Uh-oh. This is one of those times I have to come clean about why a game didn't go so well. Or in this case, why I'm not entirely sure what (or who) the main culprit was.

At the Dice Dojo, I met up with Timo, Peter, Sam, and Todd; Megan came by later as a spectator. I'd spent a hell of a lot of time prepping, perusing the rules and pestering Jared and Luke. I even made up a pretty interesting diagram to help me get my head straight about the game (apologies; it's a Word file; I'll put a PDF of it up later); any comments or questions about it are welcome. I also have a lot of beginning thoughts about Freemarket compared with the BTRC supplement NeoTerra for EABA, and about Tanith Lee's early novel Don't Bite the Sun, which I'd like to develop in this thread if anyone's interested.

Tmo and I both brought our deluxe boxed editions, and pre-play orientation and discussion went well. We moved into making the characters, who turned out to be:

Peter: Jim, a First-Gen experienced handyman
Sam: Fine Swine, a Second-Gen quester for the ultimate high
Todd: Franklin Somerset, a First-Gen old-school hobby collector
Timo: Stardate Slim, a Second-Gen mold artist

Cultivation was the main thing across most of them, with Fine Swine being the exception but still consistent with his emphasis on Printing and Ephemera. I stayed out of making up the MRCZ as much as I could, not wanting to impose, but providing setting information when asked. They eventually worked up the Pac-Men, whose purpose is to create political art. Amusingly, they didn't have any particular axe to grind so one of their Needs was to find a message, or perhaps messages from people who wanted some supportive art.

Tags: Social Engineering, Mercenary, Space Hippies
Needs: Message, Space, Following

While they worked on that, I prepped based on the memory mash-up. I messed it up a little bit, though, because I got confused over two of the ex-girlfriends and ended up with a couple of events which focused too much on single characters. In retrospect, looking over the MRCZ sheet, I now realize that I should have had that in front of me instead of scribbled notes. Its format is just right for what I was trying to do.

We were pumped! I think we really got into the light-touch but actually-significant content and everyone was happy to enjoy any incidental Color that popped up through either narration or table-talk. Opening play was enjoyable and colorful. We had a lot of fun with the four slackers who shared the living/MRCZ space with the characters and the highly fraught line someone had painted down the middle of the deck.

Let's see, going by my notes, Fine Swine's parents were trying to set him up with a girlfriend, who was part of someone else's memories, and Jim came home from the sort-of antique junk shop place with the remains of a robot sex-worker, to discover that it had been based on Franklin's ex. The Jim-Franklin dialogue about this was excruciatingly funny. I really suffered from the error I made with the mash-up as I had to struggle to get everyone into some kind of interesting scene. We ran a couple of resolutions to deal with minor hassles, and the mechanics were nearly instantly disliked intensely by Peter, and as it went along, less and less enjoyed by all of us, me included

The biggest conflict, between an NPC named Gordon, a member of the Readers MRCZ who were kind of perfect-suicide intellectual types, and three of the characters, ended up being frustrating. By this point, we'd figured out that either the system features didn't mesh with the group, or we didn't grasp the features well enough (or in a way we liked) to enjoy them. And in this case, by having Gordon wordlessly draw his katana and seek to slice up the characters on his way to Fine Swine's cache of pills ... see, none of the characters were combat-oriented, and the conflict was connected to the characters on paper, but was not articulated in play at all. So perhaps I merely called a conflict which was totally off the beam as far as the characters were concerned. Plus it was about as classic example of "monster appears, attacks" as one can get in FreeMarket.

Looking at my notes and also at the diagram, I may have strayed out of the blue zone and into the Grimjack/Post Bros area with their emphasis on butchery and family.

To clarify, this has nothing to do with understanding the basics of resolution. We got that, and grasped that card-counting played a big role, and also that one should learn to enjoy losing. I don't think we mis-played a single step in the various card-draws or card-readings.

Stardate Slim was lightly deathed by Gordon, which turned out to be kind of funny when the servo-med-robots, whatever they're called, showed up and stitched-glued his head back on, and he was fine in about an hour.

The final conflict concerned the repair of the robot, which in fictional content was actually pretty cool, and ended well with the robot being a very annoying girlfriend and Jim - after all this trouble getting her to work - switched her off. But mechanically, Peter was very grumpy about the system by that point and found it thoroughly un-fun to do; only his basic good will as a role-player and interest in the imagined material carried him through.

