative commons attribution license. This is a very flexible license that allows you to copy, remix, edit and create awesome stuff based on FU.

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Articles & Advice

Inhumanoids: A FU Hack

Here’s a quick thumb-sketch of an idea for a story or campaign, inspired by Marvel’s Inhumans. In this variation, however, it is more of a mash-up with traditional fantasy tropes, rather than alien experimentation. In the distant past, thousands (if not millions) of...

Trademarks & Meta-Tags

Freeform Universal works really well just the way it is, but today I am going to share with you two changes I have been working on – tags and trademarks. The first is a pretty simple adjustment to the language we use to describe functions in the game, while the second...

Making Custom Dice for FU

FU uses dice to generate a response to a closed question, with Yes, No, And, But providing six distinct possible results. While these answers can be generated with a standard six-sided die, I thought it might be fun to have something a little more custom. Today I am...

FU in German

I have been very remiss in not sharing this awesome piece of work much, much earlier – FU available in German, both as a digital download and as an online SRD! This awesome undertaking is by Tina Trillitzsch and Thorsten Panknin. Check it out here It is my...

Character Advancement & Experience Points

Currently, the FU rules do not provide details on advancement through experience points, instead suggesting to change descriptors and make adjustments to characters in a more ad-hoc manner. It is a small step, however, to reward play with experience points...

What’s in a Name? (Or Why It’s Called FU)

So, this comes up a lot. It was never my intention to be provocative, contentious, or just damn rude. In fact I always have and always will call my little game “foo”. It never entered my mind that “F – U” might mean something else until after I had shared it. I guess...

Dice and System Matters

I have been giving some thought to the dice mechanism in FU lately. A lot of thought. In fact, I have been chasing myself in circles thinking about how actions are resolved, what is important and why. I decided I would write this post so that; I could clarify for...

Weapons & Armour & Hit Points (Oh my!)

This is a set of optional, untested, experimental rules to introduce a more traditional damage system to FU. This is quite a departure from the standard FU rules, as it is more prescriptive in how things work, and has a list of tags that should be used in...

Image of a pencil, scissors and coffee cup on blue background

Setting Stakes in FU

I had a great conversation with Christoffer over on the FU Facebook page about setting stakes in your games of FU. At the core of the discussion was how do we ensure that our games don’t grind to a halt when a player rolls a “no” results.Up until now the process I...

2nd Edition Beta Rules

Click the image to download a copy of the FU 2nd Edition Beta rules. These are quite rough and the game will probably look very different when finished, but try them out and send me feedback!