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?