We discussed the game for a very long time afterwards. Here are the system features that Peter and Todd brought up:

- being good means you can only drag it out, not that you can get it done quicker
- being good can be undercut easily by the other guy calling fast
- narration does nothing - no "bounce" - especially since when you narrate, you don't know whether you're finishing the conflict or not
- if you get a lousy first draw, you're fucked, even if you're good

It strikes me that the only way around most of the above objections is to get more cards drawn at once, and there are some mechanics to do that which I'd like to see in action.

For my part, I found the different types and layers of Currency rather tiring to track

I want to stress that this group, and the Dice Dojo gang in general, does not suffer from several widespread problems with trying out games for the first time.

- we don't mind errors in play as part of learning, and I in particular do not mind being corrected by someone else at the table - such events never have that sour, demoralizing effect I've experienced in other groups
- we really like our characters and one another's characters and get excited about the issues and color involved in crisis situations
- we don't mind negative consequences to our characters as part of learning
- we don't mind taking the time to discover what needs to be said and shared as an interface or interstitial activity while conducting the mechanics
- we have a really good practical understanding of Authority divisions and how they might be organized very differently in different games
- we really learn systems, both through reading and through usage, and we help one another learn them through positive social means

So the conclusion at the table, and I agree with this thoroughly, is that something specific, embedded in the procedures of play, was definitely operating such that we didn't have our ordinary rocking-fun blast playing the game. But what was it? We fell into three or four camps.

- Timo was pretty sure we didn't go into it with enough grasp on the features and hence what we had to bring in.
- Sam and Todd were pretty sure that we didn't make it far enough along the learning curve to judge yet. (Sam and I are talking about organizing another try.)
- I was and am kicking myself for initiating a "he attacks you!" conflict with no information or memories obviously supporting it, which meant that the mechanics were being employed at a narrative disadvantage. I'm also provisionally underwhelmed about the exact role of narration during resolution, but I want to try it again to see if I was missing how to to do it right.
- Peter and Megan would take a full minute to decide whether to fellate Rush Limbaugh or to deal with this resolution system ever again. Megan described watching it as "excruciating."

As for this post, I really don't want armchair analysis of who's at fault. What do I want ... um, all I can think of to say is, Erik, help!

Best, Ron

This mirrors my group's experiences with the beta pretty well. Was the system updated since then?

This, in particular:

Ron Edwards wrote: - narration does nothing -

I want to address everything in your post but I don't want to do a point-by-point gloss, and let's see if chunking my responses will stave off rambling.

Responses to the Mechanics

I've
- Ryerson Crew: felt a little overwhelmed at trying to add colour with every turn of a card but they could at least come up with clever lines to make each card placement interesting
- Fan Expo Playtest: Two Forge posters were stymied by the mechanic.  Both complained that narration seemed to be icing on the cake and felt that while there seemed pressure to turn each card placement into groovy fiction, there was no reward for doing so and no lasting consequences either.  But others just whipped through the mechanics with only token attempts at in/out of character contributions to the fiction in order to role play the consequences.  During this post-resolution role play some of the individual points in the process of resolution were fictified, but this was soldering together points of contact AFTER the mechanical resolution.  They seemed to enjoy it that way and didn't worry that every moment of the resolution did not have a fictional consequence.

My recommendation: The staking of flow and the consequences of flow investment in a conflict are far more rewarding points for investing one's creative energies than in fictifying each step of the resolution process.  If a character brings in a bug from a past conflict or burns tech, interface or geneline, that deserves some elaboration.  But working out the implications of each and every step if not fun or meaningful.

What does "being good mean"?

Your AP records players' impression that if your first draw is bad, you just can't win.  The question is how badly you want to win.  So your 3 in Wetwork won't help you overcome a weak first draw?  How much of your tech, interface, geneline, and experience are you willing to burn out to finish what you started?  This isn't like trading STR points for some kind of dice bounus in a hacked version of D&D.  Your allies can help you rebuild yourself, aggie can print you out again, etc.  But here and now, the decisions about what you want and what of yourself you are willing to sacrifice to get the job done, that is what matters.  A weak wetworker willing to freak out and unload a pistol into the ceiling made a big difference in my Phantasm game.

Once again, it seems as if dramatic choices made before, after, and sometimes during the resolution are more meaningful than the individual steps of the card mechanic.

If good = the ability to drag out a conflict that means you are pushing opposing players to make drastic decisions.  The longer you drag it out the more the opponent will be tempted to make drastic "burn" decisions or burn up bug chips or attempt to drawn in allies.  Drawing out a conflict provides a different aesthetic of victory than a solid knockout punch delivered right away.  I am not a fan of whiffing and waiting out an opponent but the resolution doesn't take as long as a D&D fight so it didn't really frustrate me.  For players who are still getting used to the cards I can see where it could become a tedious waiting game.

