The Role Playing Public Radio Forums
General Category => RPGs => : trinite August 03, 2015, 06:16:54 PM
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I think it's time for a centralized thread for cool stuff to inspire Red Markets games. I'll start:
(https://41.media.tumblr.com/83f18c47f18d74f2069f7ebf49e50101/tumblr_n0zyzstMse1rqr0dmo1_540.jpg)
I could see an airport terminal as a potential enclave location. Most of the main levels are elevated, so easy to fortify. Lots of open interior space for farming, and salveagable high tech communication equipment that could be barterable. It would probably take quite a lot of work to clear out all the casualties at first, though. It would most likely have to be an enclave founded a year or two after the Crash, rather than one existing from the beginning.
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Inspiration!
(http://i.imgur.com/isEHTAC.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/jNw3sFC.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/b73oRGt.jpg)
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Power stations are going to be hot spots of activity ... Particularly renewable sources like hydro could form the nucleus of a haven or enclave (missions to other plants for parts etc). Nuclear stations might be a bit of a mixed blessing.
http://www.vox.com/2014/6/12/5803998/the-us-energy-system-in-11-maps (http://www.vox.com/2014/6/12/5803998/the-us-energy-system-in-11-maps)
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Also rivers. With no reliable gas supply, and with the countryside rendered dangerous by roving Casualties, rivers are going to once again become the fastest mode of travel. I could especially see the Missouri River becoming a massive transportation route, since it flows all the way from Montana right to the gates of the Recession (I'm curious what Caleb does with St. Louis - primary smuggling hub? Anarchic Mogadishu town? Post-urban combat hellscape? All of the above?).
Of course, wherever there's concentrated transportation, that's where the pirates and highwaymen set up shop. I'm kicking around this idea that every bridge across the river becomes a potential toll spot for local warlords to extract rent from passing boats. Much like the original "robber barons" did along the Rhine during the Middle Ages.
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Tomsawyer and I were discussing the setting while painting his house (Passed the time) and we seized onto the idea of using New Orleans and southern Louisiana as the backdrop for our Red Markets game. That night when I went home I opened up Google Maps and image search and went crazy.
New Orleans Regional Notes
When the military drew the lines for quarantine many in New Orleans breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that their placement on the east side of the Mississippi would guarantee them a place in the Recession. However, rather than expend scarce resources to clear out a city already half overrun with Casualties the military instead opted to use Lake Pontchartrain as a natural barrier, leaving Louisiana's largest city just outside the safe zone. The interstate bridges and the twenty-five mile causeway stretching across the lake were bombed with the rest when the Border closed, leaving countless survivors trapped between the Mississippi and the waters of Pontchartrain.
When they were finished despairing, these people set to work banding together and building enclaves to survive, as they did elsewhere in the Loss. However over the next few years many of these enclaves were wiped out by the escalating floods that breached the Mississippi levees with increasing frequency, leaving only those who had the fortune or foresight to build on high ground. When Hurricane Judy rolled through and caused the Mississippi to overflow in the Big Surge, most of New Orleans and the parishes were drowned in a meter or three of river water. The city became a swamp of brick and mortar, and the surrounding neighborhoods decayed into a vast bog of rotting suburbs shrouded in mist.
The Big Surge was not the end of New Orleans, however. The city had withstood Katrina, and its surviving inhabitants were determined to survive Judy. With water everywhere and Casuaties trapped in the muck, ready to gnaw on the ankles of unwary swimmers, boat travel became the primary mode of transportation for the region. Ferrymen from the Exchange sold their services to Takers, nearby enclaves, Shepherds, and anyone else who needed to get from A to B without running afoul of C. In the downtown area and French Quarter the buildings were more than tall enough to stand above the floods, so people constructed elaborate rope bridges and pulley lifts to connect the rooftops into spiderweb enclaves--this had the side effect of allowing certain rooftops to be quarantined in case of infection simply by disconnecting the bridges and letting them drop into the waters below.
One benefit of the Big Surge was the increase in river traffic from the north. With the banks of the river higher and wider than before merchants could more safely skirt the western edge without fear of being fired on by DHQS soldiers to the east, bringing trade to the enclaves in the south. This led to a moderate economic boom in the New Orleans marshes until the DHQS established their settlement in Baton Rouge (In order to reoccupy and restart the city's Mobile-Xtract oil refinery) and constructed the Lock, a new river gatekeeping system intended to stop the new trade dead in its tracks. Smugglers and adventurous Takers still find ways to bypass the Lock, but this makes any goods coming from the northern enclaves very expensive.
The New Orleans region is defined by its proximity to the Recession, the geographic changes undergone in the wake of the Great Surge, and (Until recently) trade from the north. Although there are a variety of enclaves scattered throughout the city and parishes, there are a few which dominate certain aspects of trade:
The Exchange
Established on the freeway crossings tangling together near the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Survivors used the abundance of abandoned cars for materials to construct a sprawling shanty town on the overpasses and ramps. By moving buses and other large vehicles to block entry and exit ramps they were able to effectively wall themselves off from the teeming masses of undead below, and when the floods began to scour the land of settlements they were again saved by the high ground. The increase in water level also led to the rise of the Ferrymen, who control most of the boat traffic through New Orleans and are the enclave's primary source of income. The Exchange is not one self-contained settlement, but rather consists of the central settlement on the overpasses as well as a number of outposts established on rooftops for farming, waste disposal, and other projects.
ShipRekt
This enclave owes its existence to one thing: pure luck. Among the many vessels that capsized or beached themselves on the banks during the Big Surge, the three components of ShipRekt are a cargo freighter carrying sheet metal and other raw construction materials, an oil tanker holding half a million barrels' worth of crude, and a naval destroyer that expended its heavy ordnance during the Crash but still retained stores of personal and crew-served weapons. These three vessels drifted from their respective anchor points during the Big Surge before being discovered and lashed together by survivors fleeing the low terrain. With some ingenuity and the treasure trove of resources in the ships' holds these survivors built one of the most powerful and secure enclaves in the New Orleans region. The cargo freighter was converted into a makeshift refinery for processing the crude carried by the tanker--the yield is only 30% gasoline, but it still makes them the best independent source of fuel in the entire state--and the weapons from the destroyer ensured that even the most Darwinist raiders would think twice before testing their defenses. ShipRekt and the Exchange are close trading partners thanks to the latter's fleet of boats and the former's lack for space for growing crops.
Lakefront
When the Big Surge washed through New Orleans it redrew the shorelines and turned this small peninsula of an airport into an island, making it the perfect candidate for an enclave. Lakefront is home to the military deserters who disobeyed orders and stayed behind in the Loss to rescue civilians before the bridges blew. It has been fortified with enough sandbags, scavenged concrete barriers, and weapons to turn it into a respectable island fort. The inhabitants, a mix of former US soldiers and the refugees they were able to save, sell their services to enclaves as guards, escorts, and mercenaries.
Muck
Even in the apocalypse, there's a pecking order. The people of Muck are at the bottom of that pecking order, working in the marina bayou cleaning Casualties out of the mud and scavenging their IDs for the meager Bounty. None of them are slaves, but many of them have been so worked to death that leaving to find food and shelter outside the Dockmaster's barracks terrifies them more than being bitten on the ankle. This is where survivors go when they have no marketable skills and no other refuge, to be slowly used up and tossed aside.
Cajun
The sports dome in Lafayette is home to the Cajun Boys, Louisiana's biggest and meanest gang of Darwinist raiders. Led by the ruthless "Missy", they are a mobile and well-armed force that preys on the smaller enclaves west of New Orleans. Rather than attacking ad taking what they need outright, the Cajun Boys prefer to extort tribute from their neighbors through medieval means: they enjoy making examples of defiant enclaves by rounding up captives, infecting them with the Blight, and then releasing them outside the enclave walls just as they are entering the Vector stage of infection. Regardless of whether or not the Vectors overrun the enclave in question, the tactic is quite effective: nobody wants to venture out into the Loss knowing that a gang of crazy bikers might kidnap and turn them into infected Trojan horses to eat their loved ones. Because of their reliance on motorcycles and cars the Cajun Boys stay out of the flooded zones to the east, but they will happily nip at any travelers they find in their territory.
I have more notes on salvage sites--the Superdome is a big collapsed pile of rubble trapping thousands of Casualties, as well as a huge score!--that I'll put up later. What do you guys think?
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Super cool, Jace!
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Reading all y'all's Red Markets stuff makes me giddy ;D
Keep it up!
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Places of Interest
Mercedes-Benz Superdome
In the early days of the Crash the military and FEMA responded as though the Blight was just another humanitarian issue. Evacuation centers and emergency supply stockpiles were established in major cities across America as the government struggled to deal with such an unprecedented crisis. The largest of these in New Orleans was the Superdome, which had been used for a similar purpose when Katrina struck the city in 2005. With a seating capacity of over 70,000 people it seemed like the perfect choice for a safe zone and rally point for the evacuation efforts...until someone snuck a bite through and the entire thing became a charnel house. With military checkpoints throughout downtown and the parishes already in danger of being overrun, orders were given to seal the Superdome and everyone inside. Then the bunker busters were dropped, collapsing the building and burying everything inside beneath a million tons of rubble.
Five years later old Casualties still manage to find their way out, leading many to speculate that the Superdome's lower levels--including the extensive parking garages--remain intact. Of even greater interest is the fact that civilian refugees were required to scan their IDs before entering via the stadium's modified ticket readers. If the readers' computer backups survived the Superdome's destruction they could provide proof of death for tens of thousands of lost souls, a literal fortune of Bounty for any Takers brave or foolish enough to find a way inside. Of course, there's no telling how many of those tens of thousands became infected before the Dome collapsed and are still waiting hungrily for their next meal to come wandering in...
Museum of Art
Although City Park is now a Casualty-infested swamp following the Big Surge, the Museum of Art has fared relatively well thanks to its placement on high ground. Countless works of art remain inside ready for the Taking, but since most fine art dealers are in the Recession to the north there is a shortage of buyers willing to pay for anything retrieved. Then there's the building's security system, which is still functioning on backup generators and could bring a thousand Casualties down on top of any would-be burglars who don't take the time to disable the alarms.
Mercy-Baptist Medical Center
One of the largest hospitals in the New Orleans area and naturally one of the first places to be overrun during the Crash. There are undoubtedly Archivists who would pay handsomely for any records retrieved from the building that document the early spread of the Blight--the hospital's staff would have coordinated with others to try and determine where the disease was originating from.
Mobile-Xtract Building
The tallest building in New Orleans and Louisiana at 51 stories, this skyscraper served as the oil company's regional headquarters before being evacuated in the Crash. Although the company still exists on paper the abandonment of so many oil fields in the Loss has effectively rendered it comatose, but there are still plenty of people who would pay for the retrieval of computer hard drives and physical documents left behind in the panic--data which could hold some very interesting company secrets, such as the whereabouts of the lost Atlantis-II oil platform last seen being swallowed by Hurricane Judy.
Treasure Chest
Not quite an enclave, this riverboat casino travels along the southern shore of Lake Pontchartrain entertaining those with the Bounty to afford the buy-ins at tables. Although the odds are always stacked against players, the pot is always sweet enough to lure Takers fresh from a job with more Bounty than sense. Rumors persist that the riverboat's owner is an agent of a Valet in Jackson and is a front for smuggling goods and people between the Loss and the Recession via Lake Pontchartrain.
Camp Taylor
During the Crash the abandoned Six Flags park in New Orleans was repurposed as a "last stop" refugee camp for those fleeing across the bridges into the Recession. When those bridges were blown, stranding hundreds of civilians and heroic military deserters, it dissolved into a Vector buffet. Now it remains abandoned and flooded yet again, only with a new layer of bodies--dead or otherwise--and some leftover supplies the deserters couldn't bring with them when they fled to Lakefront. The parking lot is home to plenty of Casualties, but the amusement park is a playground for something much worse.
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I can picture so many stories taking place there!
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From the Alpha Playtest Thread:
I would like to throw in my little contribution.
Since RedMarket is all about scarcity of goods, here is some figures to take in consideration when generating settlements and enclaves.
All figures are in metrics, but they are easy to convert.
How much food to I need to feed my settlement?
Depending on the farming practices, skills, lands and weather, a grain crop (typically wheat) will yield between 1.5 to 8.2 ton of grains per hectare (1 hectare = 2.5 acres). Current EU and US yields are around 7-7.5 ton/h.
Considering a calorie intake of about 2’000 kcal/day/person (a bit less for woman than for man) and that a kilo of grain supply 3’270 kcal (it includes moisture content and indigestible fibers), one hectare of grain producing 7.5 tons of grain can support the calorie intake of 33.5 persons for a year.
But that’s the best case scenario: it requires good lands, capable farmer, adequate supply of fertilisers and good seeds. It is very reasonable, in dire circumstances, to see this value divided by 5 to the lower end of the spectrum so 6 persons will be fed per hectare.
For a settlement of 1’000 persons, between 30 to 170 hectares will be needed. That’s 300’000 sqm (550x550 m) to 1’700’000 sqm (1300x1300 m) (to convert, keep it simple 1 meter = 1 yard).
Keep in mind that with this serving of calorie, considering mostly physical work, the population will very quickly become “lean” (for physical work, the calorie intake can climb easily to 2’500 or even 3’000 in harsh condition like winter). Five years after the beginning of the Blight, being overweight will be a clear sign of wealth.
Also, this diet on grain is not balanced and will be missing several micronutrients unless multiple crops are grown. Finally, potatoes field can feed about the same quantity of person as the same field of grains.
Additional points to consider, a large proportion of American grains are from Monsanto. These grains are sterile, which means that contrary to traditional practices, the farmer cannot save some grains to seeds his field for next year crop: he has to buy new grains. Those facilities manufacturing such grains are out of order (only a few are on the right side of the Mississippi), so unless there was some old grains left by an institute or some organic farmers, once the stock is depleted, nothing will grow.
If seeds from old crops are used, do not expect the same yield. Very likely, they will be sturdier and less fragile than the one coming from GMO and selective breeding, but they won’t be as performing. And worse, they might not resist the latest Round Up version, which have been specifically engineered not to harm Monsanto seeds, but might could very well burn other crops…
We are not bird, we are meat-eater !
Not for long my friend, unless you belong to the 1%...
To grow one kg of beef meat, 7 kg of grains need to be spent.
Hold on, we don’t need to give grains to cows, they can graze!
Sure my friend, as long as you have ample grass growing. And you need much more land to grow pasture to feed your cow that to use grains. And considering that grains will be used to feed people, feed cattle and manufacture biofuel, there is not much chance that a fertile patch of land will be left for grazing.
Other figures that can be useful: 4 kg of grain for a kilo of pork meat, 2kg of grain for a kg of poultry meat and a bit less than that for a kg of fish.
Idea for an Enclave:
I would not be surprised to see some huge mall being completely sealed, filled with water and converted into giant fish farm. Hint: uncontaminated dead bodies are an excellent source of protein. Cremation is such a waste of precious resources when you can convert them into fish…
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A lot of those modern estimates, though, are dependent on heavy equipment (i.e. tractors and combines, etc.) for maximally efficient plowing, sowing, and reaping.
Maybe a better source of metrics would be pre-industrial subsistence agriculture. Here's what seems to be a pretty good table of average yields during the Medieval period in Belgium: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/thelemur/ars/mundane_background/General/medieval_agriculture.html (http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/thelemur/ars/mundane_background/General/medieval_agriculture.html)
After a few seasons of trial and error, I suspect Loss farmers would be able to do a little bit better than that. We do have a better understanding of fertilization and soil chemistry than the Medievals did, and also tech like steel plows that make farming easier but don't depend on cheap fossil fuel inputs.
As for animal husbandry, it will probably only be done with marginal, non-plantable land, as was the pre-industrial norm. Also, with the decline of human population density and livestock grazing, wildlife populations will likely return to higher levels, meaning hunting will probably be a significant source of meat for enclaves (at least in areas with relatively low casualty density).
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(https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--N4PgUgEC--/c_fill,fl_progressive,g_center,h_358,q_80,w_636/xankmj1ut0wmnenxndrj.jpg)
http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/6/9107131/swincar-flexible-electricy-buggy (http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/6/9107131/swincar-flexible-electricy-buggy)
What all the Takers are driving this season. Put a dome over it ala the Pope Mobile and you're good to go.
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Preliminary write-up of Jefferson City, Missouri as an enclave:
JEFF'S CITY
With gasoline scarce and the countryside crawling with random casualties, the Loss has turned to the oldest and best transportation system known to man: rivers. Rivers are virtually the only way to move significant amounts of goods over long distances, and the Missouri River is the biggest of them all. It's a highway going all the way from the heart of the Loss to the gates of the Recession. And he who controls the River controls the wealth. The enclave of Jeff's City intends to do exactly that.
Location
Jeff's City is centered on the old downtown area of Jefferson City, Missouri. It's anchored by the gigantic Missouri state capitol building, which overlooks the Missouri River like a massive fortress (which it now is). The anti-Casualty fence encloses the high ground of the downtown area, with spurs off to various strategic locations including the Missouri River Toll Bridge, the old St. Mary's Hospital, and several major ex-state government buildings. Construction work on expanded fortifications is ongoing.
Defenses
The northeast side of the enclave is well protected by the massive cliffs that rise up from the river. The other fences are a collection of barricades and fences, slowly being upgraded and replaced with tall, Medieval-style walls (designed primarily by Governor Jeff). The soundness of these impressive-looking new fortifications has not yet been seriously tested.
The Toll Bridge is heavily fortified with steel plating, structural reinforcement, and heavy gun emplacements. It isn't hard to figure out that it's the most important place in town.
History
Organized almost single-handedly by Jeff Carnavan, who seized control of both the local and remaining state governmental power structures in the wake of the Crash. It was the first location to enforce compulsory tolls on river traffic (ostensibly as "emergency state tax revenue"), and extorted massive amounts of wealth from the desperate refugees fleeing eastward as the quarantine dropped. Virtually all of those profits went into fortifying and improving the Toll Bridge and building up the Governor's personal power base.
Exports
Seized goods from the river toll system, agricultural goods, counterfeit Missouri bounty*.
*Jeff's City possesses the only functional equipment for printing new official Missouri IDs, as well as all the remaining stock of blank cards. Jeff has secretly kept the entire ID printing system operational, and periodically uses it to produce new, counterfeit bounty when he needs quick infusions of cash. The problem is that this counterfeiting has begun to be noticed by DHQS authorities, who might eventually decide to either discount the value of Missouri bounty to factor in the artificial inflation, or else simply declare all Missouri bounty invalid (which would wreck the entire regional economy, especially for Takers). Whatever other talents he may have, Jeff doesn't seem to have a lot of wisdom when it comes to running an illegal local monetary policy.
Imports
Trade goods and supplies expropriated from river tolls, forced agricultural labor, quarried stone for fortification, beer and wine from the Rhineland settlements downriver.
Competition
The River Cities League
Proposed by the mayors of Omaha and St. Joseph, the RCL is an effort to coordinate the various toll-charging enclaves along the Missouri and ensure that they don't compete with each other and overcharge to the point of stifling traffic. Jeff's City is opposed to the RCL idea, since Jeff wants to remain free to gouge the traffic as much as he pleases. His considerable influence has kept the other bridge owners in Missouri on his side. But if Kansas City flips into the RCL camp, the idea might become a reality.
Rhineland
The prosperous agricultural lands along the eastern stretch of the River weathered the Crash surprisingly well. An influx of Mennonite farmers with expertise in pre-industrial agriculture cushioned their food crisis significantly. They also still produce significant supplies of wine and beer for export. They do not practice toll collection at their bridges. However, they have developed a strong sense of cultural superiority surrounding their religious practices, industriousness, communal land ownership, and Germanic heritage. They have been reinforcing an insular ethnic identity, mandating Low German as their spoken language and anabaptism as the de facto official religion. They do not welcome new settlers who are unwilling to commit to their communitarian practices.
Laker Takers
Southwest up the Osage River, the Lake of the Ozarks has been an anarchic zone filled with valuable salvage and lots of Casualties. Recently the Laker Takers, an outfit specializing in marine jobs, has been successful enough to declare it their exclusive territory. They're heavily armed and know the area better than anyone else. Jeff is keeping an eye on them as potential military rivals or allies.
Social Structure
Government:
Monarchy - ruled by Governor Jeff Carnavan, HQ in the Capitol Building
Jeff and his loyal followers control the river tolls, agricultural production, security, the construction of new fortifications, and (secretly) counterfeit bounty production. He maintains an iron grip on all major decisions for the enclave.
Important Groups:
Roman Catholic Church - headed by Bishop Joe Schultz, HQ in St. Peter's Cathedral
Jeff has been happy to let the Church take care of the practical welfare of the enclave's citizens, on its own dime. Its manpower includes a few dozen priests and nuns who work full-time
to serve the citizens, supported by only by communal donations (and the occasional supplement from the Governor's treasury when they Jeff needs to remind them who's boss). There's constant tension surrounding Bishop Schultz's close relationship with Jeff, with some considering the Bishop a mere toady while others think he works subtly to restrain the Governor from abusing his power.
State Patrol - headed by Captain Derek White, HQ in city jail and toll bridge
Made up of leftover members of the Highway Patrol, local law enforcement, and National Guard, the Patrol provides the enclave's security, enforces toll collection, oversees the indentured laborers, and ensures loyalty to Governor Jeff.
Average residents are mostly remnants of the pre-Crash local populace, as well as refugees and settlers from up the river.
"Indentured tribute" (IT) laborers are passengers from shanghaied from river traffic who couldn't otherwise afford the tolls. They are de facto slaves.
Neighborhoods/Locations
The Capitol
Once the state capitol, the building and its grounds have been transformed into a fortress/palace for Governor Jeff and his closest underlings. A sentry on top of the dome always keeps a lookout for incoming river traffic and other threats.
St. Peter's Cathedral
The Church and its attached school building are the center of Catholic service to the enclave. Located right next to the Capitol grounds.
The Toll Bridge
The bridge across the river has been massively fortified with armor, large guns, searchlights, and dropable barriers to prevent unauthorized passage of boats. Landings beneath the bridge are used for boarding vessels and offloading seized cargo. Both ends of the bridge are heavily fortified against Casualty mobs and human attackers as well.
Cedar City Fields
Across the river from the enclave are the river bottom fields that provide the populace with food. Field work is dangerous, as it is away from most of the enclave's defenses. As such, most of it is done by IT workers with armed Patrol overseers.
VIPs
Jeff Carnavan was a charismatic history teacher at the Jefferson City high school, known as a well-read Medievalist, a natural leader, and a somewhat ruthless self-promoter -- all traits that would prove quite valuable when the Crash hit. After organizing a small group of survivors to form a basic enclave, he immediately recognized the similarity of his position to the Medieval "Robber Barons" who extorted tolls from ships along the Rhine River. He convinced his followers to start fortifying the bridge and demanding tolls. As refugees streamed toward the Mississippi, the wealth rolled in.
Jeff is a charismatic and fairly popular leader, ruthless in his pursuit of wealth but not unnecessarily cruel or brutal. He styles himself the Governor of Missouri, and might think about expanding his territorial control outward if the opportunity arises. So far just about all of his projects have been successful. But he can't possibly be as smart as he thinks he is.
Bishop Joe Schultz is a very practically-minded prelate. He quickly recognized that Jeff's rise to power was unstoppable, and committed his priests and nuns to serving alongside the new governor's regime rather than opposing him. He's been walking a fine line between supporting Jeff's regime for stability, and trying to influence him to pay more attention to the welfare of the enclave's populace. Recently he hasn't had the sort of effect on the governor that he'd like, and is beginning to feel more like a convenient tool in Jeff's bid for continued legitimacy.
Captain Derek White is Jeff's loyal enforcer. He reaps a lot of personal benefits from the tolls and the ID labor system. Though he devotedly follows Jeff's orders, he's very willing to get his hands dirty for personal gain -- and doesn't quite realize how easily Jeff could have him replaced if he becomes a net liability.
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All these Enclave ideas made me want to think of one. But like y'all, I think it's easiest to think of where you're from. But I'm from Ohio, which is in the Recession. How would that work?
...Prequel Time!
The Cleve / Beliveland
Location & Defenses
In the early days of The Recession, The Mississippi AND the Ohio were the original lines of defense. Part of the past five years was recapturing everything north of the Ohio, while fortifying the Mississippi to create the 'permanent' border of The Loss. In Ohio, the North faired poorly with the higher population density. Northeast Ohio is divided in two pre-reclamation; The Cleve and Believeland
The Cleve: Cleveland and the surrounding metropolitan area, devoid of life for the most part and overrun by Casualties.
Believeland: the City of Akron, specifically the University of Akron and downtown. With the high bridges of the All America Bridge and Route 8, there is an easily defensible means for relative safety from the Cleve, and by maintaining State Routes 8 and 59 and Interstate 77 the city is encircled. By having the roads be the border, however, the suburbs and East Akron, and many important locations have been cut off and overrun.
Exports: entertainment, food, information via Z88
Imports: arms, raw materials, takers
Potential Exports: rubber, metal, medical supplies, air travel
Competition:
The Green Militia
Based in Green, a city between Akron and Canton. While Akron was used as the fall back spot thanks to convincing by the Dean of the University, many Guardsmen's family and friends resided in the suburbs between Akron and Canton. Many deserted rather than leave their families to die, forming the Green Militia, headed by Second Lieutenant Jaeger. Although kept around for saving tens of thousands of lives, they don't trust the official Guardsman and act on their own.
The Hallsmen
With Akron being the more defensible city, Canton was left to die. Which it did. As a source of pride for the region and separate from downtown, The Pro Football Hall of Fame was chosen as the fall back spot, and is home to most survivors of Canton. The survivors in the Hall are mostly insane due to survivors remorse and knowing they were left to die. Led by the Hall of Fame's chairman Tom Brunn, the Hallsmen form an end of days cult, obsessively keeping the records of football in a misguided means of keeping a record of humanity, and protect the Hall at all costs. Any jobs in Canton are made that much more difficult as you have to go past the Hall to get in. They also mistrust all outsiders and non-Canton natives as the savages who left them to die.
Neighborhoods:
UoA
The University of Akron makes up a large section of the Enclave. With the massive amounts of relatively new dorms and older class buildings secured by the Akron PD and National Guard, UoA is the home for many people in the region. The University PD has been fully deputized and maintains order with the National Guard. The University has a full stock of departments, including robust science labs that have switched from polymer studies to studying The Blight. The student radio station, 88.1 FM, can be heard for upwards of 40 miles around, is of vital importance since it is in the safe zone of UoA, and maintains a connection with the rest of the region.
Downtown
With Akron being situated on a plateau sharply cutting to a ravine, the casualties were easily defeated; push back and over. The downtown section near the cliff is where the final battle took place, and thus sustained a lot of damage. Canal Park has been turned into a playground and respite for the region, with the Aeros and Rock Cats continuing to play in the vain hope they can continue to. The Akron Art Museum is used as the chief meeting place in Downtown outside of City Hall, and the FirstMerit Tower is of primary importance as a lookout tower.
Potential Missions:
Summa Akron City Hospital / City Hospital
The good news: Akron General Hospital is within the borders of Believeland. Better news; the other, bigger hospital, City Hospital is nearby, directly across from Route 8. Bad news; across Route 8. It wasn't defended by the Nation Guard and as such was overrun. There's likely many supplies ripe for the taking, and is the likely first step in expanding the borders; if you can survive the Casualties, that is...
Akron Zoo
Across the way on the west side of Believeland, the Zoo is fairly big for a city Akron's size. People might give bounty for exotic pets, researchers at the University might want the monkeys for experiments, and who knows what the carnivores might do to the populace...
Summit County Juvenile Court Admin & Marine Corps Reserve
On the North, past the Route 8 bridge are the Summit County Juvenile Court Administration building, which can house up to 100 inmates and maintains a lot of records, and the Marine Corps Reserve post. The Guardsmen, while appreciating the dorms as housing, would prefer the symbolism of retaking the Marine Corps Reserve building, especially considering its the Weapons Company. They'd also like the Juvie building as a prison. Hard work, but ripe for bounty...
Goodyear HQ
The Goodyear Tire Company is based in Akron, one of the few major corporations that never left. However, they're on the East Side, well past Route 8. The Government would kill to get and keep the factories that remain and the trade secrets inside, and get people in there to restart the plant. The Guardsmen can't sacrifice enough men to clear it, but if Takers can spot for them and they can do a tactical assault... The same is for the former Bridgestone HQ, which still houses a lot of offices and the factory, but is located on the South Side.
Akron Fulton International Airport
In the Southeast of Akron is the airport. While not a personal travel hub (That would be Akron Canton International Airport, north of Canton. Definitely a That One Last Job if you can take it, but good luck with that,) this airport does house international services and is a business flight hub. Also houses the Goodyear Blimps, and a Lockheed Martin warehouse and offices. Retaking this would be a massive undertaking, but would not only give vital resources to the City, it would make it all but a certainty that Believeland would be made a recognized settlement, providing more government protection faster. But taking the whole airfield? Definitely That One Last Job worthy...
Canton
Canton is presumed a total Loss. Even with a ton of Hallsmen still at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in the north side of the city, they don't leave, and the Guardsmen and Green Militia don't want to spread their already thin forces even thinner. Still, Canton is a major city in the region, and might hide rewards for those foolhardy enough to get past the Hall...
The Cleve
Cleveland is presumed a total Loss. With many national landmarks and museums for salvage of social items, professional sports teams with mementos for wealthy clients (and the Hallsmen), many (vacant even before The Crash) factories with spare parts, the county seat of Cuyahoga County with a treasure trove of documents, the Horseshoe Casino with massive amounts of pre-Crash money... That One Last Job might mean going back up north...
VIPS
Mayor Eric Patterson
After years of scandal for the City, Patterson was elected and finally brought some order to the city... just before The Crash. As head of the city, he tries to keep the vast network of egos in check to make sure the survivors don't damn them all. Works with Dean Butterworth and Brigadier General Tulane as the ruling council of Believeland.
Dean Jane Butterworth
After years of scandal for the University, Dean Butterworth was elected and finally brought some order to the University of Akron.... just before The Crash. Realizing the need for housing, she opened up the dorms for the National Guard, in exchange for protection. By this idea she allowed for the survival of Akron and its creation into an enclave, saving tens of thousands of lives. She lets the professors teach and research into the causes of the Collapse, and personally oversees Z88 and ZTV as the chief means of communication in the region after the fall of The Cleve.
Brigadier General Lucas Tulane
One Star Army General and the regional head of the National Guard; responsible for keeping the peace and maintaining order in Believeland. Unbeknownst to all, has a direct line with the U.S. government. He knows they are retaking Ohio, but, like the government, doesn't know where or when. He and the Guard are to maintain order and facilitate the reuse of the factories to provide rubber and metal for the government to use once the region is retaken, but he doesn't have enough men to protect everything.
Hanley Reyes and Xavier Jones
Hanley was the Indians former manager 'retiring' by coaching his hometown Aeros. Xavier the reigning AL MVP on rehab assignment. After The Crash, they, their teammates, and the visiting New Britain Rock Cats were stuck in Akron. At first, they continued to play ball as a means to keep calm and keep the populace placated. As weeks wore on to years, the play was simply to keep spirits up. With Tulane and the Guardsmen heads as patrons, the teams are allowed to play as their main job. The Akron League, consisting of these two minor league teams and any local 'rec' groups, play throughout the week and compete for the Believeland Cup. The League is headed by Reyes, Jones, and Rock Cats Manager Bud Walker.
Second Lieutenant Hannah Jaeger
Head of the Green Militia. She lives in Green, so the prospect of sacrificing her family when they were so close to Akron was implausible, which was the same for many people in the National Guard. She rounded up a considerable group of deserters, and managed to save their families and many other residents of Green and the surrounding suburbs by fortifying Green High School and the luck of no Vectors. She continues to mistrust Brigadier General Tulane, but works with the National Guardsmen to rid the region of Casualties and maintain order in the surrounding Akron suburbs.
Tom Brunn
Super Bowl winning quarterback from the Cleveland Browns, after retirement he worked for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton. During The Collapse he stayed holed up in his office in the Hall. The staff, visitors, and some Canton residents stayed in the Hall as hell broke outside. It soon became apparent that the National Guard grouping around the region was not going to save Canton. Although they survived, most went mad knowing this. Looking to the also insane Tom for guidance, he created the Hallsmen, a cult revolving around football and trying to keep it's records and memory alive as a means of preserving humanity, like the Archivists. They have immense distrust for the military and anyone not from Canton. While Tom can whip the cultists into a fervor, he himself is a coward and hides in his office.
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First game will be the 30th of August, wrangling expats is hard work.
We're going to vote on either Japan or my hometown of Lansing, MI.
Due to limited time we will be running more Boom than Bust.
I have my recorder with me so I'll try to get you a recording.
Heading into Tokyo to get Red and Black dice for the group next week.
I've been doing lots of research on the Japan angle. Gun control laws have made the ready availability of firearms as appears in the default setting kind of not a good (realistic) option. However, Japan's actual military projects and other tech have given me some interesting options. (.6 firearms per 100 people, handguns completely illegal, only guns a citizen can actually obtain are shotguns and air rifles, after a course, mental and physical health evaluation and yearly police inspections, every location of a citizen gun logged, heirloom rifles turned over to the police for impoundment etc)
HULC suits, prototype mechs, (they have developed one that shoots water bottles and BBs out of gattling guns), and 3D printed guns are some of the ideas I'm playing around with.
3D Printed Guns have In Demand, Hungry, Fragile, Loud, Wear n Tear. With upgrades able to buy them off, they start at normal handgun Upkeep with all the Qualities.
Currently you face horrendous jailtime for owning 3D printed guns but after The Crash, it wont matter and the 3D printed infrastructure is already in place and the blueprints will be available on lifelines and others in high demand.
Regular bullets fired through a 3D printed gun eventually wear out the piece but there are schematics for bullets designed to be fired in the fragile guns, but these have to be machined with metal and cannot be 3D printed.
As for what happened during The Crash, Okinawa and Hokkaido are the current government stronghold. The main island fell quickly and once vectors made it onto a ferry bound for the other side, both Kyushu and Shikoku also similarly fell. The Japanese government has absorbed the US troops stationed on Okinawa after the US deemed their retrieval financially unsound. The train tunnel to Hokkaido was destroyed and currently the Japanese DHQS, National Quarantine and Infrastructure Agency wages a naval battle of that ebbs and flows with the seasons and is working on establishing footholds on the smaller islands before assaulting Honshu. Hokkaido is the promised land but some societies hail back to their island roots and set up enclaves on highly defensible fortress islands dating back to WWII.
Wake Island, Iwo Jima, and Midway have been revived as military and civilian assets. Everywhere old castles have developed into the war fortresses of old.
Smaller mountain towns fared the best but any lowland areas were quickly overrun due to the high concentrations of people.
A neat feature I like to think about is the Salaryman Stampede. A millions strong stampede of casualties that migrates with the weather up and down Honshu. Those casualties at the back drop off going one way and are swept up or trampled by the stampede going the other way. Though less and less every year it is still one of the largest and most dangerous spots of Dead Weather.
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Still coming up with stuff on my own because my group hasn't been able to meet for a playtest yet:
ENDURANCE
Less of an enclave and more an armed merchant convoy, Endurance is a train of modified big rigs, muscle cars, and motorcycles that connect other enclaves in the Midwest that otherwise would have little to no contact with each other. The "crews" of Endurance consist of the rig drivers, armed guards, scout drivers, and their families and loved ones who deal with local traders and handle pretty much everything else that doesn't involve shooting or driving. Endurance is a close-knit community, and while its members can certainly be friendly towards their favorite customers they are ruthless towards those who cross them.
