Friend of the Donut and indie game designer, Jason Morningstar (Fiasco, Shab Al-Hiri Roach, Gray Ranks), had some very nice things to say about FreeMarket.
FreeMarket is sort of amazing. Here are a few reasons why:
• Genuinely transhuman and post-scarcity in outlook, aggressively and cheerfully so.
• Handily subverts pretty much everything RPGs are usually predicated on. Sociopathic violence is not really a good option at any point. Radical kindness is always effective. Any activity the players engage with can be rewarding and compelling. Cooperation and friendship are mandatory.
• Seamless integration of player and character terminology, so elegant you won’t even notice you are using the same words to describe IC and OOC situations. I cannot emphasize enough how innovative and cool this simple thing is.
• Brilliant implementation of a card-based resolution system that encourages cheating. Card-counting, anyway.
• Game mechanics effortlessly reinforce the game’s social hierarchy and structure. Ask the guy who adds an immigrant to his MRCZ what I’m talking about
• Packaging, components, marketing.
People will look back on Freemarket and say, “Huh, so that’s where this came from.”