Perhaps less skilled opponents can cut their losses by folding quickly.  True.  But what does that mean for their flow.  I don't have the rules with me but wouldn't the character who initiated a conflict end up losing the staked flow if they call early but aren't winning?  Keep doint that and you will be off of the station.  If you entered the contest from a position of strength but a combination of bad card pulls and drastic choices about what to burn have made stayingin the conflict unapealing?  You can back out but your flow position doesn't make it catastrophic.

The sense that narration provides no bounce was a sticking upoint for some of my players too.  I saw them try to make nice bits of colour or definitive pieces of ficiton for each card draw, but heard their disappointment at the end of the session when they becaem aware than little of it had made any difference.  So your players are right.  Narration doesn't make much of a difference.

But decisions about the kinds of conflicts you start, discourse around the flow being wagered, interpreting the results of those conflicts and those wagers, setting up challenges that will draw in enemies or competitors, making decisions about what to burn, these seem to be the fun mechanical decisions.

Wait -- the dramatic decisions that are tied to mechanics.  That's where the fun it, not in creating fiction about every turn in your fortune as dictated by the Fortune playing itself out through the cards.

Enough with the stream of consciousness:

Get to the point where you can flip out cards as fast as a poker player, not like a newbie trying to remember the difference between a straight and a flush.

Then you and your players can devote your energies to coming up with interesting conflicts that will gain you individual flow or tap the flow of rivals.  Make contracts with others to get funky tech that you can burn wastefully in flashy conflicts.

When you are riffling through the cards, at most take a second to say "Blam, blam" or "I keep pushing" but do not expect those to matter any more than what you say as your Rogue swings a sword in the Castle Ravenstein boardgame.  Where you can start laying down meaningful colour is in those moments where a character's interface saves them in a rough patch.  Dramatic decisions like the sacrifice of tech or geneline or experience are worthy of in-character dialogue or (relatively) extensive description because the results of those sacrifices will persist after the conflict.  (The ebb and flow of your strengths and the little bits of fiction that come up during most acts card laying will in all likelyhood NOT persist).

So here is my ranking of the mechanics that demand the highest amount of color when elaborating on points of contact between system and fiction:
1) Staking flow
2) Determining the fictional parameters of the flow rebates/loss as determined at the end of the conflict
3) Decisions to modify one's character during a conflict to get one's goal (i.e. what to burn and why, and the consequences of that particular act of burnification, and reactions to it, and dialogue around it)
4) The DECISION to Go For It, Support, Burn, Call, or Error Correct, or play bug chips
5) Individual moments of card pulling.  Really, at most they are worthy of an Eastwood or Schwarzenegger one-liner, not detailed narration.

Hi Ron,

I can't tell from your account how much of the dissatisfaction was related to handling time or to the fictional color issues Erik describes.  Personally, I've found both of these to be hugely important to my enjoyment of challenges.  I also think group energy is consistently better when challenges are about the progress of the MRCZ, not just about an individual character (Jim's ex is part of a political thin-slicing MRCZ with some messages to support!).

As for "being good just lets you drag it out", I agree, but this also lets you accrue more victory points, so it's rewarding in that respect.  As for the Superuser calling it early, again, I agree, but I'm not sure why you would do that.  Does the book tell you to try to minimize player victory points?  Jared didn't run it that way the one time I played with him...

A bad draw totally fucks you on a solo challenge.  With a full group, I've seen some bad draws recovered from.

Finally, I found a full understanding of what "efficiency" means in context to be key to my relating the mechanical actions to the fiction.  But that may just be a personal hang-up.

Ps,
-David

Erik wrote:
Castle Ravenstein

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the replies. You may believe me as you wish, but I want to stress that we made no mis-plays, nor was any player or me having any trouble with simply applying the mechanics. When I say "learning curve," I mean "having fun with them and grasping second-order consequences," not, "how do I do this thing." Timo and I had been studying the book for months. The others playing are system jocks with very diverse experiences and a lot of flexible, enthusiastic habits about RPG design. So none of us wondered "what does this do," or similar. We got the rules, understood Effects and other details, and played cards reasonably quickly and quite logically. A few things did get Burned along the way too.

Also, Erik, I may not have been clear about our issues with narration. It's not that we struggled to produce long monologues with every card draw. The issue is that I might narrate (to stay with a very straightforward example) "I stab you through the body," without knowing whether it's the last sword-stroke in the combat or not. That totally depends on the next player Calling or not. This created a kind of slippery feeling to talking, not knowing whether we were describing something consequential or not. Again, I am willing to discover that this is a feature and that all that's needed is to tell one's fellow players that this is how it's like, but it caught us by surprise.

