The game that Chad can't remember the name of is FreeMarket. It's set in a scifi future in which money has been replaced with a social currency called Flow, which you can obtain by making friends, giving things, and cooperating. Also, death is reversible and there are no laws on the station, so what do with yourself?

I'm running FreeMarket at Fear the Con 5, and currently there's one alternate seat left!

THAT'S IT! THANK YOU! I've been banging my head on the wall trying to remember that one!

Just finished listening. Very interesting episode, and my previous session included two NPCs, both female.

One was someone who basically woke up from cryo onboard the players' ship, tells them about a terrorist plot but first unsure of their intentions for her, since she is worth a quarter mil (moral choices kept them from cashing in), she smacked one of the characters on the back of the head with a wrench.

They're constantly annoyed of her, even though in other instances I've made her, in the least, pretty tolerable. And they joke they should toss her out of an airlock, and I don't know if they're being sarcastic or not. >_>

The other character was just as innocent, about the same as the above, but they are drop-dead protective of her after a gang debt thing, and dragged her aboard the ship, not because she's a medical clinic owner and can do Treat Injury pretty well (she hasn't even healed anyone yet!). I can't explain why, but they're attached to her, and they don't know either!

Really a headscratcher.

...And FreeMarket looks interesting.

There was a point I made in the episode that I wish I'd developed a little better. It was bugging me while editing.

For one of the question (I think it was the one about game advice in books), I focused too much on new players. I mentioned the multi-path help options in Civ 5, but I didn't really tie that back to RPGs very well. My view is that in addition to a page or word budget to keep things concise, I think RPG books should be setup in such a way as to direct you to the information you need, based on your level of experience in the hobby and what you want from the game.

Any way you crack it, each page of a book adds to its cost. Given the number and complexity of table-side problems, I think it would be better to point people to the wealth of free, online resources for gaming advice instead of adding 300 pages to a sourcebook, particularly when a growing segment of gamers doesn't want their books bogged down with anything more than the bare bones it takes to run a game.

I thought it made sense, not to kiss-ass or anything. I perfectly understood it, though I probably don't count because I'm not a new player. I should show this episode to my brother and see if he makes sense of it.

On Character Creation: I agree with Dan that crunch is not bad, but it needs purpose. FASA Star Trek, HarnMaster, Traveller, and Aces & 8s are very crunchy in character creation, but have purpose to it. It helps to give a skeletal framework for a background and reasons for skills and special talents. IMO the main thrust behind their more complex rules lay a foundation to help tell a consistent game, especially a long-term campaign style game. It allows the character to develop over time and progress and regress in attributes and skill and specialties as the story develops.

Less crunchy systems are better for short-term campaigns and one shot games. Most of these systems give a player the chance to build a character to what they want without necessarily having a backstory reason for it or have a superficial explanation.

The exception to this rule is Dresden Files RPG based on the Fate System. While the crunch of the mathematical system is minimalist the build of the character required far more abstract thought. The crunch of the system is in the abstract, where the examples I gave above the crunch is in the math. Character advancement in DFRPG is dealt with changing aspects and skill ladder and will as an increased FATE point pool, not as with the other systems above which are more mathematical in their advancement.

I wholeheartedly agree with the superfluous explain-an-RPG sections. The solution reminds me of Burning Wheel's bit on how to RP a human, which was something along the lines of "It's easy enough for you to figure out". Game-specific RP and suggestions for particular scenarios in box-text is well and good, but unless you're D&D (or maybe nWoD) I think that explaining the core concepts of an rpg are easy enough for the GM (or whoever introduces the new player) to explain.

Are there any recent games that spend pages and pages (let's say more than 4 pages) of their core rulebook presenting what a roleplaying game is? Perhaps only the most introductory games do this?

Please warn people that the rules are kind of board-gamey and not what one would expect from an indie rpg. We had that less-than-stellar reaction from a couple of players when you ran it at JiffyCon West.

Personally, the amount of freedom given to the players to determine their own goals and course of action is intimidating ... and then when you grok what's going on, it's absolutely empowering. I was really having fun, when the plug got pulled.

Oh, and everyone makes food. Apparently, post-scarcity immortal's with access to matter fabricators all tend to make food and food themed items. In our case it was a foam pizza mascot costume that smelled exactly like fresh baked pizza.

I learned so much from running that game, especially explaining it to new players. In particular, you've got narrate the hell of out the cards, otherwise the challenge mechanic becomes a detatched, boring minigame.


Sports MRCZs are also popular. In last game I ran, the players made a zero-g bowling team, and it was awesome.