[FreeMarket] Trouble with something
Erik Weissengruber:
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?
jenskot:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on October 29, 2010, 08:28:28 PM
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.
Do the players have this same issue with Dogs in the Vineyard conflict resolution? If not, what was different for them?
Ron Edwards:
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.
Erik Weissengruber:
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.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on November 04, 2010, 10:06:36 AM
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.
In ItSiC I am looking for space opera pornography ... maybe I will go with a more color-specific term like "SFX." * Players will have the chance to narrate reversible or floaty SFX or take higher risks and actually bring about minor but still irreversible changes to the state of the planet.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on November 04, 2010, 10:06:36 AM
... 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
ItSiC is pretty much working on the same premise: there can be no moving to either a threatened or a default resolution of the planet's fate until all active parties have undertaken a number of discrete actions. Your opponent frames the opposition you encounter as you undertake a discrete action but cannot leap in to preempt or erase that action.
And as players keep their hands secret or have access to cards that are hidden from others, there is a level of hidden or incomplete information during the gameplay that just isn't the case in Freemarket.
Heck, I have seen players exert immense amounts of energy to keep the smallest activities or objects secret from the rest of the Donut and it is damn difficult to do so. The near-impossibility of keeping a secret works in concert with near-absence of hidden information in the mechanics, and the GM advice to have NPCs just step on up and present their agendas to the PCs' MRCZ and cut through all the coyness often used to give "mystery" or "tension" to NPCs in RPG scenarios.
Aside: Is there any chance of getting the Jank Casters to talk about their Freemarket experiences is a podcast? The way they talk about games is right on my wavelength.
jenskot:
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...
Quote from: Ron Edwards on October 28, 2010, 06:44:24 PM
- 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."
...I'd love to know what caused this. It seems to go much further than dislike, style mismatch, or bad experience. Maybe it sounds worse than it is but it wouldn't take me a split second to decide to replay the worst game I've ever experienced than fellate Rush Limbaugh! And I've played some comically horrifically bad games!
You wrote...
Quote from: Ron Edwards on October 28, 2010, 06:44:24 PM
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.
I believe this. It sounds like you grasped most of the rules and have had significant experiences lowering expectations for trying out new games for the first time. So I'd love to know what specific procedures of play made Peter consider fellating Rush Limbaugh?
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