We continue our adventures on FreeMarket Station after a one-week hiatus. Due to a pretty big flub on Kevin’s part, the previous session was not fit to air. We discuss a bit of what happened in that session, how that mistake affected play, and some of our thoughts on the card system of FreeMarket. This session is a bit short due to some technical difficulties, so we didn’t break it up into smaller chunks. Also, at one point Brandon makes references to some “notes” in our book. Luke and Jared sent us their proofread copy of the rules, which includes marginalia and design notes that will need to be implemented in the final text. So when Brandon brings up a rules clarification on upgrading and repairing tech, he’s referring to those notes in case you get confused.  Despite the technical hiccups, we had a lot of fun this session. We’ve got a pretty strong grasp of the challenge system, and look forward to our final session next week!

Relevant notes

• ARG
• Tomacco
• Zemeckis
• Tits or GTFO
• WoW Auction House
• William Gibson
• There Will Be Brawl
• Super Smash Brothers
• There Will Be Blood
• Kirby
• Hannibal Lecter
• Portal
• Open-Source Software
• Kindle
• Bot-voting
• Malware
• Low-Frequency Fear Effects
• “Head in the Jar” people

Crunchy Bits!

• Intro Music “Inner Universe” from the Ghost In the Shell: Stand Alone Complex OST
• Outro Music “Can’t You Trip Like I Do?” by Filter and The Crystal Method

Podcast: |

Session two kicks off with a Thin Slicing challenge to rid the group’s MRCZ area of an annoying rock band, and from there CJ, Dan, and Brandon launch into a negotiation with a local MRCZ to test out some new technology for them.  We spend some time getting used to the nuances of the challenge system, and set things up nicely for some exciting challenges next session. Stay tuned!

Relevant Links

• RPG Podcast Poll Please take it!
• Project Donut Homepage
• Luke Crane
• Jared Sorensen
• The Walking Eye Comics
• Hal Jordan
• Mad Men
• Hong Kong
• Welch Ave Station
• Ronald D. Moore
• The 5th Element
• Lexx
• Japanese Capsule Hotels
• Biting the head off a bat
• Grand Theft Auto IV
• The Independent Insurgency
• Malcom Gladwell/ Blink
• Marilyn-Manson.net
• Twiggy Ramirez
• Mashup
• DRM
• Peter Steele/Type O Negative
• Lemmy420
• Putting things you like (Such as Elder Scrolls: Oblivion) in your pants
• Edward James Olmos – The Adama Glare
• The Segway GOB Bluth
• The Gambler’s Fallacy
• Valve and Bungie Stats

Crunchy Bits!

• FreeMarket Actual Play Session 1 Part A 59 Minutes
• FreeMarket Actual Play Session 1 Part B  52 Minutes
• Intro Music “Inner Universe” from the Ghost In the Shell: Stand Alone Complex OST
• Outro Music “Still Alive” by Jonathan Coulton.

Podcast: |

Dan, CJ, Kevin, and Brandon sit around for a bit and discuss their thoughts on the most piratey of RPG’s: D. Vincent Baker’s Poison’d. We discuss the basics of character creation, conflict mechanics, and how play works out. To be succinct, it’s nasty, brutish, and short. Good stuff!

Relevant Links

• Vincent Baker’s Blog
• Poison’d
• D&D Word Cloud
• Poison’d Word Cloud (Thanks, Joe!)
• F.A.T.A.L

Crunchy Bits!

• Intro Music “Plunder” from Sid Meyer’s Pirates!
• Outro Music “Seven Deadly Sins” by Flogging Molly

Podcast: |

Things were looking up for our nefarious crew of the Dagger when we left off last session. That doesn’t last long. This session is an impressive display of bad rolls making the situation worse with every turn. Give a listen and see how Poison’d lives up to it’s moniker of “Reservoir Dogs on a Boat.”

Relevant Links

• Vincent Baker’s Blog
• Poison’d
• Wookie LifeDay / Life debt
• Chewbacca’s Death via Moonfall
• Ninja’s Vs. Pirates Vincent Baker Interview
• Graham Walmsley – Play Unsafe – The Dying of St. Margaret’s
• PedoBear
• Poison’d Q&A page

Crunchy Bits!

• Poison’d Actual Play Session 2 Part B: 52 Minutes
• Intro Music “Plunder” from Sid Meyer’s Pirates!
• Outro Music “Drunken Sailor” by Wylde Nept

Promos:

• Thursday Knights
• Spooky Outhouse Productions

Podcast: |

The crew of the Pirate ship the Dagger beaches itself upon Isla Luna to gather much needed water and supplies. Murmurs of discontent can be heard rippling through the crew, as Isla Luna is well known for being the home of a powerful witch. What’s the worst that could happen? Word to the wise: this episode gets pretty rank. “Dirty Dick Wiggins” makes good on his name, among other atrocities.

Roles

Brandon: Dirty Dick Wiggins Ship’s Gunnery Master

CJ: Bloody John Parr Ship’s Surgeon

Kevin: Solomon Cruikshank Ship’s Captain

Relevant Links

• Vincent Baker’s Blog
• Poison’d
• Forum Post About 2x Wear and Breakage
• Last Exile
• Germ Theory of Disease

Crunchy Bits!

