It is a very focused game story-wise though it gives the gamemaster (GM) and players a lot of leeway in defining the nature of the powers involved and the figures chasing the player characters (PCs).
Mechanics
The game mechanics of the game are fairly simple. You roll a number of six-sided dice equal to the number of items at risk plus one. Things that might be at risk include the success of your current goal, the possibility of triggering a memory, the chance the chasers get closer or capture you, in some cases the chance of getting hurt, and if you are using them, the possibility of your powers going out of control and harming others.You then assign the rolls to the relevant categories which determine how successful you are. This can lead to some interesting choices. Do you put a low roll on harm (and get hurt) but achieve your goals? Do you let the agents get closer to avoid hurting people with your powers? Do you choose to remember something even if it means capture?
The other main "mechanic" is how the Chase, or story line, is constructed. As your PCs flee they move from scene to scene with each scene being recorded on an index card. So you start at the Crash, where the psychics escape their captors. When they leave the crash site, you create a new card for that scene. Then you add the agents at the crash site. As the PCs move to the next card, the agents may follow and catch up. Once they do, then the PCs will risk being captured or even disappearing forever.
Along the way the PCs are trying to escape but they are also trying to remember who they are. Each PC has six questions on their sheet that can cover everything from their real name to the importance of key in their pocket.
The game ends once a PC remembers the answers to their questions. At that point they remember their past and now know how to escape. At that point you enter the purely narrative section of the game called the Crossroads. Here the players determine what their characters ending is. They might turn the tables on the chasers, find a refuge, or make an important discovery about their abilities.
Gameplay
Daisy Star is a heavily tattooed woman in tight jeans and velvet top. A petite blond, she possesses the power of clairsentience which takes the form of greatly enhanced senses. She can track a scent like a blood hound or hear a heartbeat from a block away. Her questions include: who is she really? Why she was captured and for how long? Where does she live?
JC seems to be an old man with a surprising resemblance to the late George Carlin. Wearing a tutu for unknown reasons, he has the ability to travel back in time about 5 seconds. He started with only four questions: what is his real name? Why is he wearing a tutu? Why are they after me? How did I gain my power?
Sandra Grey, unlike the others, is dressed in a black suit, like the agents who were after them. She is a mover, able to accelerate objects and strike with telekinetic force. Her memories are fragmented with gaping holes: why is she in a dark suit? Why do men in glasses make her angry? Sandra isn't her real name but she has ID on her. How deep is her cover?
I started the chase with a helicopter crash in the woods near a large city. The PCs are remarkable unharmed, despite the fact that JC somehow ended up outside the helicopter. I lay out what they know about the Agents: they dress in dark suits and sunglasses and use high-tech surveillance and unethical cybernetics to pursue their targets.
As they climb out of the smoldering wreckage, Daisy grabs the med kit. Grey checks on the pilot and the agent on board. Both are very dead with the pilot leaking computer chips from the back of his head. JC tries to recall why he is here.
He rolls 4 dice: one for his goal, one for a randomly triggered memory, one for the agents getting closer, and one extra for being a Runner. He gets a good roll and is able to trigger a memory without letting the agents get closer. Since he put a 6 on memory, he chooses the memory. He chooses to learn why he wearing a tutu, recalling the Agents busting in while he was teaching his granddaughter to do ballet.
Sandra and Daisy also try to trigger some memories before pushing on. Sandra recalls being an agent who went rogue. She might have caused the crash. Daisy was a quisling, a psychic used to catch more of her kind. In both cases the die they placed for the memory wasn't high enough to let them decide their memory. Instead it was up to the other players to decide what they recalled.
The PCs made their way to a nearby highway, checking their pockets along the way. I laid out a card for the next scene: the Highway. Sandra finds a slip of paper with an address in New York, someplace called Rhine Tower. JC finds a note in someone else's handwriting: "don't let Sandra look at Monitors." Daisy has a matchbox for a place called Red Star and a key to a lock.
They follow the highway to the city of Portland, Oregon. I add another card. Daisy recalls living here and also recalls an ex-boyfriend who she broke up with shortly before her capture. Careful to avoid cameras taken, they visit his apartment. As they do, I have the agents arrive at the crash site. A towering figure called Agent Red talks with a tall brunette, Agent Gold, about their next step. They use a mysterious device in a large briefcase to begin to track the PCs.