David, your questions are on target - it's not handling time at all; it's fun with the mechanics and their relationship to what's going on. Also, as I see it, the book advises flexibility about how hard to knee the player-characters in the groin, which is what Calling early would be doing. (Then again, considering the consequences of a bad early draw, Calling early is the only reasonable choice, so there ya go ...) Flexibility is good, but I don't think it's a good principle to rely on GM telepathy to know whether tactic A is more fun in a given instance. I'd rather go with my own thoughts on playing this particular character and how hard & nasty they want what they want, as I see it through their eyes in a creative fugue. How this preference works with FreeMarket fun is a good question. (For instance, I'm still dubious about the Superuser making Jared's character's pumpkin hallucinogenic in the example. I like it in some ways, not in others.)

As it happened, your parenthetical description of what would be a compelling conflict was exactly what was going on. In that Gordon was there to get these very interesting drugs from Fine Swine, but was also all wrapped up with the Reader MRCZ and a female character hooked into two of the other player-characters' memories. The problem was my failure to communicate it, and also that I might have done better to have Gordon contract the Pac-Men to make something they might not want to make. Which seems so obvious now of course.

I definitely think my screwup with the kill/not-obviously-relevant combat choice contributed to that sequence being less compelling, but the problems or problematic responses showed up throughout, including in conflicts whose fictional content was exciting.

Again, thanks for all the comments. Although most of this post bitched about how some of them didn't apply, a lot did. I'll be mining the posts for specific points to carry into prep and play when I try the game again.

Best, Ron
edited to fix italics format

Ron wrote:
... Erik, I may not have been clear about our issues with narration. It's not that we struggled to produce long monologues with every card draw. The issue is that I might narrate (to stay with a very straightforward example) "I stab you through the body," without knowing whether it's the last sword-stroke in the combat or not. That totally depends on the next player Calling or not. This created a kind of slippery feeling to talking, not knowing whether we were describing something consequential or not. Again, I am willing to discover that this is a feature and that all that's needed is to tell one's fellow players that this is how it's like, but it caught us by surprise. ...

Hi Ron,

My first instinct is usually for character advocacy too.  I hope you find a way that works!  Just to throw out an alternative, though:

I've played mostly challenges where there was no NPC antagonism.  A lot of Printing.  In these, the superuser has seemed (to me) to be pushing "What else could go wrong?" to the extent that some good plays could reduce Victory points, thus introducing more compromises.  Primed by playing this way, I imagine that, as superuser, I wouldn't be advocating for NPCs in challenges; rather, I'd be pushing the task of "how much can you customize your outcome and minimize your resource-hogging (as reflected by efficiency-rewarding Flow rebate)" as far as that was reasonably in the balance.  (Or, yeah, I'll admit, as far as my GM telepathy told me the players were enjoying it.)

Part of what I love about FreeMarket's fictional concept is the drive to add value.  Accordingly, zero-sum interactions seem like something of a waste.  As superuser, I'm not Calling to minimize my guy's losses; I'm playing on to explore possible collective benefits.  Basically, I think it's possible to play as an advocate for the station. 

I want my FreeMarket games to be about the MRCZ and the larger society.  I don't really give a fuck about any NPCs.

I have no idea if I'm reflecting the game's actual intent here.  Just throwing another POV into the arena.  Hope something in here was useful!
-David

Can any of you fellow FM veterans give me some advice?

Given the "slippery feeling" that some of us have felt during the resolution how would you advise Superusers and players to

a) narrate the steps of a Wetwork challenge?
b) narrate a challenge involving physical force that isn't Wetwork?

The result of a successful Wetwork challenge will be some kind of death, not injury or binding or knockout. 

Do I just accept that on this station people simply aim to kill in every physical fight because any lesser results would be simply shrugged off?  I can narrate all sorts of violence and so long as I hold off from the killing blow it doesn't really matter.

In that case, what kind of challenge is it when I say "I jeet kun do the loudmouth until he stops those gross insults about my significant other"?  Is that Negotiation?  One of those quick 1 flow contracts we use when we don't want to bother with the resolution system? 

What is it when I leap on someone from behind and slap on the handcuffs?  I seriously don't want to kill the miscreant but just immobilize him for 2 hours while I take his place at the party.  Do I bring in backstory and say "this is Freemarket, you just lightly death the sucker -- he'll be back in 2 hours anyway"?  Is it a kind of pre-emptive ghosting?

