Red Market Con Game/Guide?

[jackson6644]

Not sure if this is the best place to post this question, but I was wondering if anyone would be up for helping craft a package scenario to run Red Markets at conventions (with the boss' approval, of course, though he's pretty busy right now). I was thinking the final product would break down something along the lines of:

 - A four-page User Intro Guide for players (can be laminated)
     - 1 page of setting background/terminology
     - 2 page guide to core terms and character sheet
     - 1 page of lookup/FAQ/how-to reference player guide
 - 4-6 Pre-gens (possibly the ones already created or maybe we tweak/create new ones for the scenario)
 - An intro scenario that introduces the players to the very important game aspects of:
     - [TBD--this is what we discuss]
 - Player mat

I'm going to be GMing some games at WashingCon in September, and I'd love to be able to run Red Markets, but I'm a little worried that introducing it to people cold at a Con might be a little harder than I'm anticipating (I doubt I'll be able to tell players ahead of time "Go listen to like 10-12 hours of this podcast and you'll get the gist of it"), and if we could generate and streamline something lean as a group, I think we could really get some legs out of it.

Any thoughts?

[Alethea]

- A four-page User Intro Guide for players (can be laminated)
     - 1 page of setting background/terminology
     - 2 page guide to core terms and character sheet
     - 1 page of lookup/FAQ/how-to reference player guide
 - 4-6 Pre-gens (possibly the ones already created or maybe we tweak/create new ones for the scenario)
 - An intro scenario that introduces the players to the very important game aspects of:
     - [TBD--this is what we discuss]
 - Player mat

You also need a premade enclave for the Takers to work out of. Preferably you'd want two or three jobs for the players to research and decide between. I'd say you want to introduce folks to researching jobs, negotiations, scams, legs, and casualty combat.

[RadioactiveBeer]

So, I demo'd the game for a bunch of new players on Saturday and it went well. Here's what I had:

1) Pre-written enclave; ~1 handwritten A4 page (Freedom Lodge, a Montanan ski resort that was taken over by a survivalist militia early in the Crash)
2) 7 pre-gen characters (Always have more pre-gens than you need, so players have better choices. Also, it forced me to learn character creation.)
3) 2-3 blank character sheets (In case of snowflakes)
4) Printout of the "in-setting terminology" and "basic game terms" sheets of the rulebook.
5) Printout of the combat cheatsheet.
6) Three jobs, each ~1 A4 sheet (both sides, handwritten, including legs) for job info, then an extra sheet for job site map (printed off blueprints from Google searches).
7) The Negotiation sheet.
Dice.

That was plenty for a 4-hour session that went very well and got super-positive feedback from the players. The reason I went with THREE pre-written jobs instead of one was because I feel like the "hmm, is this job worth the risk?" aspect of the game is a pretty key part to the experience, as well as the idea that jobs you DON'T take are just as important as jobs you DO. Also, the book does a good job of making mission creation quick and organic-feeling, so going through it multiple times helped me learn the system better.

For reference the missions were: a Closure job for the owner of a copper mine with an escaped Latent slave [Complication: the Latent was winged by a guard while escaping and bled to death on the run; his Vector found an enclave and caused an outbreak]; a Grab job for an Archivist stealing the original film reels of a seminal zombie movie from the director's house [Complication: there was a bounty on the director's head because he was a key contributor to the Romero Effect and Raiders crash the ranch house looking to collect]; and finally, research assistance work for a zoologist, tagging and releasing Casualties to map herd movements [Complication: the zombie cluster the scientist identified as her research targets were the "lawn gnome" security system of a bunch of squatters hiding in the strip mall opposite].

[trinite]

I recommend having a defined number of legs no matter the job probably only 1 or 2. I'd go with a dangerous one and a potentially profitable one, which both look equally promising at first.