Endurance spends most of its time on the road, but in the evening the drivers will pull the convoy into open fields or abandoned parking lots and “circle up” for protection, allowing their crews to dismount and set up camp inside the perimeter. In the morning they load up and hit the road again, all the way to the next enclave and the next delivery or pickup. Because of the severe fuel shortages out in the Loss all of the rigs have been modified with hybrid motors powered by solar panels mounted on the roofs of the trailers. Even with this upgrade the rigs consume more gasoline than an enclave thrice their size, which is why the convoy must keep moving in order to trade with the settlements that have gas to spare and goods to transport.
Location
Almost always moving but following a more or less predictable circuit through the easternmost states of the Loss, hitting up enclaves all along the way.
Defenses
The big rigs of the Endurance convoy have been modified to defend their passengers from both zombies and humans. Metal skirts protect the wheels of each trailer and also prevent any Casualties from crawling beneath the vehicles when the convoy circles up during the evening. Gunports allow armed guards to fire outside without exposing themselves to enemy fire, and the top of each vehicle is lined with razor wire to deter humans and catch Casualties that try to climb over. The cabs and trailers themselves are reinforced against small arms, and the lead and rear vehicles—Endurance-1 and Endurance-8 respectively—each have a crow’s nest above the cabin for spotters.
History
In the twilight hours of the Crash, after Gnat’s historic broadcast on Ubiq urging survivors to flee across the Mississippi, a lone big rig full of hitchhikers traveled east in search of sanctuary. Over time it met up with others who had the same idea, and gradually the convoy grew to include a platoon of stranded National Guardsmen and an outlaw biker gang. By the time they reached the Border it was too late; the order had already been given to bomb the bridges, stranding them all in the Loss. The camp they stopped at was overrun with Vectors, so they loaded up as many supplies as they could and headed north to the next one. And the next, and the next, and so on until the crews of Endurance decided that they were safer on the road than anywhere else.
Exports
Transportation services. For a fee Endurance can haul people and bulk goods between any two enclaves on their stop list, which is posted on Ubiq for clients. Endurance will often be carrying multiple loads from multiple enclaves at once, picking up new contracts even as they drop off old ones. When the convoy travels light, its crews don't eat.
Imports
Everything else, although thanks to their mobility and income Endurance has plenty of enclaves to do business with for ammo, food, medical supplies, and fuel.
Competition
(Because Endurance can be dropped pretty much anywhere in the Loss its competition is whatever rival enclaves and threats your own group comes up with, in addition to the usual Darwinist raiders)
Social Structure
Although Endurance is a fairly small community, its members still prefer the company of those who share their occupations.
Hands
The men and women entrusted by the community to drive them around the Casualty-infested wasteland safely. Hands are akin to city council members and hold the highest social standing and authority; there are eight in total, one for each rig in the convoy. An "Old Hand" is a particularly venerated driver, often one who has been with the convoy since its inception during the Crash. There is some distance between the Hands and the Hogs due to their respective roots and political differences, but nothing approaching open animosity--both merely want what is best for Endurance.
Hogs
These are the drivers and riders of the convoy's small fleet of muscle cars and motorcycles, which act as advance, rear, and flank scouts to keep the rigs appraised of any possible danger. To be a Hog is to be something of a black sheep in Endurance--they're more adrenaline thirsty and reckless than the conservative Hands or the ever-cautious Guard. Despite appearances, however, they take their jobs seriously; they know if they fuck up their families will be on the line.
The Guard
One of the first group of hitchhikers the convoy picked up during the Crash was a ragged platoon of National Guardsmen who had been cut off from their extraction and needed a lift to the Recession. When the Border closed and everyone in the Loss was declared homo sacer, they decided to stay with the other refugees and use their training and weapons to keep the rigs safe. The Guard are easily the least trusting faction of Endurance, bordering on paranoia, but without them the convoy would have been wiped out by psychotic Darwinists or a herd of Casualties a long time ago.
Crews
Although the term "crew" can be used generally for any of the members of Endurance, within the community it refers to anyone who doesn't drive or hold a gun. Crews fulfill all of the convoy's other needs, from mechanical maintenance to medical care to negotiations with enclaves for contracts to taking inventory and ensuring goods and supplies are accounted for. Because each rig typically carries its own specialists with it rather than relying on a communal pool each one has its own separate "Crew", distinguished by the number of their rig; ie First Crew, Fifth Crew, Seventh Crew, etc.
Neighborhoods
Although it obviously lacks any fixed physical neighborhoods, each of the rigs in Endurance is unique on the inside and akin to a small home, distinct from all the others. A few serve specific purposes:
Endurance-3 & Endurance-5
While most rigs carry enough supplies for their respective crews, Endurance-3 is dedicated to hauling the convoy’s essentials like food and water and Endurance-5 is loaded with reserve arms and ammunition for the Hogs and Guard.
Endurance-4
The only gas rig in the convoy, and the beating heart of Endurance. Although it has been modified with some armor to prevent small arms from breaching the tank and mesh nets to safeguard against molotovs and other crude explosives it is still the most vulnerable point in the convoy and is fiercely guarded by the other rigs, usually driving between Endurance-3 and Endurance-5.
Endurance-6
Instead of a trailer this rig pulls a flatbed that once hauled lumber, but now acts as the “gunboat” of the convoy. Thanks to the welders and designers of La Corbusier, it has been retrofitted into a moving medieval-style battlement with metal breastworks and sharpened rebar spikes. The Hand of Endurance-6, Maya Rowe, is infamous for a signature maneuver she refers to as a “Booty Call” where she intentionally fishtails the flatbed to present its flank towards an approaching threat, allowing the Guard stationed behind the breastworks to enfilade the target with gunfire.
VIPs
James “Big Jim” Mahon, Hand of Endurance-1
Virgil “Rommel” Adler, Head Hog
Lieutenant Rebecca Marszalek, Chief of the Guard
Timothy “Plato” Wilson, Hand of Endurance-3
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The Lost Carol: I love your Cleveland. Especially the minor league baseball teams. Great stuff.
Jace911: Now we're gettin' a little Mad Max up in here. I love it!
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@trinite Thanks! When I remembered that most of the factories in the Akron area have shut down, I tried to think of something I haven't seen expressed yet as an export, so why not entertainment? Something to lift spirits I suppose. I like the concept of Jeff's City; using access as an 'export' is an interesting concept, and makes sense for riverfront cities or crossroads.
@Jace911 Endurance sounds great. I kinda want to see a Booty Call... wait, what... ???
@Shallazar 3D Printed guns or materials seems like one of those things that seems obvious now. Especially with how much better things would be in a near future setting. Great idea.
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@Shallazar 3D Printed guns or materials seems like one of those things that seems obvious now. Especially with how much better things would be in a near future setting. Great idea.
After looking into other improvised firearms, rigged nail guns, zip guns, burp guns, autofire hell machines, I was struck with the Duh. and google provided some good pointers.
http://gizmodo.com/3d-printed-guns-are-only-getting-better-and-scarier-1677747439 (http://gizmodo.com/3d-printed-guns-are-only-getting-better-and-scarier-1677747439)
http://www.wired.com/2014/11/atlas-314-3-d-printed-guns-bullets/ (http://www.wired.com/2014/11/atlas-314-3-d-printed-guns-bullets/)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/3d-printed-bullets_n_3322370.html (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/3d-printed-bullets_n_3322370.html)
Much more sophisticated and the speed of reproduction, with plastic and a printer they seemed a much better idea to run with than the impractical improvised firearms. Durability is improving. The man who was making some in Japan got arrested after posting youtube videos, but I'm sure he inspired others to be more discreet. The only thing that really limits them is available ammunition. Getting the components to make a supply of bullets would acquire the purchase of illegal materials (in this happy police state). No habeus corpus, and no warrants means raids on a whim. But I can seem them being used in the default setting as well, but there isn't really a need what with the second amendment and all.
Heck even swords need to be licensed and registered (anything over 13 centimetres) and can't be worn, wielded or used.
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Some ideas for Taker names to throw into that big list Caleb's including with the final book:
Headcount
Chopper
Streak
Mercy
Hatchet
Nails
Knight
X-Ray
JDAM
Pike
Sandman
Shoplift
Ronin
Lash
Reader
Gat
Scratch
Goblin
Prince
Nike
Pockets
Radar
C-Biscuit
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Some ideas for Taker names to throw into that big list Caleb's including with the final book:
Headcount
Chopper
Streak
Mercy
Hatchet
Nails
Knight
X-Ray
JDAM
Pike
Sandman
Shoplift
Ronin
Lash
Reader
Gat
Scratch
Goblin
Prince
Nike
Pockets
Radar
C-Biscuit
Or just use the names of superheroes created by Rob Liefeld: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Characters_created_by_Rob_Liefeld (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Characters_created_by_Rob_Liefeld)
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Some ideas for Taker names to throw into that big list Caleb's including with the final book:
Headcount
Chopper
Streak
Mercy
Hatchet
Nails
Knight
X-Ray
JDAM
Pike
Sandman
Shoplift
Ronin
Lash
Reader
Gat
Scratch
Goblin
Prince
Nike
Pockets
Radar
C-Biscuit
Or just use the names of superheroes created by Rob Liefeld: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Characters_created_by_Rob_Liefeld (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Characters_created_by_Rob_Liefeld)
(http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/nevermind_nathan_fillion.gif)
I will do that
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(http://i.imgur.com/jNw3sFC.jpg)
I've probably posted this elsewhere on the forums but:
https://vimeo.com/112681885 (https://vimeo.com/112681885)
Edit: and:
(http://youtu.be/YP5mbGMLoQg[/url)
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Holy shit I struck gold.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_State_Penitentiary
Behold the largest maximum security prison in the US, situated right on the Mississippi River and protected by said river on three sides; it's almost a small town in its own right, with plenty of living space, a church, cemetery, and even room for growing crops (Which is what they used prisoners for up to at least the 90s, if I'm reading this wiki article right). At first I thought that made it a great choice for an enclave or even a DHQS settlement, but then I learned that one of its nicknames is literally "The Farm" and I realized it would be the perfect place for DHQS to ship all the Immunes it rounds up for bone marrow harvesting. You wouldn't even have to change the name: just imagine people in Leper talking in hushed whispers about "the Farm" with equal parts anger and fear.
I mean jeepers creepers, here's the actual picture of the warden currently running the place:
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Warden_Burl_Cain_St_Francisville.jpg/480px-Warden_Burl_Cain_St_Francisville.jpg)
"Angola is still operated as a working farm; Warden Burl Cain once said that the key to running a peaceful maximum security prison was that "you've got to keep the inmates working all day so they're tired at night.""
I could not write this shit.
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I've actually heard good things about warden Cain. Apparently Angola has gone from being one of the most violent prisons in the country to one of the least violent. And work programs, when done well, are the best way to help prisoners get job skills that they need to not go back into crime after they get out. He is pretty scary looking, though. :)
I could see a prison as an interesting enclave. You could explore tensions and developments between former prisoners and staff/guards. There are a ton of different ways you could take it, from a ruling council of the prison gang leaders to overt forced-labor slavery. You could be as pessimistic or optimistic as you want.
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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/07/burl-cain-angola-prison (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/07/burl-cain-angola-prison)
https://www.behance.net/gallery/Angola/3235671 (https://www.behance.net/gallery/Angola/3235671)
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/16/angola-prison-forty-years-solitary-confinement (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/16/angola-prison-forty-years-solitary-confinement)
http://www.metafilter.com/76389/A-House-Built-on-Hope (http://www.metafilter.com/76389/A-House-Built-on-Hope)
http://www.metafilter.com/20614/Guts-and-Glory (http://www.metafilter.com/20614/Guts-and-Glory)
An interesting place to say the least.
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Thanks for the links, Ross. That definitely complicates the picture. It stands to reason that the take I've heard is mostly the PR version. That said, even the Mother Jones article, which I expected to be mostly a hit piece, still came off as pretty nuanced and in some ways appreciative of the Angola system, despite its overall critical tone. One thing that I think that article did miss, though, is a comparison between Angola and other prisons of a similar type. There's also the complex issue of how Angola fits into the larger Louisiana criminal justice system. I don't think anyone would hold up Louisiana as a good model of how to run a justice system, even if Angola were some kind of paradise. Nor America's as a whole, either.
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Undoubtedly there are worse prisons and Red Markets is in the near future, so a RM version of Angola could have better structural reforms in place that make it a better site for an enclave. It is also one of the most written about prisons in America, it seems like.
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Undoubtedly there are worse prisons and Red Markets is in the near future, so a RM version of Angola could have better structural reforms in place that make it a better site for an enclave. It is also one of the most written about prisons in America, it seems like.
You could even have factions: maybe Cain is dead, but he's become a semi-messianic figure for a group of the old guards. Others...remember him a little differently. So you've got the Cainanites, the Cowboys (who are all about keeping the rodeo going, and raising horses for export), the Rainbow Panthers (who consider themselves their heirs of Wallace and Woodcox, and also advocate for racial cooperation and LGBT tolerance), and maybe a council of the strongest racial prison gangs.
That could be a really hard-core political campaign setting.
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I'm a map junkie ... and so love Tony Fowlers website [ http://tonydowler.com (http://tonydowler.com) ] ... but in this contect check out his post apocalyptic map of Seattle (http://dhxj4wonub1s5.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Map_FINAL_72DPI_FullSize.jpg)
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Undoubtedly there are worse prisons and Red Markets is in the near future, so a RM version of Angola could have better structural reforms in place that make it a better site for an enclave. It is also one of the most written about prisons in America, it seems like.
You could even have factions: maybe Cain is dead, but he's become a semi-messianic figure for a group of the old guards. Others...remember him a little differently. So you've got the Cainanites, the Cowboys (who are all about keeping the rodeo going, and raising horses for export), the Rainbow Panthers (who consider themselves their heirs of Wallace and Woodcox, and also advocate for racial cooperation and LGBT tolerance), and maybe a council of the strongest racial prison gangs.
That could be a really hard-core political campaign setting.
Yeah, definitely a great place to set a game.
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Just adding to the ruin porn aspect, I totally forgot about Life After People until I started searching on architectural details and what happens when buildings aren't maintained.
There's a Wikia too. (http://lifeafterpeople.wikia.com/)
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I wonder, with current/near-future tech like drones and dronkeys available to Takers who can pay would there also be people in the Loss who make use of powered exoskeletons like Lockheed's HULC system? As far as I know it's well through prototyping--they tested a few in Afghanistan--and although it would be another expensive item it would also come in super handy. I think the claim was that it allowed a soldier carrying 200lbs of gear to run at 10mph for "extended periods". Perfect for escaping Vectors without having to ditch all your gear!
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I just wanted to take some time to say that the outpouring of enthusiasm and support for the Beta I've seen on the forums is really heartening. Thank you all so much! I'm working on the game every spare moment; my only wish is that I could get it out to everyone sooner.
Thanks again...and keep it up!
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This has been around for a while but the Zombie Safe House competition has a few non-whimsical entries that might have application [ https://zombiesafehouse.wordpress.com (https://zombiesafehouse.wordpress.com) ]
I was also thinking about what would happen to those massive server farms ... they would require far too much power to maintain but perhaps a priesthood would emerge, superstitiously cycling on and off machines in sequence in deference to the might "Brin", "the mass is over, google in peace, amen".
Google server farms would be valuable having essentially cached so much valuable information ... which could be of use to enclaves ... as well as perhaps indicating "last known locations" of people prior to the breakdown of society.
[ http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/index.html (http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/index.html) ]
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A quick question about the setting: I was looking over the pregens in preparation for my first playtest tomorrow (Eeeeeee!) and I saw that Alpha's Tough Spot is "Shepherd", but after searching through the beta document I wasn't able to find any details on what that means. I gather that Shepherds are some sort of post-Crash denomination of Christianity, but what about their beliefs makes them unwilling to dispatch Casualties? I just want to be able to explain it if one of my players picks Alpha as their pregen.
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We had someone play that character at GenCon; they have to make a self control roll to kill Casualties. Not sure what the advantage is.
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A quick question about the setting: I was looking over the pregens in preparation for my first playtest tomorrow (Eeeeeee!) and I saw that Alpha's Tough Spot is "Shepherd", but after searching through the beta document I wasn't able to find any details on what that means. I gather that Shepherds are some sort of post-Crash denomination of Christianity, but what about their beliefs makes them unwilling to dispatch Casualties? I just want to be able to explain it if one of my players picks Alpha as their pregen.
I don't think he included any of that in the playtest setting draft, so there isn't a canonical description yet.
When it came up in play for me, I described it as a term for several different belief sets that all commonly hold that you shouldn't kill Casualties. Some people think that the Blight could someday be cured; others think that the Casualties are slowly developing into a new intelligent species and should be allowed to grow and emerge naturally. Others think that killing them casually is disrespectful to the dead. And some might think that the Blight is a divine punishment, and that God is testing humanity's willingness to selflessly care for this new organism that He sent among us (sort of like the Meek, but without the doctrine of spreading the plague to everyone). But all of these groups are collectively labeled "Shepherds" by others, because their opposition to killing Casualites is all that really matters to Takers.
I would let a Shepherd PC decide which version of Shepherdism they subscribe to.
(And steal any ideas you like, Caleb. ;))
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In a similar fashion, I didn't see anything in the book describing what an Aberrant was. I doubt I'll be throwing them at players in these tests, but given that there's a chance they can complicate things, I've been theorizing based on the other zombie types that they fall under the "Talking Zombie" category. Clever, collaborative, durable zombies capable of speech and outright sociopathic tendencies.
Given that there is hinting at varieties of Aberrant, I also considered throwing the Cell zombies into the mix because a creepy hivemind seems like something that would be born of a mysterious parasitic black ooze.
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The missing stuff about Aberrants and Believers (general terms for cults in the setting) isn't an oversight. Those will be dealt with in the setting text, which is not written yet or included in the draft.
Aberrants break zombie rules, so as far as playtesting is concerned, I just need to make sure regular zombie rules are working first. Believers are pure setting info establishing the motives of NPCs; there's not much to playtest there, so I left it out cuz the damn thing's too long already :o
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The missing stuff about Aberrants and Believers (general terms for cults in the setting) isn't an oversight. Those will be dealt with in the setting text, which is not written yet or included in the draft.
Aberrants break zombie rules, so as far as playtesting is concerned, I just need to make sure regular zombie rules are working first. Believers are pure setting info establishing the motives of NPCs; there's not much to playtest there, so I left it out cuz the damn thing's too long already :o
Gotcha. Will just reroll anything that comes up aberrant, then.
This has been around for a while but the Zombie Safe House competition has a few non-whimsical entries that might have application [ https://zombiesafehouse.wordpress.com (https://zombiesafehouse.wordpress.com) ]
I was also thinking about what would happen to those massive server farms ... they would require far too much power to maintain but perhaps a priesthood would emerge, superstitiously cycling on and off machines in sequence in deference to the might "Brin", "the mass is over, google in peace, amen".
Google server farms would be valuable having essentially cached so much valuable information ... which could be of use to enclaves ... as well as perhaps indicating "last known locations" of people prior to the breakdown of society.
[ http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/index.html (http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/index.html) ]
Google Server farms are also complicated by a time factor. Google goes through so many hard drives that they buy the cheapest ones they can fit into their servers and made a special filesystem that predicts drive failures and allocates data appropriately. If you had information on a data center you could recover from it would be a race against time as well to try and gather data before the drives degrade after years of neglect.
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How does the media now operate? Is there a nascent underground media operating in the Loss, or is that just to unneccessary when you are scraping through old tins to find something to eat? Perhaps the media operating in the Recession has become cruel and degenerate, striving harder to titilate a genuinely jaded and shellshocked audience?
I have an idea for a sequence of Hollywood based adventures ... premium bounties are offered on former celebrities (now decidedly z-list), these are filmed by the team and traded to the media for the bounties. Two teams might compete in a perverse version of "Hollywood Squares" to finish off a hit list of their assigned celebrities all recorded and broadcast. Recovery missions could be sent to find lost drones / broadcasting equipment after a spectacularly unsuccessful pilot for "I'm a celebrity, get me out of here" (the bush tucker trial got out of hand).
It may all be a bit on the nose but it would mean some iconic locations ... I am picturing a hoard of zombles rolling down the Hollywood Bowl as the adventurers secure the stage.
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Vehicles adapted to survive a zombie apocalypse: http://www.coroflot.com/donalokeeffe/Zombie-Survival-Vehicle-series (http://www.coroflot.com/donalokeeffe/Zombie-Survival-Vehicle-series)
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Just finished running the first Market Fiat game to see if my group would be interested in playing Red Markets long term. Answer is a very emphatic yes.
TOO DEAD TO FAIL
Since this was a one-shot we decided to go with the pregens included with the playtest packet: our Takers for this job were Grizz, Alpha, and Mal. After hearing about a potential job opportunity they showed up at the enclave of Prosperity in Louisiana: a semi-feudal town established in what used to be a private country club, with the ruling "Members" allowing "Renters" to work the fields in exchange for the protection of the guards, who were a mix of rent-a-cops and aging military vets. One of the guards, a "Colonel Kurtz", was actually Grizz's former CO before the Crash and a current reference the player tapped to learn about the job--apparently Prosperity was running low on food stores with the winter coming up, which meant that someone was stealing from the supply.
After entering the enclave the crew met with Duke McCaughen, one of the Members sent to negotiate the terms of the job. Alpha led in negotiations while Grizz and Mal worked scams--since there were only three of them and Alpha rolled like a bastard on his Leadership check (6 rounds!) I let them run multiple scams each. The job started at 13 Bounty, which they determined was R4B9 for Equilibrium since Supply for food was low and Demand was high with winter on its way. Grizz and Mal ran some scams to increase Demand by inciting a food riot and spreading rumors that the Members would kick people out so there would be enough food for everyone. After some back and forth, during which Alpha learned and used one of McCaughen's spots and McCaughen in turn offered them the gift of a police surveillance drone, they ended up at Hazard Pay.
The Job seemed simple enough: after a 3-Leg journey through the Louisiana countryside, they would come to an abandoned storage unit and clear the area of Casualties before calling in the enclave's trucks to pick up anything still left inside--McCaughen didn't say, but it was easy for the Takers to guess that the place still had stores of food that hadn't spoiled and could be used to solve the shortages. There was more to the job that they didn't find out in negotiations: the unit was used as an emergency cache by FEMA in the early days of the Crash, back when it was still being treated as a humanitarian crisis, and thus could potentially hold enough preserved food and nonperishables to get Prosperity back on its feet. In addition the current food crisis had been caused due to some of the Members embezzling enclave funds for their personal fortunes, and while he wasn't guilty of such McCaughen was eager to clean the mess up before the Renters found out and rose up in revolt so he turned to Dead Caesar, a Valet in Jackson, for assistance. Caesar gave him the details on the storage unit in exchange for agreeing to a "future favor".
On the first Leg the Takers, while searching for a place to rest for the night, found a ranch on a hill with a house and barn. They searched the house and found it empty, save for the owner who had apparently checked out with a bottle of pills years ago, but when they investigated the barn they heard the unmistakable sounds of Casualties within and found a message painted on the chained-up doors: "TO WHOMEVER MAY HAVE THE STRENGTH TO DO WHAT I COULD NOT, GOD BLESS AND HELP YOURSELF". Thanks to the family photo they found in the dead rancher's hands the Takers knew there were probably at least a dozen Casualties inside, so rather than trying to kill them with a rifle and a tomahawk they decided to use Alpha's dog Intern to chum them off into the woods before ditching them in the fading light. They did so, and upon entering the barn they found the rancher's reward: a toolbox full of $100 bills, completely worthless. Fortunately Mal had done some scavenging in the house beforehand and located a safe full of property deeds and birth certificates worth 8 Bounty. Alpha took some Stress while waiting and worrying about Intern, but the dog came back wagging his tail with no zombies in tow so they were able to sleep peacefully in the house that night.
For the second Leg they came across an overpass with a military semi truck that had apparently wrecked and was half-dangling over the railroad tracks below, where they could hear but not see Casualties milling about. Again they decided to use Intern to lure the zombies away before investigating further, and after her success at the ranch Alpha agreed. Intern went to the top of the overpass, barked and yipped to attract the Casualties below, ran off down the other side to lure them away...and a minute later promptly came hauling ass back with a Stampede on her tail. The Takers managed to hide behind some abandoned cars and sent her running off down another road to lure them away, which inflicted more Stress on Alpha, and although the horde of 50+ zombies passed without noticing them they still had to roll Self-Control against Trauma for the harrowing experience. After the dog returned Grizz climbed inside the back of the teetering trailer and found a military shotgun, which he reluctantly gave to Mal so she wouldn't have to tomahawk any zombies they came across in the future. There was also a Casualty in Kevlar and a helmet who tumbled out the back to try and catch Intern, but since his gear was splattered in infectious blood after he fell 50 feet onto railroad tracks they decided it wasn't worth salvaging--they did take his dog tags for 1 Bounty.
The third and final Leg they would have skipped entirely had Alpha not insisted they intervene: while approaching a levee road they heard a motor vehicle driving up and down a 100 yard stretch over and over, with sounds of cheering and whistling. After circling to cross and get a good vantage point behind an abandoned car they saw an ATV roaring up and down the same stretch of road dragging something behind, with four onlookers standing by a parked car cheering the driver on. Alpha was the only one who succeeded on an Awareness check to make out what the ATV was dragging: it was roadhauling a man. Reluctantly (After I made it clear they would take Detachment damage for just turning and walking away) Grizz and Mal agreed to save him. They set up an ambush where the two of them would open fire on the group by the car, and Intern would circle around and attack the man on the ATV when he was distracted by the gunfire. Grizz popped one in the head, Mal missed and emptied half her clip into the air, Intern pounced on the ATV driver like a velociraptor and dragged him off the bike, mauling his leg in the process. After the surprise round Mal corrected her aim and blew a man's leg off and Grizz shot another one in the head, but their return fire nicked Mal in the leg for 1 Kill. Then, because she had already used her Twitch to try and avoid the first attack, the second automatically hit her and I rolled ten Kill to the head. Her player wisely decided to spend a Will to negate that (We misread the rules and I said to convert it to Stun, so we reasoned the bullet just grazed her and knocked her out). Seeing Mal go down after taking a bullet to the head triggered Self-Control checks and Alpha gained another point of Will for "Squeamish" by forgoing his turn and cowering in terror as bullets sparked off the car. Then Grizz killed the man who shot Mal, and Intern pounced on the last one and tore his throat out. Grizz patched up Mal, and when they approached the bodies they saw that they had armbands of the New Order--local raiders and slavers formed from the merger of a Christian Identity church and white supremacist movement after the Crash. The man they were roadhauling turned out to be a Latent, and very reluctantly Mal agreed to perform first aid on him (For which I rolled a negative on infection and of course did not tell them, which left Grizz very paranoid for the remainder of the game). They agreed to give him the slavers' car, earning the +Rep Spot "Law In These Parts", and looted 5 Bounty from the bodies. At this point we figured out the rules on negating and healing damage so Mal's player erased the Stun to the head and put ten Kill damage in the chest, 9 of which was converted to Stun by Grizz' first aid test.
As they approached the job site, things started to get interesting: their instructions were to clear all Casualties within the storage unit and a two block radius to give the trucks plenty of time to load, but as they scouted the area they were surprised to find very few Casualties anywhere. They also found evidence that someone had recently culled the area, which put them on their guard as they approached the storage unit, and they decided now was a good time to finally use that surveillance drone. They performed some recon on the site and noticed some big trucks with FEMA abandoned out front, as well as some old military vehicles, and razor wire surrounding the walls that wasn't in the photos they were given. Painted on the roof of a large warehouse was "HELP US".
(http://www.insideselfstorage.com/articles/2012/04/~/media/ED061912DB2D4662B7DA185693DCC173.ashx?w=544&h=238&as=1)
After calling McCaughen and making sure he knew nothing about this--he didn't--they decided to move in and investigate what looked like a failed enclave to them. The trucks and vehicles seemed to have been abandoned for years, which was an encouraging sign, and they spotted a single Humvee parked inside the open warehouse with a figure sitting behind the driver's seat. They approached to get a closer look, thinking it was just a Casualty, but it turned out to be the skeletal corpse of a long-dead National Guardsman. When they opened the door to pull him out, however, they triggered a boobytrap: the "open door" blinker in the dash was wired to a remote which caused the front gate to rattle shut behind them and also opened some of the storage units outside, which had all been closed when they scouted with the drone. They could hear scuffling footsteps on the asphalt so they sent up the drone to draw away any Casualties released by the boobytrap, but no sooner had it gotten airborne and out of the warehouse than a previously-hidden sharpshooter knocked it from the sky! The Casualties started moving towards the sound of the gunshot--and the warehouse--so the Takers climbed into the Humvee and hunkered down to see what they were dealing with. When 100+ Casualties shambled by the warehouse door, blocking their way to the closed gate, they wisely decided that this job wasn't worth their lives and started working on a plan to escape whatever mad trap they had stumbled into.
Mal examined the key fog and found that while the charge from the car had fried it after activation, it was potentially salvageable and could be repaired with some time and effort. That left the question of how they would get past the zombies, so Grizz decided to slip out of the Humvee, try one of the warehouse's side doors, and see if he could find another way out of the storage unit. While exploring he nearly ran afoul of another boobytrap: the sniper had cut one of the storage doors to pieces, taped it back together, and set a tripwire, presumably placing explosives inside to turn the door into an enormous frag grenade. After finding a maintenance ladder that was rigged with a motion sensor Grizz decided to turn back before his luck ran out (At this point Alpha's player was just repeating "Why?!" over and over re: the deathtraps) and ran smack into a mob of Casualties that strayed from the main group. He decided to lure them back to the explosive trap, and back inside the Humvee Alpha and Mal suddenly heard an enormous explosion from outside, which had the nice side effect of peeling most of the Casualties away from the front gates!
Grizz failed a Sneak check to return to the Humvee, so rather than letting him be spotted by the bulk of the zombies as they came back to investigate the explosion I allowed him succeed at cost (Or "pay 2 win" as I called it) by emptying his silenced rifle to kill the ones who did see him before ducking out of sight, and since we were using the High-Stakes Haul rules he checked Foresight to see if he had extra mags; he did not, so he was just down to his pistol. Back in the Humvee the group debated about how to get out: Alpha had scavenged the floor mats so they could throw them over the razor wire and hop the wall, but refused to go with Mal and Grizz if it meant leaving Intern behind. The two of them agreed to climb over the wall, fire some shots from their non-silenced weapons to draw the remaining zombies away from the gates so Alpha could use the now-repaired key fob to open it, and then he and Intern would make a break for it past the sniper (Who they correctly guessed was in the second floor manager's office).
Grizz and Mal made their Sneak checks to slip over to a section of wall behind the warehouse where the sniper would have a difficult time hitting them, but Mal had to succeed at cost after a botched roll so we said that she tripped, dropped her UbiqSpecs, and couldn't waste time to grab them since the Casualties were just a few dozen feet away. They reached the wall without further incident and started working on getting over, but back in the Humvee Alpha had to roll a Self-Control check against Stress--as far as he knew Mal and Grizz might just decide to abandon him there and wouldn't come back, since a Squeamish Shepherd is a bit of a liability out in the Loss--and failed, which gave him his first Regret! After presenting him with the three options Alpha's player chose Flight and decided "fuck it, I'm hitting the gate and just sprinting past the zombies with Intern!". The two of them made it past the handful that wandered into the warehouse, but when they were halfway to the gate the sniper took a shot--which missed--and pulled the Casualties' attention right as Alpha and Intern were right in their midst.
We jumpcut back to Grizz and Mal, the former of which has climbed up onto the wall over the floormats and fires off a few rounds from his pistol just as he hears the sniper fire his shot at Alpha and sees the Shepherd running out in the open with his dog for some stupid fucking reason. Mal fails her Athletics check to climb up onto the wall, and after considering the options--fail and fall, making lots of noise as her toolkit hits the ground, or succeed at cost--she decided on the latter and grabbed an uncovered section of razor wire to catch herself, slicing open her hand for 5 Kill damage. She managed to make it up and the two of them hopped over the other side to safety.
Alpha and Intern, meanwhile, bolted for the gate through the crowd of Casualties. The player burned what was left of his Rations to give them both bonuses, and just as Alpha made it out and turned to see if Intern was still behind him the sniper took a second shot that just barely grazed the dog's back--only 1 Kill damage, but seeing his dog injured meant that Alpha wouldn't heal 1 free Humanity after this session. Still under the influence of his Regret Alpha and Intern took off down the road, putting some distance between them and the storage unit sniper while Grizz and Mal headed for the rendezvous point. When Alpha failed to show up they headed back to Prosperity to report their failure and reasons thereof to McCaughen, who was displeased but convinced to at least give them their Hazard Pay. Combined with the Bounty they scavenged during the three Legs, and with cutting Alpha out of the group for abandoning them on the job, Grizz and Mal managed to make a slim profit. We decided that Alpha probably returned to the enclave to retire from Taking, as he clearly was not cut out for it, and (Although this wouldn't matter for a one-shot) eventually Prosperity would collapse as starvation led to revolution and a mass exodus to other enclaves.
Afterwards I explained the story behind the job site to the players: the storage site wasn't just used by FEMA during the Crash, it was also temporarily occupied by a rogue battalion of the Mississippi National Guard that left the Recession in the early days after the Crash on an unknown mission to Houston--this became something of an urban legend of the Crash. They established outposts along their route, creating a "safe corridor" for resupply, but withdrew the few troops they spared to man those posts for their big push into Houston, where they promptly disappeared. The sniper was the one soldier who stayed behind to watch over "Fort Hitchhike" in case they returned, and after five years of isolation and bad encounters with bandits/other Takers who shot first he became paranoid about defending the place. If the Takers had managed to kill him and deal with the mob of Casualties somehow they would have found the bodies and gear of another Taker team that Dead Caesar had hired to search the place weeks ago, along with lots of crazy graffiti in the sniper's nest, a journal detailing the sniper's descent into madness (Which they could have sold to Archivists interested in the legend of the Rogue Battalion), and some sweet military-grade loot. Alas, sometimes the money just isn't worth it.
We had so much fun playing this and have decided to try and run an ongoing game, starting with enclave and character creation proper instead of relying on pregens. I spent a while studying the rules beforehand but there were still a few things I had to look up, like how Called Shots and healing worked, but I was able to walk them through most everything else like Job Negotiation (Which they loved). Everyone particularly enjoyed the Leg encounters, not just because I put some thought into making them but because the idea itself means they'll be short, sweet, and varied so great job there Caleb! The main part of the game at the Job Site was a bit less fun because the players felt trapped by the circumstances (And not necessarily in the way I wanted) but after talking about it afterwards I decided that the next time I run this game for another group I'll have way fewer zombies--I wanted the focus to be on the sniper and his craziness, but with 100+ Casualties breathing down their necks the players were primarily concerned with the horde. I figure a handful of separate Mobs to keep things interesting, plus the boobytraps and the sniper will make the job site challenging enough without causing the players to take one look and go "lol nope".