Ron wrote: The issue is that I might narrate (to stay with a very straightforward example) "I stab you through the body," without knowing whether it's the last sword-stroke in the combat or not. That totally depends on the next player Calling or not. This created a kind of slippery feeling to talking, not knowing whether we were describing something consequential or not.

Hiya John,

Finally got a moment to follow up; I apologize for the delay. I and two other people at the table have played a solid amount of Dogs, I with one group and the two of them with another. As far as I know, none of us ran into the same trouble with that game. I think that system does have some individual consequence per Go, however, specifically whether one Takes the Blow or not, so the "floatiness" of the narration isn't quite the same.

Before going on, I want to specify that I was not citing this particular feature of the game as a dealbreaker. It may have been a contributing factor in the face of some of the more fundamental frustrations that Peter experienced in particular, involving the "screwed from the start" factor. My concerns lay more in the latter realm and also some currency stuff in terms of handling time, and remember, I was in the "need to play it more" camp of the debriefing discussion. I don't think the "gah! hate it!" camp was irrational though and I want to examine their points fairly.

Also, although I am still working up the post for it, I found a thought-provoking counter-example in a recent playtest of a game design I recently brushed the dust off and started to work on again, Doctor Chaos. Just as in FreeMarket, rounds of card play and the narration that goes with each play are only cumulatively effective and don't actually "do" anything in terms of who wins, although they can certainly chew up the landscape.

So in writing this current draft and in explaining the rules to this playtest session group (which included Peter), I was very clear that all narrations during this part of play are nothing but superhero and supervillain pornography: blasts, smashes, grimaces, determined words and glares, aerial speedings about, spectacular acrobatics, and similar.* This fits very nicely with the topic of the game, which is the ultravillain, such as Doctor Doom. Like FreeMarket, the design entails accumulating successes until someone calls; it's based on a very stripped-down version of Rummy rules and so you call by knocking on the table.

A primary difference, though, is that the hands are held in traditional private card-play style, so you cannot be sure exactly where you or anyone else stands, although keeping an eye on card draws can help. Another difference is that unlike FreeMarket, you cannot knock until you achieve a minimum degree of success which happens to be pretty high. Given both of these points, knocking solely to undercut someone else's apparent success is not possible. It also provides a particular form of tension and risk to the card play which is not present in FreeMarket, in which strategy is based on full-knowledge card-counting (and this not a bad thing, just different).

I'll talk more about the game and session in its own thread when I get around to finishing the post, but here I'll say that the playtest was successful and the relatively non-consequential, and indeed genuinely pornographic narration at the steps I'm talking about did not create frustration. In fact, Peter took on the extremely important role of the lesser villain and was a standout strategist and genre-specific performer throughout.

So my point in bringing it up here is that in another design, the feature you're asking about wasn't a problem. It may be that simply making this "porn talk" factor clear to everyone the next time I play FreeMarket will be sufficient to solve that potential problem or perceived problem. Or perhaps it won't, and then mechanics issues like the definite difference between Doctor Chaos card play and FreeMarket card play will have to be analyzed and perhaps it'll boil down into a preference issue. I rather admire the design goal of FreeMarket to be a full knowledge system; there are no mechanics unknowns at any time. I haven't played it enough (or well enough!) to know whether I like that, although if I'm not mistaken, Bliss Stage has that feature too, so maybe I do like it. But anyway, maybe there are people out there who really, really don't.

Best, Ron

* "Pornography" in this case meaning not graphic sexual content, but instead gratuitous spectacle seeking OMG moments, for any topic, in this case, four-colored superheroic combat and melodrama.

I appreciate the extensive reply because I am incorporating card play and gradual build towards dramatic conclusions via "floaty" narration in my wonky space opera game In this Sign, Conquer.  And because I really have had fun with Freemarket and want to respond to the concerns of some of the folks with whom I really want to run the game.

Ron wrote:
Just as in FreeMarket, rounds of card play and the narration that goes with each play are only cumulatively effective and don't actually "do" anything in terms of who wins, although they can certainly chew up the landscape ... all narrations during this part of play are nothing but superhero and supervillain pornography: blasts, smashes, grimaces, determined words and glares, aerial speedings about, spectacular acrobatics, and similar.

Ron wrote: ...  Like FreeMarket, the design entails accumulating successes until someone calls; it's based on a very stripped-down version of Rummy rules and so you call by knocking on the table ... A primary difference, though, is that the hands are held in traditional private card-play style, so you cannot be sure exactly where you or anyone else stands, although keeping an eye on card draws can help. Another difference is that unlike FreeMarket, you cannot knock until you achieve a minimum degree of success which happens to be pretty high. Given both of these points, knocking solely to undercut someone else's apparent success is not possible. It also provides a particular form of tension and risk to the card play which is not present in FreeMarket

Thanks for replying Ron!

