Red Markets Alpha Playtest

[Kamen]

So looking forward to this. Isn't Synthenia the infamous prostitute from Andrew's Fortune?

Also, this has got me thinking about a possible ARG aspect to Red Markets. We could use the forums as Ubiq to allow different groups to effect/assist/hinder each other. There'd have to be a bit of group buy in, but it could be interesting.

[trinite]

Very cool enclave design. I'm a little curious: since Chicago is east of the Mississippi, has the border of the Loss been adjusted?

[Cthuluzord]

@trinite
Thanks!

They really wanted the Chicago area, so I pushed the line back to the Illinois river. I suppose it makes sense, considering the population density of Chicago and its vulnerability as a transit hub. I'll keep the Mississippi line in the actual text, but there's not much about the setting that can't be adjusted once you understand the economic realities that the mechanics support.

That said, there will be an in-game setting as described in the GDW podcast because it's easier to pick up and play. Plus, that's the actual fun part of the book to write, so I'm not about to skip it.

@Kamen
They wanted a campus drug dealer and wouldn't come up with a name fast enough, so they got the Stokes canon.

[Twisting H]

Edited.

[clockworkjoe]

yaaay red markets

Steadfast Stanley - 3rd Year Film

[trinite]

Awwwww.


Coincidentally, while eating lunch with my dad today I ran into Shorty, the guy I based my Springfield GAME Red Markets character on. He's a five-foot tall guy on disability with a cowboy hat and boots, who wanders around downtown aggravating people and occasionally tries to play harmonica at local blues jams.

The real life version isn't a wanna-be doctor, but he's probably better at driving an ambulance.

[Kamen]

Awwwww.


Coincidentally, while eating lunch with my dad today I ran into Shorty, the guy I based my Springfield GAME Red Markets character on. He's a five-foot tall guy on disability with a cowboy hat and boots, who wanders around downtown aggravating people and occasionally tries to play harmonica at local blues jams.

The real life version isn't a wanna-be doctor, but he's probably better at driving an ambulance.

This... I... I feel like there's so much we're missing from this story.

[Mr. Purple]

Awwwww.


Coincidentally, while eating lunch with my dad today I ran into Shorty, the guy I based my Springfield GAME Red Markets character on. He's a five-foot tall guy on disability with a cowboy hat and boots, who wanders around downtown aggravating people and occasionally tries to play harmonica at local blues jams.

The real life version isn't a wanna-be doctor, but he's probably better at driving an ambulance.

Now now, you did hit a lot with that ambulance.  Several zombies, the front of the store, me...

This... I... I feel like there's so much we're missing from this story.

[trinite]

During a playtest at Springfield GAME, I played Doctor Shorty, the closest thing to a medical professional one is likely to find on a Taker crew.  Good doctors make it out of the Loss, and mediocre ones can get stable jobs in an Enclave. Shorty is...neither of those. And not very smart, either, but pretty self-confident. He was about to flunk out of his EMT program when the Crash came, but he happened to be in the right place to steal an ambulance full of supplies and equipment. So he figures that he's a real doctor now, but the team mostly just keeps him around for his wheels. Which he drives using blocks glued onto the pedals so he can reach them.

And that's where the problems came from in the game. Through a number of critical failures -- the infamous 7-7s, never to be forgotten -- the crew got themselves into a close-quarters casualty fight inside a music store. Shorty decided to just crash the ambulance through the front windows for a rapid extraction. Which he did -- with another 7-7, running over David's character. Apparently Shorty had decided to manufacture a little business for his first aid skills.

If that recording ever gets posted, you can hear that and more, including Shorty's speed-fueled catwalk knife fight, and my brother totally losing his shit after the eighth or ninth 7-7 of the session.

[Zombieneighbours]

Ross, you are a horrible monster! I do not need those kind of feels before work!

[Twisting H]

That's a fantastic video Ross.

I am avoiding all spoilers until the Red Markets AP come out so I have no comments on the latest posts, but I was thinking about character sheet layout.  When you are coming to the end of a massive project like writing a core book by yourself, how do not despair and fill up that terrible gnawing whitespace with something cool?

Here some interesting character sheets. Inspiration or what not to do?

Eoris



Adventure Zone



Fan made D&D Next (on reddit somewhere)



Official D&D Next character sheet




So how do you emphasize (or hint at) zombie and economic horror in a Red Market's character sheet?  Make it like a an IRS 1040 form to instill anxiety in adults and confuse the kiddies?  Model it after a home foreclosure form for true terror?

Do you include any flair? A bloodied Platoon-like dogtag in the corner? Grasping zombie hands? Or do you keep the character sheet minimalistic?

When Ruin has a character sheet, I would love to see one made in the BRUTALISM style. 

[Twisting H]

Some further thoughts on Ubiq and the post Crash internet based on recent news releases.

