In this episode, I talk to Luke Crane and Jared Sorensen about the game they've designed for Peter Adkison at Hidden City Games, FreeMarket (previously known as "Project Donut"). FreeMarket is a transhumanist science fiction game in which you try to gain prestige ("flow") on a Utopian space station.

Also, I had a cold.

Also, big news on the music front (scan down).

WARNING: The Independent Insurgency is an "explicit" podcast.

This episode is 64.8 MB big and 01:10:46 long.

00:01:08: The origin of the "Project Donut" working title
00:04:00: What's it about?
00:06:20: The primacy of cooperation
00:07:17: Transhumanism
00:07:54: Blade Runner (in case you didn't know)
00:10:13: Jared claims FreeMarket is one of the first real science fiction games (and his explanation for what that means for shock: social science fiction by Joshua A.C. Newman)
00:10:58: What is science fiction?
00:11:13: J.G. Ballard's three pillars of science fiction
00:13:45: How the game works
00:15:30: The game's concept of Flow reminds me of face rank in Extras by Scott Westerfeld
00:15:43: Cory Doctorow
00:17:17: "Deathing" people
00:19:35: Setting is built into the skills, and characters use the same game terms players do
00:20:34: Division of labor
00:21:29: Oldboy
00:23:16: When I played FM, I created a Y.T. gene line for my character (from the book Snow Crash)
00:24:08: Luke ran a game of Jared's game Lacuna for he and Peter
00:25:36: Luke and Jared would have liked to have done the Bella Sara RPG
00:27:28: The influence (or lack thereof) of other games
00:32:07: Rebekah "Spyder" Bennington has done art for FreeMarket
00:33:22: Difficult things to fix
00:37:42: Things they couldn't make work
00:40:17: The fascinating role of death(ing) in the game
00:42:16: Sengoku
00:42:47: The GM is called the "Superuser" and the other players are the "users"
00:44:33: FreeMarket is a no-prep game
00:45:45: How to get playtesters and get them to give you feedback
00:47:30: A RadioLab episode on choice that I babble on about
00:49:17: Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
00:51:03: Darcy Burgess
00:51:54: Playstorming
00:52:03: The purpose and use of art
00:53:49: Pictures of the "white book" for the game are on its site
00:55:46: Slugfest Games put them in touch with their printer
00:56:28: The PDF of the game will be given out for free
00:57:23: Skekses
00:57:32: You'll be able to register as a "colonist" and choose the number of the game you want
00:58:37: The contents of the boxed set
00:59:28: Empire of Dust by KNRPG Productions is another boxed set
00:59:34: Marketing
01:02:50: Jim Munroe, author of Everyone in Silico and the movie Infest Wisely, which were inspirations for FreeMarket
01:03:27: Jared has visions of one day playing the game with Doctorow, William Gibson, Munroe, and Bruce Sterling
01:05:00: George W. Bush as the Manichean president
01:05:09: When will it be out?
01:06:45: The Farm is not happy

I'm super-lucky that Righteous Babe Records gave me permission to play music by Ani DiFranco. I'm going to start doing so for a while, since she's my favorite musician. We're going to start with a song about a corporate entity trying to get you to sell yourself out, a song called The Next Big Thing.

Logo courtesy of Daniel Solis: http://danielsolis.com/