I re-read the thread and I'm unsure what specifically caused Peter's reaction (beyond initial bad draws being challenging to recover from). I think I understand (and empathize with) your, Timo's, Sam's, and Todd's reactions. But given this statement...

Ron wrote: - Peter and Megan would take a full minute to decide whether to fellate Rush Limbaugh or to deal with this resolution system ever again. Megan described watching it as "excruciating."

Ron wrote: So the conclusion at the table, and I agree with this thoroughly, is that something specific, embedded in the procedures of play, was definitely operating such that we didn't have our ordinary rocking-fun blast playing the game.

Hi John,

I can't speak for Peter or anyone else for certain. I've tried to articulate what he was most concerned with during the discussion, which (I think) might be summed up as, you can't really be good at anything. You can manage your various currencies (Flow, things you can burn, et cetera), sure, but card-counting is card-counting, and once you get it, the system has nothing more in it to use and nowhere to go in terms of simply winning conflicts. If it's gone poorly for you, you can only Call to cut your losses as quickly as you can. As a related note, he is absolutely correct that a bad draw at the outset really screws you. But that is as far as I'll go in trying to channel someone else's views. I may have misrepresented them already without knowing it, and it is not fair for anyone to provide rebuttals to him through the possibly flawed interface I'm providing.

This may go hand-in-hand with something I'm still sussing out as Superuser, which is that, in ome of the text, I find there to be a tension between driving hard at the player-characters yet somehow being sure that it all works out well for them. It may be simply poor reading on my part, but such an approach seems to involve two (for me) undesirable possbilities fo rmy role: either a friendly face masking a passive-aggressive threat, or a play-fight provocativeness masking a benign presence. Now, since I care for neither of these, and since I'm pretty juiced about lots of stuff in the setting and system, I need to find a way to work with the text so that those aren't the only two things I see. I'd like my role as Superuser to be absolutely consistent with the light-hearted, colorful, and intellectually stimulating material, such as captured so nicely by the crowd scene on the cover (especially the primary character), the frontispiece illustration of the little kid with the dog, and that wonderful illustration of Tier 1 Status in the MRCZ chapter. I'm pretty sure that I can do that with another shot at play.

Best, Ron

Hi everyone -

Firstly, I would never engage in any sort of sexual act with Rush Limbaugh regardless of the other choice presented to me.  Ew.

As Ron has related in his summary of the game, I was a spectator at the table due to a rehearsal I had to run earlier that evening.  I think I may have missed one of the more enjoyable parts of the game, which was the character/world creation part of the session.  It seemed like there were a lot of really interesting elements that came out of that process - especially the creation of memories within the group.  I would be curious to see how a session runs from top to bottom, rather than halfway through.

Also, to qualify my "excrutiating" comment - from my perspective, there was a lot of frustration at the table and that was translating into unhappy players.  It seemed like after a while people were trying to get through the actions in scenes not so much to move the story forward or resolve a conflict, but just to finish it up quickly so they could get it over with.  It didn't look or sound like fun to me.  Again - I wasn't there the whole time, and maybe if I had been, I'd feel differently about the session I observed.

Megan

Hi Megan! Welcome to the Forge, too.

Your observations were and are right on the money, I think. Our final challenge concerned Peter's character trying to repair the robot, and it seemed to me that we were forced to jump through kind of a grinding series of hoops without much payback. Only our good will toward one another as people kept us from being frustrated with each other.

My thinking is that, by that point, we'd lost most of the excitement about the material that might have made generating details in increments a lot of fun. That's what I can't really know - whether the frustrating feature were an artifact or intrinsic to the system, and if the latter, whether a different prep or viewpoint would make all the difference.

Best, Ron

Ron wrote: I even made up a pretty interesting diagram to help me get my head straight about the game (apologies; it's a Word file; I'll put a PDF of it up later); any comments or questions about it are welcome

Hi George,

Like a lot of us here, I am pretty deeply embedded in science fiction, fantasy, and comics, both experientially and historically. When looking over something like FreeMarket, which is very derived to the point of almost being pastiche, I seek a bit of grounding in the older works which I think have directly or indirectly influenced it, or are consistent with it to the point of being historically important to its origins. This is often productive if not immediately obvious to do with Jared's work because he is such a weird filter for pop culture at its most superficial and fragmented - it's like he absorbs all this incredibly stupid and derivative shit, goes "whiirr, h'mmmm, beep!" and spits back a gorgeous, honed, nuanced, and scarily insightful item that could fit nicely among the best of the genuine and powerful seminal works of that topic - without ever having seen them.