At the boyfriend's house we had our first use of a power. Daisy used her ability to detect who was in the house based on their heartbeats. Unfortunately the player rolled poorly and Daisy was distracted by the numerous sounds of the neighborhood. She did realize it was Sunday though based on an overheard radio 2 blocks away.
Later after a botched attempt to convince John McCubbin, the boyfriend, to cooperate peacefully, JC has to deal with John's new girlfriend who is sleeping upstairs. It goes poorly when she screams at the intruder in the house. This time a player uses his power successfully as JC turns back time to handle the situation more delicately.
In the end Daisy comes out of it with many of her questions answered but not many leads of where to go. The group does a bit of car shuffling, taking John's to take a bus to a quiet lot where they steal another car. Daisy remembers some of her criminal past as they make their way east to the Tri-City area.
As they plot their next move at an isolated motel, they start to wonder if they are being tracked through something other than camera. Sandra and Daisy find surgical scars on their heads. JC doesn't have any scars but does find a note on his back in sharpie: Rhine. They decide to extract whatever chips the agents put in them. Then they will hit an ATM using Sandra to break it open and JC to grab the money and rewind time to before it was damaged. Money from nowhere.
Sandra's surgery goes easily. It seems that Daisy somehow is a skilled surgeon. When Sandra operates on Daisy the process is tougher. As some of the chips are pulled there is damage and her medical knowledge vanishes. In mechanical terms, the player rolled poorly and decided to place a low value on harm. Daisy will be injured for the rest of the session.
JC takes the chips to a truck stop while the women rest. Then suddenly outside agents fold out of nothing in the parking lot. Since the players were in different locations I added two side by side index cards for the two scenes. The agent markers moved to both cards.
This was where we broke up for the first session. Daisy recovers from her harm and we picked up at the next session with the agents arriving to capture the PCs.
As Sandra and Daisy try to escape, rolling poorly with each attempt and slowly getting injured and captured, JC escapes his attacker and heads to the rescue. And we get to see what a bad roll on power control looks like.
By the time JC gets the motel, Sandra is on the ground stunned and handcuffed. Daisy has suffered a concussion trying to ram a car into Agent Red. JC decides to rewind time to grab Red's stun gun and zap him with it. We've previously learned that JC is actually from an alternate time line, one where George Carlin is alive and has psychic powers. When he shifts in time, he sometimes brings things from those other timelines here.
When the alternate version of the motel collides with its counterpart, the explosion rocks the everything for blocks. JC is standing over Sandra holding a stun gun as bits of Red and the motel rain from the sky.
The group escapes east, eventually shifting to an RV. Along the way they have more tussles with the agents, carry out their daring ATM theft and make their way toward Rhine Tower, a refuge for their kind as Sandra remembers. She was sent by them to infiltrate the psychic hunters.
Eventually in Champaign, Illinois JC remembers the answer to his last question: why the agents are after him specifically. They are after his power, his ability to travel between timelines. With that they could become all-powerful.
At this point they have reached the cross roads and describe how their character stops running. JC chooses Turning the Tables. He forms a team with the psychics at Rhine Tower to counter the agents when they come for a psychic. Sandra finds herself Home at Rhine Tower while Daisy chooses to Hide herself there.
Conclusion
Like many free form games Psi-Run leans more heavily on the GM and players in order to deliver an enjoyable experience. The players need to be willing to take the narrative reins and the group needs to trust each other as well as respect each others boundaries.As long as that is the case, this can be a really fun game. I think the GM's main task (other than delivering interesting descriptions of locations and action) is maintain the pressure. Give them leeway so they'll start risking harm or damage to others but be ready to bring the Agents into the scene to deliver tension.
In my game people quickly got a sense of the gameplay and created some very cool and zany action. I was a bit worried about bad dice rolls causing serious troubles but generally speaking the odds are good that 1 or even 2 sets of bad results won't eliminate a PC. I think a GM might actually need to encourage players to take more risks.
I definitely recommend giving the game a chance.
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