Ability Strips are a way to quickly add abilities to a freeform. They consist of a strip of card with three abilities for each character. There is also space for the character’s secret (something that they don’t want other people to know) and information (something that they know but don’t mind sharing).
You can download the file here.
I wrote them with Peaky in mind. There’s rarely a lot of spare time at Peaky, and so there are almost never any abilities at the game written there. While they’re not always necessary, sometimes I miss them so I designed these ability strips that do not require much effort to use. I imagine it wouldn’t take more than an extra 30 minutes to drop these into a typical Peaky game.
The abilities refer to goals and an “Other People” section, so you’ll need to make sure that your character sheets include those - but many already do.
If you’re familiar with our murder mystery games at Freeform Games then you may recognise much of this. In our games, characters all have three abilities, a secret and a clue. Our current format for our games has abilities within the character booklet, but at one time we had ability strips just like these (some of our older games still do).
Abilities don’t suit all games, but I can imagine them working well for games such as Best of the Wurst, An Ecumenical Matter, and Carry on at Camp David. I wouldn’t use them for games like Second Watch or Burning Orchid.
Some tips for using the strips
Knowing that I was going to include abilities wouldn’t change how I write a freeform - the abilities simply make it easy for information to be shared within the freeform.
Some of the abilities refer to a characters first goal. So it’s nice if the top goal is fairly interesting. (I like to think of using abilities as rolling a critical in a tabletop RPG - so it’s nice if you always get something worth having.) But on the other hand make sure that that top goal doesn’t give too much away.
There’s no reason why two (or more) characters can’t have the same abilities.
I generally don’t include many of the abilities that expose secrets, and I am careful about who I give those to.
In Freeform Games, the murder can’t be solved purely by using abilities (so the murderer doesn’t have “I’m the murderer” as their secret). So be circumspect when thinking about what to use as secrets and information.
Adding Ability Strips to The Highgate Club
Before posting this here I’ve taken the Ability Strips out for a spin and added them to The Highgate Club. I’d already prepped this as I had hoped to run it in January, but I didn’t get enough players and ran Death on the Gambia instead. So The Highgate Club is all printed out and ready to run...
So all I did was use the ability strips as given and created one for each character. I re-read their character sheet to identify an appropriate secret and piece of information, and that was it. The Highgate Club has 14 characters so I needed to create four more ability strips - and all I did was duplicate two of the pages. (So some characters have duplicate ability strips - not that it matters.)
I did check through the characters and make sure that they had an interesting first goal and that they knew at least two or three other people - that did mean a little bit of rewriting, which probably wasn’t a bad thing.
I haven’t run The Highgate Club again yet - and I’m looking forward to seeing if the strips make a difference.
Expanding further
The abilities I’ve used are all fairly straightforward information-sharing abilities that suit pretty much any freeform. Please feel free to replace with other abilities that suit your game.
A simple way to make the abilities suited to the character is to add a bit of flavour text, explaining why they have that ability.
Freeform Games have some standard rules for combat, arrests, capturing, poisoning and pickpocketing that all contain further examples of abilities. You’re welcome to use them!
Here’s the link to the Ability Strips again.
You can download the file here.
I wrote them with Peaky in mind. There’s rarely a lot of spare time at Peaky, and so there are almost never any abilities at the game written there. While they’re not always necessary, sometimes I miss them so I designed these ability strips that do not require much effort to use. I imagine it wouldn’t take more than an extra 30 minutes to drop these into a typical Peaky game.
The abilities refer to goals and an “Other People” section, so you’ll need to make sure that your character sheets include those - but many already do.
If you’re familiar with our murder mystery games at Freeform Games then you may recognise much of this. In our games, characters all have three abilities, a secret and a clue. Our current format for our games has abilities within the character booklet, but at one time we had ability strips just like these (some of our older games still do).
Abilities don’t suit all games, but I can imagine them working well for games such as Best of the Wurst, An Ecumenical Matter, and Carry on at Camp David. I wouldn’t use them for games like Second Watch or Burning Orchid.
Some tips for using the strips
Knowing that I was going to include abilities wouldn’t change how I write a freeform - the abilities simply make it easy for information to be shared within the freeform.
Some of the abilities refer to a characters first goal. So it’s nice if the top goal is fairly interesting. (I like to think of using abilities as rolling a critical in a tabletop RPG - so it’s nice if you always get something worth having.) But on the other hand make sure that that top goal doesn’t give too much away.
There’s no reason why two (or more) characters can’t have the same abilities.
I generally don’t include many of the abilities that expose secrets, and I am careful about who I give those to.
In Freeform Games, the murder can’t be solved purely by using abilities (so the murderer doesn’t have “I’m the murderer” as their secret). So be circumspect when thinking about what to use as secrets and information.
Adding Ability Strips to The Highgate Club
Before posting this here I’ve taken the Ability Strips out for a spin and added them to The Highgate Club. I’d already prepped this as I had hoped to run it in January, but I didn’t get enough players and ran Death on the Gambia instead. So The Highgate Club is all printed out and ready to run...
So all I did was use the ability strips as given and created one for each character. I re-read their character sheet to identify an appropriate secret and piece of information, and that was it. The Highgate Club has 14 characters so I needed to create four more ability strips - and all I did was duplicate two of the pages. (So some characters have duplicate ability strips - not that it matters.)
I did check through the characters and make sure that they had an interesting first goal and that they knew at least two or three other people - that did mean a little bit of rewriting, which probably wasn’t a bad thing.
I haven’t run The Highgate Club again yet - and I’m looking forward to seeing if the strips make a difference.
Expanding further
The abilities I’ve used are all fairly straightforward information-sharing abilities that suit pretty much any freeform. Please feel free to replace with other abilities that suit your game.
A simple way to make the abilities suited to the character is to add a bit of flavour text, explaining why they have that ability.
Freeform Games have some standard rules for combat, arrests, capturing, poisoning and pickpocketing that all contain further examples of abilities. You’re welcome to use them!
Here’s the link to the Ability Strips again.
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