What even is it

I like to think I'm fairly up on oddball RPGs but this one is a mystery to me.

A quick Google suggests it was a limited print run thing so that's a strike against it. It's about transhumanism which to be honest isn't my SF kettle of fish so I'm not that excited either.

All told sounds not my bag.

>>39949118
Back when it first came out we decided the setting is actually a nightmarish dystopia. I suppose if you and your friends are all anticapitalists you might get a kick out of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F_mmR9UCGk

They didn't really sell it for me. It's just a bunch of people doing shit for whatever reason. They even cite their first games as people murdering each other and going cannibals. Why? For shits and giggles.

It seems like playing a game of bored nobles committing hedonism and horrific acts for entertainment. But without the tangible making other people's lives worse.

You would probably have better luck playing Eclipse Phase.

>>39949289
I think that's pretty much the point of the game though, the idea that the whole thing is existentially terrifying under a veneer of happy (because of the limited space).

>>39949734
The Aristocrats!

I play this regularly with programmers who are all jaded as to the inanity and complete lack of substance of startup culture and the kinds of people and products that come out of it.

The only terrible thing about the game is the item repair mechanics, which take far too long. Otherwise it's very good for campaigns.

Our mrcz was a fashion startup that focused on shoes made with interesting and exotic materials. Our first collection ended up being these platform shoes made of human leather harvested from another tier one mrcz that we were sharing our incubator space with.

By the end of that first session we had successfully pissed off the employees of a Harry Potter-themed (and Harry Potter print-clone staffed) office supply store and created so much buzz with marketing stunts in said store and nearby subway-sponsored swimming pool that we got the attention of Surface ( who after being spun off as its own company from Microsoft, eventually bought bing from them, which ended up exploding after google was forced to dismantle itself after the metadata wars of 2077, which lead to the acquisition of Microsoft by Surface's bing division five years before the events of our campaign) who offered us a chance to become a well-heeled pawn in their endless product wars with Netflix Mining GmbH (who were bitter rivals ever since they outbid Surface for controlling interest in Skype decades ago).

It's kinda player driven at the start, so you'd really have to have a group intrested in things like marketing and scifi vs traditional hook based narratives.

It's important to note that the world outside the donut is NOT Like the donut. very few people who immigrate here stay, and people who leave are forced to never return.

In the setting people not on the donut view the moniker kind of negatively: a ring of interplanetary society's oversatureated saccharine fat, with a transparently vaccuous heart.

>>39949734
Yeah, we play it halfway between existential horror and satirical farce

>>39949118

Anybody got a PDF?

>>39949289
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=freemarket

That was a fun thread.

Isn't this the RPG that has more markers and tokens than most board games?

http://technoccult.net/archives/2010/08/04/freemarket-interview/

Based on this interview I don't think it's supposed to be a serious setting.

>>39952815
I think they mean it seriously, but are aware that in play players not used to the system tend to flail around in silly ways.

They are totally self aware as to how shitty the Donut is. You play as people who've spent their entire waking lives on the spaceship or a doomed immigrant; literally ALL the people who founded the space station where everyone is immortal have either by choice permanently exiled themselves or are dead by irreversible suicide.

>>39950014
I'm not totally sure what I'm reading, but it sounds strangely fabulous.

>>39952815
I don't know why everyone keeps calling it anarchist. It's clearly not.

>>39955837
Meant for >>39951823

>>39953840
Yeah, character creation is meant to be done completely separately, and then you are supposed to role play out the forming of a mrcz in character.

We had a second gen guy who was the son of a blank of Mary poppins and James Bond, who was on a constant search for things genuinely British (due to his dubiously post-hyperreal British parents), a foot fetishist who has a thing for older women, a thug who makes boutique art films with footage captured only from cam quality movie theatre bootlegs and a fashion designer obsessed with transparent materials.

They were all sick of living in coffin hotel sized apartments and made a mrcz in an attempt to gain the most precious commodity on the donut: elbow room.

>>39956980
That sounds like utter shit, anon.

>>39955837
It's less anarchy and more Twitter/Facebook. The goal isn't to actually make something better, it's to become a trending hashtag

>>39957253
It's just different. This isn't about going on adventure, it's about trying to make something like Uber (the taxi company) and all the marketing and political maneuvering to get there. That's how we played it at least.

>>39957327
No, I mean the characters sound like shit. Granted, this is probably due to the game, but that doesn't change anything.

>>39957377
>My way is the one true way to have fun

All I know about Freemarket comes from this description of a group's experience:
>http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?528474-Freemarket-Excramax

Convinced me to buy it, it was a good read. Not sure I like the actual card-based mechanics though.

>>39957541
It sounds like utter shit, anon. You might have fun with it; good for you. It still sounds like utter shit.

>>39957596
To you, you stupid shit. You opinion is not fact, and you're being a cunt. Grow up.

It's fun but not as good as GURPS Transhuman Space.

>>39957596
Lmao I'm the guy who posted the "shitty characters." I mean if they sound boring that's def what our groups reading of the system kinda prompted, so the system probably isn't for you.


Lmao at your incredibly antisocial wording tho

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470 KB JPG

>>39951823
This'd make an interesting setting for a game actually.

You're a bunch of scavengers from a nearby planet breaking into the place and stealing the replicator technology after the station's gone dark. Then when you get in you find the entire place went to hell after a successful coup and friend aggregate has been replaced by some nutso socialite.

I definitely want to play this game, but never will.