Facebook is testing solar power drones to deliver internet to remote locations.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/03/facebook-tests-laser-equipped-drones-but-they-come-in-peace/

The drone program, codenamed Aquila, is the result of Facebook's purchase of the British unmanned systems design firm Ascenta—the company that currently holds the record for the longest solar-powered flight. The aircraft has a wingspan comparable to that of a 737, Schroepfer said, and the weight of a small car. Schroepfer told attendees that the completely solar-powered drones would "loiter at very high altitudes and beam down backbone Internet access."

Facebook is planning on deploying squadrons of the drones at altitudes of greater than 60,000 feet; the aircraft would stay on station for months at a time. When deployed, multiple aircraft would link together via laser communications to provide a network backbone, acting as routers to route communications from ground stations. Wireless networks tethered to the ground stations would provide user access to the network.

Google bought its own drone company, Titan, last year. Titan's drones, which the company refers to as "atmospheric satellites," are being integrated into Google's Project Loon, which has also investigated using high-altitude balloons to provide large areas with wireless coverage.

Further developments on Google's Project Loon and testing of balloons for internet delivery.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/03/google-balloons-cell-towers-in-the-sky-can-serve-4g-to-a-whole-state/

[Twisting H]

In a post apocalyptic world if you have the training, the right software, access to a big dish and amplifier you might be able to hack a satellite to accept commands. 

Balint Seeber was an engineer on the ISEE-3 reboot project. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Cometary_Explorer

The International Cometary Explorer (ICE) spacecraft (designed and launched as the International Sun/Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3) satellite), was launched August 12, 1978, into a heliocentric orbit. It was one of three spacecraft, along with the mother/daughter pair of ISEE-1 and ISEE-2, built for the International Sun-Earth Explorer (ISEE) program, a joint effort by NASA and ESRO/ESA to study the interaction between the Earth's magnetic field and the solar wind.

ISEE-3 was the first spacecraft to be placed in a halo orbit at the L1 Earth-Sun Lagrangian point. Renamed ICE, it became the first spacecraft to visit a comet, passing through the plasma tail of Comet Giacobini-Zinner within about 7,800 km (4,800 mi) of the nucleus on September 11, 1985.[1]

Reboot effort
Sometime after NASA's interest in the ICE waned, others realized that the spacecraft might be steered to pass close to another comet. A team of engineers, programmers, and scientists began to study the feasibility and challenges involved.[7]

In April 2014, its members formally announced their intentions to "recapture" the spacecraft for use, calling the effort the ISEE-3 Reboot Project. A team webpage said, "We intend to contact the ISEE-3 (International Sun-Earth Explorer) spacecraft, command it to fire its engine and enter an orbit near Earth, and then resume its original mission... If we are successful we intend to facilitate the sharing and interpretation of all of the new data ISEE-3 sends back via crowd sourcing."[17]

On May 15, the project reached its crowdfunding goal of US$125,000 on RocketHub, which was expected to cover the costs of writing the software to communicate with the probe, searching through the NASA archives for the information needed to control the spacecraft, and buying time on the dish antennas.[18] The project then set a "stretch goal" of $150,000, which it also met with a final total of $159,502 raised.[19]

The project members were working on deadline: if they got the spacecraft to change its orbit by late May or early June 2014, or in early July by using more fuel, it could use the Moon's gravity to get back into a useful halo orbit.[20][21][22]

Replacing lost hardware
Earlier in 2014, officials with the Goddard Space Flight Center said the Deep Space Network equipment necessary to transmit signals to the spacecraft had been decommissioned in 1999, and was too expensive to replace.[23] However, project members were able to find documentation for the original equipment and were able to simulate the complex modulator/demodulator electronics using modern software defined radio (SDR) techniques and open-source programs from the GNU radio project. They obtained the needed hardware, an off-the-shelf SDR transceiver and power amplifier,[24] and installed it on the 305-meter Arecibo dish antenna on May 19, 2014.[24][25] Once they gained control of the spacecraft, the capture team planed to shift the primary ground station to the 21-meter dish located at Kentucky's Morehead State University Space Science Center.[24] The 20-meter dish antenna in Bochum Observatory, Germany, would be a support station.[24]

Although NASA was not funding the project, it made advisors available and gave approval to try to establish contact. On May 21, 2014, NASA announced that it had signed a Non-Reimbursable Space Act Agreement with the ISEE-3 Reboot Project. "This is the first time NASA has worked such an agreement for use of a spacecraft the agency is no longer using or ever planned to use again," officials said.[26]

Contact reestablished
On May 29, the reboot team successfully commanded the probe to switch into Engineering Mode to begin to broadcast telemetry.[27][28]

On June 26, project members using the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex DSS-24 antenna achieved synchronous communication and obtained the four ranging points needed to refine the spacecraft's orbital parameters.[29] The project team received approval from NASA to continue operations through at least July 16, and plan to attempt the orbital maneuver in early July.[21][30]

On July 2, the reboot project fired the thrusters for the first time since 1987. They spun up the spacecraft to its nominal roll rate, in preparation for the upcoming trajectory correction maneuver in mid-July.[31][32]

On July 8, a longer sequence of thrusters firings failed, apparently due to loss of the nitrogen gas needed to pressurize the fuel tanks.[8][9][10]

