Thank you all so much for the reviews. I'm chuffed. =)
Some responses:
Kleenestar,
The hour-long sessions *are* tight, but doable, I think. I ran a couple of one hour sessions at a convention recently (Polaris and The Shadow of Yesterday) and had to explain the rules and background to people who'd never played any indie games whatsoever. Along with the actual game!
Afterwards, two-four hour sessions seem like a luxury.
On the clarity of the book, I found it quite difficult to sort out how the game was presented. I wanted the book to present ideas as they came up in play - conflict when conflict appeared - but that meant some chapters were huge.
You're totally right about tokens not being clear. I finally figured them out late on the Sunday. =)
And you're spot-on with the muddiness in protest cards. And it never even occured to me that I needed to explain that you stuck with characters through the ten sessions. Nice catch!
On Completeness, I didn't want an ongoing plot, but haven't communicated that. I see the game as having the intensity and energy of Invader Zim, say. Pow pow pow, conflict conflict conflict, and on to the next town.
And I thought about players helping each other, but didn't really come up with anything. Great observation there, again. =)
Effectiveness. Great thoughts here. I'll just respond with one 'correction':
You missed two rules. At the end of the first two phases, the conflict deck is shuffled (look at the ends of those chapters). As qualities and tokens can be spent to get extra draws, more tens are played, and the PCs should actually come out slightly ahead in tokens at the end of a session.
I need to fine-tune this economy as you suggest, but my stuffed-animal playtesters seemed to do ok. =)
Swing! Wow! I'm gobsmacked again by your generosity. And if you do get a chance to playtest, keep in touch!
Joe.