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191 KB JPG

I'm an American.
I experience the free market every day

>>39951801
>Anybody got a PDF?
http://www.mediafire.com/download/833rtks3gwoi69b/FreeMarket_Beta_111209.pdf

>>39962967
Read the blue ant trilogy instead.

>>39958362
Did I ever say it was, faggot? No. I said it sounded like utter shit, which it does. Now sit down and stop being mad.
>>39959331
I'm just going to assume you're not actually anon, because no-one could really be that new.

You know, I'd actually run a game like this, and kick the characters off the station at the end. They'd emerge out of the Donut into space, and after few moments, have their consciousnesses invaded by the hyper-intelligent hive mind of the next step in human evolution. The Originals turn out to have been a group of crazy anarchists who refused to change, and were allowed to play in their "Donut" with basically all the toys they could ever want as posthumanity spread across the Universe, content in the knowledge that when their retarded cousins are finally done playing they'll join them among the stars. Of course, this information overload shoots their brains out of their ears and noses, but their minds live on after the pain, so it's all okay, right?

>>39967957
>Anarchists
Also, that just sounds like a retarded "yur setting is stupid, look how stupid it is you were just playing in a sandbox your betters gave you" wet-dream. And I'm one of the guys who thinks the setting's unbearably shitty.

>>39949118
In settings like this, I've always wondered what's to stop assholes from abusing the system. This setting seems to be trying to invoke a social media themed setting, but where's the backlash? People are always offended on social media, it's one of the easiest ways to gain approval. I would think the space station would soon find itself divided into different factions. Each hating one another based off of minor differences.

>>39968260
No, it wouldn't divide into factions. The whole deal of social media is that it's amorphous. Sure, you'd get SJWs and MRAs and GGers and aGGers, but they wouldn't be clear factions. You'd constantly be "switching sides" depending on what you thought and what the general Zeitgeist was.

>>39968280
>SJW and MRA and GG and aGG
I just realized that this is the kind of slang our grandchildren are either going to find incomprehensible or make fun of.

Is this that game where the only currency is basically how much people like you on social media?

>>39968379
Dear god, I hope so. That's far better then the alternative of those short-hands still mattering.

>>39968425
>Is this that game where the only currency is basically how much people like you on social media?
For not already knowing this, you get a frownie.

>>39970042
Where do I red thumb you?

>>39970082
>red thumb
Get a load of this dirtfooter

>>39965892
A pdf that isn't just the beta?

>>39967592
Lol I guess I'm new

>>39970621
>lmao
>def
>cares about antisocial wording
You sure sounded new to me too, m8

>>39970663
You can always pick out the newfriends because they try so hard to be abrasive and exclusive.

They also tend to point out shorthands and txtspeak as though the site hasn't been filled with it since 2002.

>>39970880
Sure, anon. Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it eventually.

>>39949118
It wasn't particularly fun and I have no idea who the fuck the target audience is supposed to be except the author's gaming group.

I suppose it could be fun if they threw out the borderline retarded card based mechanics and presented the setting as the self condradictory dystopia that it really is.

Its a poor man's Eclipse Phase, but without anything that makes EP fun, and by poor I mean rich because this shit is fucking expensive for some reason.

I played as a guy who basically reposted robot porn all day which got me enough capital to buy my own robot to fuck.

My goal was to buy enough robots to fuck myself into oblivion to escape the hell I was living in because no introvert could survive that society and stay sane.

I'm serious, if you're an INTJ you would basically live in the equivalent of poverty.

>>39972058
It's transparently an indie system cuz it attempts only to model this one space station and it's weird Facebook culture, not trans humanity at large AT ALL. People who don't love the Donut's culture leave as soon as they can (the lore says that only 5% of immigrants end up staying for more than a MONTH) because they are unwilling to be pulled into the insanity.

This is a very small system to do a very specific thing. Very definition of not for everyone, in the same way that a John Deere tractor isn't for everyone.

>>39972170
Haven't you heard? You can no longer buy John Deere tractors. You can only rent them. The software shuts down after the season.

>>39972170
Yeah, but a John Deere tractor doesn't do one specific thing, it is a rugged vehicle with and incredibly diverse range of applications in agricultural, industrial and commercial contexts (many airports for example).

A tractor is also fun to drive, Free market is not.

>>39972232
A soviet planned economy version of the game would be...interesting. It would probably turn out as a Eurogame.

>>39972229
Not funny anon, that shit's serious.

>>39972629
...Is what I'm saying.

Good luck getting your sedan unlocked when your lease doesn't allow for leaving the county and the county line on the country trail you were on is unclear, no phone coverage btw. Hope you don't have kids on the back seat getting impatient.

>>39949118
that art alone is already making me upset. It just screams "Zany And Quirky, LOL!".

How's this game actually work? I saw "poor man's eclipse phase" and some mentions of facebook economy itt, is it another one of those "What if social capital were literally capital for buying machines and factories and shit??" game?

>>39972742
It's a study in post scarcity transhumanism. Although there is still scarcity, just of other things. You cannot die because if you do you are simply restored, but in an absolute way instead of the EP latest fork state. You earn kudos by being helpful to others (scored by social network) and try to realize your one crazy dream.

It is an interesting experience because it takes away most of what we use to quantify our lives and leaves the player in a vacuum that he then must fill with anything he wants.

>>39972742
At least it's not Tumblr "I'm so original I copied Adventure Time look how quirky I am I'm a nineties kid too".

I swear, nineties kids are nearly as bad as boomers.

>>39972821
So basically it's a shitty ripoff of EP but without the things that make EP interesting is what you're saying

>>39972996
No.

>>39972272
this guy gets it