One other thing I want to mention: while prepping for this game I had the idea of giving players tokens to let them keep track of Twitch in combat--I didn't want to waste time playing "did I spend it this round?"--which then expanded into giving the players tokens to keep track of all their resources on a labeled mat: Endurance/Rations were represented by nickels, Haul was dimes, and Item charges were pennies. As they spent charges for all of these they would take coins and put them in the center, and if they refreshed or recovered some (Grizz got some rifle ammo back from a Nazi's corpse, they all filled their rations with MREs from the back of the military semi) they would grab them back. Overall I'd say it worked pretty well and provided a good physical reinforcement of the "economic" theme of the game, although one player suggested using some kind of slider instead. It'd probably be a lot of hassle to include physical tokens with the game (Even as a stretch goal) but if this sounds like a good addition I figure a sidebar couldn't hurt? Tomsawyer was in the game and took a picture of the "resource mats" I made so he can post that sometime.
tl;dr One player almost died, one lost his marbles (And thus his cut), and they had to abandon the job and barely made any money, but everyone had a great time!
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Jace, please, please, please tell me you have a recording of this! That sounds like it was a lot of fun and you wrote it up really well!
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@Jace
That write up is so helpful! Thank you so much! I can't wait to see more!
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That sounds fantastic. I won't do a full writeup of the game I ran last weekend, since it's one of the pregen scenarios and thus possibly spoilery. But it sounds like your players had as much fun as mine did!
And for my next game I'm stealing your pennies, nickels, and dimes idea. Maybe use quarters or dollar coins for Will, too. I could see having a little stack of shiny golden dollar coins sitting in the middle of the table would be a good reminder for players to use their Spots! :)
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Incase anyone wanted to see how we managed the tokens in the game Jace ran, I played Grizz by the way.
(http://i.imgur.com/TTIPVbx.jpg)
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That's actually a pretty intuitive way to keep track of everything at a table. I might have to steal that idea for my playtest.
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Jace, please, please, please tell me you have a recording of this! That sounds like it was a lot of fun and you wrote it up really well!
Sadly not; our friend with recording stuff wasn't there. :(
@Jace
That write up is so helpful! Thank you so much! I can't wait to see more!
A few other points of interest:
1. During the shootout with the Nazis Tom and I realized that, so long as Grizz had good cover against attacks, the combination of Called Shot and Cover rules (Move to end of initiative for CS, can't be targeted if you haven't fired that round) effectively made it impossible for the Nazis to hit him while at the end of every round he could pop out and snipe one in the head. We weren't sure if this was a bug or a feature, but we agreed that it wasn't terribly unbalanced since all the Nazis would've had to do is make an Athletics check to flank the car the party was using for cover. Fortunately they were gunned down/mauled by an angry German Shepherd before they figured that out. Unless we read one of those rules wrong, which we may have--we had a general policy of "roll with it, look up later" to avoid bogging the table down. I just reread the rules on Called Shot and realized that Tom definitely would have been exposed to gunfire the entire time, whoops! :V
2. For the coin/mat thing, during the climactic encounter at the job site I realized that keeping track of resources with physical tokens also had the benefit of allowing the GM to simply look around the table to see where characters were at with Endurance/Rations and use that to gauge how much to push them, rather than asking every round "how many points do you have?"
3. This might have been due to the small number of players, but although I was worried that negotiations with McCaughen would prove terribly easy and they would make a shit ton of money they were actually hard-pressed just to work their way up to Hazard Pay--they only uncovered one of the client's spots, and he used one of Alpha's plus a Gift to force them back, and Alpha botched his Leadership check at the end so they couldn't move up to Expenses. Obviously one game isn't enough for a judgment call, but my first impressions of the negotiation mechanic and its "difficulty curve" are positive.
That sounds fantastic. I won't do a full writeup of the game I ran last weekend, since it's one of the pregen scenarios and thus possibly spoilery. But it sounds like your players had as much fun as mine did!
And for my next game I'm stealing your pennies, nickels, and dimes idea. Maybe use quarters or dollar coins for Will, too. I could see having a little stack of shiny golden dollar coins sitting in the middle of the table would be a good reminder for players to use their Spots! :)
I also used quarters to represent the delicious Bounty they were earning--during negotiations as I was placing stacks on the slider I could practically see them salivating, and when they scavenged more out in the Legs they gave a little cheer when I added those to their growing pile. I really think having physical representations of their reward reinforced the experience for them, and I'm definitely using this idea in all the other games I hope to run!
Incase anyone wanted to see how we managed the tokens in the game Jace ran, I played Grizz by the way.
(http://i.imgur.com/TTIPVbx.jpg)
This was taken pretty early in the session--by the final encounter Grizz was completely out of rifle ammo, most of his first aid kit, and was digging deep into his rations to keep himself going.
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Yeah, sweet! Love those mats. I could see those as a stretch goal, or included as a player aid in the book.
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I also used quarters to represent the delicious Bounty they were earning--during negotiations as I was placing stacks on the slider I could practically see them salivating, and when they scavenged more out in the Legs they gave a little cheer when I added those to their growing pile.
It was also super disapointing to loose half of them when we had to abandon the job. Luckily we got our hazard pay but still :(
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You guys made 23 Bounty total, and splitting it between the two of you that meant you made a profit of 4 Bounty (Mal's Upkeep dropped from 10 to 9 because she lost her UbiqSpecs but kept the military shotgun), and Mal probably burned her whopping share of 2 Bounty on medical bills (5 Killing to the right arm, 1 Killing/9 Stun to the chest, 1 Killing to the right leg).
So it was pretty much a wash, but at least you didn't lose money! Now all they have to do is find a replacement negotiator and third team member. :V
EDIT: In retrospect I also goofed when dishing out Humanity damage, particularly for Alpha--I was making him take Stress for seeing Intern in danger when it should have been Detachment, and the check that made him Crack definitely should have been Detachment since he was panicking about his comrades abandoning him to the Casualties and the sniper.
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@Jace that write up was awesome! Great job! I hope the games I run are even half as good. And good idea for the table mat counter.
@pigsinspaces Your Hollywood Squares idea... I love it. I wish Our campaign was anywhere near California. That would be a great one shot
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It would be interesting to think about takers on a macro level - clearly the average taker job cannot be as hard as that job otherwise there would be no taker groups. If that was the average job, no one would take it, unless it could pay for your retirement in of itself - in which case there's no taker group after the job. Taker groups are an investment of resources that could be spent on other things as well. These jobs must be the best opportunity for them or there would be no taker culture/industry.
Of course on the other hand, Only one group has PC halos and they are the special group that gets the worst and weirdest jobs in the entire Loss. They get the unique/legendary jobs. But can you make a career of that?
What is an easy job? What is a hard job? What kind of return does an average group get? How long do they stay in business before death or retirement? How many groups operate in a single region?
These are things to think about when running Red Markets.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunsell_Forts
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/57/Redsandsforts.jpg/300px-Redsandsforts.jpg)
Long abandoned WWII army and navy forts, built in the Thames and Mersey estuaries. Decommissioned in the 50's, hosted pirate radio stations in the 60's, recently declared unsafe, though there seems to be some sort of conservation effort.
Sounds like a highly defensible enclave with boat access to some of England's major waterways.
Or maybe some yahoo hauled in a transmitter and is now broadcasting on Radio Free ZMBI.
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When I run that game eventually for another group the only major change I'll make is cutting down the horde at the end to 3-5 randomly rolled Mobs of Casualties spread around the storage unit--that way there are still enough to be a concern, but the players will treat them more like the boobytraps to avoid while attempting to deal with the sniper.
There was also going to be another Taker group that tries to undercut the players, and then if snubbed in negotiations shows up at the site to try and rub them out (Only to run afoul of the sniper and his traps as well) but when I saw that they were struggling just to reach Hazard Pay I decided not to include them. In retrospect they probably would have been glad for the accidental assistance, even if it resulted in less pay. :V
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Did you use the Contract Generator or do that one wholecloth?
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Did you use the Contract Generator or do that one wholecloth?
I made the whole thing from scratch when I found the picture of the storage unit online and thought "that would make a fantastic post-apocalyptic fort." Then I fiddled around and came up with the job, the Legs, the complication with the sniper, and the background conflict with Prosperity on my own too; if I ever make use of the Contract Generator it'll be for random ideas or inspiration rather than its intended purpose...
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Had some shower thoughts about Red Markets and counter-culture in heavily impoverished socioeconomic climates (like the Cuban movement Los Frikis).
Given the "safe," but generally unpleasant climate of the Recession and the terrible conditions of places like Free Parking villes, combined with C-Bait takers who hopped the fences to try and make ends meet in the recession, the idea of hopping the fences and leaving the relative safety of the Recession for the relative freedom and liberty of the Loss grew among the less well-to-do and those frustrated by the militarized Recession government. With a global communication platform like Ubiq to talk and plan anonymously, the resentment and talk eventually turned to action. When the first few small groups jumped the fence and rafted their way to an uncertain future, the Bankruptcy movement was born.
In the few years following the crash, korrupt (formerly 'krupt, formerly Bankrupt, etc) enclaves have begun to populate the loss (and more than a few have fallen horribly). Ideals obviously vary from place to place, but in general, they reject the notions of government or currency, generally relying on some form of emergent leadership, collectivist / communalist values, barter and favor exchanges, and more than a little "take what you want" and "do as thou wilt" philosophy.
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So I'm finally through the Beta and I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the setting. My only real gripe, and I don't know if it's already been hashed out, is that if you look at a map of the US by population density the East side of the Mississipi is not where I'd go if I wanted to flee undead. Something of a grognard point, so I'm not gonna hold on to it so hard.
Anyway, since a big part of the fun of this game seems to be using your locale for setting, I've been thinking about California a lot. Here's what I came up with. Short version: population density maps are basically dead weather forecasts. https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/maps/thematic.html (https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/maps/thematic.html)
Central Valley – Casualty Alley.
The Central Valley was the agricultural heart of California. Now it is the states necrotic sore. Though not as densely populated as the bay or the southern sprawl, average population ranges from 250-5000 people per square mile. This, combined with the difficulty of actually leaving the valley, with limited highways through winding mountain passes being the only exit – at least until they were closed down by wrecks and aggressive locals – turned the valley into a vector petri dish. The same mountain ranges that fed runoff into the deltas also feed casualties back in, keeping them bottled up. This has created a rolling hurricane of stampeding dead, following each other round and round the flatlands, pushed out by the urban development that follows the 5 through the middle of the valley, turned in by the foothills.
Ironically farming has actually become easier since the crash, as the few remaining farmers now have plenty of water to share. Enclaves in the valley enjoy an 8 month growing season, though they may be trapped inside for weeks by unseasonable dead fronts.
Escape from LA – Or not
LA was 90 square miles of concrete with insane congestion problems before the Crash happened, and gridlock traffic is a bad place to be when vectors start cutting lanes. Los Angelinos had about half the national survival rate according to conservative guesses, and a 10th by more pessimistic ones.
The Joys of Disparate Impact: In an odd twist ghettoized neighborhoods had some architectural advantages during the crash. Many of them were buffered from other populations by warehouses, industrial zones, and highways, and barred windows and security doors work equally well against Causalities as burglars, though not so much against vectors. Much as with schools, prisons and barracks, housing projects are surprisingly defensible.
I'm gonna be honest and say this feels somewhat patronizing and uncomfortable to write.
Oil!
At the bottom of the Central Valley, just north of Los Angeles over the Tehachapi Mountains lie some of the biggest oil fields in the US. While the coalition of enclaves in the area don't have access to the all the current technologies, they still manage to produce and refine enough oil to keep suped up dune buggies and muscle cars chasing each other around the Mojave for the next millennia.
The Run: But you can't eat oil, so all of that black gold has to go somewhere. Some of it is sold to independent traders who port it back up over the mountains into the great basin, but along the 5, its distributed through a process known as The Run. A single tanker is too tempting a target to let out on its own, and a convoy that stops to haggle is going to pull in too much of the teaming dead to ever get started again. So oil is delivered Santa Claus style, all in one go. Customers buy tankersfull in exchange for crypto and goods to be delivered at a later date, the convoy loads up every last semi it's managed to get its hands onto, along with a horde of escorts, including tanks looted from Camp Pendleton lashed to flatbeds, and hordes of dirt bike riders ramping up and down their own converted flatbeds to change shifts, repair and refuel. Then its a straight shot to Seattle; No stops, no breaks. At an average of 50 miles an hour this takes about a full day. Fuel is dropped off at predetermined exits, at which point it is the customers job to pick it up before the following horde swamps the area.
Once the convoy hits Seattle everything is loaded onto barges, and gradually shipped back down to the port of LA by the helpful Pacific current.
Bay Area – Bay of Pigs
The American Pacific Fleet still largely operates from the Pearl Harbor Naval base on the casualty-free, and now largely foliage-free, island of Oahu. Their duties and forces are much declined, but include trying to keep Kumatakok combatants off of mainland, and avoiding the psychotically vengeful Canadian Navy. However a large chunk of the force was commandeered by the DHQS and used to reclaim portions of the Bay Area, generally by bombarding a hill until nothing stood on it, then airlifting pre-fabbed fortifications into place and building from there. The various ships still wait off the coast, ready to lend support to the settlement
San Francisco is now the DHQS foothold on the West coast. For now it's their only foothold, as any DHQS force that leaves artillery support range is generally set upon by one of the many rebel military groups left behind by the Recession, most of whom were never noticed to evacuate.
The Boring Part With No-one In
I'm from and currently live in Far Northern California, right at the very tip of the Central Valley, also known as either Jefferson State or southern Cascadia, depending on your preferred secessionist movement. Because of that I have a personal bias against instituting sweeping general fates, and want each little bit of my home area to be a special snowflake.
Also most of the counties up here have the same population density as North Dakota, so it's a great place to avoid Casualties. There's not that much interesting stuff up here, so I just came up with some general ideas for enclaves based on whats going on. We have
Wood - Lumber mills are not a bad place to start an enclave. They're generally fenced in, have plenty of raw building material in addition to the tools too make more. They also often have their own machine shops, and historical ones may still have worker dorms.
Weed – Humboldt and Trinity counties are the home of backwoods deisel dope. These isolated, heavily armed, agricultural businesses are pretty much a Enclave starter kit.
Water – There are over a dozen hydro-electric dams in Northern California. While the engineers may not have survived, someone on Ubiq must know how to keep these things up and working, right?
During my research I also came across the fun fact that Arizona has 4 different massive aircraft graveyards, so it wouldn't be that far of a jump to have a ton of aerolights and homemade bi-planes. I realize this is not particularly economic horror-y, but man is it sweet to have sky pirates make sense in your setting. You know where they can get gas from.
So it's not all set up to use as enclaves and such, but I hope you guys like these ideas and can find something for your own games.
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I had never thought about using the census data to get a good bead on zombie weather. Granted, I also haven't tried doing enclave creation yet. Also "unseasonable dead fronts" is one of my new favorite phrases.
To add a little bit I've got a couple more Abandoned Porn links. The first probably everyone already has but the second one is pretty good too, although all the writing is in Swedish.
http://imgur.com/r/AbandonedPorn/ (http://imgur.com/r/AbandonedPorn/)
http://www.jornmark.se/ (http://www.jornmark.se/)
Also protip: don't search for "ruin porn" or "abandoned porn" on tumblr unless you want to also occasionally see actual porn
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We finished our intermediary enclave/character creation session last night, and the next time we meet the Takers will choose their first job of the campaign! They decided to set the game in Nevada, partly because they wanted something with a bit of Mad Max flavor and mostly because of their choice of location for their enclave:
HOOVERVILLE
(http://www.history.com/s3static/video-thumbnails/AETN-History_VMS/21/154/History_Kaiser_Builds_Hoover_Dam_and_Warships_45407_SF_HD_still_624x352.jpg)
Five years after the Crash turned out the lights all across America, Nevada still shines in the darkness thanks to the ever-enduring Hoover Dam and the electricity it generates for any enclave in the region willing to pay...which is most of them. It is maintained and operated by technicians and engineers who realized the severity of the crisis facing America and brought their families into the Dam to try and weather the storm. Over time they were joined by a military diaspora and a small flood of refugee survivors, and together they formed the technocratic community of Hooverville.
Location
Hoover Dam. Duh.
Defenses
Hoover Dam. Duh.
The dam's architecture and placement make it a veritable fortress against both Casualties and raiders, especially when augmented with additional fortifications like scrap metal gates and watchtowers. These defenses are manned by a mixed group of soldiers and private security contractors who were abandoned by their chains of command in the Crash; they are led by Marshall Amanda Cho. Finally, the Dam's isolated location provides another barrier against attack due to the distance one must travel to reach it.
History
Hooverville's original occupants included the technicians who operated the Dam and kept her running, plus whatever surviving family they could bring with them. The next group to seek refuge in the monument was a mixed platoon of Army infantry and PMC contractors who had been left to die in the mass exodus east; these would become the enclave's defenders and law enforcement officers. And, over time, more survivors began to flock to the Dam when they heard by Ubiq and radio and word of mouth that there was shelter to be found. As conditions in the Loss continued to deteriorate and people realized rescue simply wasn't coming, they settled in and built Hooverville.
Top Exports
Electricity—Hoover Dam supplies electricity to just about anyone in Nevada or California who can pay and keep the cables maintained. This makes them a powerful economic force in the region despite their average population and isolated location.
Water—Nevada hasn't gotten any less dry and inhospitable since civilization collapsed. Fresh water is sold to anyone looking to keep their crops from drying up or their cattle from dying of dehydration.
Engineering Expertise—One of the engineers who fled to the Dam had the foresight to raid a manufacturing center on the way, bringing a number of 3D printers Hooverville now uses to make replacement parts and equipment. Although raw materials are in short supply, the ability to repair delicate equipment with machined parts instead of junking them more than pays for itself. On top of this, the techs and engineers are more than willing to sell their knowledge over Ubiq as consultants and designers.
Top Imports
Food—Space is at a premium in Hooverville, and although there are more than a few small hydroponic gardens set up on top of the wall they don't produce even a fraction of what the population needs to survive.
Scrap Metal—You can't build with raw materials, and quality scrap metal is one of the most cost-effective construction materials available in the carrion economy of the Loss.
Medicine—Although it means less government interference, being so far from the Recession also means less easy access to manufactured goods like modern medicine. Suppliers out in the Loss can make money hand over fist selling pharmaceuticals to enclaves, and with so many people packed into a relatively small space Hooverville can't afford to let its medicine cabinets go unstocked.
Competition
The House—A network of former gamblers, insider traders, and mafia members who have their fingers in enclaves throughout Nevada. They use their influence to game the economy, driving the prices for goods up or down, and employ teams of unwitting Takers for jobs that take advantage of their manipulations. The House is a money-making machine and isn't above endangering people to make a profit--they might arrange for an enclave's water supply to be contaminated, then charge them to send Takers to scout out a new well site. They operate in secret and jealously guard their investments--stumbling across a House operation is often the last mistake a curious Taker makes.
The 51st State—Some saw the Crash as the end of the world, but others saw it as the chance to uncover the truth. When the military pulled out of Nevada every redneck conspiracy nut in the Southwest headed straight for Area 51 to finally see the alien corpses and UFO wreckage and lizardmen cryo tubes at long last. When they arrived they found none of these things, surprising nobody but themselves. Consoling themselves by looting the hastily-abandoned site of weapons, ammunition, and military vehicles, the conspiracy theorists took to the road and over time became a nomadic band of desert raiders. The absence of any proof for their theories in Area 51 has only fueled their distrust of the government--they obviously cleaned up anything of value before pulling out and leaving their own citizens to die at the hands of their sinister experiments (Probably).
Mojave Nation—A loose confederacy of surviving Native American tribes in Nevada that congregated at Fort Mojave for mutual protection. Over time they established a system allowing for cooperation in trade and defense while retaining their independent governments and cultural identities, effectively becoming a small nation with member states. Due to their proximity to the Colorado River they are the largest producer of crops in Nevada, which makes them a strong trading partner with Hooverville to the north.
Shadow Hills—A megachurch in the Vegas suburbs converted into a fortress by a somewhat mild offshoot of the Meek. Although they believe that the Crash was God's Rapture and that the Blight was his way of calling man into Heaven, they are not as driven to enforce their beliefs on others and are content merely to live and let die. Although many enclaves find it distasteful to interact with them many do not have a choice, as they are the second-largest exporter of crops in Nevada behind the Mojave Nation.
Free Rangers—A traveling hodgepodge of truckers, ranchers, and highway patrol officers who raise the largest surviving herds of livestock in Nevada. They migrate from grazing spot to grazing spot in convoys of cattle-carrier big rigs and supercharged police cruisers to stay ahead of any roving herds or bandits, and they make regular stops at enclaves along the way to sell their juiciest animals.
Social Structure
On the surface Hooverville is a technocracy with flimsy pretensions of being a meritocracy, but peel back the layers and one will see that it is actually a cleverly-disguised aristocracy in the guise of a technocracy. In Hooverville decisions that affect the community are put to a vote, but not every vote is equal: the Engineers who maintain and operate the Dam which provides for them all have more say than the men and women of the Garrison, who have more say than the diverse population of skilled laborers and other non-technical Specialists who serve important roles in the community, who have even more say than the refugees living on top of the Dam and the Latents exiled outside the walls (Who have none).
In theory all one needs to graduate from Tourist to Specialist, Garrison, or even Engineer is to take and pass a test which gauges one’s useful knowledge and skills. This is much easier said than done in the post-Crash world, where education has yet to be re-established even in the Recession and many children haven’t seen a classroom or textbook in years. Further stacking the deck is the fact that the Engineers closely guard their knowledge, teaching only their children and family members so that they may preserve it, thus making it extremely difficult for anyone to actually climb the theoretical ladder to power.
This system, while somewhat stable, does result in more than a little social unrest. Protests and demonstrations on the archway are not uncommon, and a growing civil rights movement led by self-styled activist Neal Dalton is demanding that the Tourists be granted the right to vote. Despite Marshall Cho’s moderating influence Chief Engineer Greeley is pushing the Board towards increasingly authoritarian measures to contain and suppress these protests, and within the Garrison itself there is a small but vocal movement of anonymous guards calling themselves the Strike Breakers who demand the mass deportation of the Tourists and call for the Latent “gravediggers” outside the walls be driven away.
Neighborhoods
The Dammed—Latent ghetto/squatter's camp erected outside the enclave, moves from one end to the other by way of the Bypass, as they aren't permitted within the walls.
Tourist Trap—The tent city and shanty town decorating the top of the Dam, where the bulk of the non-military and engineering citizens live.
Barracks—Formerly the observation deck and museum, now converted into the military quarters.
Powerhouse—The seat of government and where the engineers and their families live.
VIPs
Chief Engineer Michael Greeley—A man ill-suited to leading a city-state, Greeley is slight in stature and spine. His courage is bolstered by his position on the Board, secured solely due to the fact that nobody knows the Dam like he does, as well as the control over the Garrison which it affords him. When Greeley is afraid he tends to lash out, or order others to lash out, and Greeley is afraid very often. He likes when things work the way they’re supposed to and everyone just does their job.
Marshall Amanda Cho—Cho was just two short weeks from turning in her papers and leaving the military life altogether when the Crash began and the whole damn world lost its mind. She kept 2nd Platoon together by sheer force of will when the Blackhawks abandoned them on the tarmac, and she managed to keep those trigger-happy White Forest goons from shooting anyone after they started tagging along. Greeley might outrank her, but she’ll be damned if she lets him use her soldiers like a switch on those poor people up on the archway. Even if some of them are asking for it.
Neal Dalton, "The Guide"—At first glance Dalton may seem like an earnest and charismatic civil rights figure in the making, but in reality he just loves the attention. He organizes rallies, delivers speeches, and rants against the oppressive tyranny of the Board of Engineers to anyone on the archway who will listen. Marshall Cho makes a point of having at least a squad of her men present at each event to keep things from getting out of control, but their presence only serves as a convenient hook on which Dalton can hang some of his nastiest Nazi allusions. Many people among the Tourists and even some of the Specialists are swept up by the quasi-religious fervor of Dalton's apparent convictions, convinced that the revolution is only a matter of time, but in truth Dalton has no plan for reform and is merely riding off the high of adulation.
Janet Quinn, host of 93.5 "The Spill"—Something of a black sheep among the Engineers, Janet Quinn is a communications technology major from LA who was granted admittance into Hooverville on the promise that she could establish communications with other survivors and even contact the government for evacuation. When the military pulled back east and Ubiq went online both of these contributions became redundant, but what kept her from being booted into the Specialists was her increasingly-popular talk news radio, "The Spill". In addition to covering local news and politics Quinn also provides a Daily Show-esque comical release for the Hooverville listeners, taking savage jabs at the Board and their decisions (All for a laugh, of course). Her "dissent" is tolerated by the Board because they feel that shutting her show down or demoting her to Specialist would anger far more people than it would placate.
Eric McLaughlin, owner/bartender of the "Hole in the Wall"—The Crash changed a lot of things, but at the end of the day honest working folks need a place where they can kick back with some shitty distilled booze and forget their problems for a few hours. That's the beginning, middle, and end of McLaughlin's sale pitch, and considering he owns the only bar for a few hundred miles around he doesn't need to work that hard at it. McLaughlin tries to stay out of politics, opening his bar to any Engineers or Garrison members who need a drink, but as a Tourist himself he empathizes with the frustrated masses and prays the Lord will soften the Board of Engineers' hearts to their plight.
Pharmacist Clarence Clayton, "CC"—Five years ago Clarence was a Berkeley hippie who dropped out of his chemistry degree to grow weed in Humboldt, but now with skilled doctors and sources of medicine thousands of miles to the east he is the closest thing Hooverville has to a medical supplier. On behalf of the Board of Engineers Clarence hires Takers to retrieve unspoiled medical and chemical supplies in the Loss that he can use to make various street drugs in lieu of FDA-approved medicinals. "CC" might claim to have gone straight, but there are plenty of rumors about how the Tourists have been getting their hands on that shitty weed proving to be popular up on the archway.
Romero, leader of the Gravediggers—Nobody gives the Latents a break, nor should they ever expect one; this is the advice Romero gives to newcomers. The de facto leader of Hooverville's small infected community is recognized as such for his relentless determination in keeping them together and alive outside the walls, where they work to keep the perimeter clear of Casualties in exchange for food and water from the enclave. The presence of so many potential Vectors is a hot button political issue in Hooverville, especially between the Board and the Strike Breakers, but Romero has kept tensions from boiling by keeping his people from approaching the walls and keeping them in line with a combination of fear and respect. Nobody knows who he was before the Crash, and to be frank not many want to know.
And here is the Taker Outfit they came up with:
Casualty Clearing Crew (CCC)
Göts - A German-American mercenary and veteran Taker who lost his last team in a disastrous mission that saw most of them die horribly, took his one surviving friend's legs, and robbed him of a perfectly good arm. Having spent years in the Loss as a "Lifer" chasing money and thrills for the hell of it he has come to the conclusion that he needs to get out before his luck runs out again. He spent what Bounty he had to get himself and his dependants to Hooverville, get a new arm from the 3D printers, and get a couple of Takers together to found CCC.
Weak Spot - I've Had Enough
Soft Spot - Freedom to choose one's destiny
Tough Spot - Old Hand (+1 Sway once per session for Negotiations, but already Cracked in Trauma)
Dependants
Adam, disabled comrade
Joey, younger brother
Rachel, adopted daughter
Cabbie - A first-generation immigrant cab driver from San Diego who smuggled people over the border before the dead began to walk and the border moved a few thousand miles east. Now he's still a driver and still hopes to smuggle himself and his sister over the Quarantine Wall someday, but before that happens he's going to need a lot of cash to set them both up in the Recession. He's not going to be driving cabs for the rest of his life.
Weak Spot - Fuck the Police
Soft Spot - Hard work can get you anywhere
Tough Spot - Coyote (+2 Criminality, but already Cracked in Detachment)
Dependants
Roxanne, sister
Plato - A former athlete and self-styled warrior-philosopher of the wasteland who would have celebrated the collapse of society's oppressive and constricting scaffholdings had they not resulted in the deaths of millions. For a time Plato traveled the Loss on his own, with nothing but his wits, his parkour, his bow and the Immune gene keeping him from joining all the poor souls taken before their time. He might have been content to continue that way until the end of time had he not encountered and adopted a little orphaned boy named Danny, who had survived the collapse of an enclave and the deaths of his entire family (Again).
Weak Spot - Prefers Freedom to Security
Soft Spot - Protect the Weak
Tough Spot - Immune Exile (Can't be infected, but will be hunted for medical experiments if his secret gets out)
Dependants
-Danny, lost little boy
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That. Is. A. BRILLIANT. Idea. For. An. Enclave.
Kicking myself for not thinking of it :'(
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Also here's the writeup for Göts' prosthetic arm I gave to Tom:
Prosthetic Arm
Effect:
No infection tests required for chosen arm/Spend charges in place of Endurance for Unarmed & Melee attacks with chosen arm
Charges: 00000 00000
Qualities:
Capped (Can’t spend extra charges for bonus)
Hungry (Two charges spent per test)
Wear’n’Tear (Charges used on every success)
Upgrades:
Reinforced
—Spend charges to negate damage to hit location
Spiked Knuckles
—Unarmed attacks do Kill damage
Optimized
—Buys off Hungry
Ungoverned
—Buys off Capped
Sturdy
—Buys off Wear'n'Tear
Upkeep: O O O
Haul: Prosthetic
The idea was that you could start off with what was basically a cheap medical prosthetic, and then over time spend Bounty to retrofit it into a badass Furiosa-esque mechanical arm. If I recall correctly he paid three more starting Bounty to get Optimized, Spiked Knuckles, and Sturdy since he didn't want the arm breaking in one or two sessions. We'll see how it holds up in play.
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That. Is. A. BRILLIANT. Idea. For. An. Enclave.
Kicking myself for not thinking of it :'(
Maybe we can put together some sort of collection of fan-made enclaves once the book comes out. I agree that this is the best one so far.
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We finished our intermediary enclave/character creation session last night, and the next time we meet the Takers will choose their first job of the campaign! They decided to set the game in Nevada, partly because they wanted something with a bit of Mad Max flavor and mostly because of their choice of location for their enclave:
HOOVERVILLE.
Hilarious ... I had a similar concept ... though more focused on Lake Mead itself ... specifically the Lake Mead Marina and Las Vegas Boat Marina combined to make a floating enclave in Boulder Basin (right behind Hoover Dam). The enclave is rechristened "Basin City". The population is a mix of ex-Middle Class/professional boat owners, Latino casino workers, some heavies from Las Vegas and a handful of national gaurdsmen from nearby Boulder City. http://www.riverlakes.com/las_vegas_to_boulder_basin.htm (http://www.riverlakes.com/las_vegas_to_boulder_basin.htm)
Today Lake Mead is low because of over-consumption of water by industry, agriculture and civilisation in general .... post-crash this is no longer a problem ... quite the reverse, and maintaining the level of Lake Mead is a critical concern for the neighbouring enclave of Hooverville (maintained by the Lecky-Crew).
Now that the lake has risen to higher levels, Boulder Beach is underwater creating an area of muddy shallows ... one of the Latino members of "Basin", calling back to his youth in Mexico city, has begun working the shallows into a series of Chinampas (so-called floating islands) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinampa (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinampa) ... to create secure, canal accessible areas to grow fresh food. This (and fish) will be Basins main source of trade (trading food for power with Hooverville, etc). Canoes and gondolas (liberated from a famous Vegas casino) are used to move around the Chinampas.
Power within Basin is divided between (and struggled over by) the boat owners (where still alive), the fishermen, the farmers, and the soldiers .... the former heavies are a fifth power, squeezing the weaker members of the other factions and attempting to live as high on the hog as possible.
There are four neighbourhoods ... V (Formerly Las Vegas Marina), Middletown (formerly lake mead marina), the Shallows (closer to the shore, refers to the Chinampas themselves) and The Boulders (some small rocky islands North East of the marinas on which a series of shanty huts have been built.
There are at least two other marinas on Lake Mead and so these are trade opportunities, but also the source of friction ... at least one turning predator and become lake pirates with cannibalistic tendencies.
Two key resouces initially required are new seed stock (possibly accessed from farms North of Las Vegas ... avoiding Las Vegas as much as possible is a great idea because it is a real mess) and fertilizer. Specifically in the case of fertilizer, there is a cave upriver along the cliff face of the Colorado river filled with bat shit .... it was once mined by the American Guano Corporation (the cave used to be accessible by a cable and bucket from a place called Guano point on the opposite side of the canyon - it was featured in the finale of the movie Edge of Eternity - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Point (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Point)).
I suspect there may be some infected stranded along the river, perhaps a very primitive enclave that has gone somewhat bestial in their isolation.
Nevada gives some other interesting locations ... not least of which is area 51 ... so paranoid enclave members might well be interested in cracking that one open.
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Eclipse Phase has the Eye. Red Markets needs a killer fan site too.
Great work Jace!
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Eclipse Phase has the Eye. Red Markets needs a killer fan site too.
Great work Jace!
UBIQ someone goregister that URL!
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ubiq.com is apparently the old personal website for Mark Weiser, a Xerox scientist who was the father of "ubiquitous computing". Mr. Weiser apparently died in 1999, so it's possible that the site could be acquirable. I have no idea what the process might be, though.
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What about LifeLines?
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Lifelines.com redirects to some weird site about biofeedback and deep audio relaxation
Edit -- redmarkets.com is also taken
Edit x2 combo -- red-markets.com is up for sale
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takers.com and takernet.com are seemingly available!
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If I'm reading this right "inthered.com" hasn't been taken and "inthered.net" is up for sale.
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Also here's the writeup for Göts' prosthetic arm I gave to Tom:
Prosthetic Arm
Effect:
No infection tests required for chosen arm/Spend charges in place of Endurance for Unarmed & Melee attacks with chosen arm
Charges: 00000 00000
Qualities:
Capped (Can’t spend extra charges for bonus)
Hungry (Two charges spent per test)
Wear’n’Tear (Charges used on every success)
Upgrades:
Reinforced
—Spend charges to negate damage to hit location
Spiked Knuckles
—Unarmed attacks do Kill damage
Optimized
—Buys off Hungry
Ungoverned
—Buys off Capped
Sturdy
—Buys off Wear'n'Tear
Upkeep: O O O
Haul: Prosthetic
The idea was that you could start off with what was basically a cheap medical prosthetic, and then over time spend Bounty to retrofit it into a badass Furiosa-esque mechanical arm. If I recall correctly he paid three more starting Bounty to get Optimized, Spiked Knuckles, and Sturdy since he didn't want the arm breaking in one or two sessions. We'll see how it holds up in play.
I have got to 'borrow' this idea for one of my dependents! Dude lost part of a leg and someone's going to have to take over when I get my character killed ::) ;D
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For the first contract of the Campaign beta the takers are going to be looting around an abandoned neighborhood in the mountains where only stray casualties bumble about as synapses trigger hauntings of places they may have occupied in life. As a bonus to fulfilling the contract (simple closure) there is ample loot to be scored in the various houses, so long as the takers can avoid a large ruckus and the attention/generation of a mob. I thought about just making the characters roll sneak and athletics, as well as scavenging but these seemed too tame. Instead they can spend 30 endurance (split between all participating takers) to buy in to a general scavenging effort.
To resolve the success/degree of success I'm going to be using the children's puzzle game chairs. The tension created by the simple game is more gripping (imo) than calling for rolls that not everyone can make or would lead to a narratively unsatisfying end.
http://www.amazon.com/Ideal-Chairs-Stacking-Puzzle-Game/dp/B00005JCNZ (http://www.amazon.com/Ideal-Chairs-Stacking-Puzzle-Game/dp/B00005JCNZ)
Each chair stacked represents one bounty (max of 24 chairs), the takers can quit at anytime and take however much they have accumulated. However, when the chairs topple it represents a taker making a loud noise and the Market rolls for Mob generation as if an unsilenced weapon was used.
