[Freemarket] The Simple Pleasures School of Everything

[Motipha]

Here's the link to the ap: http://chicagoindiegaming.wikispaces.com/Freemarket

This has some link back to Ron's post of the one-off at Chicagoland Games, as Todd, Megan and myself (Johnny Katana, Maggie Parker and Zhang Shiao) were all at that earlier session.  This is our regular game group having a crack at it, and the experience has been fun so far.  A few notes:

1)  We used the following structure for narration during challenges: declare action, flip cards, narrate.  This worked a metric ton better than what we were trying at the dojo.  The narration is then informed by what the cards show, rather than trying to anticipate them.  it also helped to keep the narration short, punchy, descriptive, but not resolutional.  So everything is a step towards the final goal without absolutely including the final goal.  I'm not sure how this affects excitement levels in the long run, as I tend to be the "I cleave you in twain with my battle axe!" type with my narration, but that should be fine.  All I can say is that this was working a lot better.

2)  Also with Challenges, we had a sample challenge before character generation like the game suggests.  It didn't make the system crystal for everyone at the table, but it helped to explain all the different actions in a meaningful way, including flow rebate and all that jazz.

3)  It's really important to grasp that the rules are not a translator.  An explanation:  For a lot of games, the rules and the mechanics they describe kind of act as a fiction-to-reality translator.  Freemarket isn't really doing that at all.  The place where this is most obvious is with the Experiences, which are best compared to a skill system in another game, say the fate system.  When I look at my Fate character sheet and see brawling, I know that word:  it means something to me from my own life experience, which I can then use to imagine and affect (effect? both I think) what is going on in the fiction.  This is not true of the Experiences in Freemarket.  The 14 experience types are all descriptions from the point of view of Freemarket and it's freemers:  They are cultural referents of the game culture itself.  By accepting that and understanding this, the game system makes a lot of sense.

4)  I don't remember where I read it, but someone mentioned that all the game terms are actually things on the donut.  a character might have a conversation about this persons breaking rating, or geneline.  They can talk about what tags on a piece of tech, and it is all appropriate in-game conversation.  That is a very, very cool thing, and it makes the world make sense.  In essence, understanding the system is understanding the world.

In many ways I think this first session went very smoothly because we had that earlier session with Ron at the store.  By seeing where we ran in to bumps, and what were sticking points, we took the time to try and get some understanding of the challenge mechanics rather than just figuring "we'll understand it when we get to it."  I think Freemarket needs to be approached very cautiously for those who haven't played.  But that said, this world... man, this world is awesome.  Character generation is crazy fun, figuring out the MRCZ was a moment of epiphany, and even though we only got a few challenges under our belt, the system was starting to hum.  We got a couple things wrong, but we've caught them now and are going to correct for next session.

[meganjank]

First off, I told the guys in our group that I would NEVER play this game after watching Ron's session of it at the Dice Dojo a few weeks ago.  I have a very short list of games I flat out refuse to play, and Freemarket was on it.  I got to feeling, however, that I didn't really give it a fighting chance since I wasn't an actual player and hadn't participated in the full session.  So I agreed to play a session or two.

I am pleasantly surprised about our game after my experience watching the other session at the Dice Dojo.  I'm still not 100% sold on Freemarket stepping away from the table, but in the moment of actual play, it's okay.  Missing out on the character creation the first time around was a big deal in my better understanding of the game in action.  First time around I rated it at "excrutiating", and I will up my rating to a solid "s'okay".

I think I've identified my biggest problem with Freemarket - this is the kind of game that makes me feel really dumb, at very least in the initial setup.  I haven't really run into this feeling in an RPG before, but I run into it with board and card games from time to time.  I need to do things to learn them; I'm a hands-on, trial and error kind of girl.  If you throw too many words and finely finessed details and strategy at me up front beforehand, I'm going to shut off and get frustrated.  I don't think there's a way to approach Freemarket as a new player without running headfirst into a lot of the stuff that shuts me down.  And I fully recognize that there are people that love that, like Timo.  

I think it's one of those situations where player and game just don't click the right way.  
Megan

[Jared A. Sorensen]

We presented the text, the rules, the world if a very specific manner to avoid the "firehouse of data" alluded to in the instruction manual.

Glad to hear things are starting to gel with the group. Yay, error-correction interface!

[David Berg]

I don't remember where I read it, but someone mentioned that all the game terms are actually things on the donut.  a character might have a conversation about this persons breaking rating, or geneline.  They can talk about what tags on a piece of tech, and it is all appropriate in-game conversation.

To the extent that this is universal across all Freemarket game terms (I'm not sure whether it is or isn't), this allows an interesting possibility for melding "immersion" with "playing a game".

A problem I've encountered with "let's get really into character and act accordingly in a realistic setting" is that it's hard to avoid all the vagueries of, well, real life.  You get the sense of transportation, but not the satisfaction and clarity of playing a well-defined game.  Naturally, a solution is to make the setting itself a sort of game.  But that doesn't work for a lot of game concepts.  For Freemarket, though, it totally does.

I'm not sure how many folks who are drawn to the game are actually interested in playing it in this manner, but it's still an appealing potential to me.

Ps,
-David