• Intro Music “Plunder” from Sid Meyer’s Pirates!
• Outro Music “Strike The Bell” by Wylde Nept

Podcast: |

Kevin, CJ, Dan, and Brandon sit down for our third and final D. Vincent Baker game: Poison’d: A Pirate RPG. This session covers the creation of our individual pirates, as well as the crew and specifics of our pirate ship. We do just a tad of roleplaying at the end to get a feel for how Success Rolls work, and set things up nicely for next session. So far we’re all enjoying it a lot!

Roles

Brandon: Dirty Dick Wiggins Ship’s Gunnery Master Soul: 4 Devil: 4 Brutality: 4 Ambition: 4 Brinkmanship: 4

CJ: Bloody John Parr Ship’s Surgeon Soul: 4 Devil: 4 Ambition: 4 Brutality: 3 Brinkmanship: 4

Kevin: Solomon Cruikshank Ship’s Quartermaster Soul: 4 Devil: 4 Ambition: 5 Brutality: 5 Brinkmanship: 5

Relevant Links

• Vincent Baker’s Blog
• Poison’d
• Sgt. Hatred
• Cervantes
• A map of the Caribbean
• Burning Wheel
• Sid Meyer’s Pirates!
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• Dogs in the Vineyard
• In a Wicked Age
• 2-Masted Bermuda Sloop
• “That’s a REAL GHOST!”
• Misspent Youth
• Hardtack
• Rogue Trader
• Lego Tie Defender

Crunchy Bits!

• Intro Music “Plunder” from Sid Meyer’s Pirates!
• Outro Music “” from Lazytown.

Podcast: |

A new experiment from The Walking Eye!  Since we usually record on Wednesday evenings, our warmup conversation usually focuses on the week’s new comic books.  The Walking Eye Comics Cast features Dan and CJ discussing, and occasionally ranting, about January’s comic releases.

Comics discussed:

• Blackest Night #6
• Green Lantern #50
• Blackest Night: The Flash #2
• Blackest Night: JSA #2
• Superman #696
• Batman and Robin #7
• R.E.B.E.L.S. #12
• Secret Warriors #12

Crunchy Bits!

• Intro and Outro music: Pixelguru by Subatomicglue.

Podcast: |

Our review of “Vincent Baker’s Concentrated Awesome” aka Dogs in the Vineyard. We sit down to discuss the dice mechanics, moral ambiguity, and how advancement is inextricably tied into not only changes to your character, but also the damage model. Also, Brandon’s still not over his fear of cows.

Relevant Links

• Dogs in the Vineyard
• Vincent Baker’s Blog
• Dogs in the Vineyards Forum
• Apocalypse World
• State of Deseret
• Burning Wheel
• Diagonally Through the Woods
• Mutants and Masterminds
• D&D
• Warhammer Fantasy RPG
• Mind Flayer
• Arcana Evolved
• Burning Empires
• Oregon Trail
• The Jank Cast
• Call of Cthulhu

Crunchy Bits!

• Intro Music from the soundtrack to The Proposition by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (the composer, not the comic writer)
• Outro Music “Palomino” by Tree Adams.

Podcast: |

Dogs in the Vineyard wraps up with the small ranching town of King’s Crossing. The players experiment with taking on conflicts solo, and finds some pretty serious challenges facing their characters. The defeats culminate with a very tense final showdown!

Unfortunately this is our last session of Dogs. We had a pretty rough three months this winter and have only managed to record twice due to plague, work, weather, and holidays. It was very difficult to keep the momentum going, but we all feel this is a good session to end on. The conflicts were tough, the morality fuzzy, and the ending suitably tragic.

Relevant Links

• Clancy Brown
• Deadlands: Los Diablos
• Wolf Brother
• Conner from Angel

Crunchy Bits!

• Intro Music from the soundtrack to The Proposition by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (the composer, not the comic writer)
• Outro music from “God’s Gonna Strike You Down” by Johnny Cash.

Podcast: |

And here we have our first full town for D. Vincent Baker’s Dog’s in the Vineyard. The gang learns a few good lessons this session. Namely, there’s pretty much no stopping a group of Dogs when they team up, and no matter how bad you don’t want your cousin to be a Sorcerer, sometimes you just have to face facts.  This town was created by Jason Morningstar, and is based on the true story of Olive Oatman. When Jason found out I was running his towns, he shot me an email warning that a few of his early town designs aren’t the most ideal. I thanked him for his concern, but went ahead anyway.

Since then, I’ve done a LOT of reading on the lumpley forums on The Forge about town design, and gotten a bit of play under my belt. I now know what Jason was concerned about. I’m not sure if it comes through in the recording, but this town lacked the tension of some later ones I’ve run, and I know exactly why: The situation was too clear, the antagonist too one-sided, and the problems of the town hadn’t escalated to Hate and Murder yet. Vincent recommends ALWAYS designing a town up to Hate and Murder. I learned a lot from running this town, and my second town is one I made myself, and I think really hits all the right spots for what a town should be. Stay tuned for that!

Relevant Links

• Dogs in the Vineyard
• Vincent Baker’s Blog
• Dogs in the Vineyards Forum
• Kevin’s Post on the DitV Forum about this session.
• January Branch Document
• Jason Morningstar’s awesome play aids
• Mouse Guard
• Wheel of Time
• Detect Evil
• Carnivale
• Deadlands
• Unknown Armies

Crunchy Bits!

• Intro Music from the soundtrack to The Proposition by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (the composer, not the comic writer)
• Outro music from “When The Man Comes Around” by Johnny Cash.

Podcast: |