The buy in makes it a gamble, if they succeed they'll still be down 30 endurance but up (potentially) 24 bounty. and if they fail they will be down 30 endurance plus resources spent dealing with the casualties. It also turns what would otherwise be (imo) boring roll off to an intense and thrilling scene where all the players can contribute.
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Cool idea, Shallazar.
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Really good and inspiring ideas in this thread gents.
(http://i.imgur.com/TTIPVbx.jpg)
I really like this setup.
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I tried using that setup with my IRL playtest to mixed results. Some of the players liked having a physical tracker of their stuff and others were kinda "egh, I have to set up 40 counters? can I just take tallies?"
I think the best moment of the physical tracker was when players decided to swap weapons for an encounter and decided to trade piles of tokens as well
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I tried using that setup with my IRL playtest to mixed results. Some of the players liked having a physical tracker of their stuff and others were kinda "egh, I have to set up 40 counters? can I just take tallies?"
I think the best moment of the physical tracker was when players decided to swap weapons for an encounter and decided to trade piles of tokens as well
You've identified a real world valid flaw. So what's a solution for this? Use dice as counters? Index cards with numbers?
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I tried using that setup with my IRL playtest to mixed results. Some of the players liked having a physical tracker of their stuff and others were kinda "egh, I have to set up 40 counters? can I just take tallies?"
I think the best moment of the physical tracker was when players decided to swap weapons for an encounter and decided to trade piles of tokens as well
I had all the coins sorted into individual baggies that I passed out to the players before the game began. It increases the GM workload but my group seemed pretty happy with it so it was worth it.
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So I was idly thinking about Lost Carol's post below and the neat map of mostly aquatic/island(ish) terrain in a Red Market's setting.
1.Enclave Name
Village of Four Seasons
(http://www.landsat.com/street-map/missouri/village-of-four-seasons-mo-2976157.gif)
I like this map in general because you automatically have an area balkanized by geography and specialization of goods on specific islands can lead to shifting community politics of interdependence and hostility. Also river piracy and commerce raiding are real threats/may be significantly profitable. In an environment like this transportation is king, and those who control it would rule. I could see enclaves rising and falling depending on the integrity of their boat hulls or if low tides created land bridges. Alternative might be drones, carrier pigeons (why not), or hell maybe someone set up a zipline network among close islands.
I am of course assuming that swimming in the water is inherently dangerous. I was reminded of Dragon Age Inquisition and the Fallow Mire.
http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Fallow_Mire (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Fallow_Mire)
One of the things I think the game did really well was making the water area into a "the floor is lava" situation. Every time the player walks into the water, four plus zombies pop up out of the water and home in on your position. It made the area memorable and I think images of legions of the dead standing on the river floor, raising their hands so the fingertips just breech the surface as they sway with the current and you have to cross that in a boat oh so very gently would make a great scene in Red Markets.
Lets ignore the dead for the moment. In a map like the above survival in a post-apocalyptic world would be impacted strongly by natural phenomena and predators already. Alligators? Non native invasive frog species that fucks up the ecology? Malaria brought about by a concentration of unchecked mosquitoes? Piranha's swarms went native and somehow became zombified?
Ok, the last is fanciful, but heavy rains, flooding banks, winds, lightning strikes in thunderstorms would all make living in an environment like that bad enough in a post-apocalyptic situation without the zombies.
So that made me reflect on Red Markets, and it really is economic horror. The system works perfectly well for a pure gritty survival game without the dead.
Then I was thinking about the Laird Barron story about the Iditarod, Arctic expeditions in gaming (http://recklessdice.com/2015/04/live-session-beyond-the-mountains-of-madness-part-1/ (http://recklessdice.com/2015/04/live-session-beyond-the-mountains-of-madness-part-1/)) and The Revenant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRfj1VCg16Y (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRfj1VCg16Y)
As written in the beta, Red Markets expects a cycle of risking life and limb with varying (usually diminishing) rewards. But I think the system as written could apply and apply well to one shot survival situations where instead of the crushing attrition of economic horror, there is a "happy" ending if the player survives to the end. The Red Market's rules seem to me to deliver a more gritty slant on survival than any other system in gaming I can think of (GURPS, etc.).
In a survival situation like this where you have multiple players or a lone survivor. Tapping a Dependent to heal humanity could mean a flashback in the middle of a crisis to a more domestic time, or you making the Dependent Needy, Strained, or Broken means you weakened the bond for additional supplies in the field (you ignored your wife's calls to work overtime to buy more supplies/train harder, etc.).
Then I was thinking of The Call of the Wild and Call of Catthulhu. And I got the weird idea, could the Red Market's rules as written work for playing a sled dog in the Iditarod? Your bonds/Dependents are with other dogs and the human drivers? I don't know just an amusing fancy I had.
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Ran another playtest with player-made characters this time (except one player played Alpha pretty much exclusively because he had a dog). Anyone interested can look at the character sheets here (https://drive.google.com/open?id=13Scyq_2jvGOew98VYLn2xHKD00hGj5jQq1s0QEmTXOY).
First playtest I ran where takers succeeded in 2 networking checks. Alpha found a job to retrieve rubber for a slingshot maker, and Triage a job to deliver food from one enclave to another. After about 40 minutes of back and forth where they tried to figure out how to do both jobs, they decided to take their chances at the food delivery job. Some research revealed that the enclave, Jackson Street, was a former gang stronghold that utilized its abilities to keep out police and swat teams in the crash to stop casualties and vectors from invading. It's an anarchocapitalist society occupied mostly by the members of the Jackson Street gang, but the de facto leader (not elected, everyone just kinda looks to him for leadership) opened the enclave to anyone willing to work their share and help keep invaders at bay.
On their way to the enclave they saw a black chopper heading their way, trailing smoke and crashing in a wooded area a bit away. Recognizing this as a DHQS chopper (passed Meme test), the takers decided to investigate in order to reap some good loots. They found the chopper surrounded by a dozen casualties already with more on the way. Alpha was able to use the siren to successfully chum the Cs away long enough for them to scavenge the crashed chopper for whatever they could find quickly. Valley picked up a mostly-empty SMG and Scrapper got a broken surveillance drone before they decided to cut and run.
As they approached Jackson Street, they found a large apartment complex with the first floor more or less gutted and filled with cavalry traps baited with raw meat, designed to attract and disable incoming casualties so that the goons can clean them out on a daily basis. One of the fence guards sees the takers coming and lets down a ladder to let them in. Alpha meets with Train Jumper (or TJ) and they get down to negotiations. Through some atypical scamming (Triage did some work in the hospital to talk to some people who had info, Valley worked in the kitchen to talk to people, Scrapper went through TJ's trash), they uncovered all of the job spots; the most troubling of which was the Tough Spot, where they discovered that Jackson Street has lost contact with Bread Basket, and the true nature of this job is revealed to be scouting and re-opening / re-negotiating trade routes (and maybe teaching Bread Basket not to fuck with Jackson Street). TJ Played 2 Spots at once with a Weak Spot and a Gift Spot, but Alpha managed to negotiate to 100% markup. The completion price for the job came to 97 bounty at base. Negotiations complete, the takers headed off to the site.
Leg 1: Inner-city. The takers hear the sound of clicking against the pavement, and Valley calls for them to hold back, looking out and spotting a small herd of Pronghorned Antelope. A breeding group escaped from the local zoo years ago and given that the only thing that can outrun and catch them is a cheetah, they have expanded and flourished in this new landscape. Valley (a chef at heart) can't turn down the offer of a few hundred pounds of meat for the cost of a bullet, and quickly puts one of the bulls down. As the party approaches, one of the antelope jumps over a car and sets off its alarm, drawing out casualites from the nearby buildings. Valley isn't going to let this go to waste and proceeds to skin and start butchering the antelope in the street as her partners shoot down a wave of oncoming caualties. She gets 2 meatbags (made from antelope pelt tied off) and then runs off, letting the remainder of the carcass draw the remaining casualties to cover their escape.
Leg 2: Inner city. Takers pass a hospital. They recognize quickly that a hospital is a major source of potential bounty by way of patient records, but also that hospitals quickly became vector incubators during the Crash and are subsequently full of casualties and pretty much devoid of any light sources due to a major lack of windows and no remaining power to the building. They decide they're already making a big enough profit on the job, mark the location on a map and continue onwards.
Leg 3: Inner City. Derailed train blocks the road. As the takers look for a way around, they notice a mob of casualties surrounding one of the overturned boxcars and Alpha overhears some banging from inside. Alpha, much to Valley's regret, hands Intern one of the meatbags to chum the Cs away and keep them distracted for a bit. The takers find that there's a guy inside the boxcar and that also the hatch he entered through was constructed oddly and cannot be opened. Triage, ever the humanist, decides to take the hatch apart to get the man out. Valley hops on top of the boxcar to get a lay of the land and spots a delivery van approaching from the distance. When she relays this info to the group, Alpha realizes this is a mantrap and the van is driven by slavers. Valley takes no chances and blows the driver away with her sniper rifle, causing it to crash into a nearby building and drawing out some more Cs. A small gunfight later, the takers have felled the slavers and distracted the casualties with a Duck Bomb (https://twitter.com/donttrythis/status/643548091254075392?lang=en) out of alpha's bag (burned one haul to have a small useful item that makes sense), Triage backs the van out and down the way (burned 1 will to stunt drive the van out of casualty zone with a blind luck roll since no one took driving). The party noticed that the train had a long line of fuel cars and that the slavers had attached a line to one of them to refuel their slave van on runs. They also took along the man, exhausted from a day in a hot box with not enough water.
With the van they finally approached Breadbox (based on Garfield Conservatory Park), immediately noticing that there were no guards posted in the towers along the fence. A closer examination showed some casualties and Alpha heard a human and simultaneously inhuman scream from within. The place had been hit by an outbreak and a few vectors were left in the wake of it. The party taps a resource to call up Rose, an enclave planner that can get maps to propsective enclave layouts, and start thinking about a way to address the situation. They spot a big hole in a part of hte fence that piled through a garden and into the interior, and opens a path towards the storehouses (since they need to get food still), provided someone wants to sprint through a huge field full of casualties and potentially soem vectors. Triage agrees to be the sprinter and gets Valley and Scrapper to cover him as he makes a break for it. 3 rounds to get to an unbreached building. Triage manages to juke around casualties at full speed, but then suddenly the concentration is interrupted by "HELPHELPMEHELPMEHEEEEELPEMEEEEHURTSHURTSHURTSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH" as a vector runs through a hole in the wall towards Triage. Valley and Scrapper make good on their promises and Valley drops it with a good headshot (14/1 roll on a called shot), allowing Triage to get to the door.
The room entered appears to be no better as casualties dot the entire area and the others have been called in by the vector screams and are pressing at the doors. Triage continues the sprint unabated and now without any cover while the rest of the party decides to casually walk towards the motorized gate to the east. Running through the area, Triage hears another telltale scream and picks up the pace through the door to the storage area, hearing the metal and glass ripping apart as the vector continues pursuit. Silenced pistol already out, Triage goes for broke and manages to score a headshot on the approaching vector before running off towards the gate. Triage hits the button to open the gates up and is greeted by the terrible grinding sound of the gate slowly opening. Knowing that stealth is already fucked, Triage whips out his assault rifle and starts unloading into vectors trickling out of the cornfields and the rest of the greenhouse. As the vectors start to outnumber the amount of fire he can put out, triage does some hardcore parkour to jump and roll from the catwalks on the fence and out the gate (5 endurance spend) as valley and scrapper get to the open gate to pick off more approaching vectors while he reloads. They clean out the vectors with automatic fire and now just have to deal with a few dozen casualties moseying on forward. Alpha manages to distract the majority of them with the dog siren while they break open the storehouses and throw food into the delivery van.
As scrapper comes out with the last crates of food on a Gator just outside the storehouse, the crew is alerted by one final scream coming out of the greenhouse heading straight for Scrapper. Just as it reaches the vehicle it is again cut down by a swath of automatic fire and scrapper nervously drives up to the delivery van where they dump the rest of the food and drive off.
Between the job and some scavenged gear (sold off at upkeep price), the group made out with 119 bounty. Alpha decided to take the short share and they then sorted out the stuff offscreen.
Long combats between casualties, vectors, or any combination of the two is interesting as the fight either ends with everyone walking away unharmed or the entire party destroyed. I also realized the vectors were too easy because I forgot to apply their murder modifiers to the rolls. That said, the players were rolling crits left and right (except for scrappers player who rolled an inordinate number of critical failures). For the sake of fairness everyone was using Random.org to generate perfectly random numbers between 1 and 10 for every roll just to get the question of unbalanced dice out of the equation. I don't know how or why but this game likes to break probability.
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For what it's worth my group was just rolling our usual D10s (Though I did buy a new pair of red and black just for this game!) and I don't recall us running into any probability shenanigans. I think the only crit rolled at the table was the Neo-Nazi that tried to shoot Mal in the head.
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For what it's worth my group was just rolling our usual D10s (Though I did buy a new pair of red and black just for this game!) and I don't recall us running into any probability shenanigans. I think the only crit rolled at the table was the Neo-Nazi that tried to shoot Mal in the head.
The first 2 playtests I ran had an insane number of Critical Failures (well, half of the second playtest used random.org and showed expected result distribution). The first playtest had at least 15 critical failures and maybe 5 crit successes. The third playtest had an equal number of critical successes and failures but pretty much only one player rolled crit failures. One round he made a full attack and managed to roll crit failures on both rolls (spent a will to turn one crit fail into a regular fail) and then crit failed the next round to run somewhere. I remember at some point his character got so tired of his shitty gun jamming that he just threw it in the back of the delivery van.
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We just had our first campaign game have a look at all that sweet sweet bounty.
At the end we each got 11-10 bounty of profit each ;D
(http://i.imgur.com/YYgW21R.jpg)
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Were the M&Ms also counters
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Were the M&Ms also counters
No, but they were delicious :)
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(http://i.imgur.com/XfIMcA8.jpg)
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(http://i.imgur.com/XfIMcA8.jpg)
Is that fan art or real life? Either way, it's terrifyingly awesome.
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Just finished the first job of the Nevada campaign last night! It went pretty smoothly for the Takers, all things considered, but there were still some twists and surprises for them to keep things from getting boring.
WHERE DEAD MEN GO
The three Takers of the Casualty Clearing (Crew? Corps? Company?) were Göts, Cabbie, and Plato. Since they hadn’t lost any Humanity damage yet on account of the campaign just starting I decided to skip opening vignettes with dependents and start them off with job hunting. Everyone rolled Networking and everyone failed, so I told them they could tap References to hear about one job each.
Cabbie got in touch with Jesus, an old friend he had smuggled over the border before the Crash who happened to end up in Hooverville as well, who told him that the Board of Engineers were quietly asking around for Taker crews. In exchange for the information Cabbie agreed to pick up a friend of Jesus’ in the nearby enclave of Overpass and bring him to Hooverville.
Plato contacted Chuck, a member of the Free Rangers, who reluctantly told him that during a stopover in the Mojave Nation he had heard scuttlebutt that the Confederate Council was also looking for Takers to pull a job, but wouldn’t be asking for long on account of some sort of time constraints. Plato agreed to pay for drone shipping on a package of scent-blocker that the Free Rangers had ordered to keep their herds from attracting Casualties.
With two potential job leads Göts decided against tapping a Reference for now, deciding to save them in case they needed something later. After rolling Research checks they determined that the Mojave Nation job would start at 9 Bounty and was 1 Leg away, so they decided to check out the Hooverville one first and see if that would pay more. Göts got in touch with Amelia McKenzie, the Board member who had been asking around for Takers, and was escorted down to the Powerhouse for a face to face meeting. McKenzie informed him that a few days ago the Board had quietly decided to send a small survey team (5 Specialists, 5 Takers for protection) to the nearby McEmbry mine in order to determine if one of the smaller copper shafts could be reopened, but they were now two days without contact and had voted to send a follow-up team to investigate. The site was in the middle of nowhere, away from major population centers and freeways, so there shouldn’t have been significant quantities of undead or any squatters to speak of. The Board wants the Takers to drive the 4 Legs to the mine, see if they can find the survey team, and if necessary determine if the mine is unsafe.
Since the job started at 11 Bounty the crew decided to open negotiations. Göts rolled Leadership and got 3 rounds, so that meant Cabbie and Plato would both get to run a scam. This time the negotiations went very much in their favor: Cabbie broke into McKenzie’s office and learned one of her spots—she was a secret fan of 93.5 “The Spill”—while Plato stirred up a protest on the Archway with the families of the missing survey team to put pressure on the Board. During the negotiations Göts invoked his Tough Spot for a free +1 Sway, which pushed him all the way up to Expenses, but critically failed his last Leadership test to meet McKenzie on 100% Markup. Still, with everything else they were looking at 59 Bounty total once the job was complete—more than enough for them to make a profit!
With some printouts of the mine and an “example” map of the interior of the shaft (The survey team had been hoping to find a map in the mine offices) the Takers set off on their first Leg.
After driving through southern Nevada for a ways the Takers spotted a mobile home parked off the side of the road. There was a small campsite set up adjacent to it but nobody seemed to be home, so they decided to stop and investigate to see if there was anything worth taking. While Göts covered everyone with his binoculars from atop the car Cabbie approached the RV and Plato went to look at a collapsed tent. After digging around Plato found that the tent had been ripped open from the inside, and found a dog collar on a chain spiked into the tarp—it was broken. Cabbie approached the door of the RV, which was swinging open and shut in the wind, and immediately spotted bloodstains leaving the RV.
When he looked inside he failed a Self-Control test and took a point of Detachment damage: there were blood and half-eaten entrails everywhere. Reluctantly he stepped inside to investigate further and found the partially-eaten bodies of two adults, a man and a woman. The latter was still holding a revolver with three rounds, which Cabbie took—Göts needed a weapon besides his robot arm—and after digging around a little more he critted his Scavenging check and found 10 Bounty’s worth of IDs and papers in the glove compartment: the family’s life savings, evidently.
After readying their weapons the three Takers decided to follow the bloody footprints away from the camp, over a rise, and into a small wooded area. It wasn’t long before they found the owner of the footprints, a young girl standing barefoot at the edge of a creek staring blankly at the water. They made some noises to try and get her attention, but she wouldn’t move. They approached cautiously and saw that her arms were soaked with blood to the elbows, although they couldn’t see her face, and when Göts rolled a Meme check he realized that this girl was infected and in Torpor between Vector and Casualty. He shot her without a second thought, succeeding his Self-Control test even though Plato did not, and they left the first Leg behind.
The second Leg took them skirting along the edge of an urban area, where the freeway dipped down beneath several overpasses. They were forced to stop when they came across a blockade of abandoned cars in their way, and after deliberating they decided to reverse and spend extra fuel finding a way around instead of getting out and pushing cars out of the way.
The third Leg was another lonely stretch of desert highway, upon which they encountered a lone hitchhiker named Marcus who desperately flagged them down. He begged them for a ride to anywhere with a fence, spilling a sob story about having narrowly escaped the fall of his enclave (“Judgment”) and having run out of food and water hours ago. After some debate the Takers decided to confiscate his gun, give him a little food and water, and let him jump into the back of the Mad Taxi (The name of Cabbie’s car) to ride along with them until they finished the job. After interrogating him a little they also learned that Judgment likely fell due to someone infecting their water supply, and they file away Judgment as a possible score in the near future.
The fourth Leg had them pass through a small town to reach McEmbry. Partway through they turned a corner onto Main Street to find their way barred by what initially seemed to be a horde of frozen Casualties but then resolved into an army of department store mannequins. Someone had painstakingly arranged them in ones, twos, and threes all over the street to resemble pedestrians going about their daily lives, but there were so many that the Mad Taxi couldn’t pass through without knocking or running several over. The Takers took one look at this scene and in unison decided “Nope!” before throwing the cab into reverse and backing out of the encounter, burning extra fuel to get around it.
(http://www.inuktun.com/whats-new/images/barrick-gold-meikle-underground-mine.jpg)
Finally the Takers arrived at the McEmbry mine Rodeo shaft (Pictured above). After driving around they found the front entrance of the mine and found a pair of Jeeps belonging to the survey team’s protection detail, a Taker crew named Terminal Vector. After parking a short distance from the entrance and investigating they also found a body lying in front of the closest Jeep—or rather, what was left of it. One of the Terminal Vector Takers had apparently come staggering out of the mine, collapsed in front of the Jeep, and been ripped open by something. Cabbie tried to use First Aid to notice any other details, but the only other thing that caught his eye was the fact that there were no obvious bite marks anywhere on the body. They also found a smashed GoPro on his body, which Cabbie pocketed to see if he could get any footage from when they returned to Hooverville.
The Takers dawdled outside the entrance of the mine for a bit gathering information and deciding what to do. After searching the Jeeps for supplies—Göts found some extra rounds for his revolver—they gave the clean one to Marcus to drive back to Hooverville, which he gratefully accepted. Göts tapped one of his References—Honey Badger, a fellow mercenary with a temper—for a map of the mine, which proved to be a bit more extensive than they had been led to believe, and Plato found the leftover plastic wrappers from some firecrackers that the Terminal Vector Takers had apparently used to see if any Casualties had been infesting the mine. They also had the idea of splicing the second Jeep’s battery into the intercom and setting it off to try and lure anything in the mine out, but although Cabbie succeeded his Mechanics test they realized the flaw in their plan—the intercom system was also connected to the interior of the mine, so while they could make plenty of noise over the speakers anything inside the mines wouldn’t hear anything outside. When the sounds of the intercom faded they did stop to listen and heard something echoing up the shaft that might have been a cry for help or the screams of a Vector, it was too faded to tell.
The Takers finally worked up their courage and headed inside. The elevator was down and the power was also, obviously, out in the mine as well. They decided just to take the stairs, as fixing the elevator would only give them a slow and noisy means of descending into the shaft. Down and down they went into the quiet dark, occasionally finding more scraps of plastic from firecrackers, until they came across the skeletal body of a miner. His bones had been gnawed clean, which wasn’t a good sign, but he had obviously been there since the Crash so they still weren’t sure what had happened to the survey team. Then they found the second body, a man from the survey team who had been very messily killed and eaten—this time Cabbie did find bite marks—but not before smashing his pole seismograph on something bloody.
Then they encountered their first Vector: a man in tactical gear, bleeding from his face, came stumbling around the corner to investigate the noise they were making. Plato put an arrow in its skull and dropped it in one hit with an aimed shot—that left seven more members of the survey team. After proceeding even deeper into the mine they stopped at a branch in the tunnels, hearing more Vectors approaching. Thinking that they would get one from each of the three paths they backed up and prepared to open fire, only to be surprised when three Vectors came sprinting out of the nearest tunnel. They were nine Shambles away, giving the Takers three rounds to put them down—everyone hit their first shots to the head, not quite doing enough damage but inflicting grisly wounds, but on the second round they all missed. With the Vectors one round away from tackling them all into the dirt they rolled again and spent Will to put them down in unison.
Göts’ player remarked that “hadn’t been so bad” and that they could just make more noise to draw the rest of the Vectors into their shooting gallery. Right as he finished speaking they heard a very human-sounding shriek come from another tunnel, and since it wouldn’t look good if they let any survivors get eaten they sighed and ran towards the sound. They found a pair of Vectors beating on the window of a break room that had been installed into the wall of a tunnel, which was the source of the shrieking. The Vectors turned and charged at them and they opened fire, but Göts narrowly made an Awareness check on his turn to detect a third Vector sprinting at them out of the darkness to their rear. After a very short, very tense combat all three Vectors fell dead—one of them literally at Göts’ feet, thanks to one of Plato’s arrows—and they approached the break room to speak to the sole survivor of the survey team. Göts made a Leadership check to get her to open the door, and after she stopped sobbing she relayed her story of what had happened.
The survey team arrived on schedule and entered the mine, setting off noisemakers to draw out any Casualties. They got halfway down and found nothing but some old bones before two of the Takers heard something down a side tunnel and went to investigate. Shortly after the rest of the team heard screaming and gunfire, and only one of the Takers came running back with a gash in his neck yelling that they had to get out. The survey team panicked and ran, but the injured Taker suddenly spazzed out and bit one of his comrades. Eliza got separated from everyone in the chaos, found the break room, and hid underneath the desk while listening to the screams and shooting. After a while everything went silent, but then she saw one of her friends staggering past the window and realized it wasn’t safe to leave, so she stayed put to wait for rescue. Three days later she was starved, severely dehydrated, and losing her mind with fear when she heard the gunshots from Göts’ unsilenced revolver. She turned on the lights and started calling for help, only for the two Vectors to show up first.
The Takers did the math and realized there had to be at least one more Vector in the mine—whoever had started the infection. They chose to retreat, report back to Hooverville that they had found a survivor, and camp outside the mine for two days while they waited for any remaining Vectors to enter torpor. During that time Eliza scarfed down most of Göts’ rations, but they had packed plenty ahead of time (We were using modified High Stakes Haul rules that allowed them to spend Haul at the beginning of the game specifically to have extra food, ammo, batteries etc later). Finally Cabbie and Plato went back inside the mine while Göts stayed with Eliza.
Despite their fears, the Takers found nothing else lurking around in the mine. They swept the entire maze of tunnels from top to bottom over the course of the next day, setting off their own firecrackers that Göts had delivered from JDAM—another one of his References who specialized in homemade explosives—but failed to draw any undead attention. When they reached the ore crusher at the bottom of the mine they found the mummified body of another miner, but what disturbed them was that this one shared similar injuries to the first body they had found by the Jeep outside: his torso had been ripped open and his chest cavity partially excavated by something, but neither of them could find any bite marks.
Shrugging and chalking it up to one of the mysteries of the Loss, the Takers packed up and drove back to Hooverville to collect their pay. Between the fee and what they scavenged at the RV they made off like bandits with a total profit of 10-11 Bounty each. I informed them we would be playing with the “No Budget, No Buy” rules and explained what they could invest their money in aside from their savings, and after some deliberation they each put about 6 Bounty towards their retirement funds and spend the rest on future healthcare funds, therapy bills, paying off References, and improving skills. They also found that they had earned a +Rep Spot from Marcus for saving him: Good Samaritans. Cabbie got a chance sat down to work on the GoPro he found and managed to pull some poor-quality footage from it.
What it showed was more or less what Eliza described to them, up until the two Takers split from the group to investigate the noise in the tunnel. Shortly after the man with the camera heard a gurgle and turned to see that his friend had been knocked down and had a nasty gash in his throat, at which point something dark tackled him to the ground and set off his gun. They couldn’t see what was happening from the perspective of the camera, but they heard the injured Taker get up and run off into the darkness back to the survey team shouting for them to run as the cameraman bucked and struggled, then started to choke on something. He went still, twitching occasionally as the distant shouts turns to screams and automatic weapons fire, and after everything went silent he suddenly stood up, feeling his way along the tunnels without his flashlight, and staggered his way back out of the mine. Along the way he passed a member of the survey team who was feasting on another Taker, but the fresh Vector didn’t seem to notice him.
When he stepped out into the sunlight he stumbled over to the Jeep before collapsing, at which point he started convulsing again as blood sprayed across the ground and something black and ropey brushed by the camera. Then several hours of silence and staring at the gravel until the camera, which was damaged in the fall, ran out of battery.
Needless to say the Takers had to make Self-Control tests for watching that.
I’ll arrange my thoughts on the game later after I’ve had some time to think about it, but my impressions are still good. I don’t think we ran into any real problems and we seem to be getting the rules down. Over the next week the crew, who will be hiring a new member, will decide if they want to try and organize their own score, keep job hunting, or try to loot the remains of Judgment enclave.
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Kinda disappointed they didn't enter into mannequin town.
How long have your games been taking, anyway? I have yet to run a contract that takes less than 6 hours in total.
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Kinda disappointed they didn't enter into mannequin town.
Oh man, you have no idea. I was so looking forward to that one.
How long have your games been taking, anyway? I have yet to run a contract that takes less than 6 hours in total.
We've only run the two games so far, but the Market Fiat job took IIRC 6 hours and this one was about four to five thanks to the car. Skipping Legs really cuts down on game length, which isn't necessarily a bad thing if the players just want to get to the meat of the session without wasting time on the appetizers.
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Kinda disappointed they didn't enter into mannequin town.
How long have your games been taking, anyway? I have yet to run a contract that takes less than 6 hours in total.
The Reformers has been running for circa four hours; but due to our players we kinda have to keep to two hours a session. Thus our contracts are pretty cut up; usually 45 minutes for Vignettes/Negotiation/Briefing, 30-90 minutes for legs (they've done one and three for our two missions thus far,) 90 minutes for at the job site, and then 30 minutes for post mission/selling extra loot. Thus we've been spending parts of three sessions to cover one contract.
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Yeah I've started finding it best to break it into at least 2 games: Early stuff, negotiation, travel time as one game and then job site stuff as a second game. I always think the job site is going to be way shorter than it is because I only have like a paragraph written and yet it still can easily stretch into 3 hours.
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In my experience both playing (in The Reformers) and running games at home, players tend to treat the Job Sites as hardcore dungeon crawls, and really take their time to be cautious and thorough. While I like the suggested structure of running vignettes, negotiation, travel legs, and job site all in a single session, I would definitely expect it to take at least 4-6 hours to do everything in a typical group. But if you've only got a short session for a one-shot, I've found that the game can still be super fun if you basically cut right to the legs and job site, and play it as a horror/action game. Next time I run a session, though, I really want to focus on negotiation, since I haven't gotten to run that element yet.
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A couple of my players wanted to try just running a game where they're a taker dispatch / negotiation service and all they do is negotiating and scams.
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A couple of my players wanted to try just running a game where they're a taker dispatch / negotiation service and all they do is negotiating and scams.
I've mentioned the idea of adding NPC fixers to the game so groups that want to focus on the jobs can cut down on the negotiations and scams. The idea of a reverse campaign, where the players are fixers, is interesting.
The main thing would be managing NPC groups of takers - you would have to ensure they get home and don't waste their paydays on useless shit instead of gear for the next job - also do you help them retire or try to keep them in hock to you?
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I've mentioned the idea of adding NPC fixers to the game so groups that want to focus on the jobs can cut down on the negotiations and scams. The idea of a reverse campaign, where the players are fixers, is interesting.
The main thing would be managing NPC groups of takers - you would have to ensure they get home and don't waste their paydays on useless shit instead of gear for the next job - also do you help them retire or try to keep them in hock to you?
And also getting your cut / managing enough groups and being references to enough people to make a profit yourself or sending one group against another group that never paid their dues.
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And for the really bastard player groups, do you risk ripping them off or embezzling and pissing off the slightly crazy adrenaline junkies with guns?
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Running a game in a coastal setting made me think about chumming in a new way. While pulling large groups of casualties away from enclaves is good, what's better is probably leading them into the ocean. It's mentioned that they don't have the coordination to swim and so luring them into the water where they get tossed around by the tide and ideally into something hard or sharp repeatedly (some kind of garotte line or something) would be an easy enough way to remove 40 or 50 at a time.
Through boredom at work I thought up the best/stupidest way to accomplish this plan. Lone taker who goes by "Piper" pretty much exclusively takes jobs for transport, transit, and casualty chumming across the west coast, all thanks to his Aquada (http://www.seriouswheels.com/pics-2008/ghij/2008-Gibbs-Aquada-Front-And-Side-1920x1440.jpg). For chumming jobs, he puts in his Miley Cyrus cd and blasts "Party in the USA" all the way to a marina where he just pulls in and switches his car to boat mode until the Cs stop putting their hands up while he plays their song.
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A couple of my players wanted to try just running a game where they're a taker dispatch / negotiation service and all they do is negotiating and scams.
Man, think of the crazy dream situation: run two games at once, one for a group of dedicated negotiators and another for a group of dedicated job operators. Group 1 sets up jobs, Group 2 executes them. How nuts would that get?
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A couple of my players wanted to try just running a game where they're a taker dispatch / negotiation service and all they do is negotiating and scams.
Man, think of the crazy dream situation: run two games at once, one for a group of dedicated negotiators and another for a group of dedicated job operators. Group 1 sets up jobs, Group 2 executes them. How nuts would that get?
It is entirely possible: my Shadow Run GM did this his first time GMing that system - he's uh... social and may have over sold the game, so lots of people signed up to play.
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A couple of my players wanted to try just running a game where they're a taker dispatch / negotiation service and all they do is negotiating and scams.
Man, think of the crazy dream situation: run two games at once, one for a group of dedicated negotiators and another for a group of dedicated job operators. Group 1 sets up jobs, Group 2 executes them. How nuts would that get?
It is entirely possible: my Shadow Run GM did this his first time GMing that system - he's uh... social and may have over sold the game, so lots of people signed up to play.
Did he get some wild trans-party fighting the first time a job went hella wrong? Because that's the ultimate dream.
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A couple of my players wanted to try just running a game where they're a taker dispatch / negotiation service and all they do is negotiating and scams.
Man, think of the crazy dream situation: run two games at once, one for a group of dedicated negotiators and another for a group of dedicated job operators. Group 1 sets up jobs, Group 2 executes them. How nuts would that get?
It is entirely possible: my Shadow Run GM did this his first time GMing that system - he's uh... social and may have over sold the game, so lots of people signed up to play.
Did he get some wild trans-party fighting the first time a job went hella wrong? Because that's the ultimate dream.
I don't know - we're a decade out of college and this was back in high school. He hasn't exactly given a blow-by-blow of that campaign. I've gotten more of the story around the only time he's killed a character and the dog-walking story.
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That does bring up a thing that has so far not come up (and ideally will not need to): These rules are great for PvE but similarly to GUMSHOE they don't really work so well for PvP. The system is designed as a zero sum system but you can't do that for PvP because the system now becomes completely symmetrical and it's not designed for that.
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Cargotecture is a thing http://www.inspiredhomeideas.com/tiny-houses-and-shipping-container-homes/ (http://www.inspiredhomeideas.com/tiny-houses-and-shipping-container-homes/)
http://www.cargotecture.com/ (http://www.cargotecture.com/)
http://www.sunset.com/home/architecture-design/cargotecture-movement (http://www.sunset.com/home/architecture-design/cargotecture-movement)
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Not really an inspiration thing so much as a thing I did for personal sanity. I mapped the success probabilities in a grid because the core mechanic felt too arbitrary even though speaking realistically it's not that much different from any percentile system.
You can look at it here (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EGjeuioYx_d3RzUFNHzefQD_C9DyQxRPs50U4U-9qwc/edit?usp=sharing)
This was useful for playtests as it also allowed me to explain to my players that probabilities are not as uneven as they appear and also give them enough resources to know how spending extra points for a bonus on a roll can help.
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Not really an inspiration thing so much as a thing I did for personal sanity. I mapped the success probabilities in a grid because the core mechanic felt too arbitrary even though speaking realistically it's not that much different from any percentile system.
You can look at it here
This was useful for playtests as it also allowed me to explain to my players that probabilities are not as uneven as they appear and also give them enough resources to know how spending extra points for a bonus on a roll can help.
That's awesome! I'm really glad you took the time to do that (sorry it damaged your sanity). A visual representation of the probability curve is something I'm going to have to include in the book. The dice mechanic is intentionally swingy and uncertain, but I don't want people getting turned off from the game thinking it's impossible or something. Really, with the ability to spend charges and bid for success, it's a less brutal curve than something like CoC.
