FreeDough
number go up
Dough 0
Lifetime risen 0
The FreeDough, sternwheeler and arcade. The bakery's amidships, the café's beside it, the games are up on the arcade deck, and the prize counter's at the purser's window.
Every game aboard is built on a Fair Play Economics model — a design where no player can end with less than they started. Points are earned, never bought. Who pays, and why paying is worth it to them, is printed on every door.
Where the dough is baked — and issued. The mint of the boat.
Every passenger gets a fresh loaf a day, on the house. The bakery hands them out because a fed boat is a happy boat — and a happy boat fills the café, the arcade, and every shop on the promenade. That's the whole trick, printed where everyone can read it: the bakery's generosity is the boat's business model.
Today's loaf: +10 Dough. Warm from the oven.
Wave 1 — five games, each one a working exhibit of the book's models. Doors open as each is finished.
A bounty wall at the heart of the boat. Sponsors post bounties — US trivia, crypto knowledge, spelling championships — and players claim them by answering. The sponsor pays because the wall is where the whole boat gathers.
Under constructionClimb rung by rung through chess puzzles, each rung funded by a patron whose name is carved on it. Miss a rung and you simply stay where you are — the ladder holds no traps.
Under constructionStake Dough on a test series. Finish, and your stake returns with a bonus from the vault. Don't finish, and your stake still returns in full — the only thing a failed run costs is the time you spent, printed here on the door before you enter.
Under constructionUp in the chart room, the Desk buys accurate forecasts at a printed price per outcome — weather, prices, arrivals. Nothing is ever staked; a wrong forecast simply isn't bought.
Under constructionFree-card bingo in the mess hall. Every unclaimed prize and every expired event point sweeps — visibly, on a public board — into a commons pool that funds community bounties for everyone aboard.
Under constructionThe café and the shops fund the fun, and say so proudly: the games bring the crowd, the crowd buys coffee. Pull up a chair — this room is the explanation of who pays for everything else aboard.
Open — you are reading itThe Winners Circle — spend Dough on badges and portraits. First class of portraits: the cast of Meet the Webs.
Your profile, your portraits, and your stamps — kept in your own browser, under your own hand. No account, no sign-up.
Badges & stamps
Port stamps arrive with the maiden voyage — every port event stamps the passports of the passengers who played it.
The boat stops, the gangway drops, and the games go ashore.
Port events are special games and tournaments held where the FreeDough docks — seasonal happenings, championship stops, one-day-only bounties. They pay the same Dough, the same badges, and the same portraits as everything aboard, and each one stamps your River Passport.
The maiden voyage is being charted. The first season sails as a voyage of port events with the championship at the home port — the Saturday League, in riverboat form.