So especially for FreeMarket and especially for Jared, I toss my mind and memory out like a net to find things to help orient me regarding what he produced. It's an idiosyncratic thing, certainly; I don't claim that it's especially helpful for anyone else although in the past, I've found that it has been. And it's very helpful to those who are playing with me, because they can see where and how the text spoke to me, and either refine that or use it as a way to orient themselves.

First, I guess I should clarify the diagram. There are three basic units, Grimjack, Those Annoying Post Bros, and Snow Crash. They all overlap one another one-on-one, and all together as well. I realize it's a little hard to tell where each unit's borders are. I'll have to mess with it to make that more clear - each unit is sized at about the dimensions of a comic book cover. So Snow Crash includes the white box with the picture as well as all three blue boxes.

So to break out Grimjack conceptually, its terms are Noir, Introspection, Butchery, Family, Dimensions, Cynicism, Human Contact, Memory, Satire, Flair, Urban, and Genre Mash-up. In the diagram, it shares the top two blue boxes with Snow Crash (Human Contact, Memory; Satire, Flair, Urban, Genre Mash-up) and the middle blue one and white one to the immediate left of that with Those Annoying Post Bros (Satire, Flair, Urban, Genre Mash-up, Butchery, Family, Dimensions, Cynicism).

OK, that said, and I hope it helps someone read it better, I am saying that FreeMarket, to me, draws upon or is consistent with these sources in a very piecemeal but productive way. If I were to say "like Grimjack, sort of," I might cause more trouble than I helped, because Grimjack includes, for instance, introspection in a fashion that could not possibly work with FreeMarket. But with the diagram, I am naming things that I think any reader of Grimjack would go "Oh!" and recognize and be able to consider individually. It also helps me break out the unique combination of features which characterizes the game and is not fully consistent with any one of the three sources that were most useful to me in thinking about the game, i.e., the blue boxes.

Let me know if that helps or makes sense. I tend to work better with specific questions or points rather than a generalized "tell me about it" request.

As a technical aside, the more historically relevant and vastly better source that should occupy the Snow Crash box is Don't Bite the Sun, by Tanith Lee, which would have rearranged the terms to a significant degree, especially concerning reversible death, and further highlighting the glaring absence of sex in FreeMarket.

Best, Ron

Thanks Ron, that explains the diagram, although I am not familiar with the three sources. Would you be able to give a specific example of how this diagram influenced the game? I mean, would it be used to add particular colour to a scene, or as motivation for an NPC?

Hi Ron,

I recently asked Jared about being superuser in challenges, and he told me to that I should play to win, and, if that's not possible, play to maximize Hazard.

Not sure if any of that's news to you, but I don't remember Hazard coming up in this thread, so I figured I'd pass it along.

Ps,
-Dave

Alright kids, everyone relax. It's all going to be ok. Peter is here ;)

But seriously, I'm here so Ron doesn't have to try and explain me anymore. Here's my issues with Freemarket.

mechanics of conflict resolution.

Now having read the thread, and Erik's post that ranked the mechanics of conflict resolution as being pretty much the least important thing I'm not surprised. I think that if the focus of the game is on settiing up challenges and exchanges of flow then... ok that seems fine. I also think if it's emphasized that the acquisition of tech and things that you can burn is supposed to be trivial then... fine. But then why bother with conflict resolution at all... and why bother with such a complex system at all?

Let's assume for a moment that there's a reason for the system and that it's a good one. I want there to be one because I like systems. I like mechanics. I like figuring them out. What don't I like about the system?

I don't like the "oops, I got two cards, you got one, I win because I can just end it" thing. If that's the case then just make it a flip of two cards. It's not any different than rolling a D20. Random resolution system is random resolution system, modify to fit the bell curve you want.

I really don't like the Gene vs. skill mechanic. I'm a brilliant neuroscientist, who happens to be descended from the most steady-handed artists and craftspeople of all time. I call upon my genetic lineage to assist me in performing neuroscience.... but wait.... unless I skip drawing cards in order to recall how to perform neurosurgery I don't benefit from any skill cards I draw.... At least that's what I recall of the system.

Anyway. Having read the replies that indicated emphasis on the flow and less on the conflict... I might consider playing again. Frankly though, if the mechanical system isn't terribly important I'd rather flip coins, or play Gin (Dr. Chaos), or draw a fistful of cards a la contenders. The cards were pretty, but the choices you had seemed formulaic and intended to entice people to make what I would call stupid decisions (gambling on better cards).