But I think it's hard for new players to grasp that being badass in your "skill and stat" is not enough to consistently perform, especially with Potential limiting rather than adding. Badass shooters spend a lot of time at the range (+4 Skill) AND burn a lot of ammo (+4 in charges) to get their 80% or something shooting roll. I don't make that apparent enough in the current draft, and mapping the curve like this will help teach that concept faster and with less frustration than seeing a bunch of conservative spends fail at the table.
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Yeah, I found if players don't know their success chances they will only ever spend the base point to roll and just kinda hope for the best because they're afraid of wasting points.
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This seemed to capture some of the spirit of Red Markets
(http://i.imgur.com/KlACq3m.jpg)
http://datem.deviantart.com/art/suburb-561894521 (http://datem.deviantart.com/art/suburb-561894521)
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Cargotecture... I seem to recall this was done in Londons docklands as an artists community
http://www.containercity.com/projects/container-city-I (http://www.containercity.com/projects/container-city-I)
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So the job in the game I'm running tonight involves competition from DHQS, and the players have taken to calling them "the dicks" to make conversation faster.
Not necessarily inspiration, but it was a thing I enjoyed that came out in play.
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So the job in the game I'm running tonight involves competition from DHQS, and the players have taken to calling them "the dicks" to make conversation faster.
Not necessarily inspiration, but it was a thing I enjoyed that came out in play.
....why didn't I think of that. Fits in perfectly with the setting.
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Reminded me of Red Markets. A future tech prototype married to an old reliable.
(http://i.imgur.com/NXONcrn.jpg)
http://pavellkid.deviantart.com/ (http://pavellkid.deviantart.com/)
The Ukrainian artist has several post apocalyptic pieces. He draws inspiration from Roadside Picnic/STALKER.
(http://i.imgur.com/Yi2h0J7.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/Tpa5vdf.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/owJk6xo.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/7HLyttI.jpg)
This one is titled "Loss" :)
(http://i.imgur.com/IoFNJnG.jpg)
Cross guard on the sickle could be from a coke can.
(http://i.imgur.com/CkahxSj.jpg)
Clearly a mutant but in Red Market's canon could be a guy with a goiter and a thyroid problem.
(http://i.imgur.com/URo73bb.jpg)
NONE PURER
(http://i.imgur.com/Sjk5ciM.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/50aP72o.jpg)
Taping a wrench to the end of your makeshift axe makes it a multitool.
(http://i.imgur.com/ENDLD8l.jpg)
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Does anybody know if this Ukrainian fellow A.) speaks English or B.) offers reasonable rates? With a slight shift in tone and refocusing, this dude could be amazing, but I can't seem to find any info on him.
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Hmm. I think your best bet is to make a Deviant Art account and send him a direct message.
His last update (the gun posted) is Sept 19th so he's active. He responds in English in the comments.
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Caleb, since you appear to be in the looking for art phase, I've thrown together a bunch of images of varying relations to post apocalyptic themes for inspiration/perusal
http://drthoth.deviantart.com/favourites/66950404/post-apocalyptic (http://drthoth.deviantart.com/favourites/66950404/post-apocalyptic)
Also here are some Deviant Art post apoc collections. I found them randomly by clicking on a picture I liked and finding what collection had included them in the lower right corner.
http://mbboy.deviantart.com/favourites/63434271/post-a (http://mbboy.deviantart.com/favourites/63434271/post-a)
http://dreamdrawer26.deviantart.com/favourites/62471968/The-End (http://dreamdrawer26.deviantart.com/favourites/62471968/The-End)
http://mjwilliam.deviantart.com/favourites/1636567/Post-Apocalyptic-Eye-Candy (http://mjwilliam.deviantart.com/favourites/1636567/Post-Apocalyptic-Eye-Candy)
http://zloygrin.deviantart.com/favourites/66486392/POSTAP (http://zloygrin.deviantart.com/favourites/66486392/POSTAP)
Good hunting.
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As thanks for Caleb's shoutout to my placemats and prosthetic rules on the latest GDW episode I decided to post the ever-expanding list of Taker names I keep on my phone:
50-Cal
A-Poc
Apostle
Arclight
Arsenic
Bastard
Bearskin
Black Baron
Bloody Mary
Bowie
C-Biscuit
Chan
Chewy
Chopper
Cossack
Crackerjack
Crosshair
Crow
Delta-V
Devil Dog
Diamondback
Dragon
EMP
Excalibur
Faith
Fallout
Feral
Flint
Gat
Goblin
Grinder
Hair Trigger
Harley
Hatchet
Headcount
Holiday
Honey Badger
Hopscotch
JDAM
Knight
Komodo
Mace
Maestro
Major
Mako
Marshall
Mercy
Mongoose
Napalm
Pandora
Pike
Plato
Prettyboy
Prince
Razor
Roadrunner
Robin
Ronin
Sandman
Scratch
Shank
Shiner
Skidmark
Skipper
Smokes
Spyder
Sticks
Switch
Terminal
The Rev
V8
Viper
Wasp
Waterdog
Whisper
Winchester
X-Ray
Z-Rex
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Planning on making a random Taker name generator there Jace?
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Planning on making a random Taker name generator there Jace?
That's not a bad idea, actually. Right now I just have a notepad list on my phone that I pull out and add to whenever a cool name enters my head.
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Need an enclave location or score? http://www.core77.com/posts/41622/Luxury-Communal-End-of-the-World-Shelters (http://www.core77.com/posts/41622/Luxury-Communal-End-of-the-World-Shelters)
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Need an enclave location or score? http://www.core77.com/posts/41622/Luxury-Communal-End-of-the-World-Shelters (http://www.core77.com/posts/41622/Luxury-Communal-End-of-the-World-Shelters)
I think I rather work at one of those places than plunk down the money to live there. Other than probably not having a skill set their looking for...
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Hey, look what I found. Another post apoc scene with a Big Dog.
(http://i.imgur.com/laczE2L.jpg)
http://carlosnct.deviantart.com/art/Coast-Of-The-Beast-463427012 (http://carlosnct.deviantart.com/art/Coast-Of-The-Beast-463427012)
And another
(http://i.imgur.com/Edu1rf4.jpg)
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Planning on making a random Taker name generator there Jace?
That's not a bad idea, actually. Right now I just have a notepad list on my phone that I pull out and add to whenever a cool name enters my head.
That is a really good idea actually. Generators on an official game website or a fansite I think drive traffic to that site. They certainly increase page views.
Examples are 7th Sanctum and Chaotic Shiny
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/ (http://www.seventhsanctum.com/)
http://chaoticshiny.com/ (http://chaoticshiny.com/)
Pretty sure the owner of Chaotic Shiny is (or was) a Something Awful member
I think both write their generators in php.
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Playtest Update and Reminders
Hello everyone,
I’ll start by saying thank you. The amount of time and dedication you’ve spent reading, critiquing, and playing Red Markets is one of the most encouraging things to happen in my short game design career. I’m so grateful for everyone that’s taken the time to write up their sessions on the forums. It’s really great to see, and witnessing how you guys are interacting in-character online has given me a dozen more ideas for future products and features.
We are entering November, meaning there is little over a month left in the beta. I’m already compiling playtest reports and my own notes into a master change log. Here’s a reminder of the plan:
• Get all the playtests in by the Dec. 20th deadline
• Use Christmas break and (hopefully) snow days to do a massive revision of the rules text
• Run a second playtest campaign with the RPPR crew in late Winter/Spring to test the post-Beta revisions. Revise the book as I go and plan the Kickstarter campaign.
• Ross posts the first playtest campaign as we start playing the second, hopefully building up some hype.
• Kickstarter launches in early Summer, sometime after school lets out and man the comments section full time.
• If the book doesn’t fund: cry forever.
• If it does fund: do a jig. Perhaps even a “Carlton.”
• After my jig, distribute Beta 2 to backers.
• Complete the setting stuff, edit, layout, art, etc.
But all of this hinges upon you – the noble playtesters – turning in the playtest reports. I’ve noticed more participation in the game than I’ve received feedback…by a much larger margin than expected. I understand some of this is inevitable, and many of you are merely waiting to get more games under your belt in order to make an informed decision, but we are quickly approaching the point at which I need those reports back.
The audio is priceless, and listening to you guys play my game every day on the ride to work has deeply informed my revision plans already. But whenever possible, I still need as many detailed playtest surveys as I can get. The audio is great for in-depth analysis, but Red Markets is a big book in need of big changes. In short, I need breadth as well as depth, and while I can drop a hundred playtest reports on my office floor and collate revisions all at once, I can’t listen to a dozen AP’s simultaneously.
So as we enter the final month, that’s what I wanted to say. Thank you to everyone that’s reported in so far. For everyone else, thank you and PLEASE email in November if you have not reported in yet. I need all of you if I’m going to help make the game better.
My address is stokes353@gmail.com.
Happy taking,
Caleb
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I started creating an Enclave for the Cape and Islands region as well as some of Eastern Massachusetts. It’s nowhere near complete, but any critiques are welcome. It’s not exactly Lovecraft Country but it’s weird and isolated enough to leave a mark on anyone who live here, for better or for worse.
THE CAPE
(http://johnburk.zenfolio.com/img/s/v-3/p160227678-5.jpg)
Nobody in the Massachusetts enclaves like to go to Cape Cod. Anyone can tell you that if you ask them, and they always have a good reason, from shit loot to bad weather. The stories and reports are never promising, and nobody who tried to build an outpost there lasts more than few months before going giving up or dying. It’s empty, they say, just lonely beaches and abandoned towns, and if you know what’s good for you you’ll stay away from the place, understand? Just don’t ask them who keeps the lighthouses running into the night, don’t ask where the clams in you chowder come from, and don’t ask who the silent men watching from the dunes are or how they actually built that ship you bought up north. You won’t like the answer.
Location
Jutting into the Atlantic from Southeastern Massachusetts, Cape Cod is a small artificial island separated from the mainland by a large canal. It has quite a few islands surrounding, all of with were populated before the Crash and often privately owned.
Defenses
The Cape is protected from the mainland by a steep and rocky canal with notoriously choppy waters, and most of the coast is inaccessible by sea due to the incredibly dangerous shoals surrounding it. When nature isn’t enough, the locals apparently built rudimentary fortifications out of old beached boats and a wide variety of guns, from civilian arms to honest-to-god cannons scavenged from the multitude of naval museums in the areas. People who make it farther inland note that many of the buildings are very solidly built brick and lumber and sturdy stone walls have been put up around some of the larger towns, built with what appear to be historic methods. The poor bastards who try and swim anywhere find out the locals somehow filled the area with sharks from Martha’s Vineyard. Oddly, very few reports of these fortifications actually being used are rare, as nobody can ever recall anyone actually wanting to invade the Cape.
History
People used to love Cape Cod. It had everything that a tourist could ever want: Smiling faces, lovely beaches, great food, and enough history to mean something to enough people that the population quadrupled every summer. The Cape was rustic, quaint, and rural. Yes, time had left it behind, but things were modernizing slowly, and people were happy. The Crash changed that. Most of population died quickly, leaving the towns abandoned and the ships rotting at the docks, but those who survived were the other majority of people on the Cape. They had stayed on their boats and in their lighthouses, waiting for the fires to die down. These people were hard and grizzled, the salt of the ocean flowed through their veins and the crafts of the old world lived through them: Clamming, shipbuilding, fishing, hunting, the forgotten arts of New England the world forgot it needed. These older folks, some approaching seventy, took in the younger and the uninformed and allowed the Cape to survive. Now, a majority of the Cape has been reclaimed but not settled, with a majority of the population living in well-hidden communes or isolated shelters.
Top Exports
Specialty Food— Fruit is very hard to grow in Massachusetts, so the Cape Cod art of the cranberry bog has allowed the Cape to produce large amounts of an easily stored and transported food item at any price they care to name. Scurvy isn’t something people want to come back. Clams are also valued, but they require heavy refrigeration to transport and are often only sold to the major Enclaves in Massachusetts like Beantown. The massive surplus of alcohol due to the tourist trade tends to pad out transactions nicely.
Old Knowledge/Items — Find someone who can build a signal cannon or clean wood with sand and rope. Exactly. The elders who lived on the Cape have large amount of knowledge sealed in their heads, as do the unusual amount of museums and libraries in the area. Selling their knowledge has allowed some of the less well-off Enclaves survive with a much lower level of technology than expected.
Science: The Cape is somewhat of a paradox. Old world can mix with high tech bizarrely easily depending on where you end up, and a few settlements in the Cape know exactly how make it. If the Cape and Massachusetts were a country, it would have the third best education in the world, after all. Wood’s Hole is home to WHOI, and several ecological foundations including IFAW are based there.
Top Imports
Advanced Weapons and Ammunition: Other than the supplies stolen from Otis AFB, any sort of military production is nonexistent. The people of the Cape will gladly trade for weapons and armor so they can travel safely from town to town.
Electronics and Chemicals: Again, no real industry existed on the Cape before the Crash, so there is no choice but to fill the gap through trade. WHOI and the other scientific enclaves will pay through the nose for the chance to maintain their gadgets and projects.
Competition
The general attitude about the Cape is to pretend it doesn’t exist until you need something from it. People just tend to find the place so unnerving that they ignore it. Trade is mostly on an Enclave-to-Enclave level and diplomacy is never face-to-face.
The Armory: When the Crash came, people need guns. Lots of them. So, a group of machinists reclaimed the famed Springfield Armory and got it churning out enough M14s and 1911s to arm the entire city of Springfield with a few hundred to spare. They quickly absorbed some of the weaker Enclaves and began trading their weapons to other areas, with trade routes stretching as far as Maine. Now a military power rivalling Beantown itself, the Warlords of the Armory have turned the city of Springfield into a trap-infested, gun-filled citadel of fire and lead. The often hire the people of the Cape as guides or transport along the East Coast. They don’t attempt to invade the Cape because they honestly have nothing of value to them.
The Whalers: New Bedford had an important place in the Era of Wooden Ships and Iron Men, and the Crash gave it a chance to revitalize that image. The great naval power of New New Bedford (as some call it) now makes its living hunting the rebounding whale population of New England and selling the parts for profit. Having updated their ships from wood to metal (although some of the more eccentric captains repurposed the historic ships kept at the wharf), they provide the vast majority of oil and meat to the Eastern Massachusetts region. Occasional scuffles over naval transport and fishing rites crop up occasionally between the Cape and the Whalers, but they tend to be resolved amicably.
Beantown: Boston reborn. To say this Enclave is powerful can’t be understated. They’ve got power, plumbing, an actual military, and enough industrial production to have a very high standard of living. Very few people actually make it past the walls, and even fewer get to report on what it is like inside. Boston doesn’t accept outsiders, you see.
Social Structure
Cape Cod has very decentralized system of rule, with each small settlement ruling itself, from the anarchic artist-leaders of P-town to the Plutocracy of Nantucket Sound. Each leader has to attend meetings at Barnstable, the de facto capital of all of the Cape to discuss serious matters such as war. The vast majority of the Cape, however, is a loose collection of family clans with social ties to everyone in the immediate vicinity. Everyone knows everybody on the Cape, after all.
Neighborhoods
WHOI: The technocracy of WHOI is very hesitant to share anything about themselves, but everyone knows they have the best tech of anyone on the island. Wood’s Hole is their sovereign territory, and anyone invading can expect liberal usage of chemical and electroshock weapons.
P-Town: The mad bohemian paradise of P-Town can literally drive people insane. From makeshift Sake bars to parades espousing the wonders of every fetish under the sun, P-Town is going down in a blaze of sex, narcotics, and modern art. An LGBT haven before the Crash, people seeking asylum there for social reasons will almost always be given it and treated nicely.
Martha’s Vineyard: Sharks. So many goddamn sharks. Nobody knows how they got so many goddamn sharks in the goddamn water but nobody ever tries to go there because fuck sharks.
Nantuckett: A peaceful and pristine island community. Go there for safety, supplies, and lodging. One of the ferries there still works but the lines are long, so most people just take their own boats, if possible.
The Gardens: Heritage Gardens was a wonderful tourist spot back in the day. A massive botanical garden and museum, it supplies a huge amount of lumber, seeds, and fine art. You can’t get them to admit it, but they drive the vintage cars they keep there whenever possible. Also, ziplines.
The Compound: The Kennedy Compound fortified and incorporating all of the other coastal mansions in the neighborhood. People are pretty sure an actual Kennedy runs it but nobody on the inside is talking. All people know is it’s well-guarded, well-off, and they buy as much as they can with as much as they can.
The Lighthouses: A network of mini-citadels that guard the coastlines, often manned by grizzled older folks who just want to be left alone.
The Sag: Sagamore Bridge, now literally sagging due to it being ridiculously old and unmaintained. Specifically built high to accommodate warships, one of which is underneath it and stopping the bridge from collapsing. A large battleship apparently recommissioned out of desperation, it suffered a hull breach directly under the bridge. Nobody knows the name of it, since most of it was actually stripped off, including any readily accessible identification. The original crew was long gone but it is now settled by about 100 people, who have to deal with the fact the ship was never meant to actually work again. Leaks and system failures happen with unfortunate regularity. The cannons still work, but absolutely nobody aboard is willing to fire one.
VIPs
(I’m still working on this)
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The Cape is awesome, SynapticError. I wonder how it would be affected by the (in-canon) nuclear war on Canada during the Crash?
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It's not totally finished but w/e here's the enclave my playtest group is using:
The Rock
(http://i.imgur.com/ZrQlfPo.jpg)
Location
Alcatraz Island. Following the ideas of Max Brooks, survivors decided to hole up inside a prison on an island 2000 feet from land. As the crash got further away and more people got to the island the community expanded beyond the prison to the greater island area, making use of its 22 or so acres to set up farmland. San Francisco to the South, Berkley/Oakland to the East Ocean to the West and the greater Bay Area to the north.
North: http://i.imgur.com/pkiQAoE.png (http://i.imgur.com/pkiQAoE.png)
West: http://i.imgur.com/PAcOOjQ.png (http://i.imgur.com/PAcOOjQ.png)
South: http://i.imgur.com/BxcT6Mt.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/BxcT6Mt.jpg)
Defenses
Alcatraz is a fortified installation on an island that is mostly steep cliffsides. Nothing had to be too heavily modified to make it more defensible as it’s great at keeping people from coming or going. Guard towers were reinforced and a greater guard force was set up near the singular port as well as some watchers around the bay to keep an eye on any incoming trouble.
History
Alcatraz has been maintained for decades after its closure as a popular tourist attraction in the Bay Area. When the Crash went down, everyone with a boat immediately went for the island and struggled to make camp until a carrier who didn't report a bite turned vector and wiped the whole place out. The place was written off until some new settlers came with a few months more wits and experience about them and cleared out the remaining casualties on the island. These second founders would not make the mistakes of their predecessors, and this time security would be valued above philanthropy. Alcatraz screens all potential comers for what they can bring to the community and keeps all new migrants in a separate section of Little Alcatraz until such time that they would have turned.
Top Exports
- Guaranteed Casualty-Free Travel (Surplus of boats) - the one thing every survivor that reached alcatraz has is a reliable motor boat. Moving up and down the coast is considerably easier at sea than it is over land.
- Courier / Delivery Service - since the time of the crash the enclave has been able to rig up some barges and make use of their existing boat assets to move freight along the coast.
- Whiskey aged in gunpowder barrels (We call it Firebomb) - grain surpluses go bad, so they take the rest and ferment it in a submarine still and age it for a short time in old gunpowder kegs. It’s an acquired taste but one that has caught on in the Bay Area.
Top Imports
- Fuel - Lots of boats and lots of travel means everyone is consuming fuel at a regular pace.
- Water - Ironically despite being surrounded by water the enclave has little access to any that is good for drinking. Water reclamation methods were experimented with in the early days (rain barrels, condensation methods, desalination) but none were efficient enough to be sustainable and ultimately it was easier to trade for water shipments with the surrounding enclaves.
- Weapons / Ammo - Alcatraz has an arsenal but it was cleaned out when the place became a tourism destination in the late sixties. The place has solid walls but residents only had weapons allowed by California’s highly restrictive gun laws
Competition / Neighbors
Drone Town USA (UC Berkeley)
Brief History
Started in the nearby California Memorial stadium, a huge structure with good sightlines and very few entrances and exits to block off. Expanded out slowly to the university campus (originally a very soft target with no walls or fortification), took advantage of the experimental silicon valley alternate energy solutions, pretty much sustainable from an energy perspective thanks to solar and wind power and kept surveilled by a big swarm of robots
Trade
Exports: Biofuels, Engineering Expertise, Food
Imports: Weapons, Water, Building Supplies
Treasure Island (Coast Guard base at Yerba Buena / Treasure Island)
Brief History
Military installation, well armed and easily defended with plenty of sea-faring vessels on-hand. Survived initially through internal water reservoir, weaponry and training as well as access to boats.
Trade
Exports: Water and Guns / Ammo, Delivery Service
Imports: Food and Fuel probably, Delivery Service
Truck Stop (inland, closer to concord)
History
Truck Stop was (and I guess still is?) a former service repair center. It boasts a massive 30 truck bays, spare parts, an on-site gas pumping and storage facility, in addition to storage of numerous shipping containers, and a water reclamation center literally next door. In the wake of the Crash, its incredible repair services and stock of tools made it highly valuable to a number of automotive and big rig owners who used their vehicles and skill to establish a safe zone inside the area. As the carrion economy bloomed, Truck Stop has slowly grown into a major shipping and transportation hub.
Trade
Exports: Water (houses a major reservoir), and mechanical expertise, supply chain stuff
Imports: Food, Fuel, other supply chain stuff
Chevron (Richmond Refinery 37°56′32″N 122°23′43″W)
History
Oil Refinery in Alameda that was quickly abandoned during the crash (dead weather there was severe). In recent years some enterprising engineers have taken it back and gotten it working, working with the millions of crude barrels still on-site and importing what they can from SoCal.
Trade
Exports: Gas, plastic, synthetic fibers, motor oil
Imports: Pretty much everything else
Social Structure
Structure: Representational Compromise by way of a leadership council. Leadership also works within the Enclave as there’s just not enough hands for them to do desk jobs (We ran some numbers and found that at its peak efficiency, all of the farmable area on the island can only sustain about 270 people tops, so Alcatraz only has about 175-200 people).
- Security - A dedicated guard and watch team maintains a killing field near the singular entry point. Regular watch is kept over the rest of the island but since most of it is cliff face they’re mostly just looking for anyone who would be climbing the cliffs.
- Farmers / Brewers - A sizeable percentage of the population tills the acres of farmland (mostly grain / soybean rotation patterns). Surplus is distilled into Fire
- Bomb Whiskey which is sold off.
- The Boat Men (Ferrymen / Couriers) - Trade and transit is one of the chief exports of the enclave. Boat drivers are the second largest labor force on the island and are second to takers in terms of risk.
- Fishermen - Technically part of the Boat Men but a different variation. Supply the rest of the food for the enclave. Some go a little ways out into the bay area to fish but never too far.
- Takers - They go out and take things. You know what these guys are.
Economy: Communalist / Collectivist. The community is small enough that resources are shared around as needed. Anyone who doesn’t want whatever part of their share is can barter it off or sell it to others in the loss for things they do want.
Neighborhoods
Neighborhoods are defined and owned by the different factions of the social structure. Largely these all coinhabit different floors of the Alcatraz prison as it has capacity for about 300 prisoners and is in the best shape on the island except for the museum. Other blockhouses have been converted to fit necessary purposes of the workforce.
Latent Ghetto is a small settlement on Little Alcatraz connected by a bridge, immunity is on a sort of “don’t ask don’t tell” scheme and the island doctors are expected to maintain their confidence.
VIPs
Work-in-Progress, but one representative from each of the major work groups (excepting the Takers) is part of the council and stays back at the island doing logistics work and sometimes farming.
Boat Leader: Ahab
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http://1ver4ik1.deviantart.com/art/Urban-blocks-523249032 (http://1ver4ik1.deviantart.com/art/Urban-blocks-523249032)
(http://i.imgur.com/DHz08L2.jpg)
When I started this piece I was inspired by Brazilian favelas and Chinese tower blocks. I’ve done a lot of photo-bashing and overpaint here. That was a lot of fun and I'm quite happy with this one. And this piece wasn't be so cool without the help of Artem (motloch.deviantart.com/) He's done a bunch of awesome graffiti for this work.
This made me consider that humans, no matter how small their living space, continually strive to make their environments individualistic. Whether it is a small box of brightly colored flowers on a tiny tenement balcony, garish graffiti, or the utilitarian emptiness of a Spartan lifestyle; each of these is a choice. Makes me pause and muse about the genesis of cave paintings.
Anyway I could see a small seed bag of colorful flowers, cans of spraypaint, an pristine can of house paint or even specialized cleaning supplies (we all miss the scent of pine sol) as being items in high demand from the Lost. Of course this leads to possible confrontations in a overgrown former (plant) nursery, a Sherman-Williams and of course the ubiquitous Home Depot ruins.
Then maybe just maybe a player contact wants part of a sign to cheer up his part of the Enclave.
http://1ver4ik1.deviantart.com/art/Zombie-Distraction-566221671 (http://1ver4ik1.deviantart.com/art/Zombie-Distraction-566221671)
(http://i.imgur.com/g39VGVq.jpg)
How are you going to get that "A" off of the wall?
I really like the emotion on this character's face.
http://stayinwonderland.deviantart.com/art/16-3-15-Get-money-get-paid-520526658 (http://stayinwonderland.deviantart.com/art/16-3-15-Get-money-get-paid-520526658)
(http://i.imgur.com/H1lZRDL.jpg)
More art
(http://i.imgur.com/BzWprd3.jpg)
http://blakez.deviantart.com/art/landscape-35-383552954 (http://blakez.deviantart.com/art/landscape-35-383552954)
(http://i.imgur.com/x6DNqk7.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/svdKF3j.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/rdUc0zg.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/gfx6Jsg.jpg)
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Cybernetics / Bionics
Regarding the near future approach that Red Markets is taking (mentioned in the last GDW) how much information do you want about the technology that is being developed now?
I have a small archive of news articles, primary articles, and reviews of advancements made over the past few years. If you want something like that I could organize it and set up a drop box.
Here are some of the research projects walking out of the Berkeley Robotic and Engineering Laboratory: http://bleex.me.berkeley.edu/research/ (http://bleex.me.berkeley.edu/research/)
Everything from Exoskeletons to robots modeling the movement of animals to "Magic Gloves"
Art
http://datem.deviantart.com/art/Poisoned-Sebastian-2-488948367 (http://datem.deviantart.com/art/Poisoned-Sebastian-2-488948367)
(http://i.imgur.com/SYuO3G1.jpg)
Recent interview about nanomaterials (biogels and holographic sensors) and their potential applications.
http://scholar.harvard.edu/yetisen/publications/nanomaterials-designer (http://scholar.harvard.edu/yetisen/publications/nanomaterials-designer)
Q&A Ali Yetisen
The nanomaterials designer
Ali Yetisen’s research includes using nanotechnology and biosensors to make environmentally responsive materials for clothes, tattoos, accessories and contact lenses — materials that could be the future of fashion. Here, Yetisen, who works at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital in Cambridge, talks about mimicking the diffraction in butterfly wings, transforming gowns, and what fashion designers and materials scientists can learn from each other.
Tell me about your materials.
I make photonic materials that change colour in response to the environment — to, say, stretching, temperature or moisture. I also work on holographic sensors that change hue in response to chemical parameters, such as pheromones, glucose or salts. It is biomimicry, really: inspired by the iridescence of butterfly wings. Rather than pigments, butterfly wings have layered structures that diffract light to produce different colours. I create structures from layers of silver particles in a hydrogel. The gel swells or shrinks in response to what it is sensing, altering the spacing of the layers. That shifts the wavelength of the diffracted light, and the material shows a different colour.
How would these be used in clothing?
We foresee printing these materials on fashion items instead of dyeing. Or they could be used to reveal the presence of a harmful gas or unhealthy levels of ultraviolet light. In contact lenses, they could make eyes look brighter. Other researchers, including Juan Hinestroza at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, are also merging textiles with nanoparticles. Nanoparticles can change a material’s colour (because particles of different sizes interact differently with light) and can be superhydrophobic and antibacterial, giving clothes stain-repellent or odour-control properties.
Where is technology currently having the greatest impact on fashion?
Sportswear companies have been the first to embrace electronics and biosensors, with wearable technology and devices. Adidas and Ralph Lauren have introduced lines in which conductive fibres in the fabric measure heart rate, calories burned and breathing rate. In photonics and electronics, the London-based company CuteCircuit has made a dress that displays real-time tweets, and architectural fashion label Chromat has produced a ‘fight-or-flight’ dress that expands into an imposing structure when temperature and sweat levels suggest that adrenaline is pumping. We are likely to see more of this. Intel is now a patron of the British Fashion Council, and plans to work with designers to weave more smart products into clothing and accessories.
How can nanotechnology enter fashion?
We are at a very early stage. Our team has had some conversations with Google, which is interested in intelligent materials for design. But many questions remain. If we make a garment with nanoparticles, the particles have to stay within the textiles and not get into the skin, air or food. Nanomaterials also need to be manufactured at scale, which means standardizing the quality of raw textiles to a whole new level and controlling, for example, the surface charge and oxidation levels of cotton, as well as fibre length and strength.
Can science learn from fashion?
Scientists start from fundamental building blocks and understand how materials or a technology can be constructed by putting parts together. In art and fashion, it works the other way. Usually, the big picture is there and designers will look for materials to make it happen. Because of that, fashion is really good at thinking outside the box. If fashion designers and scientists make a conscious effort to understand each other’s way of working, they can build sympathy between these very different schools of thought.
Do you follow fashion?
I watch fashion weeks and events to see how creativity evolves outside basic sciences and technology, and I am in a minority of scientists who want to make technology more accessible using new forms of expression. Do I buy designer clothing? No. That is for the red carpet at the Oscars. What is the point of wearing designer clothing in the lab? ■
INTERVIEW BY ELIZABETH GIBNEY
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
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Don't forget, only five days left for our reports!
To borrow a quote from Matt from The Drunk and The Ugly:
BWOOP BWOOP
DECEMBER ALERT
ALL HANDS TO DECEMBERSTATIONS
5 DAYS LEFT TO FILL OUT RED MARKETS HAPPENINGS
THIS IS NOT A DRILL
Playtest Update and Reminders
Hello everyone,
I’ll start by saying thank you. The amount of time and dedication you’ve spent reading, critiquing, and playing Red Markets is one of the most encouraging things to happen in my short game design career. I’m so grateful for everyone that’s taken the time to write up their sessions on the forums. It’s really great to see, and witnessing how you guys are interacting in-character online has given me a dozen more ideas for future products and features.
We are entering November, meaning there is little over a month left in the beta. I’m already compiling playtest reports and my own notes into a master change log. Here’s a reminder of the plan:
• Get all the playtests in by the Dec. 20th deadline
• Use Christmas break and (hopefully) snow days to do a massive revision of the rules text
• Run a second playtest campaign with the RPPR crew in late Winter/Spring to test the post-Beta revisions. Revise the book as I go and plan the Kickstarter campaign.
• Ross posts the first playtest campaign as we start playing the second, hopefully building up some hype.
• Kickstarter launches in early Summer, sometime after school lets out and man the comments section full time.
• If the book doesn’t fund: cry forever.
• If it does fund: do a jig. Perhaps even a “Carlton.”
• After my jig, distribute Beta 2 to backers.
• Complete the setting stuff, edit, layout, art, etc.
But all of this hinges upon you – the noble playtesters – turning in the playtest reports. I’ve noticed more participation in the game than I’ve received feedback…by a much larger margin than expected. I understand some of this is inevitable, and many of you are merely waiting to get more games under your belt in order to make an informed decision, but we are quickly approaching the point at which I need those reports back.
The audio is priceless, and listening to you guys play my game every day on the ride to work has deeply informed my revision plans already. But whenever possible, I still need as many detailed playtest surveys as I can get. The audio is great for in-depth analysis, but Red Markets is a big book in need of big changes. In short, I need breadth as well as depth, and while I can drop a hundred playtest reports on my office floor and collate revisions all at once, I can’t listen to a dozen AP’s simultaneously.
So as we enter the final month, that’s what I wanted to say. Thank you to everyone that’s reported in so far. For everyone else, thank you and PLEASE email in November if you have not reported in yet. I need all of you if I’m going to help make the game better.
My address is stokes353@gmail.com.
Happy taking,
Caleb
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Whoah, new art since the last time I read this thread! Thanks, Twisting H.
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So I think these were meant to be cybernetic horrors but for some reason the image feels to me like it belongs in Red Markets as aberrant zombies.
(http://i.imgur.com/oVIFZPE.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/S3XgaOX.jpg)
http://salvadortrakal.deviantart.com/art/T3A-GANG-BIKER-CONCEPT-346685441 (http://salvadortrakal.deviantart.com/art/T3A-GANG-BIKER-CONCEPT-346685441)
http://www.behance.net/gallery/6238771/THE-3RD-APPEARANCE (http://www.behance.net/gallery/6238771/THE-3RD-APPEARANCE)
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Red Market's isn't a tactical post-apoc game, but someone may want to run it like one sometime.
But where do you get cool maps?
Courtesy of some generous Anon on 4chan.
http://boards.4chan.org/tg/thread/44711992/tactical-battle-maps (http://boards.4chan.org/tg/thread/44711992/tactical-battle-maps)
(http://i.imgur.com/JyuyteT.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/kz9YcRv.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/C5sFeT6.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/RROXT6F.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/sGHleJf.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/SdbdIQW.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/nQfDJk5.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/XBLN3La.jpg)
Maybe an aerial view of the Fallouts and Skyrims could be captured as well?
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Here's my updated list of Taker and Outfit names with notes on which ones we've used in the Hooverville game thus far.
Takers:
50-Cal
A-Poc
Apostle
Arclight
Aristotle (Reference, Plato)
Arsenic
Bastard
Bearskin
Blackjack
Bloody Mary (Player Taker)
Bowie
C-Biscuit
Chan
Chewy
Chopper
Coma Boy
Cossack
Crackerjack
Crosshair
Crow
Delta-V
Diamondback
Dragon
EMP
Excalibur
Faith
Fallout
Feral
Flint
Gat
Goblin
Gremlin (Steward)
Grinder
Hair Trigger
Harley
Hatchet
Headcount
Holiday
Honey Badger (Taker/Reference, Gots)
Hopscotch
JDAM (Reference, Gots)
Knight
Komodo
La Muerta
Mace
Maestro
Major
Mako
Marshall
Mercy
Mlack Baron
Mongoose
Napalm
Pandora
Pike
Plato (Player Taker)
Prettyboy
Prince
Razor
Robin
Ronin
Sandman
Shank
Shiner
Skid (Wholesaler, Plato)
Skidmark
Skipper
Smokes
Spyder
Sticks
Switch
Terminal
The Rev
V8
Viper
Wasp
Waterdog
Whisper
Winchester
X-Ray
Z-Rex
Outfits:
Devil Dogs
Diamondbacks (KIA at Sierra)
New Apostles (Meek)
Rat Queens (Honey Badger's crew)
Regulars (KIA at Sierra)
Roadrunners (Coyote Dan's crew)
Terminal Vector (KIA at McEmbry Mine)
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Image dump.
(http://i.imgur.com/ts75Cy8.jpg)
We haven't had a good picture of the DHQS yet so...
(http://i.imgur.com/nanbu1L.jpg)
And when they fail.
(http://i.imgur.com/WsXxZRn.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/1geJwQP.jpg)
Noses are a luxury in the Loss
(http://i.imgur.com/RKryHrj.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/dOi1wKS.jpg)
I'd make the sacrifice.