On July 24, the ISEE-3 Reboot Team announced that all attempts to change orbit using the ISEE-3 propulsion system had failed. Instead, the team said, the ISEE-3 Interplanetary Citizen Science Mission would gather data as the spacecraft flies by the Moon on August 10 and enters a heliocentric orbit similar to Earth's. The team began shutting down propulsion components to maximize the electrical power available for the science experiments.[33]

On July 30, the team announced that it still planned to acquire data from as much of ISEE-3's 300-day orbit as possible. With five of the 13 instruments on the spacecraft still working, the science possibilities included listening for gamma ray bursts, where observations from additional locations in the Solar System can be valuable. The team was also recruiting additional receiving sites around the globe to improve diurnal coverage, in order to upload additional commands while the spacecraft is close to Earth and later to receive data.[34]

On August 10 at 18:16 UTC, the spacecraft passed about 15,600 km (9,700 mi) from the surface of the Moon. It will continue in its heliocentric orbit, and will return to the vicinity of Earth in 17 years.[35]

Contact lost
On September 25, the Reboot team announced that contact with the probe was lost on September 16. It is unknown whether contact can be reestablished because the probe's exact orbit is uncertain. The spacecraft's post-lunar flyby orbit takes it further from the Sun, causing electrical power available from its solar arrays to drop. Reduced power could have caused the craft to enter a safe mode, from which it may be impossible to awaken without the precise orbital location information needed to point transmissions at the craft.[11]

So granted the team had full access to NASA's archives and compliance with more than one observatory, but the hardware was available off the shelf and as I understand it (not an expert) the software permits transmission of radio frequencies without a great deal of hardware requirements.

Evidently if you have one of these Universal Software Radio Peripherals you can make your laptop an FM transmitter/receiver, have it emit passive radar, and have it receive GPS transmission among other things.

I think all you really need from the observatory is access to a dish, which I would imagine would be possible in a post apoc scenario.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Software_Radio_Peripheral

Balint Seeber talks about the project here on the Risky Business podcast.

One of them was by Balint Seeber on Software defined radio haxing, he’s our feature guest in this week's show.

We'll talk to him about messing around with aircraft radar, ACARS, keyless entry and all sorts of stuff. He even managed to take control of a satellite 15 million kilometres from Earth from his laptop while he was in a DEFCON talk! (Don't try this at home. Or do. I don't know what advice to give on that one.)

http://risky.biz/RB363

Another link on the subject.

How to Talk to a 36-year-old Space Probe (ISEE-3) with GNU Radio, a USRP, and a Big Dish

http://www.jmalsbury.com/how-to-talk-to-a-36-year-old-space-probe-isee-3-with-gnu-radio-a-usrp-and-a-big-dish/

[Twisting H]

There is a Roguelikes sale on Steam until Monday 10 am.

I have to recommend Neo Scavenger.  It is a survival post apocalyptic roguelike that is some what unfinished as a game, but it really does feel like you are in Mcarthy's The Road where dirty men warily size each other up and then engage in brutal and frenetic combat with makeshift spears and glass shanks over a can of condensed soup. 



I'm not sure if Red Markets is going for this level of bleak survival, but Neo Scavenger scratches that itch until Red Markets opens.

Neo Scavenger is $15 normally, and $10 now. If you like turn based post apocalyptic games or have played Dwarf Fortress, pick it up at this price.  If this will be your first roguelike, I'd wait until you can grab it for $5.

Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/248860/



RPS review: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/01/17/impressions-neo-scavenger/

Lets Play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUlr-ciKi24

I've played about five games since I purchased it a few days ago.  In my fourth game I was pretty confident with my military grade gas mask, two layers of shirts plus a hoodie for warmth, and a scoped hunting rifle with four total bullets.  A long way from beating dogs with a tree limb for nourishment was I.  I had set up shop in a abandoned apartment high rise when I was roused from my sleep by my tin-can-on-a-string noise alarms going off.  Some nameless scavenger with only shorts to his name wanted my stuff.  I shot him from afar and he ran away, coughing up blood.  I chased him to the next tile with a predator's confidence.  My next few shots were unlucky misses but I decided to close with the nearly naked man to beat him in the head with my superior rifle butt. 

Then I started losing fluids from both ends.  Evidently the marsh water I so desperately drank a day ago was contaminated.  I had cholera.  What was once certain doom for my bleeding shorts-clad prey turned into a knock down drag out fight. 

Desperate to get back to my highrise camp site, I was ambushed by two men combing the city's ruins.  One had a crowbar and I was too dehydrated to deliver effective blows with my rapidly degrading rifle butt.  They were not impressed by my attempts to intimidate them by brandishing a scoped rifle.  Fortunately I had passed out from the pain before the crowbar split my head like a melon.

[Tomsawyer]

Listening to Dungeon Crawl Classic game I hope there is a Character Funnel like feature for Red Markets. It can be called Free Market Character Creation, the character you play is decided by the market