Just to be clear. No one is fellating Rush Limbaugh, except possibly Ron because he came up with it. And I *REALLY* liked the world, character creation, concepts of flow, and what little I understood of how the superuser is supposed to mix things up for everyone. There is a *TON* of game here that I like. It's just the mechanics of conflict resolution that I thought sucked.

Vox

Hi there,

In this case, the diagram was a device for myself. I frequently make them as group devices and this one was intended to become one after I became more confident about how the game is played. Since I think a fair amount of further play is necessary before I'm that confident with FreeMarket, I'll hold off on using it as a group device. I wouldn't mind finding some graphics from the sources that show more overlap; unfortunately, at the moment the images highlight the stuff that is not shared in the "Freemarket space."

For myself or among a group, such things have been useful to me in lots of ways. I'm not sure it can be pinpointed to specific points on a picture or list affecting specific moments in play, so much as a way to get the Color and sense of priorities onto the same page for everyone.

In fact, I probably should have paid more attention to it just as such a GMing device, because I found myself gravitating toward Post Bros territory which was not in the blue boxes, specifically butchery and a certain what-the-fuck?! quality found in sudden conflicts.

Hi Peter!

Great to see you here; welcome!

Those two specific points about the system got up my nose too. At present I'm casting about for a way to make those features workable, and not being too successful yet.

Best, Ron

P.S. I wouldn't do it either.

Hi all,

I'm not certain exactly what went wrong with your session -- and I'm very sorry you didn't have fun -- I hope you don't mind if I offer a few comments.

I'd like to encourage you and all players of this game to engage the full breadth of the challenge mechanics. Be sure to use the Support, Engage, Recalibrate and Burn actions -- not just Go For It and Call. Just using two actions out of six will result in a very frustrating experience indeed.

In regard to being "better" at something on FreeMarket, there are a number of ways. Having a higher-rated ability -- 3 to 1 -- is useful. With an ability of 3, you have the potential to score eight points to an ability of 1's four points. But to be truly good at something on the station, you need a triumvirate of experience/geneline, interface and technology. If you're just relying on one particular aspect of the system, you're missing out.

And it's true, a freemer with an ability of 1 can stop the bleeding and call off a challenge he's losing. Anyone can do that. The rule is in place because Freemers are all smart, capable people. Noone is THAT much better than another -- those some have certain edges. Consider, though, a situation in which a user with an experience of 1 targets a freemer with an experience 3. With an ability of 1, you're going to have to muster all of your resources (or just get very lucky) against a freemer who is that competent. He can counter your attacks with his experience alone -- let alone his interface and technology.

And if you don't have tech or interface for a challenge, create or bargain for some. It's part of the game. Very little on your character is fixed. Transforming yourself is part of life.

When superusing a session of FreeMarket, it's also vital to abide by the core tenets on page 101: Nothing Is as It Seems, Circular Logic and Personal Transformation. The first is perhaps the most important. That stinky death artist really just needs to ask you a question about horticulture. That art/cult MRCZ wants to prevent you from being rejuved so they can use your corpse in one of their performances. The Excramax APs on RPG.net are excellent examples of how this should play out on FreeMarket.

It's also vital that when the superuser play to the utmost when he does engage in a challenge. It's okay to win! The more you win, the more bugs the users receive and the greater the chance they have to come back later. And as superuser be sure that the users have the chance to initiate and be targets of challenges. It doesn't quite work if you only ever assume one role.

Narration is noted on page 30 -- you must describe what you're doing as a component of your action. Each action on pages 27-29 has a few cues for how it can be used. Narration and description is intended to be simple and, well, traditional. You tell the other users what your character is doing -- a simple, discrete action like "I shoot him; I introduce hormonal algorithms; I mount a laser on its head." Each player takes into account what you said and incorporates your details into his narration. This seems self-evident to me, given the nature of the game, but I freely admit that I'm too close to the issue. The player who calls should tell the other users how and why the challenge ends, sort of summing up everything that's happened and putting a point on it.

I hope that's helpful. Again, sorry you had a bad time.
-L

My call is still mainly learning-curve. In some more chat at the Dojo, we arrived at a "let's try it again" agreement. Luke - thanks for weighing in, and I'll print that out for prep and play advice.

Best, Ron

I'll endeavor to respond to this thread with my exact take on the mechanics tomorrow if Ron will kindly bring his copy of the rules to the Dojo.

Vox