(http://i.imgur.com/tNLtpde.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/2IZiB9g.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/itwuwwT.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/FTU1cKC.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/DiEtbZc.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/AWHXk1a.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/DZpnopt.jpg)
Where would the majority of the planes crash?
(http://i.imgur.com/8E2G0kI.jpg)
This was titled "The Postman"
(http://i.imgur.com/EdmguNT.jpg)
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If someone was programming a random website generator for Taker names I'd also suggest a random generator for Ludwig architectural quotes.
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If someone was programming a random website generator for Taker names I'd also suggest a random generator for Ludwig architectural quotes.
Somebody in this group has to have the programming chops for this - I volunteer to research architectural quotes and try to think of Taker names.
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Gamer's Table has a pretty decent podcast chatting about the post apoc genre/games.
http://gamerstable.com/ep248/ (http://gamerstable.com/ep248/)
The comment "post apocalypse is this generation's Western: a fantasy where you can make your own rules" is pretty spot on.
They totally whiff on the "post apocalypse is a very American genre" though. *gives the hairy eyeball to STALKER, Godzilla, the backstory to nearly every Anime ever*
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Also the fact that the Mad Max franchise is obviously an Aussie export.
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Also the fact that the Mad Max franchise is obviously an Aussie export.
Lies and slander! According to Brietbart, Mad Max is a proud piece of Australian American cinema starring Australian American actors and directed by a manly Australian American man!
Hell, it's so American the first film wasn't even released in America! Because it was TOO AMERICAN to be viewed.
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The Gamerstable podcast (Shannon I think) did address that Mad Max was Australian. And the main moderator of the podcast (Eric?) brought up Mary Shelley's The Last Man.
I haven't had the opportunity to read it yet, but speaking of 'Australian' post apoc media there is the novel On The Beach (1957) written by a British-Australian author. Two movies based on it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(novel) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(novel))
Anyway a Red Market's Idea inspired by their podcast is the idea that every body (corpse) tells a story.
We've seen this in Fallout all the time and more demonstratively in Fallout New Vegas Honest Hearts DLC, where the story of the pre-war Survivalist is told through notes left at supply caches. Most players found this story arc more compelling than the main arc for Honest Hearts.
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Survivalist_hidden_cache (http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Survivalist_hidden_cache)
This isn't a new idea. Very rarely some DMs that have a real ecological and holistic sense of their D&D dungeons will do this; where you find scattered treasure, the remains of a pack and then further down some yawning lonely corridor you find the body of the adventure with his magic sword.
Edit: Come to think of it the position of bodies and what they have on them is critically important to the stories in the Souls series, including Bloodborne. (See the Prepare to Cry series by VaatiVidya: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWLedd0Zw3c5SCqzfFpcy82pfliyAu2kl (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWLedd0Zw3c5SCqzfFpcy82pfliyAu2kl))
But I think linking history to loot really hits home the idea of the player's mortality and subtly amps up the fear, which is specifically useful in a economic horror games like Red Markets.
Every gain the players make is from the bones someone else's failure. Someone who had hopes and goals like them. And it raises the question subconsciously; how long until the player's luck runs out and their only utility for the next generation is the number of unspoiled powerbars they carried with them and if they expired in a convenient place?
In the current (Episode 1) Red Market podcast, Caleb uses this technique by putting a bunch of bounty on a Captain Morgan cardboard cutout that has become half records of the missing, half shrine for the deceased. The juxtaposition of gritty depression with the comedy of hauling a larger than life pirate picture around the Loss because it is worth more than it's weight in gold is typical Caleb (typically Stokesian? :o)
I think Red Markets (or a supplement) would benefit greatly by at least a 1d100 table for comic/disturbing/depressing corpses to find loot on (bounty) where the body tells a story/the loot had critical meaning to the perished. Be real useful for a GM (Market) and double as adventure seeds.
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Another Red Market's Suggestion
At some point (GDC podcast?) Caleb was wondering about how to generate a bunch of names for NPCs for Red Markets.
I suggest literally taking a page from Sine Nomine's Silent Legions and printing a page of Kickstarter backers plus playtesters for GM quick NPC names.
Not everyone has a name as memorable as Atticus Wombles but there you go.
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I think Red Markets (or a supplement) would benefit greatly by at least a 1d100 table for comic/disturbing/depressing corpses to find loot on (bounty) where the body tells a story/the loot had critical meaning to the perished. Be real useful for a GM (Market) and double as adventure seeds.
Another one for the list of Kickstarter stretch goal ideas, I'd say!
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Not set as far in the future as Red Markets, but there might be some good inspiration from Dead State. A high school turned into a fortress. Have to fight off bandits and zombies. Maintain resources and social problems. Fun stuff all around.
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The school from Dead State
(http://blogs-images.forbes.com/danielnyegriffiths/files/2012/06/shelter1.jpg)
Also Discovery Channel's The Colony might be useful for inspiration
(http://netstorage.discovery.com/feeds/brightcove/asset-stills/dsc/124629184686812869000301197_SeriesIntro.jpg)
(http://i1293.photobucket.com/albums/b595/tatchi1/the_colony12small_zpsc9a8778c.jpg)
(http://www.bloggernews.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/18918_warehouse-map_m.jpg)
(https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://i.ytimg.com/vi/y2vSmje7rhQ/hqdefault.jpg&imgrefurl=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3Dy2vSmje7rhQ&h=360&w=480&tbnid=2qikk75F-gk7dM:&docid=YBNvvblo925AqM&ei=JlSkVrTqHMTWjwPqvb_ABQ&tbm=isch&ved=0ahUKEwi0laCoz8HKAhVE62MKHereD1gQMwhNKBowGg)
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Caleb please find a way to work this into a random table.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/30/europe/italy-mafia-arrests/ (http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/30/europe/italy-mafia-arrests/)
Italian police arrest 2 fugitive Mafia bosses in underground bunker
After eluding capture for years, two Mafia bosses have been arrested in an underground bunker in southern Italy.
Police seized mobsters Giuseppe Ferraro, 47, and Giuseppe Crea, 37, in Calabria region Friday, according to Italian news agency Ansa.
Ferraro was found guilty of murder and Mafia association decades ago, and had been a fugitive since 1998.
Crea was convicted of Mafia association and had been on the run for nine years, according to the news agency.
Their hideout had an array of weapons, including rifles, pistols and machine guns.
"Today is another great day for everyone and for the country because justice has won," Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said after their arrest.
Beyond Italian borders
The two men are part of 'Ndrangheta, a dangerous criminal organization that has tentacles worldwide. The group is based in Calabria, where the two men were arrested.
'Ndrangheta's power has grown beyond Italian borders.
Two years ago, Italian officials said the group is linked to drug trafficking in South and Central America, Canada and the United States.
The 'Ndrangheta was formed in the 1860s, and is involved in kidnappings, corruption, drug trafficking, gambling and murders, according to the FBI.
It has between 100-200 members in the United States, mostly in New York and Florida.
Maybe takers stumble across two skeletons in impeccable suits in a bunker handcuffed to each other, gripping each other's throats in death.
Or maybe they are playing a game of bocce underground if we push full throttle on the stereotypes.
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http://5ofnovember.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=0 (http://5ofnovember.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=0)
(http://i.imgur.com/5fqsred.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/rXuCwFr.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/MC8F6CB.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/IpKA1KK.jpg)
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You're welcome, Ross: http://elcomics.tumblr.com/post/54127537542/dead-planet-a-new-comics-drawn-by-the-amazing (http://elcomics.tumblr.com/post/54127537542/dead-planet-a-new-comics-drawn-by-the-amazing)
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Something occurred to me while playing Dying Light and thinking about the parallels between it and Red Markets; for those who aren't familiar with it, in Dying Light there's a drug called Antizin you can take to suppress the symptoms of the zombie virus, much like Supressin in Red Markets. Unlike Supressin however you need to keep taking Antizin regularly to keep the virus at bay, otherwise you start suffering seizures and delirium before eventually turning. This means that a large part of the game's plot centers around runners venturing from safe zones solely to retrieve government air drops of Antizin--the survivors' reliance on it dominates their existence in the quarantine zone.
By contrast Supressin is much less vital to life in the Loss--it's great to have if you're bitten and infected, but once you go Latent it's obsolete and worthless to you. However, as Caleb mentioned in one of the latest episodes of GDW Supressin might be turning into something similar to Antizin from Dying Light where Latents need regular injections to maintain their condition and prevent turning Vector.
And if Vectors need Supressin, that means that they'll need Immunes.
If that particular lore change comes to pass I suspect the "symbiotic" relationship between the Latents and Immunes of Leper will become darkly parasitic, as will the relationships between Latent and Immune player characters.
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If latents had to take a drug on a regular basis, they would be EXTREMELY rare and would all live near places that manufactured the drug. In Dying Light, there's one overrun city. In Red Markets, it's most of the planet. The few factories that could produce it would probably be focused on basic meds like antibiotics and pain killers. Why keep a latent around at the cost of so many other medications when a bullet to the head is so much cheaper? The government would have teams of latents for spec ops missions and shit like that, and the rich would have some but that's about it.
I did suggest the idea of special latent drugs that could benefit them in ways - for example a drug that made them look more human or made them less infectious. Those would cost upkeep obviously.
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If latents had to take a drug on a regular basis, they would be EXTREMELY rare and would all live near places that manufactured the drug. In Dying Light, there's one overrun city. In Red Markets, it's most of the planet. The few factories that could produce it would probably be focused on basic meds like antibiotics and pain killers. Why keep a latent around at the cost of so many other medications when a bullet to the head is so much cheaper? The government would have teams of latents for spec ops missions and shit like that, and the rich would have some but that's about it.
I did suggest the idea of special latent drugs that could benefit them in ways - for example a drug that made them look more human or made them less infectious. Those would cost upkeep obviously.
I'd have to listen to the episode again, I thought Caleb mentioned he was considering it. I do like the idea of Latents requiring maintenance, whether it's from regular shots or Supressin or in the form of supplements like the drugs you mentioned.
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Loot an active bombing range for scrap metal? Sounds like a job for takers!
https://youtu.be/I4pFat3VTkI
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After trying out the quickstart of the new 7th Sea (And our brand-new microphone!) our group decided to make another Red Markets enclave just for fun. After contemplating locales they decided to return to New Orleans from the first one-shot I ran, with some changes (Since everything I wrote the first time was GM Fiat).
Name: The Boneyard
Location:
(http://media.nola.com/business_impact/photo/13760483-standard.jpg)
The abandoned Six Flags park on the edge of Lake Ponchartrain, just outside of New Orleans.
Defenses:
The restored barbed-wire fence encircling the perimeter of the park, a town guard of military diaspora, clear sightlines all around.
History:
During the Crash the park was one of the major evac sites in the Mississippi Delta area, and when the quarantine was established it became home to the remaining evacuees who missed the last buses across the Lake. Joining them in exile was an understrength company of National Guardsmen who refused to abandon the civilians in Camp Six. For this they were declared homo sacor and abandoned with everyone else, leaving them all with a healthy resentment for the DHQS and Recession government just across the Lake. Over time the survivors organized into a micro-government with representatives elected to a survivor's senate, countered by the executive arm of the Guard.
Top Exports:
--Scrap metal from the unused sections of the park
--Guardsmen contracted out as mercenaries and security for other enclaves
--Food, primarily rice
Top Imports
--Medicine; malaria and other insect-borne diseases are murder
--Ammo; lots of guns need lots of bullets
--Engineering Expertise; more battery power is burned on Skype calls to trained engineers for consultations to reinforce the makeshift living structures against flood and storms than any other electrical device in the camp
Competition:
--Cajun Boys; swamp folk who trade with the Boneyard for scrap from time to time
--Anglermen; semi-nomadic group of survivors who fish off the Ponchartrain bridge and trade with nearby enclaves
--Lakefront; an airport on the short of Lake Ponchartrain, contracts Boneyard mercenaries for protection from raiders and Casualties
--The Crypt; Mercendez-Benz Superdome was once an evac site in downtown New Orleans, then a mass grave until a large group of Latents cleared it out and turned it into a fortress. Hostile groups like the Voodoo Kings and more than one ambitious Taker crew found out the hard way that they didn't clear out the entire dome--Casualties make good metaphorical crocodiles
--Voodoo Kings; ruthless gang that wears a shallow pop culture image of traditional Louisiana diaspora folkways, much to the exasperation of actual hoodoo practitioners. The Kings raid the flooded ruins of downtown New Orleans for plunder with their fleet of canoes and riverboats. Boss operates out of a salvaged casino boat that serves as a floating palace of post-apocalyptic hedonism
--Ascension; cult of Believers who live in a secret enclave somewhere outside of New Orleans, not quite as zealous as the Meek but still unsettling in their pursuit of their leader's unknown agenda. Occasionally sends emissaries to certain enclaves to preach about God's plan and the Crash
Social Structure:
The survivors of the Boneyard are primarily separated into two groups, the Senate and the Guard. The Senate is made up of elected representatives from the many evacuees who were left behind when the government closed off the Recession and bombed the Ponchartrain bridge, while the much smaller Guard is composed of the various ex-military volunteers from the National Guard company assigned to protect the evac site. The Senate itself is unofficially divided into two primary parties, the Settlers (Those who want to set aside the past and push for DHQS resettlement as soon as possible) and the Sovereign Party (Those who want to remain independent of the DHQS, whether out of self-interest, resentment, or fear). The Senate votes on decisions affecting the entire enclave, while the Guard carries out executive actions, enforces the law, and can veto Senate decisions.
Neighborhoods:
See Map (http://sfno.com/images/parkmap/sfnomap.jpg)
Ponchartrain Beach: The marketplace, or as close as Boneyard has to one
DC & Looney Tunes: Two main scrapyards in the park where rides are torn down for surplus metal and building material
Cajun Country: Largest plot of farmland in the park
Main Street Square: High-class living for Senators, Guard officers, and other powerful citizens
Goodtime Gardens: Latent ghetto, separated from the rest of the park by multiple barbed wire fencelines and a Guard checkpoint
Mardi Gras: Poorest neighborhood in the enclave, a shanty town of corrugated metal, cardboard, and tarp tents.
VIPs:
I haven't been able to come up with very interesting NPCs, so I'll just post the inspirations they gave me:
--National Guard Major
--hoodoo witch doctor (Mentor to one of the PCs, who is totes a hoodoo practitioner)
--doomsday prepper Senator (MY TIME HAS COME)
--fake (?) Supressin dealer
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I have been collating a pinterest page with art for red markets inspiration. one of my players suggested i share the link here
https://www.pinterest.com/constructacon36/red-markets-inspiration/ (https://www.pinterest.com/constructacon36/red-markets-inspiration/)
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Re: The Boneyard
What a great idea for an Enclave location Jace.
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So I didn't notice it anywhere in the thread yet but Season 1 of Jericho might make for some good inspiration.
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51j1jI9nUUL.jpg)
Warning Spoiler Heavy
So to go into the basic idea of it, twenty one major cities are destroyed and most of the US is left to fend for itself. Jericho is a mostly farming community that has to adapt and deal with various outsiders that are trying to take advantage of their ease of access to food. Eventually, they come into conflict with another nearby city that was pretty much just a factory town. Factory town needs Jericho's food so they turn their factories into munitions factories and start a war. Ignore season 2 for the most part.
It seems like it would be a good representation of conflict between two enclaves as well as other interested elements, like the local criminals trying to get a foothold, small-town politics coupled with the apocalypse, abundance of some resources and a lack of others, capitalist mentality when the US economy is gone. Definitely something to look into. Not the greatest show but interesting elements.
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Might be cliche to set zombie apocalypse survivors in a mall but could be fun to set up an enclave for Mall of America
(https://lintvkimt.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/mall.jpg?w=650)
(http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/8ak220/picture12762629/ALTERNATES/FREE_640/Americana%20overall%20crop.jpg)
(https://klbuley.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/dsc_0007.jpg)
(http://dvtfaqskbwkln.cloudfront.net/user_content/photos/6a55e007-90ed-4f10-b9a7-996d08914ec1.jpeg?appID=278)
(http://www.eatnineghost.com/wp-content/uploads/largestmall/bigmall10.jpg)
(http://kelleyfarmdevelopment.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/MOA-Expansion.jpg)
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Also, Dominion, the follow up to Legion. Set in Vegas where the former elite have set up major Governing Houses and if you're not a member of a house, you're a secondary citizen. Interesting set up for an Enclave.
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@Jace
I love that concept. After a Facebook post about a shut down beloved local amusement park (that was partially ruined by Six Flags) I've had amusement parks on the mind. It looks like it would be a very interesting Enclave, with a great potential for scenes and schemes. Are any of the rides still active? Might be good for morale.
@Enders
An Enclave in the Mall of America? I think you could have an entire campaign and never leave the mall. I mean, I've known it's big, but it's own hotel? It's own MEDICAL CENTER? Yeesh, that's huge.
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I love that concept. After a Facebook post about a shut down beloved local amusement park (that was partially ruined by Six Flags) I've had amusement parks on the mind. It looks like it would be a very interesting Enclave, with a great potential for scenes and schemes. Are any of the rides still active? Might be good for morale.
i've thought about that too i want to do one set in Disney Parks, where each park is a seperate enclave, got a lot of inspiration for it and EP from the book "Down and out in the Magic Kingdom"
http://www.amazon.com/Down-Magic-Kingdom-Cory-Doctorow/dp/076530953X (http://www.amazon.com/Down-Magic-Kingdom-Cory-Doctorow/dp/076530953X)
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@Jace
I love that concept. After a Facebook post about a shut down beloved local amusement park (that was partially ruined by Six Flags) I've had amusement parks on the mind. It looks like it would be a very interesting Enclave, with a great potential for scenes and schemes. Are any of the rides still active? Might be good for morale.
I'd imagine that there's some sort of cobbled together playground for kids, but I can't imagine any of the rides being anywhere near functional after being left to rust for over a decade and a half. And even if they were the noise would draw Casualties.
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While thinking about Interludes and how they would work I inadvertently came up with a Taker roadtrip/campfire game for PCs to play on long trips: "Three Wishes"
It's similar in theme to games like "Never Have I Ever", except instead of talking about things you've never done (Which everyone else has) you talk about things you miss from before the Crash, and if someone else also misses that thing they have to put one of three fingers down. The last person with a finger up wins.
Now it'd probably be really easy to win by saying "my family" or "my wife" or "my leg" (For Takers with missing limbs) but then you're just being an edgelord and nobody wants to play with you. The goal is wistful indulgence in nostalgia, not depression--though there's probably a fine line to be walked there.
If the GM wants to add mechanical incentive to the game they could even reward one free Humanity to the winner or make everyone roll Self-Control checks if someone is an asshole and says "my dead daughter".
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Might want to advertise the Red Markets subreddit.
I only found it randomly today by looking for an rppr subreddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RedMarkets/ (https://www.reddit.com/r/RedMarkets/)
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Might want to advertise the Red Markets subreddit.
I only found it randomly today by looking for an rppr subreddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RedMarkets/ (https://www.reddit.com/r/RedMarkets/)
Will do. Problem was it didn't really exist until the sites went down with the hosting issue. I'll shout it out more now that the RPPR media platform is back up and running.
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Saw this take on the movie Witch by a reviewer on Slate.
I think sometimes people forget how psychologically challenging being a stranger in a strange land, let alone a stranger in a hostile land as a settler can be.
After reading this I was thinking about how out there nuts highly religious New England setters had to be to make the voyage in the first place, and secondly how dangerous/crazy ideologically blinded people can get when consistently faced with an uncaring reality and there is no lifeline.
Naturally, the psychological cracks and crumbles that the New England settlers experienced could be used as an example of what characters in the Red Market's universe have undergone.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/02/29/the_most_accurate_part_of_the_witch_is_how_it_nails_the_desperate_crazed.html (http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/02/29/the_most_accurate_part_of_the_witch_is_how_it_nails_the_desperate_crazed.html)
The Most Accurate Part of The Witch? It Nails the Desperate, Crazed Mindset of Early American Settlers.
“What went we out into this wilderness to find?” asks the father of the doomed family at the start of The Witch. “Leaving our country, kindred, our fathers’ houses, we travailed a vast ocean. For what?” Much of the conversation around the historical setting of this maybe-not-very-scary, depends-who-you-ask horror film has been about witchcraft and aesthetics. Would English people in Massachusetts in 1630 have believed that goats harbored Satan, or that a witch might kill a baby in order to take flight? How accurate are the materials used to make the family’s dark, tiny house, and their drab homespun costumes? (Slate’s Forrest Wickman’s Q&A with director Robert Eggers answers many of these questions.)
But I submit that the most interesting way to watch The Witch as historical fiction is to put witchcraft aside, and instead to focus on the very questions William poses to the tribunal that will soon exile his family to the woods. The Witch is a great exploration of the dark, chaotic, troubled psychology of English colonists at the very beginning of the empire’s colonial experiment in North America. People who “travailed a vast ocean” to find a new life turned starving and paranoid, surrounded by their dead, uncertain of their identities or their missions. To put it bluntly: People living through those first settlement years often lost their goddamn minds.
In a well-received 2014 book, literature scholar Kathleen Donegan wrote about the earliest histories of Roanoke, Jamestown, Plymouth, and Barbados, arguing that the awful things that happened to colonists—starvation, sickness, violent death, breakdown of the social order—in the first few decades of habitation of these places fundamentally challenged their worldview and deeply traumatized them. I don’t know if Eggers read Seasons of Misery: Catastrophe and Colonial Settlement in Early America while making the movie; I don’t care. It’s a great companion to The Witch.
“When I began this study, I wanted to write about the first years of colonial settlement because I could not get the stories out of my mind,” Donegan writes. Indeed, some of the episodes she describes—people dying by the score at Jamestown, so hungry that they licked blood from the bodies of sick compatriots; panicked colonists mounting ill-conceived raids on nearby Native American tribes, committing awful atrocities; doomed trading outposts populated by rough men who eventually descend into lawlessness—are truly terrible.
Donegan’s fellow literary scholar Mary Louise Pratt writes about what happens in places where cultures meet, calling them “contact zones.” Adapting Pratt’s idea, Donegan calls the psychological state induced in early colonists facing these trials a “chaos zone.” “I use this term to refer to both social and mental spaces within the colonial context where the ability to understand what is happening is recurrently and threateningly disturbed,” she writes.
Whether such failures of recognition result in uncanniness, paranoia, misprision, panic, physical violence, or (most frequently) a dangerous combination of all of these, they must be understood as something other than a temporary sense of disorientation.
Native Americans often bore the brunt of the colonists’ mental dislocation. As an example, Donegan describes the actions of George Percy, the governor of Jamestown who presided over the colony’s worst months—the “Starving Time” of 1609-10. Eventually, as tensions with the neighboring Paspahegh escalated into open conflict, Percy, trying to send a message, “threw Indian children into the James River and shot their brains out as they were trying to swim ashore.”
Mental dislocation, extreme survival conditions, failures of epistemology and faith—these are perfect starting points for a horror movie. Let’s leave behind the impulse to do perfect historical fact-checking of The Witch, and look instead at the way the movie evokes, with scary psychological precision, this “chaos zone.”
Isolation
The family in The Witch is utterly alone. When brother Caleb is lost in the wood, along with their dog, gun, and horse, the parents realize they can rely on no one else to find him, since the plantation they left is so far away (a day’s ride by horse). “From the very point of initiation,” Donegan writes, “England’s overseas colonies could instantly be cut loose from protection, alliance, or any means of belonging to the home country. Settlers at Roanoke were... shocked when supply ships failed to come to their aid, but abandonment was literally written into their constitution.” William and Katherine have chosen to live apart from their fellow colonists, and at the beginning of the movie, this independence seems like bliss; they smile toward the woods, alone in the clearing where they will build their farm. When they desperately need help, it’s too late.
Looked at from this perspective, the absence of Native Americans (they are visible only in the very first few minutes of the movie, and mentioned twice by William and Katherine) cements this forsaken feeling. The Native Americans around Plymouth died in tremendous numbers in the years after colonization. Donegan writes that these deaths, as well as the withdrawal of the remaining Wampanoag and Massachusett (who were rightfully wary of the English intruders after they did things like mount the head of Massachusett warrior Witawamut on a pike on their fort), left the Pilgrims bewildered and alone, without trading partners, in the decade after they arrived. The empty woods in The Witch, populated only by supernatural beings, offer no human fellow-feeling at all. The historical parallel is probably not intentional, but it works.
Hunger
The Witch unfolds as the family starts to fear the winter. The initial deception that drives a wedge between Katherine and Thomasin comes about because William trades away Katherine’s treasured silver wine cup in order to get traps to supplement their failing crops (then lets Katherine believe Thomasin lost it). As things start going wrong, and the tension builds, the children lie awake in the attic, their eyes wide and staring, listening to their parents argue. Hunger was a persistent presence at Roanoke, Jamestown and Plymouth, and was the shadow factor that caused so many of the colonists’ other problems: disease, internal enmities, bitter conflicts with Native Americans. Likewise, hunger dogs the narrative in The Witch.
Death
The colony at Plymouth lost half of its people in the winter of 1623. “In two or three months’ time half of their company died, especially in January and February, being the depth of winter, and wanting houses and other comforts; being infected with the scurvy and other diseases which this long voyage and their inaccommodate condition had brought upon them,” wrote Plymouth Colony leader William Bradford. “So as there died some times two or three of a day in the foresaid time, that of 100 and odd persons, scarce fifty remained.” The mortality rate had a profound effect on the social fabric of the colony. “Only three of eighteen married couples survived intact. All of the colony’s principal men—William Bradford, Miles Standish, Isaac Allerton, and Edward Winslow—were widowed. Only two families did not suffer a loss,” Donegan writes.
The Witch starts with the bizarre and unexplained subtraction of a child—the infant Samuel, who is whisked away into the woods with supernatural quickness. In their curtained bed, William consoles Katherine, who can’t stop crying and praying. He reminds her that they have been lucky: they’ve never lost a child. The movie is about to take away all of their family members, one by one; by its end, Thomasin is left in the woods by herself. The strangeness of some of these losses—Sam, taken; Caleb, bewitched; Jonas and Mercy, apparently killed, though we never see their bodies—is matched only by their relentless progression. Donegan acknowledges that people in England were used to their family members dying, by plague, disease, or accident. But English colonists suffered these losses in the middle of the forest, without the larger web of social comforts to sustain them. Thomasin, alone at the dark cabin’s table, is the last of all her family, and without any ties at all.
Homesickness
One reason mainstream audiences may be having trouble really loving The Witch is that the characters speak in thick English accents, using archaic syntax. They are, relatively speaking, fresh off the boat. It shows in the way their thoughts turn back to previous days. Katherine and Thomasin, especially, are homesick for England. Thomasin tries to get Caleb to reminisce with her about the glass windows they had in their house back home, asking him to remember how their dog Fowler used to lie on the floor in the sun (Given the hunger the family is suffering, and the imminent death of the dog, her memory of her father’s joke when Fowler hopped up on the table in their English home—“We will have him for meat!”—is all the more poignant.) Thomasin also remembers English apples, and longs for one; when the bewitched Caleb throws up a perfect Red Delicious, glistening with blood, its physical presence in their wretched home is the perfect cursed answer to this wish.
Loss of faith and personal identity
For English colonists who came to Virginia or Massachusetts without an explicit religious mission, the feeling of being set loose from England—with all of the strictures and comforts that implied—was sometimes terrifying. For the people who came to Massachusetts for religious reasons, the colony’s early failures sorely tested their faith. “The threat of becoming a corpse abandoned in the wilderness was not only a material concern for the Plymouth colonists; it was also a typological nightmare,” writes Donegan, referring to the story of the wandering Israelites who, doubting the bounty of the land of Canaan, were cursed by God for their disbelief. People in Plymouth must have wondered: Are we dying because we didn’t trust God?
The failures of the farm, and the successive deaths of the family members, cause parents and the older children to question their own status in God’s eyes. For Katherine, it’s the worst; she once had a strong sense of God’s love, and, with the disappearance of Samuel, it departs from her. Caleb worries that he is going to hell; when he dies, bewitched and screaming about the presence of Jesus, his parents are left to wonder whether he is truly in heaven, or whether his final words were a mocking burlesque of religious fervor, placed in his mouth by the witch who killed him. And William dies stripped of his own sense of worthiness as a Christian and as a patriarch, buried in the huge woodpile he has built up alongside the house—the only thing he has been able to provide for his family.
So. Is The Witch scary? I didn’t jump. Is it historically accurate? Maybe not in the strictest sense. But it got the mindset of America’s lonely, desperate early settlers exactly right.
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Since Caleb brings up the use of nursing homes as target-rich environments by Taker gangs, and the overall architectural theme of the Brutalists so far, I thought you might appreciate this as a possible location: http://www.hartmutwilkening.de/Hartmut_Wilkening/Foucault_project_in_nursing_home_building.html (http://www.hartmutwilkening.de/Hartmut_Wilkening/Foucault_project_in_nursing_home_building.html)
(http://www.dvhn.nl/images/bh2ul4-B82910516Z.1_20150210191540_000GDJIDTF2.2.jpg/ALTERNATES/WIDE_768/B82910516Z.1_20150210191540_000+GDJIDTF2.2.jpg)
The De Burcht nursing home is notable for not only having a panopticon design (making it a pretty good environment for security-minded folk such as Takers, great lines of visibility!) but it also features a prominent statue of Foucault, the theoretician who concocted the panopticon design in the first place.
Downside, it's Dutch rather than MURRKAN but that's easily altered when adapting it to your game. Perhaps you're staging a raid on it, but it honestly strikes me as a pretty solid base for an enclave.
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So there's a mall complex in my hometown that was built before the housing crisis and subsequently abandoned when half the companies involved went under, and after nearly a decade of sitting out off the freeway while the city desperately offers grants to any company that will agree to sign into a rejuvenation deal, it looks like a pretty great Red Markets enclave/job location.
(https://sachomes.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/egmall.jpg)
Good sightlines all around and lots of space for farming. I can even picture an open-air bazaar lining "main street" between the big buildings.
(http://cdn.patch.com/users/65109/2013/06/T800x600/f091b037e15036294142ce2de79123d2.jpg)
Act now and get a free chainlink fence around the entire complex!
(http://www.thecrcconnection.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/EG-Mall-900x600.jpg)
No walls or insulation of any kind anywhere so the survivors will have to get creative and roll up their sleeves to make the place livable in the long-term. If only there was a massive suburb with multiple department stores nearby...
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Le-CLLjKxw8/UvF_TjpTrNI/AAAAAAAAUE0/18HHSoJZMV0/s1600/Promenade+005.jpg)
I have no fucking idea what this thing is, it just looked post-apocalyptic to me.
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Well, if we're going with local..
Leeds Girls High School (http://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/main/misc-sites/31269-leeds-girls-school-june-2015-a.html#.Vwk4wTArLIU) is where my older sister went to school. It's original building is a 1900's brick and tile school in the leafy borough of Headingley, and the school consistently scored amongst the highest in the region academically. The school had several buildings, with the Senior School and Rose Court (the infant school) situated on Headingley Lane while the Junior School set up shop a mile down the road in a converted manor, Ford House.
In 2005 the LGHS administration formed a merger with the administration Leeds Grammar School (my school) and the student populations were physically merged in 2008, moving to the LGS's more modern campus to the north of the city in Alwoodley Gates. Together they are now The Grammar School At Leeds which, I agree, is a terrible name.
But this does mean there's a 1900's era former school sitting surrounded by grass and trees, going pretty much unused. A TV company did spruce a bit of it up in 2010 to use as a set for a medical drama, turning it into the fictional Saint Matthews Hospital. This means that, yes, it is both an abandoned school AND an abandoned hospital.
(http://i1144.photobucket.com/albums/o494/lavino71/Leeds%20Girls%20High%20School/Leeds%20Girls%20High%20School%20Lavino%20114_zpsao0uqc8b.jpg)
Gosh, that's not even slightly haunted.
(http://i1144.photobucket.com/albums/o494/lavino71/Leeds%20Girls%20High%20School/Leeds%20Girls%20High%20School%20Lavino%20090_zpsb0m0bzwt.jpg)
Oh good.
(http://www.proj3ctm4yh3m.com/urbex/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/LeedsGirlsHighSchool-21.jpg)
Oh good.
(http://www.proj3ctm4yh3m.com/urbex/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/LeedsGirlsHighSchool-34.jpg)
(http://i1144.photobucket.com/albums/o494/lavino71/Leeds%20Girls%20High%20School/Leeds%20Girls%20High%20School%20Lavino%20056_zpsa6wezq4q.jpg)
"Fire the missiles, children."
(http://www.proj3ctm4yh3m.com/urbex/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/RoseCourtInfants-17.jpg)
This is Rose Court, where the 3-7 year olds were entombedrolled.
(http://www.proj3ctm4yh3m.com/urbex/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/RoseCourtInfants-14.jpg)
This is where we keep the little ones..
(http://www.proj3ctm4yh3m.com/urbex/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/LeedsGirlsHighSchool-18.jpg)
(http://www.proj3ctm4yh3m.com/urbex/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/LeedsGirlsHighSchool-19.jpg)
Remember how this used to be a location for a medical drama? Well, it also used to be a school that taught things like chemistry. So have fun figuring out what's real and what's a prop.
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Because that's not creepy at all...
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Listening to The Brutalists, and the bit where they put a gun on the El Camino reminded me of this:
LIBYAN BATTLE TRUCKS (http://jamesmollison.com/photography/libya-trucks/)
(http://jamesmollison.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/abc_Abdul-Waled-Crop1.jpg) (http://jamesmollison.com/photography/libya-trucks/abdul-40-and-waled-31-near-ajdabiya-libya/)
(http://jamesmollison.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/abc_Hammad-Safe-Crop1.jpg) (http://jamesmollison.com/photography/libya-trucks/libyan-battle-trucks/)
(http://jamesmollison.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/abc_Salah-Crop1.jpg) (http://jamesmollison.com/photography/libya-trucks/libyan-battle-trucks-2/)
(http://jamesmollison.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/abc_Waled-Muhamed-Crop1.jpg) (http://jamesmollison.com/photography/libya-trucks/libyan-battle-trucks-3/)
(http://jamesmollison.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Muhamed-Kalifa-0536.jpg) (http://jamesmollison.com/photography/libya-trucks/muhammed-and-kalifa-near-ajdabiya-libya/)
(http://jamesmollison.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Libya-trucks-v-sign.jpg) (http://jamesmollison.com/photography/libya-trucks/muhamme/)
(http://jamesmollison.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Libya-CF053389.jpg) (http://jamesmollison.com/photography/libya-trucks/muhammed-ali/)
(http://jamesmollison.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Libya-CF053358.jpg) (http://jamesmollison.com/photography/libya-trucks/fathallah-and-moftah-near-ajdabiya-libya/)
And I gotta say, Muhammad is rocking that gas-mask-and-dreadlocks look.
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Libyan battle trucks.
This shit is amazing. Looking forwards to the inevitable Osprey book on the conflict with these pictures plus illustrations by Angus McBride.
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Really dig those photos. I need to put some technicals into Fallen Flag.
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(http://i.imgur.com/oNtU5.jpg)
As promised Murder Dronkey
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I really want to see a Dronkey with long, heavy-duty, barding being used as mobile cover from raiders and such.
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Like Mec Troops in Xcom Enemy Within? That'd be cool. Red Markets is one of the few games where it is hugely beneficial to send an unmanned recon unit in first.
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Radioactive, I love Panopticon buildings so much for Red Markets. Another good one is the Presidio Modelo in Cuba.
(http://i2.wp.com/mindware.ru/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Presidio_Modelo-Cuba.jpg?resize=1020%2C683)
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Tiny shantytown on an island in Lake Victoria. Up to 1500 live in it.
(http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/09/14/article-2203467-1503078C000005DC-328_966x647.jpg)
Mokoko, the floating city of Lagos, if you want to live somewhere that's less cramped.
(http://lh4.ggpht.com/-uvKA4wsXUpo/U06LAYccsoI/AAAAAAAAxho/8rQCz8exW_Q/makoko-14%25255B9%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800)
A LOT less cramped!
(http://assets2.thecreatorsproject.com/content-images/contentimage/no-slug/c54146a87b455906609ffd3aa3b42345.jpg)
I noticed in the Brutalists that there has been some significant climate change in the Red Markets 'Verse, so maybe some people on the West Coast decided to stay, water levels be damned? That, or someone decided to try and colonize Lake Michigan. Those lake pirates have to raid something, after all.
Also, ships for the artistic pirate in us all.
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_com8AsQH0zU/TGgIE4vCRDI/AAAAAAAAAeQ/eRRGJlOcZ6w/s1600/Picture+6.png)
(http://static.squarespace.com/static/51b79387e4b06b939d343f1c/51b80310e4b0fa90afcb1e28/51b80370e4b0fa90afcb2c01/1371014000589/dsc04849_maria1.jpg?format=original)
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Libyan battle trucks.
This shit is amazing. Looking forwards to the inevitable Osprey book on the conflict with these pictures plus illustrations by Angus McBride.
In the meantime, Osprey has this:
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5115UWaCuqL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)
Vietnam Gun Trucks (https://ospreypublishing.com/vietnam-gun-trucks)
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As a central Californian I've occasionally wondered how the Bay area has been faring in Red Markets with regards to water levels, especially the delta area. I love the idea of Taker barges floating from Sac to San Fran and having to steer clear of Casualty mobs stuck in deep muck and water.
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I could see an optional part of the loss - lower Florida. Miami is already sinking into the ocean basically and in 20 years, it will either be like Venice or an empty ruin. They cut the fence through upper Florida and abandon everything south of it. Takers scavenge through Miami, Disney World, and the Keys.
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I could see an optional part of the loss - lower Florida. Miami is already sinking into the ocean basically and in 20 years, it will either be like Venice or an empty ruin. They cut the fence through upper Florida and abandon everything south of it. Takers scavenge through Miami, Disney World, and the Keys.
This is one of those fantastic lore ideas that is both plausible and fucking hilarious.
I'm just imagining some DHQS planners looking at a map of Florida and going
(http://images.thehollywoodgossip.com/iu/s--fXtb57fw--/t_full/f_auto,fl_lossy,q_75/v1430859675/bugs-bunny-saws-off-florida.gif)
"It's easier for everyone!"
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TBH when you mentioned knots of zombies my mind immediately went to grenade fishing.
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What about the deep Northeast, like Maine? Too isolated to barricade efficiently.
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Probably also isolated enough that folks wouldn't necessarily be surrounded by Vectors when the Crash happens and would have time to get to an isolated compound or pack up their car and start moving.
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Example of animals repopulating after a man made apoc.
Wildlife reclaiming and even thriving in the Chernobyl Exclusion zone 30 years later.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/060418-chernobyl-wildlife-thirty-year-anniversary-science/ (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/060418-chernobyl-wildlife-thirty-year-anniversary-science/)
Naturally if vectors leave the local fauna alone (and don't serve as vectors for more mundane animal diseases) this scenario could happen in the Loss eventually.
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I missed the Beta, and wanted to get in on the fun, SO i got creative recently. I created a Dread one-shot based off of it and recently got the chance to run about an hour and a half of it with some friends. It was pretty fun. To see what I made I'll post the google doc link below.
My thoughts: Dread is a great system for tension, which is similar to the goal of Caleb's design of playing against the Market and economic horror. The deck is stacked against you. However the Scale of Red Markets is FAR FAR beyond Dread's framework.
I based it in Minneapolis, since I'm from there, and I wanted to, as a creative exercise figure out how that MIGHT work within the Red Markets universe.
Deviations from standard dread: Because I don't own the Dread Rulebook, (though you kind of don't need one if you like to design your own rules), I deviated from the standard Character Questionnaire Handouts to save on time. I created unique secret goals. And since I like to make more work for myself I created character with unique Dread related abilities, that worked to... varying success. Some not at all. Some VERY successful. Some... I didn't see coming at all.
Summery:
I had them select characters (7 in all) secret goals and vote on a leader. The sheriff ended up getting elected the leader. There was only one traitor in the group but it never got to that. The game began as they left out the gates of the enclave. They sent the runner ahead to distract the zombies, while they charged out. While the Runner was on his own he checked out an abandoned drugstore looking for any opiates or painkillers. There was nothing of use. All expired. Almost got killed by a zombie, but took it out with his crowbar. He made the rendez-vous, but the group waited for him. Which allowed Casualties to catch up to them. The leader wanted to just run away, but the Outsider had the Slayer goal, so he wanted to get his kill count up. So he and the Leader each made pulls and the Runner pulled for the group running.
They chose to walk through the snowy streets instead of the casualty infested Skyway. This is why they encountered a sniper bandit who had been tracking them from a high perch on a crane. The mechanic found some makeshift cover then led the group into a department store. Among the manikins some casualties began shuffling through. This was a great moment because one player COMPLETELY forgot his genre saavy and suggested they hide in clothing wracks. The Sage pulled to determine if it was safer to fight their way out, or to hole up in a dressing room. If they'd stayed and hid they'd end up doing more pulls because it would be to Hide and then sneak away later. Running and fighting just yielded more upfront. They ran and fight. ( should have made this scene WAY harder)
Getting free of the department store they were back on the street. They spy some gang tags of a rival group that is still making and selling heroine in the Loss. This attracted the Networker (who was the addict) and the Runner (the angel of mercy). They followed it to a car which was the gang's secretly marked "cache". They broke in, but had to contend with a booby-trap. They succeeded, and managed to get two backpacks of drugs and 3 Bounty. The Sage (who had the Tax Man goal) heard that and wanted to get ahold of the bounty. He was metagaming the hell out of it but the outcome was SO worth it. When they got back the group demanded that the Runner show the stash. He hid the drugs, but the Sage wanted the bounty and PvP between teh Sage and the Runner began.
They did maybe 14 pulls on an already ludicrously balanced tower. They used their mechanical ability. I was really impressed that sage was able to stand up to the Runner mechanically and it worked out so well. The tower looked like an insane child skeleton of jenga blocks when finally the tower fell as the runner made his last pull. I ruled that the Sage and the Runner were wrestling for the backpack and in the struggle, the sage shoved the Runner onto nasty spike through the head.
It was late so we called it there.
Successes: Tension. Man the tension worked so well. I got people thinking about what their next move was, what was safe and what would carry the least risk. The mechanic, had the power to pull blocks and put them back in, and an actual Mechanic played this role and he was AMAZING. He put loose blocks from the upper tower then placed them in lower tiers where the tower was weak. This one was a surprising success. The Sage's ability could work, but requires lots of tweaking. The Runner's power was STRAIGHT UP overpowering. He did maybe 80 to 90 percent of pulls, but he was the first character (and only character) to die before we had to call it a night. The Outsider worked exactly as I hoped. It reduced a few multiple pulls to just 2. He was combo'd with the Runner and Mechanic several times. And it accomplished my goal of making the tower harder, and they mechanically distrusted the player. Only drawback is you need a more gun-ho player.
Failures: The Leader role is not... ideal. It could not be working OR i just didn't push the group as a whole enough. I should scrap it. It rarely made a real impact. Networker worked... but it may not be effective. I should have done more group pulls where everyone has to pull 1 or 2. That is the only way I think i can make it work. Some abilities i think i would scrap altogether. The taxman had too high of a goal. I think i should make the goal 3 and its represented by a block for each. Which means they have the ability to either spend for a pull OR hold onto it until the end of the game, a good thematic conflict were I to do this ever again.
Feel free to read through. It was a noble experiment. I don't know if I'll do it again, but it was ultimately a fun way to introduce Dread AND Red Markets to some friends.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10KNDUnhiCGcrH5FHqWwhLNrWMWiOiwDhKYD7gwIzkzc/edit?usp=sharing
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Wilzuma: That sounds cool! It's tough to get the emphasis on expending resources and tracking costs that's so central to Red Markets if you're using a single-mechanic system like Dread (that's why Caleb wrote his own system, after all!). But it sounds like you had a really cool game. I especially like how you added roles with special powers to the standard Dread system. It might be tough to balance house rules like that, but I do think Dread is an imminently hackable game.
In case you didn't know, I ran Dread for the RPPR crew once: http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/2015/10/genre/horror/dread-moonbase-red/ (http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/2015/10/genre/horror/dread-moonbase-red/) I too used secret agendas to build in some conflict, and used a house rule that allowed players to spend accumulated blocks to get freebie successes (this was mostly to include more proactive play instead of having players avoid making pulls, and to help me track spotlight time).
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So, I had this idea for a job where a group of scientists are trying to "track" Casualties the way you would track the migratory patterns of wild animals; "tag and release" subjects. The idea is to map out "herds" in the area so that enclaves and travellers have plenty of warning about local populations (a kind of weather forecast), but there might be a slightly twisted ideology underneath of a kind of "mild Meekism" where they don't believe zombies are the chosen, but ARE a valid new life form to be treated as you would any sort of wildlife. Perhaps the data might also be useful to better understand the Blight and what it makes people do in aggregate.
In more practical terms, this translates to a variant of a dead drive using special equipment provided by the scientists; essentially this would be harpoons with embedded trackers. (Who doesn't love harpoon guns?) The Takers have to score as many centre-mass shots with these harpoons as possible (since being skewered through the torso apparently doesn't upset Casualties) and then lure the tagged Casualties into a nearby herd. Ideally, you then get away safely, of course. There would probably be a base rate of pay assuming a certain number of successfully tagged subjects (say, 10) with bonuses for more successfully tagged (since more subjects means more data, which means better data). Importantly, you don't kill the Casualties and you certainly don't kill the herd.
My idea for a complication on this job would be the encountering of a small Black Math cell, who want to Black Math all over the place. Kill all zombies means totally ruining the scientist's data; short term thinking leading to long term problems as it stays difficult to safely travel through the area.
This also has potential to become a job line to the tune of "hey, a bunch of zombies are heading to this enclave, drive them in a new direction!" or "hey, a bunch of zombies are massing in weird places - go check it out!"
Thoughts?
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So, I had this idea for a job where a group of scientists are trying to "track" Casualties the way you would track the migratory patterns of wild animals; "tag and release" subjects. The idea is to map out "herds" in the area so that enclaves and travellers have plenty of warning about local populations (a kind of weather forecast), but there might be a slightly twisted ideology underneath of a kind of "mild Meekism" where they don't believe zombies are the chosen, but ARE a valid new life form to be treated as you would any sort of wildlife. Perhaps the data might also be useful to better understand the Blight and what it makes people do in aggregate.
In more practical terms, this translates to a variant of a dead drive using special equipment provided by the scientists; essentially this would be harpoons with embedded trackers. (Who doesn't love harpoon guns?) The Takers have to score as many centre-mass shots with these harpoons as possible (since being skewered through the torso apparently doesn't upset Casualties) and then lure the tagged Casualties into a nearby herd. Ideally, you then get away safely, of course. There would probably be a base rate of pay assuming a certain number of successfully tagged subjects (say, 10) with bonuses for more successfully tagged (since more subjects means more data, which means better data). Importantly, you don't kill the Casualties and you certainly don't kill the herd.
My idea for a complication on this job would be the encountering of a small Black Math cell, who want to Black Math all over the place. Kill all zombies means totally ruining the scientist's data; short term thinking leading to long term problems as it stays difficult to safely travel through the area.
This also has potential to become a job line to the tune of "hey, a bunch of zombies are heading to this enclave, drive them in a new direction!" or "hey, a bunch of zombies are massing in weird places - go check it out!"
Thoughts?
I've had some ideas about this as well; given enough data (Geography of infrastructure, death reports and population listings, tendencies of Casualties to congregate in certain areas based on misfiring leftover memories, etc) I imagine you could build a theoretical model of "zombie weather" in the same way meteorologists do. Such predictions would be invaluable to Takers and anyone else in the Loss.
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I've had some ideas about this as well; given enough data (Geography of infrastructure, death reports and population listings, tendencies of Casualties to congregate in certain areas based on misfiring leftover memories, etc) I imagine you could build a theoretical model of "zombie weather" in the same way meteorologists do. Such predictions would be invaluable to Takers and anyone else in the Loss.
The weather is a great way to think about zombies; I think the best zombie fiction treats them as environmental hazards rather that quote-unquote monsters. You have your spike pits, your death traps, and your zombies. Same category.
I think it's important for the horror to keep the predictive power of this sort of thing kind of vague and inconsistent - room for error, not all hordes having tags in them yet - so there's still room for the "suddenly, a horde!" moment that you really need in a zombie game every now and then. Plus, I imagine the practice would actively be hampered by other Takers who reason "why not just KILL them and make the roads safe that way?", even if they're not Black Math religious zombie killers. This means you'd likely have your data points dropping out or becoming unreliable due to outside interference, so you need to keep going out and tagging herds.
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Wilzuma: That sounds cool! It's tough to get the emphasis on expending resources and tracking costs that's so central to Red Markets if you're using a single-mechanic system like Dread (that's why Caleb wrote his own system, after all!). But it sounds like you had a really cool game. I especially like how you added roles with special powers to the standard Dread system. It might be tough to balance house rules like that, but I do think Dread is an imminently hackable game.
In case you didn't know, I ran Dread for the RPPR crew once: http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/2015/10/genre/horror/dread-moonbase-red/ (http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/2015/10/genre/horror/dread-moonbase-red/) I too used secret agendas to build in some conflict, and used a house rule that allowed players to spend accumulated blocks to get freebie successes (this was mostly to include more proactive play instead of having players avoid making pulls, and to help me track spotlight time).
That game is where I got the idea to run this dread game. ;-)
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Wilzuma: That sounds cool! It's tough to get the emphasis on expending resources and tracking costs that's so central to Red Markets if you're using a single-mechanic system like Dread (that's why Caleb wrote his own system, after all!). But it sounds like you had a really cool game. I especially like how you added roles with special powers to the standard Dread system. It might be tough to balance house rules like that, but I do think Dread is an imminently hackable game.
In case you didn't know, I ran Dread for the RPPR crew once: http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/2015/10/genre/horror/dread-moonbase-red/ (http://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/2015/10/genre/horror/dread-moonbase-red/) I too used secret agendas to build in some conflict, and used a house rule that allowed players to spend accumulated blocks to get freebie successes (this was mostly to include more proactive play instead of having players avoid making pulls, and to help me track spotlight time).
That game is where I got the idea to run this dread game. ;-)
Aw, now ya makin' me blush!
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So, I had this idea for a job where a group of scientists are trying to "track" Casualties the way you would track the migratory patterns of wild animals; "tag and release" subjects. The idea is to map out "herds" in the area so that enclaves and travellers have plenty of warning about local populations (a kind of weather forecast), but there might be a slightly twisted ideology underneath of a kind of "mild Meekism" where they don't believe zombies are the chosen, but ARE a valid new life form to be treated as you would any sort of wildlife. Perhaps the data might also be useful to better understand the Blight and what it makes people do in aggregate.
In more practical terms, this translates to a variant of a dead drive using special equipment provided by the scientists; essentially this would be harpoons with embedded trackers. (Who doesn't love harpoon guns?) The Takers have to score as many centre-mass shots with these harpoons as possible (since being skewered through the torso apparently doesn't upset Casualties) and then lure the tagged Casualties into a nearby herd. Ideally, you then get away safely, of course. There would probably be a base rate of pay assuming a certain number of successfully tagged subjects (say, 10) with bonuses for more successfully tagged (since more subjects means more data, which means better data). Importantly, you don't kill the Casualties and you certainly don't kill the herd.
My idea for a complication on this job would be the encountering of a small Black Math cell, who want to Black Math all over the place. Kill all zombies means totally ruining the scientist's data; short term thinking leading to long term problems as it stays difficult to safely travel through the area.
This also has potential to become a job line to the tune of "hey, a bunch of zombies are heading to this enclave, drive them in a new direction!" or "hey, a bunch of zombies are massing in weird places - go check it out!"
Thoughts?
That's a great idea. And for more personal tension, play up the detachment of the scientists, who live in the Recession and have the luxury of seeing the Casualties as subjects to be studied rather than immediate threats of death. Maybe they also insist that the Takers wear trackers on themselves, just in case they get bitten and join the herd.
Or maybe for a secondary complication, the tagging process isn't actually the real experiment -- it's actually a social behavior experiment studying the responses of the Takers themselves as the scientists ask them to do stranger and more dangerous things. Homo Sacer, after all, make excellent test subjects -- especially since they don't have any human rights or anything.
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Maybe they also insist that the Takers wear trackers on themselves, just in case they get bitten and join the herd.
Oof, that's grim, I love it. I can imagine if there's a Latent in the party that all eyes just kind of awkwardly turn in their direction... ("I mean, you're most of the way there already?")
Or maybe for a secondary complication, the tagging process isn't actually the real experiment -- it's actually a social behavior experiment studying the responses of the Takers themselves as the scientists ask them to do stranger and more dangerous things. Homo Sacer, after all, make excellent test subjects -- especially since they don't have any human rights or anything.
I'm sure there could be some social scientists studying "the Taker subculture" or the economic desperation of the the Loss ("no really, what would you do for a Klondike bar?")
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My invented umbrella term for scientists who study Casualties, from the biologists trying to figure out how the fuck the Blight works to the sociologists who try to map Casualty migration and even psychologists studying cases of depression and PTSD among Latents, is "Neo-Thanatologist".
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I'm not sure if anyone has shared this before but as it has been popping up on my social feed, and it felt like it was quite directly related to Red Market's setting, Chernobyl, 30 years on.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/30-years-chernobyl-disaster-live-shadow-suffer-consequences/story?id=38678417
Or perhaps a little more to the period of 5 years like Red Markets, the Fukushima evacuation, which has been 5 years.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/12182635/Return-to-Fukushima.html
http://en.ozonweb.com/photography/fukushima
Chris
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defensive architecture: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-subtle-design-features-that-make-cities-feel-more-hostile (http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-subtle-design-features-that-make-cities-feel-more-hostile)
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"The Subtle Design Features That Make Cities Feel More Hostile"
(http://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/28445/image.jpg)
um :V
(The caption does admit it's completely unsubtle, but I thought it was funny regardless)
Good article, makes me wonder what sort of "hostile architecture" one might design to support humans and hinder zombies--not just the usual anti-zombie defenses, but with the same philosophy of park benches that people can still sit on but can't be used as beds by the homeless.
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defensive architecture: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-subtle-design-features-that-make-cities-feel-more-hostile (http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-subtle-design-features-that-make-cities-feel-more-hostile)
Venetian Renaissance Fortifications in the Mediterranean
https://books.google.com/books?id=ke07CwAAQBAJ&dq=osprey+venetian+defensive+forts (https://books.google.com/books?id=ke07CwAAQBAJ&dq=osprey+venetian+defensive+forts)
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More Car Porn. Vrooom vrooom!
(http://i.imgur.com/kQWDydq.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/Y9R8E87.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/VwtkFdY.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/9RFxhhJ.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/o1pIgpK.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/o5QdFeB.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/Rac4gsN.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/0SszwJl.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/801e5Zo.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/WeLkz9z.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/rg6b45S.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/EhmvZ77.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/C1tO2vL.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/bDkbX5w.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/BYTCQRB.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/UG5tWNq.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/fEfqVTh.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/lwk0hGe.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/c6dlpvk.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/djwCAbt.jpg)
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This may be getting away from Red Market's aesthetics but, Mad Max cosplay:
https://vimeo.com/162418675
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This movie's a couple years old, but I just saw it and thought of Red Markets:
http://youtu.be/ChM2icbWo9w (http://youtu.be/ChM2icbWo9w)
I'll tell you what God's given you. He's put a bullet in you and he's abandoned you out here to me. He feels nothing for you. He couldn't give a fuck if you died tomorrow. God gave you a brother who's not waiting for you. He gave you a brother who's not even thinking about you right now. Just 'cause you and him came out of the same woman's hole... The only thing that means anything right now is that I'm here and he's not. Your brother left you to die. That's what people do. You don't learn to fight, your death's going to come real soon.
What feeling do you have when you wake up in the morning? When your feet touch the floor? Or before that, when you're lying there thinking about your feet hitting the floor. Do you know what I'm talking about?
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Caleb reviewed the Rover in this episode http://slangdesign.com/rppr/2014/07/podcast-episode/rppr-episode-102-rules-fetish/ (http://slangdesign.com/rppr/2014/07/podcast-episode/rppr-episode-102-rules-fetish/)
I later saw it. It is quite Red Markets.
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Caleb reviewed the Rover in this episode http://slangdesign.com/rppr/2014/07/podcast-episode/rppr-episode-102-rules-fetish/ (http://slangdesign.com/rppr/2014/07/podcast-episode/rppr-episode-102-rules-fetish/)
I later saw it. It is quite Red Markets.
And I probably have listened to that episode and forgot. I grabbed it on a whim at a local video rental place, along with Extinction starring Jeffrey Donovan & Matthew Fox, wondering if they were going to suck. Turns out half my fears came true.
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Hey Caleb. Have you ever seen Swimming With Sharks?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114594/ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114594/)
First of all, it is a stellar black comedy.
Secondly it just occurred to me that there is a lot of overlap between the vicious office politics/extreme capitalism and the "my way or we blow up what you want" negotiations Takers engage in on a regular basis.
An idle thought.
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Caleb reviewed the Rover in this episode http://slangdesign.com/rppr/2014/07/podcast-episode/rppr-episode-102-rules-fetish/ (http://slangdesign.com/rppr/2014/07/podcast-episode/rppr-episode-102-rules-fetish/)
I later saw it. It is quite Red Markets.
And I probably have listened to that episode and forgot. I grabbed it on a whim at a local video rental place, along with Extinction starring Jeffrey Donovan & Matthew Fox, wondering if they were going to suck. Turns out half my fears came true.
Is anyone else somehow horrified that there is still a "local video rental place." I thought they went extinct at this point. Not one left in the Twin Cities Metro. Are you sure taht wasn't an abandoned building you went into and came out with dvd's? Are you sure that the video store isn't Carcosa Video?
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Is anyone else somehow horrified that there is still a "local video rental place." I thought they went extinct at this point. Not one left in the Twin Cities Metro. Are you sure taht wasn't an abandoned building you went into and came out with dvd's? Are you sure that the video store isn't Carcosa Video?
Nope (https://www.facebook.com/audiovideocentreottawawellington/), whats more, it's a new video rental place, been in business for less than a year, popped up between a record shop and a pho restaurant. It's also not the only video rental place in town, there's a place in another neighbourhood that's been around since the heyday of VHS.
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An artist on deviant art who goes by the name 5ofnovember has this personal project "To the North" with a bunch of evocative post apoc art.
(http://i.imgur.com/EwNhmob.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/knH42l4.jpg)
http://filipdudek80.wix.com/tothenorth (http://filipdudek80.wix.com/tothenorth)
http://5ofnovember.deviantart.com/ (http://5ofnovember.deviantart.com/)
Just found this guy today.
http://yu2673.blogspot.ru/2014/06/work-in-progress.html (http://yu2673.blogspot.ru/2014/06/work-in-progress.html)
http://yu2673.deviantart.com/ (http://yu2673.deviantart.com/)
These are for an upcoming Russian mmo R.2028
(http://i.imgur.com/s8lKMcB.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/ImOUd7K.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/ufp4Y6R.jpg)
And this is from someone else!
(http://i.imgur.com/hcowpHL.jpg)
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The Red Markets Kickstarter is up!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/159466030/red-markets (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/159466030/red-markets)
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I remember back during the beta test, there was some question about how near future the game was going to be set, and how advanced of a replacement prosthesis could be reasonably used. This seems like a good place to put this:
http://www.iflscience.com/technology/amputee-gamer-gets-bionic-arm-inspired-metal-gear-solid (http://www.iflscience.com/technology/amputee-gamer-gets-bionic-arm-inspired-metal-gear-solid)
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Once the end comes would this family be the boss Hogg, or first on the pyre ... https://theconservativetreehouse.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/prepper-1.jpg (https://theconservativetreehouse.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/prepper-1.jpg)
Also do a google image search for "Prepper vehicles" ...
Though really wouldn't a good mountain bike be a viable choice - relatively good on multiple surfaces, quiet, fast (ish), no fuel requirement .... Check out this photo of a "rail bike" from I wanna say the 20's http://fcdn.mtbr.com/attachments/29er-bikes/594125d1296173810-rail-bike-riding-railing.jpg (http://fcdn.mtbr.com/attachments/29er-bikes/594125d1296173810-rail-bike-riding-railing.jpg) for a logical adaptation.
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Also do a google image search for "Prepper vehicles" ...
It's like Mad Max cosplay only they hope think it will come true.
Though really wouldn't a good mountain bike be a viable choice - relatively good on multiple surfaces, quiet, fast (ish), no fuel requirement ....
(https://cnet3.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2015/01/28/9aa9956c-5b68-4676-af61-d5472d277f6c/resize/970xauto/742cf0b47b7f177b60b9c1ccd66496ce/turbo-kid-skeletron.jpg) (http://www.cnet.com/news/mad-max-on-a-bmx-turbo-kid-is-an-80s-kids-adventure-with-added-gore-and-it-looks-epic/)
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Groin protection being the most important element I think.
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Groin protection being the most important element I think.
(http://www.fanboynation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Turbo-Kid-Skeltron.jpg)
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So in episode 10 of the Brutalists AP, Caleb talks about "blueprints" with embedded 3D models that can be viewed with specs. For anyone who has trouble picturing that, I thought I'd share the present-day inspiration for that idea here:
http://youtu.be/0p0eKdBKFkg (http://youtu.be/0p0eKdBKFkg)
Skip ahead to 4:52 to see the embedded model being used.
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defensive architecture: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-subtle-design-features-that-make-cities-feel-more-hostile (http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-subtle-design-features-that-make-cities-feel-more-hostile)
99% Invisible has just put up a podcast on that subject: Unpleasant Design & Hostile Urban Architecture (http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/unpleasant-design-hostile-urban-architecture/)
And actually they did a podcast about the same subject matter four years ago: The Arsenal of Exclusion (http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-51-the-arsenal-of-exclusion/)
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defensive architecture: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-subtle-design-features-that-make-cities-feel-more-hostile (http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-subtle-design-features-that-make-cities-feel-more-hostile)
99% Invisible has just put up a podcast on that subject: Unpleasant Design & Hostile Urban Architecture (http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/unpleasant-design-hostile-urban-architecture/)
And actually they did a podcast about the same subject matter four years ago: The Arsenal of Exclusion (http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-51-the-arsenal-of-exclusion/)
Yeah I saw that article on tumblr - I'll have to catch up on 99% invisible - I've just finished Hello from the Magical Tavern backlog.
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I'll have to catch up on 99% invisible
It's a great design podcast. I was hooked early on with The Blue Yarn (http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-30-the-blue-yarn-download-embed-share/):
Sensei: What is that?
Doctor: That's a waiting area.
repeat ad nauseam
Sensei: Why are there so many waiting areas throughout this facility? Who's waiting there? What are they waiting for?
Doctor: Those are our patients, they're waiting for us.
Sensei: ...
Sensei: Aren't you ashamed?
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The Hooverville crew (Minus Ryan/Cabbie, who is still away for school) just sat down for enclave and character generation for a Bust game where Tom (Gots) is the Market and I get to play!
We decided to set it in our hometown of Elk Grove, a suburban sprawl between the bustling urban center of Sacramento and the lazy stretches of vast, endless farmland of the valley. After speculating on location we also decided to set our enclave in the Promenade mall I detailed earlier in the thread, only in the alternate near-future of Red Markets the town finally got the project off the ground and it opened full of new stores just before the Crash. Because the enclave was positioned on the literal edge of town before the asphalt and concrete of the suburbs gives way to the green and brown farmlands, we dubbed our enclave "The End". It's three primary exports are Knowledge (Bookstore converted into a reference library by an Archivist), Trade (Serves as a bazaar for the farmers to the south and survivors in the suburbs who need food), and Food (Enclave expanded into the surrounding lands to grow crops of their own). It's three primary imports are Medicine/Expertise from the Hawk's Nest, Building Supplies from the suburbs, and Ammunition from all around.
The End was a brand new Promenade mall in Elk Grove before the Crash turned Sacramento into a death zone. The local EGPD, acting in absence of orders from the civil government, designated the mall as an evacuation center where the military could extract civilians without having to venture into the Vector-infested suburban maze. When the military failed to show the police and surviving aldermen established a tenuous social order which, while descended from the democracy of pre-Crash city politics, morphed into a sort of benevolent feudalism. After a while they were joined by a convoy of truckers with trailers stuffed full of refugees--these trucks and their trailers, along with the many big rigs abandoned on adjacent highway 99, would form the foundation of the wall that protected the budding enclave.
We also recorded the entire process and we'll try to get that uploaded if anyone wants to listen, but in the meantime here are some of the ideas we concocted (Names are tentative):
Hawk's Nest: Cosumnes River College has become the most secure, prosperous enclave in the south Sacramento area. Its close proximity to a cluster of hospitals and its nursing program means they ended up with the bulk of surviving medical personnel and equipment. Its architecture makes it very defensible. And the light rail station allows it to trade with enclaves in downtown Sacramento and as far away as Folsom.
The Farmer's Guild: Their isolation and self-reliance saved many of them during the chaos of the Crash, but even they needed to band together from time to time to survive mutual threats like raiders and mobs of Casualties. They value their freedoms and privacy and will happily leave you alone if you give them the same courtesy, and The End is as far north as most of them like to travel for trade.
Jeffersons: Some ideas persist even after the end of civilization. Taking their name from the State of Jefferson movement, this combination cult/political movement believes that cities and other dense gatherings of humanity are simply repeating the mistakes of the Crash. A thousand citizens are a thousand potential Vectors, so to prevent another catastrophic outbreak mankind must disperse and scatter into smaller and smaller villages, tribes, and family units. While the Jeffersons aren't notably violent like raiders they often harass travelers and enclaves. More than one town has thrown a Jefferson crier outside the fence.
The Prosperous: In California, the raiders rob you with a smile and an eerily-sincere "God Bless". The followers of a local megachurch took their survival through the Crash as a sign that God was with them, and that was practically a blank check for them to do as they pleased. If they needed someone else's food, they took "tithe" from their neighbors--at gunpoint. If they needed "donations" or "volunteers" they helped themselves to those too. After a while enough people got together to burn their church to the ground, but all that did was "prove" to the Prosperous that they were the righteous persecuted minority, and they became a nomadic enclave traveling from tentpole revival to tentpole revival, collecting "donations" from anyone they come across.
The Campuses (WIP): A loose alliance of high school enclaves run by a Lord of the Flies-esque group of surviving students that survive by scavenging the suburbs and trading for food and other necessities. They regularly compete with one another in a series of blood sports.
That's what I can remember off the top of my head, there's probably a few things I left out. We named our Taker crew "Blacklight", and the three employees are:
"Silver", as in hands, tongue, and thirty pieces of. The negotiator of the crew, who claims to be former carbait who voluntarily left the Recession to find her fortune in the Loss and pay her family's way out of a Free Parking ghetto. In reality she is a Steward for an unnamed corporation in the Recession, sent to California for an unknown mission. Her most distinctive feature and namesake are her painfully obvious prosthetic arms. Her "dependants" are her fellow Takers and her handler in the Recession, codenamed "Black Friday".
"Rufio", an Immune wild child from the Franklin High Campus who was a student when the Crash started summer vacation early. Her innate resistance to infection has made her reckless and headstrong, and the pseudo-communist society of the Campuses has given her a dim view of capitalism. She only came to be in The End after her parents heard rumors she had survived the Crash and hired one of the enclave's fencemen to track her down and "rescue" her, which he did. Rufio was resentful at first, but after being reunited with her parents and seeing how much her "rescuer" sacrificed to bring them together she chose to stay in The End. When she ran into a woman with prosthetic arms looking for Takers, she and Galavant agreed to sign on with Blacklight.
"Galavant", a rookie EGPD officer and one of the original deputies of The End. He was a respected member of the community when Rufio's parents came to beg for his help, and more notably he was Immune. He is no longer either of these things, after an errant bite frightened his comrades into injecting him with Supressin to "save" him from infection. While his fellow deputies still see him as one of them, people now cross the street and keep their distance from a man they used to call a hero. After a while Galavant realized that he had no future in The End and agreed to join Silver's small Taker crew.
Our first game will be recorded on Friday, so look forward to that!
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Fukushima 5 years after evacuation.
This is what the lost would look like
http://m.imgur.com/a/KabxJ (http://m.imgur.com/a/KabxJ)
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My first experience with actually getting to play Red Markets, in gif format:
(http://img6.mmo.mmo4arab.com/my/upload/f7/18/nemius/10/0922/medium700_20100922160930_666.jpg)
(http://i1181.photobucket.com/albums/x440/beetlepower/0qRnE_zpsxnarn4r0.gif)
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-IfIdIJpmafI/VgQPitiYrAI/AAAAAAAABys/nLEySOftTKo/w800-h800/7a92359bb1d1e18914eccdd3910cb164.jpg)
We got absolutely shafted on negotiations, I almost got eaten by a mob of Vectors, and we very reluctantly saved a baby.
10/10
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Where did the baby come from?! :o
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The baby was an encounter for their first leg. They came upon a stroller sitting in the middle of the road.
Being smart players they thought "That's totally a trap" and threw a rock at it. The baby started crying because of that when they looked in the stroller and found a note saying Sorry with a bounty taped to it.
The real trap of the leg was the unexpected baby that fell into their lives ;)
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Being smart players they thought "That's totally a trap" and threw a rock at it.
(http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g80/CADmonkey__________/no-country-for-old-men-4.jpg) (http://s53.photobucket.com/user/CADmonkey__________/media/no-country-for-old-men-4.jpg.html)
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In my defense who the fuck leaves an actual baby in its carriage, in the middle of the road, in the middle of the zombie infested countryside?
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In my defense who the fuck leaves an actual baby in its carriage, in the middle of the road, in the middle of the zombie infested countryside?
Someone who's been suffering from untreated PTSD for years?
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In my defense who the fuck leaves an actual baby in its carriage, in the middle of the road, in the middle of the zombie infested countryside?
Someone who's been suffering from untreated PTSD for years?
I'm not saying it's unreasonably impossible, but Occam's Razor was telling me that the far more likely answer was "Samaritan bait".
I mean, if I'd metagamed it then yeah it would've been pretty obvious to me that it was an actual baby because I knew Tom would gleefully pull that shit on us and make us carry a screaming infant through a zombie wasteland. But I wasn't operating as someone who's known Tom since high school, I was operating as a person who didn't survive five years and two bites in the Loss by being a sucker.
I just happened to be wrong this time. :V
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Hello! I have been posting these around other places, like the reddit, but I have yet to receive any feedback or suggestions yet. I was hoping that someone might help me out and sharpen up these ideas somewhat. Or at least tell me if they seem fun for the game.
Though I admit, the first draft I had got deleted and this was rewritten from memory, so that is why job two is more detailed.
Contract: Surprising Thematic?
Goods/Service: Relationships between Enclaves, whether rivals, enemies, neutral, or allies are much like those of old nations. Gifts and deals, envoys and diplomats. One such mission has gone wrong, a rookie Taker crew known as The Pedal Express has disappeared while working for the Taker’s enclave. They were new, but exciting, reliable. High speed, low drag couriers on bikes. Comprised of members of a pre-Crash cyclist club and experienced Fencemen, by all accounts they were one the crews that would succeed. Smart, capable, knew their limits. Their mission was to deliver a gift to a neighboring enclave, but they did not arrive. The diplomatic intent was hammered out later, but the client wishes to recover the gift to be reused later. Given the disappearance, and the fact the GPS tagged gift has been in place since contact has been lost, the Pedal Express is no doubt dead...and if they are not dead, they need rescue.
Economy: Based on local Markets.
Equilibrium: Roll for local conditions.
Client: Local VIP, based on local Markets.
Competition: Based on local Markets.
Travel Time: 3 Legs to Job Site, 4 Legs if Crew wishes to rest at neighboring Enclave.
The Site: Success or use of a reference to find the location of the GPS location will lead the Takers straight to the site. On failures, they may need to spend an extra leg to triangulate the location. The job site is a former used car dealership and lot.
Injun Joe’s Used Autos was a scuzzy and shady and slightly racist car dealership. Pre-Crash it was where local hoods and gangs got rid of some stolen cars and parts, or obtained cars for use in drive bys. In any case, it was a bad business in a bad neighborhood. Pre-Crash saw its lot emptied by looters and post Crash saw it just forgotten. It has a full service garage that appears unlooted and still sealed. It is this kitchy stereotypical car lot with Old West style facades. The Neighborhood itself is full of sinkholes and seems structurally unstable.
Relevant skills, examples Foresight or Networking or Research, will show that Injun Joe’s garage has been unlooted due to the fact that no one wants to risk a collapse or a vehicle to haul out its equipment. While worth something, it is deemed not worth enough by most with the ability to drive out there.
Awareness will reveal bike tracks leading up to the sales office, while the center of the street is collapsed and the area cluttered with rubble, the lot itself is cleared, if trash filled. Further Awareness tests will reveal a barricaded and trapped door leading into the back offices, one point of stun if caught unaware.
Self Control test 2/0, the entire rear offices is gone. After opening the door, it will reveal the building’s decorative facade is basically hiding the fact the inside of the building has been gutted by a massive sinkhole(filled with rubble, bodies, and water)...that caught the Pedal Express unaware. Self control test for the sheer randomness of the Loss and how it can kill you without warning. Evidence shows that the Pedal Express crew made camp, and were presumably the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Complications:
Minor: One of the Pedal Crew was a Latent and in the brackish water there is a Casualty ready to grab and bite.
Major: The entire block is on the edge of turning into a major sinkhole, Pre-Crash the lowest bidder did not do due diligence, and now the untreated water has eroded the entire block. It will collapse any day now, and if they draw Casualties, it will definitely start a chain reaction.
Bust Mode: There is a gas pocket, that due to the Pedal Crew, is now leaking. One shot, the building explodes.
Contract: Nostalgia Therapy
Goods/Service: There are many people locked up in mental institutions, away from National Service and Obligation, as well as the free parking ghettos and general population. Full of people suffering from serious mental disorders as well as disabilities, but mostly for people with Post Crash Stress Disorder. From these places come the false IDs that Takers covet and work hard for. Excuses to why they have not been seen for 5 years. Now one of these places needs Takers to obtain “therapy props and tools”. Lakeview Rehabilitation is a mental institute specializing in Post Crash Juvenile Stress Disorder and its offshoots, and its procurement officer has placed a add to the Taker’s enclave Lifeline page looking for help raiding a nearby mall, which contains both a Toys R Us and Disney Store. Can the Takers stomach risking their life for toys?
Economy: Based on local Markets.
Equilibrium: Roll for local conditions.
-Will pay for them to go, and minimum 1 Haul per Taker of small items.
-Will pay 1d6+Takers Number for each Haul worth of small items(bag of small toys, collection of blurays)
-Will pay 10+Takers Number for each 3 Haul worth of large items(bedroom sets, room decor)
Client: Susan Lang, MSW, mousy woman on a video call.
Weak Spot: Overworked with Pain
-Susan is in a tough spot, she is overworked in a highly emotionally draining job, getting these materials fast and impressing upon her that looking past the Crew will take more time then necessary can sway her.
Soft Spot: Safety Nets
-Susan believes in minimum income and that nobody should go hungry, if the Takers can convince her what she is offering is not enough to live on, they can get extra sway.
Tough Spot: First Time Client
-Is obviously a first time client, worried about being cheated and stressed by her “illegal” actions. If the takers can reassure her, she will stick with them from then on, and they will gain extra sway.
Gift Spot: All the Soma
-Ten charges of fully upgraded Soma. If it is one thing she has a lot of, it's that.
Competition: Based on local Markets.
Travel Time: 2 Legs
The Site: Lone Oak Mall was a hybrid open strip enclosed mall close to your home Enclave. It is a uninteresting place that has long been looted by survivors Pre and Post Crash. Though with research, foresight, and networking checks will reveal that looters and scavengers had prioritized useful items, food, and tools and the relevant stores should only be dirty and neglected and the site has long been considered “picked clean”. Still chock full of salvage that no one wants, save for those few outliers that took time to take this or that trinket and raid the registers. The back store rooms should still be full of books, toys, blurays, bedroom sets, posters, and other things.
Further research might reveal that it is a potential enclave site, though perhaps a bit too expensive and too tough to make it worth it.
Complications: LALA Land
Even hard and challenging enclave sites can be made into enclaves, sometimes all it takes is one family, the first person to stake a claim and start work on the walls. Once arriving on the site, the Takers will soon find that there are signs of life, barricades have been set up, parts of the mall have been sealed off past the areas too insecure. Such as the broken front windows, or the front parking lot. A inner area comprising of the target stores has been blocked off. The person owning all this is a young teen named Princess. A girl who when she is not playing dress up is in a ghille suit and toting a rifle. A keen survivalist and sniper, who could not have been more than 10 when the Crash happened...if that. She has a set of Ubiq specs, and will contact the Takers to leave her Kingdom alone. She will first verbal warning and threaten, before taking warning shots, if the Takers offend her or set her off, she may aim to kill right off the bat. She seems obviously delusional, as she says things like.“Please leave my kingdom alone!” “Begone bandits!” “I will protect my sick King!” “I am the Princess of this Kingdom, are you friend or foe?”
Though perhaps she is off on a trading run when the Takers get there, and will find themselves trapped by a disturbed teenager who is angry at their tresspass, but is obviously not so fargone as to kill out of hand. Humanity damage if they kill her without engaging with some talks.
She lives primarily in the underground service and storage areas that have been sectioned off and secured from casualties, and evidence will show that she is slowly clearing the complex out by herself. It is trapped, barricaded, and professionally set. Self Control Check 1/0 to think that a kid is so competent, she can’t have more than a third grade formal education. If they breach her inner sanctum into her living area, prompt a Self Control Check 2/0, there is power as well as disturbing decorations. The tunnels are decorated in Disney Princesses and Imagery, it as if this place is a playground rather than a survival compound. Prompt a Self Control Check 3/1 if they reach the innermost areas, where they will find a mummified body on a makeshift throne, shrouded in a sheet and crowned with a toy crown. Her king. Or rather her father.
Research/Networking/References will reveal that this person was a Lone Wolf merc, former Spec Ops sniper who had a daughter. Materials will reveal that he had set the groundwork, and trained his daughter thoroughly. She might not have been formally schooled, but she has the equivalent of Special Forces training for the last five years. Maybe in another year, she might actually have a place where a Enclave can start?
Market discretion where this plot goes. She can be made into a dependant, reference, or enemy depending on Taker actions
Contract: Flavor Country
Goods/Service: If there is one thing in demand, one thing that can reassure a man, woman, or child, it is familiar flavors. And now there is a threat to the Taker’s local flavor baron. Or rather Coke Baron, and yes that is Coka Cola. There is a new cola provider in the area, and he might flood the market with cheap generic cola sugar water, as he is providing actual Coke. Syrup is still being made in the Recession and even some places in the Loss, and there are high profit margins. One container of syrup becomes many gallons of soda, and if you can carbonize water even better. He is looking for Takers to represent his business at a third party mediated neutral ground based sitdown, he is not looking for war, death, or killing. He is looking to protect his monopoly through deals and agreements.
Economy: Based on local Markets.
Equilibrium: Roll for local conditions.
Client: Simpson, The Coke Baron, and yes he knows it is a Simpsons reference. He is a serious dour man in a suit.
Weak Spot: Speak softly and carry a big stick.
-He needs people that can talk, deal, and wheel. Not assassins, not killers, those will be useful, but while right now he needs people that can do the former, if they can also do the later all the better. Takers can play up their ability to do so, or their competitions inability to do so.
Soft Spot: Memories
-There is a reason he is in his business, while he is as dour as he seems, and is a serious numbers minded business man, he is also nostalgic and melancholic. He trusts his inner circle because they understand each other, if the Takers can “share” and be empathetic, they can gain sway.
Tough Spot: Knives looking for his back.
-While he is a peaceful man, looking first for a peaceful solution, he is worried for an actual war. He is worried that someone is out to get him. And that he needs to maintain MAD. If the Takers can impress him, that they are the only ones that can do this, that can save him, that can be that strike back if needs be, he will be swayed.
Gift Spot: Weekend Getaway
-He will give them a weekend getaway package. He also owns a simulationalist hosbilitablity business, where wealth Loss residents can “play house” and pretend they are not living in a zombie infested hell hole. If the Takers accept this gift, they will heal N+2 columns of Humanity instead of N, where N is the number of Dependents and will not need to spend bounty for it.
Competition: Based on local Markets.
Travel Time: 4 Legs
The Site: It is in a clearing, temporary camp full of takers and armed men and women. Where it exactly is, is up to the market, but it is in a place where people are kept honest in so far there is no way to easily sneak up on people, or gain advantage in a fight. There are five other parties here. The first is the Taker group who organized the sit down and is providing third party mediation and security. They will release a video recording of the proceedings to prove the efficacy of their service. The second and third are like the party, Takers with no stake in the negotiations beyond their participation and their attempts to make a profitable deal. They represent a salt provider and a fruit preserves provider. The fourth and fifth are groups representing themselves, a band of Mexican traders who speak English semi-fluently who are offering chocolate and sugar, and the Client’s competition who sells generic Loss made Cola.
Negotiations will be based around territory, access to common markets, competition clauses, as well as who is allowed to sell what where. No one wants a fight, and if there is war, the first shots won’t be here.
Complications:
The Meek seek to infiltrate and replace the Cola guy, and infect the Loss with Vector producing Cola. They might try and kill everyone and replace everyone. They might try and sneak their way in. Either way, they are crazed cultists looking to kill the human race...and they might not very well be able to pull it off due to their insanities. Up to Market how they proceed.
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Those are awesome jobs, Bystander! I especially like the first one. I'd like to see a lot more jobs and legs about the physical dangers of living in the Loss.
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Those are awesome jobs, Bystander! I especially like the first one. I'd like to see a lot more jobs and legs about the physical dangers of living in the Loss.
Been told the gift spots are a bit too much. Any suggestions?
I would like feedback on them. What do you think of LaLa land?
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(https://c2.staticflickr.com/9/8676/28374658393_c715ae311d_b.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/Kenxoa)
WASTELAND WEEKEND 2015 - AQ5P7827 (https://flic.kr/p/Kenxoa) by Jeff Vaillancourt (https://www.flickr.com/photos/vailncourt/), on Flickr
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A job I made using the format Bystander posted earlier:
And Now, The Weather
Goods/Service: They say that in the Loss, Casualties are like the weather. It'll kill you, but only if you let it take you by surprise. You need to be ready, you need to keep one eye on the horizon - and you need a forecast. Dr. Hamilton needs a group of Takers to help her "catch and release" the undead, allowing her to track the local herds and stampedes. The job is simple-ish. Tag a group of Casualties (at least three), dead-drive them into a stampede - and then make sure it doesn't follow you home.
Economy: Based on local Markets.
Equilibrium: Roll for local conditions. Add 1 Bounty for every Casualty successfully tagged past the third.
Client: Dr. Hamilton, a zoologist holed up in a wildlife observation facility. She has access to a lot of radio equipment and trackers. She has thick, milk-bottle spectacles and frazzled ginger hair.
Weak Spot: Accidentally Useful - Hamilton doesn't fully understand the value of her work - or rather, she understands the wrong type of value. A pure scientist, she understands data is useful but she's a zoologist - she's interested in studying Casualties as animals, specifically herd animals. The thought of the "weather forecast" aspect of her work simply has not occurred to her, causing her to significantly undervalue her job. She might be exploitable by those who appeal to her pure scientific side, or a more charitable soul might seek a pay boost by explaining plainly why local enclaves would very much like early warnings for zombie stampedes.
Soft Spot: Loves a War Story - Hamilton survived the Crash by sheer isolation, sticking herself in the middle of nowhere and not coming out until the bombs stopped falling. She has a strong Lifelines presence, looking through stories and records of how the world fell apart. She might rationalise it ("Just gathering data!") but her appeal is more emotional; Takers who detail their experiences (perhaps embellish, a little) will gain traction with her.
Tough Spot: Please, No Headshotting The Specimens - Hamilton is somewhere between a Shepherd and Crusader, fascinated by studying the undead and not wanting anyone to break her toys. And, of course, the job only makes any sense if Casualties are left alive (well, mobile) at the end of it. She doesn't want people who boast about how many heads they've popped, she despises Black Math, but she values skill and a measured approach to the apocalypse.
Gift Spot: The Reedus Package - Hamilton will provide the Takers with a fully-charged crossbow with RIF arrows, Tactical and Composite. It is to be used in the job but she will let them keep it after the job is complete. The arrows contain the tracker she intends to use to map the herd movements.
Competition: Based on local Markets.
Travel Time: 3 Legs
The Site: Hamilton has identified a small group of Casualties (~10) loitering around an abandoned strip mall. The strip mall is in a small ghost town, exactly where being up to the Market. The stores include a diner, a clothes store and a pawn shop (as well as whatever the Market considers appropriate). Most of the storefront windows have had the glass broken and some form of barricade or boarding set up; some of it still stands, a lot of it doesn't. Local Takers have been talking about a stampede heading in this general area and by the time the Takers arrive it can be seen, just cresting the horizon. (Markets may want the sight of hundreds of Casualties to prompt a Self-Control check, even from so far away)
The street flanked by the stores, in which the Casualties stand, is standard post-apocalyptia, lined with abandoned, smashed and burned out cars. The Takers can use these cars to take cover in, but their engines are long ruined and their cargo picked clean. An additional wrinkle (Awareness check to spot) is that a number of bear traps line the street; in fact several of the Casualties in the street seem to have been caught in traps themselves.
The looming stampede is a time limit on the mission; it moves slowly, but certainly. Markets should keep an eye on the clock to make sure it hits at a dramatically appropriate time. Once the stampede hits, the Takers can get to safety by spending rations; either they try to outpace it, or find somewhere secure in the strip mall (a meat locker in the local butchers, perhaps?) and just waiting it out.
Complications: The zombies outside the strip mall aren't just random undead; they're guard dogs. A small group of survivors are holed up in the strip mall (having knocked down the walls dividing the diner, pawn shop and clothes store) and set the traps to scare off lone scavengers and wild animals. They're skinny, half-mad and have a small assortment of knives, cudgels and one shotgun amongst them. If the Takers make too much noise in the street, the survivors will realise someone's out there and come out to defend their home turf. Leaving them to the stampede (or, worse, only realising they're even in the mall when the stampede hits and their walls collapse) is a major Detachment stressor.
Job Line: The Information Game - Once the dead are providing data, it's time to interpret those findings! And, of course, sometimes you need to do a little further investigation to really understand what your data means. Successfully completing this job can open up a job line with Hamilton. When her data spits out something weird, the Takers are the first people she'll turn to with a contract to research it. ("Why do the Casualties seem to avoid this particular stretch of highway?", or "What's directing them all towards that megachurch?" and so on.) These jobs should be used to accentuate the weird, seemingly logic-less nature of the Blight - and it's an excellent opportunity to throw Aberrants at the group.
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For inspiration I was thinking about an old comic, The Legend of Mother Sara, which is a woman wandering a post apocalypse Earth looking for her children. The tone was grim and futile and it'd work pretty well in with Red Markets.
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Would like to hear some thoughts on some fluff I am working on. :)
NPCs:
Description: Nat Geo, Freelance Bait Photographer out for "nature" shots of the Loss. Used to be a freelancer couldn't make a buck with everything sharing their photos and giving all the social media platforms the rights and shit, but now? Well, picking up a camera is one of the biggest death wishes of them all.
Purpose: Job Giver, Leg Encounter, potential noncombatant/client for rival Takers will to fight it out in the Loss.
Quote: If it bleeds it leads...heh, fuck if that's true anymore, everything is bleeding. So you know what's left? Playing on people's nostalgia, their hearts, it ain't going to be some meathead shooting a Ab, it's going to be something else. Something beautiful.
Description: Mother Mayflower, local apiarist and crazy survivalist lady. Bees, who the fuck collects bee hives like they're cats?! Fucking crazy ladies who fucking aren't to be messed with, that's who. Mother Mayflower is a local power among the Enclave farmers. They need her bees to pollinate their crops, and her expertise in "green" pesticides helps when the trade routes run tight. Though she is a fucking crazy lady, and not in that hippy way, she's got plans for a bunker and a wall of crazy that she won't shut up about, and you fucking don't want to know what she did to Stoli and his crew when they tried to shake her down.
Purpose: Job Giver, Enclave Flavor, Investment Sink
Quote: You think this is over? That this is the new world?! That the Apocalypse came and went? Fucking open you eyes man! We're still in the middle of it, it's still happening! Let me get my power point! The Blight is too clean, too out of context, too sudden. Maybe it was God's wrath, or Gaia's wrath, or any number of religious bullshit, but you know what I think? I think it's a plan. Kill off people for some reason, biodegradable genocide, leave the resources intact, and most of the biome, fucking make us ready for colonization. Something did this to us, and when it figures out step two, you better find yourself the deepest darkest hole you can and pray.
Slang:
Open Source Trash, someone who tries to follow online guides and blogs to become a Taker or the guides and blogs that prey and trick such people.
Roach Motels, usually refers to Taker groups made up of Roaches, but can also refer to unscrupulous groups that burn through recruits and are left with "survivors".
Latent Proofing, the procedures and protocols unique to each enclave when it comes to latents interacting with their populations. Some just quarantine them outside the last fence line, others make them wear biohazard suits and reflectors, but there is always a idea in place on how latents need to act.
Items:
Bike Chains. Cost: 1B. Qualities: Clunky, Charged, Reusable. Upgrades, Wireless Unlocking, Lightweight Alloys. Bike chains can be surprisingly useful, whether it be to as impromptu restraints, locking a gate or double door closed, or actually securing your bikes, creative takers will find some use for lengths of chain that can be easily secured to things.
Breadcrumbs. Cost: Depending on GM. Qualities: Static, Reusable, Charged. Upgrades, Infrared Marking, RFID Signal. You can download all the ancient fire escape maps you want, you can try and picture it in your head before you get there, but you ain't ever going to be prepared for what you find in there. Breadcrumbs are small placement markers(usually made of reflective eye catching materials), used when anywhere you are afraid of getting lost. Whether it be a national park, or the sub-basement of a Casualty filled building, you might want to bring something better than a old marker and duct tape. Upgrades make them more stealthy, with Infrared Marking needing night vision equipment, and RFID making them totally undetectable unless you have the right Ubiq Specs app.
MISC:
Idea: A Black Math Narco Cult. Basically your crazed Saint Death worshiping sicarios and drug runners keeping up the business to fund casualty culls. They rather barter for guns and ammo, but if you have to pay cash fine. I sort of see a reliquary made out of their founders bones that is brought along to meets and deals.
Imagine, sitting in the Lost, with overwatch and your boys, and just waiting for your contact, and they appear. Not in some normal thing, no, it's a Narco Tank painted like a reliquary and there are technical gun trucks painted the same. Men and women with skull face paint, gangland tattoos, and the will to hurt you for nothing, and the religious extremism to go any distance.
The deal is on, and you need what they have. Opium, Cocaine, hell, sugar and peppers if you've got change...Hard to keep a clinic stocked, or men and women alive, when all you got is a hack saw and some moonshine. They want what you have, so they're coming in. Talking about their saints and their purpose, and all too willing to throw their weight around, but they're still businessmen to a point.
And to seal the deal, they want you to pray, and give offering to their blessed leader, their founder, who watches over them. Or perhaps it is one of their new exalted martyrs? But it's still a skeleton, dressed in silk and gold, with a diamond grill just smiling at you over a collection plate of bullets and knives. So you do, and you did, and they laugh and smile and the Casualties will come soon, and they want them to come...it is time for some blessed work, don't think about the gagged man begging for you to look at him, to save him, it doesn't matter. No, it doesn't matter, not even when they bring out the gas and the tires.
It doesn't matter. Go home, and hope the doctor can use what you bring.
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So the idea of our Enclave is set basically where we all grew up. Granted we had to move the Recession back a ways, but we all wanted to play in our back yard. The enclave itself is going to be set in the trees of a state park, right on the Ohio. It is split into three areas(basically the neighborhoods), The Citadel, a three story Fort, where the Militia is based, as well as housing the small Latent community. The Town, where the majority of the populous is, includes marketplace and all that good stuff. And, The Wharf, basically the Slums and fishermen. Has the smallest population density. All of these areas individually surrounded by a wooden palisade(think early american fort) with a spiked Ditch on the outside. The dirt from the ditch was transplanted to the inside of the wall, to help reinforce it from being pushed on, if anything makes it past the ditch. There is a draw bridge in the Town and the Citadel to allow outside access. Finally, all of the areas are connected via tree top walkways and guard stations(think Ewok territory) with no easy way to get to it from the ground. Im kinda excited to play. lol
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I just ran this for a one-shot and I think it worked quite well as a job.
Golden Parachute
Goods/Service: Only a small minority wants to spent the rest of their days in the desperate danger of the Loss. Most takers are risking their lives because they want to make a big payday and escape to the Recession. The Recession may be an autocratic, fascist semi-refugee camp, but at least there aren’t casualties on the other side of the wall, raiders around the corner and cults preparing for the end of the world. Tick-Tock is a legendary taker in the community and after a big score she is ready to smuggle herself over the Mississippi to the Recession. A pilot has been hired to fly her east, but they need somewhere to take off from. Tick-Tock wants to hire some takers to clear out a nearby municipal/hobbyist airfield. After the crew clears out the airport they will contact Tick-Tock who will drive out with her own team, liaison with the pilot and fly off to the east to her retirement.
Equilibrium: Roll for local conditions (add red and black).
Economy: Based on local Markets.
Client: Tick-Tock is a legendary taker in the enclave and region. She has been a taker since before there was a name for it. For the last few years she headed the crew The Black Sheep. A couple months ago they pulled off a Mr. JOLS. Now Tick-Tock has enough to smuggle herself back to the Recession and set herself up in style. Tick-Tock is nobody’s fool and she hasn’t survived the Loss for years without cunning and instinct. T-T is a tough woman. Her hair is always kept in a tight bun. She possesses an easy charm on the exterior, but doesn’t mess around in the field.
Weak Spot: Three Days from Retirement - The end is incredibly close. The struggle is nearly over. By this time next week she hopes to be sitting on a balcony, sipping a beer and enjoying the fruits of her labour… but anything could go wrong. The enclave could fall, she could get exposed to the blight, the DHQS could kick in the door or the plane could crash as she flies east. This fear causes her to wake up some nights in a cold sweat.
Soft Spot: Veteran Taker - Tick-Tock has seen it all. She has been working the Loss for years and has worked with dozens of different takers and taker crews. In most circumstances she is the most experienced person in the room. She has taken a lot of men and women under her wing and seen a lot of people broken by the job that she loves. She wants to see all the takers do well and come home in one piece. She has an affection for the fellows in her profession not unlike to the way police feel about their ‘brothers in blue’.
Tough Spot: Blood on Her Hands - A person who has worked the Loss and has had as many jobs as Tick-Tock has done some things she isn’t proud of and has made enemies. Locally Tick-Tock is somewhat of a folk hero, but elsewhere groups have cursed her name, like the Meek or DHQS.
Gift Spot: A fully upgraded, silenced rifle.
Competition: Depends on local Market.
Travel Time: 3 Legs
The Site: Located not far from the enclave is a small municipal airfield. Airports were attractive targets for takers. Located on the edge of nearby city the municipal airport is relatively intact. The aircraft fuel is long gone, but there might be valuable equipment left behind. The real prize is the runway for Tick-Tock’s pilot can land and take off. There are casualties in the area of unknown number.
This is a municipal airport, not a regional hub or international airport. It catered to small charter flights and hobbyist pilots. There’s only one runway. It is surrounded by a simple chainlink fence and barbed wire, which is hardly secure from takers and infected. There are four main buildings on the site: the small airport terminal, the office and hanger for Cloud-Skimmer Charters (logo is a smiling cartoon cloud), and two hangers for private owners.
A Foresight check will tell the takers that it’s likely the obvious and easy scavenging will likely be gone, but there might be some valuable materials left behind. An Awareness check will tell the takers that someone has been in the buildings recently. An extremely diligent/paranoid crew can spot a camera rigged to monitor the airport setup off the road to watch the airport.
Complication: Tick-Tock’s plan to escape must not have been kept tight enough. Someone talked and now a group of raiders want to set up at the airfield to ambush her and make their own Mr. JOLS. The Market can determine whether the raiders strike before the buildings and airfield are cleared of casualties or after.
The raiders consists of somewhere between 6 part-time enemies and a full-time enemy for on-going story. If the takers manage to push the raiders back the full-time leader should flee and provide the basis for a job line. Tick-Tock and her escort can be called in for back-up before her flight arrives. The crew can just try to hold out for the cavalry. If the crew flees it’s a broken contract and they don’t get paid.
Job Line: In the Tall Grass. The leader of the raiders is none too pleased that you killed his/her men. He dedicates himself to revenge and can provide rivalry, competition and complication to jobs and legs going forward.
Tick-Tock can act as a valuable reference in the Recession with extensive knowledge of taking in your region.
Please let me know if you run this and how it goes!
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Golden Parachute is a cool job! It could be used as a "tutorial" to help convey the whole concept of Retirement to a group, too. Thanks, SJLee.
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Golden Parachute is a cool job! It could be used as a "tutorial" to help convey the whole concept of Retirement to a group, too. Thanks, SJLee.
It played out really well too, in my opinion. The complication wasn't obvious so the players got sunk deeper and deeper into paranoia until it revealed itself. I stole the idea to have the job teach something about the game from a helpful fellow who is sharing sample jobs, it seemed a smart approach.
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(http://pre12.deviantart.net/9026/th/pre/i/2016/146/d/1/scavenger_by_cjcenteno-da3xmpa.jpg)
CJcenteno on deviantart
(http://pre10.deviantart.net/bd94/th/pre/i/2012/192/1/0/wasteland_raider_by_jflaxman-d56txlm.jpg)
jflaxman on deviantart
(http://orig06.deviantart.net/5f41/f/2011/252/c/4/the_old_guy_by_markusthebarbarian-d49cavv.jpg)
MarkTarrisse on deviantart
(http://pre10.deviantart.net/baf8/th/pre/i/2015/043/8/7/post_apo_chara_by_asahisuperdry-d8hp4wi.jpg)
(http://pre07.deviantart.net/1da2/th/pre/f/2014/247/2/4/character_design_8_by_pavellkid-d7xwtfp.jpg)
(http://pre02.deviantart.net/8120/th/pre/f/2014/145/c/7/character_design_4_by_pavellkid-d7jnkh8.jpg)
(http://pre15.deviantart.net/e952/th/pre/f/2014/145/d/e/character_design_3_by_pavellkid-d7jnkfy.jpg)
(http://pre03.deviantart.net/8cb2/th/pre/i/2014/355/1/2/character_design_by_pavellkid-d8an503.jpg)
(http://pre01.deviantart.net/8658/th/pre/f/2014/349/7/7/character_design_by_pavellkid-d89xny9.jpg)
(http://pre09.deviantart.net/5519/th/pre/f/2014/297/3/0/cd__by_pavellkid-d83s1u9.jpg)
(http://pre00.deviantart.net/8085/th/pre/i/2015/154/8/c/chieftain_by_pavellkid-d8vudn0.jpg)
PavellKid on deviantart
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Bend The Knee: A Campaign Framework
"The new world order is this, and it's really very simple, so, even if you're stupid, which you may very well be, you can understand it. You ready? Here goes. Pay attention. Give me your shit... or I will kill you. You work for me now. You have shit, you give it to me. That's your job." - Negan, The Walking Dead
Enclaves get by, just about, with maybe a little wiggle room for small, stained luxuries - and to pay for Takers to get what they can't source otherwise. But that wiggle room has competition. Raiders, Randians, LALA's. There's plenty of people out there living Darwin. Instead of farming, they run what is essentially a protection racket. Roving bands of professional assholes travel the Loss, preying on travellers and smaller survivor groups. Larger enclaves might put up a fight, but more likely they pay small fees to keep them away.
In the "Bend The Knee" campaign model, your enclave and most enclaves in the local area have a common enemy: Darwin. Darwin is the biggest, nastiest son-of-a-bitch anyone's ever seen in this neck of the woods. Every Taker has some story about seeing Darwin personally rip a Vector's arm off and bash it's skull in with the wet end, or some other badass half-myth. What makes this even worse is Darwin stands at the head of a huge Raider band that travel between enclaves. They say they're keeping trade routes clear of Casualties, that they hunt the Meek and bash their heads in with golf clubs. Part of that's even true. But they're bleeding the enclaves under their "protection" dry with their tithes. Don't pay your dues and the next Taker group that leaves the enclave, funny enough, doesn't come back.
This represents a general campaign frame, with the specifics being up to your own group and enclave. The fundamentals are that Darwin and his boys are a big, dominant force most of the enclaves hate but have to put up with. They're large enough that most enclaves have essentially decided it's cheaper not to fight them - but, of course, player characters don't think like that and are inevitably going to want to fight him.
As Takers in Darwin's country, your profit margins are down and that's bad news. Providers just don't have as much as disposable income to throw your way if they also need to make Darwin's next tithe. That means you need to grift and grab even harder if you really want (Market: When rolling the pay for a job, roll Equilibrium twice and take the lower result. The higher represents how much it would have been without Darwin's depressing effect on the location.)
Next, vignettes work a little differently. Each session, one Taker does not get a regular Humanity healing vignette. Instead, the Market and Taker act out what would have been a vignette involving a Dependent - and then Darwin or one of his raiders comes in and ruins it. It's date night and then here's someone with a baseball bat smashing the plates and asking for this week's cut. These vignettes should serve to reinforce that Darwin is in charge, but also keep the resentment going.
Finally, the default retirement scheme for a Bend The Knee game model is tontine. The ultimate plan is, of course, to take down Darwin and his organisation. But such a job is not to be undertaken lightly. Darwin's crew is large, well armed, has a lot of vehicles and strong defences in their home base. Resources need gathering. Meeting milestones in this model represent actions that would undermine Darwin's organisation (such as sabotaging some vehicles, causing an outbreak in one of their forward camps) or somehow improving your odds in the eventual attack against Darwin (laying in extra ammunition in a secure location, getting the support of additional combatants etc.) Mr JOLS is, of course, the final battle or the assassination mission.
Other retirement options are of course entirely valid in this campaign model; your Takers may just want to get away from Darwin and his raiders and get into the Recession, or even just flee to another state and join another enclave away from Darwin's influence.
Once Darwin is dead (no easy task, bringing down a well-trained and dedicated Latent), the question is of course what to do with the political and economic vacuum that creates. If Darwin's raiders weren't wiped out in the battle, what stops them from just moving to a new neighbourhood and setting up the same scheme? Do decentralised raider bands now prey the roads that were formerly policed and kept clear of the dead by Darwin? Do the Takers assume Darwin's mantle and become the new legendary badass extorting the local enclaves?
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I wrote some Red Markets drabbles off of visual prompts from Tumblr:
Drabble the first (https://www.laurabwrites.com/stuff/2016/11/28/a-red-market-drabble) off of:
(https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56ac1ba48b38d4e9f6c9175a/t/5839ba2029687f08e03b31d5/1480178252427/?format=500w)
Drabble the second (https://www.laurabwrites.com/stuff/2016/12/4/another-red-markets-drabble) off of:
(https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56ac1ba48b38d4e9f6c9175a/t/584417de1b631be1b531bf62/1480857581517/?format=750w)
Drabble the third (https://www.laurabwrites.com/stuff/2016/12/12/sarge-has-the-tactics) off of:
(https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56ac1ba48b38d4e9f6c9175a/t/584e109a46c3c416aabf198d/1481511141501/steel+mill.jpg?format=750w)
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Here is Simon Stalenhag's gallery, images of a failed place that might just be a in the quiet of the Loss.
http://simonstalenhag.se/ (http://simonstalenhag.se/)
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A viking of the Lost
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/001/427/699/large/borislav-mitkov-pa-viking.jpg)
Source: http://www.bmitkov.com/ (http://www.bmitkov.com/)
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The jobs I have on hand for our first session of Red Markets next Saturday. If anyone has suggestions or comments I'd love to hear, I prerolled the equilibrium so I knew how intense I wanted to make the complications. Love to hear some input.
Job 1 Equilibrium 19
-James Cubed has managed to recruit another scientist to come help run the Frakking operations near town. Needs team to pick up and escort the scientist from 4 legs away.
Complication: The latent scientist is a Moth defector. They don't want to give her up, and the DHQS caught wind of things and are trying to capture her for interrogation.
Both groups will be gunning for the group, hard.
Job 2 Equilibrium 16
- Tin Hat Tom needs someone to lure a hoard of walkers to a specific warehouse. To test out his new barriers before implementing them on the walls of Stockpile. The groups job will be to lure at least 3 groups of at least 5 mass each to a defensible position, then use the provided “siege” defenses to take them down.
Complication: The number of Casualties grows quickly after the initial pull of groups. The defenses have a malfunction chance since they are still prototypes. The team has to make sure the cameras are set up to watch them use the equipment.
Job 3 Equilibrium 13
- The ruling council hires a woman named "Mullet" to negotiate with Takers to loot a local Ikea, they need several haul worth of lightweight furniture to furnish the local clinic with better beds and supply storage. Will gift a Dronkey with 1 upgrade of the groups choosing. 3 Legs away
Complication: Weather turns really bad. Group must hold up in the warehouse for multiple days or risk the storm, the stress of running low on rations and hiding out couped up damages self control. If the players hold up another group attempts to take shelter in the warehouse as well, can the party trust these newcomers? And if they decide they don't trust them they risk humanity damage of a violent conflict to turn them away.
Job 4 Equilibrium 3
- Eugene a local mechanic sends the group out for the supplies to convert vehicles from standard to diesel/biodiesel vehicles. Needs to bring back at least 4 haul worth to get paid. The supplies are 3 legs away
Complication: The auto supply warehouse served as a hideout for some workers. They are now casualties. Also there is an alarm on the building that is still working, if the party doesn't break in using criminality they will set off an alarm drawing in hordes.