Messages

16

RPGs / Re: Red Markets Inspiration

« on: July 11, 2016, 01:38:11 AM »

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!

17

Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest

« on: June 10, 2016, 11:39:12 AM »

Ludwig for prez 2k16

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Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: Red Markets Playtest Campaign: Fallen Flag

« on: June 07, 2016, 11:07:04 PM »

Question about setting.

If DHQS is the ultimate antagonists for the players in the settting (clandestine goverment agency dedicated to ensure that there are no orginized civilization/survivor resistance and unpersoning of anyone in the loss) how can any taker group ever work for them without distroying their retirement plan? It seems your branded by the devil for life because he caught you trying to sneak into his house. The end result being joinning them and sent right back out on missions or being killed as a security risk.

Would it be any better working for the moths or we talking high fuctioning driven refugee that needs shit done until you die.

It would seem the way to survive in red markets is to not engage with any of the major players At All, And just scootch by into the safezone. You need both to live, moths for ubic and DHQS for bounty but neither are your friend and will get you killed.

I'm not Caleb, but seeing the DHQS as nothing but ultimate antagonists is only one possible choice that the Market could make when running the setting. In your game, they could be less hostile and ruthless than they are in the Brutalists Maybe they're trying to extinguish all organized Enclaves, or maybe they're trying to pick certain ones to grant official Reclamation status to. Or maybe some parts of the Agency are doing one or the other of those things, or completely different things, or are just so inefficient and unaccountable that they're not really doing anything with a single discernible purpose.

The fundamental fact for Takers is that DHQS needs jobs done, and they have a lot of money. Yes, it's pretty dangerous working for the Feds, but that's who has the money.

I imagine the DHQS would be a lot more negotiable towards Takers the further you get from the Recession, which is the attitude I adopted for them in the Hooverville campaign; why expend precious fuel and flight hours on expensive aircraft to carry out operations hundreds and thousands of miles from the Recession when you can maintain a network of fixers to pay Takers to do the same jobs?

The CCC's second job was to rescue a DHQS soldier in a crashed helicopter near their enclave, and their fourth involved scouting out a site that the DHQS had secretly staked a claim on. While they were opposed to the Takers in the second example (Through their agent guarding the place) they were also perfectly justified in defending a site that was technically government property even before the Crash, as it was full of military vehicles and munitions.

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Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Re: Red Markets Rewards

« on: May 23, 2016, 12:10:33 PM »

I can't believe I was ever anxious about this game being funded. Holy shit.

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RPGs / Re: Watcha gonna do? Delta Green: Agent's Handbook is coming for you!

« on: May 22, 2016, 05:34:54 PM »

i had an idea for a campaign that would need to be fleshed out some more and mythosed. the idea came to me while watching orphan black, what if in 1996 when"dolly the sheep was born that was a cover-up by the cowboys, and there were a bunch of clone children at the"farm" they "sanitized." only the agents that were sent couldn't do the job, they couldn't kill the chldren. instead they secreted them to foster systems all over the US. Cut to present day where the players are these children, who have all suspisously been recruited/joined the goverment.  go from that story seed...let's see what grows.

I like this. Bonus points if you namedrop CATALYST somewhere.

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RPGs / Re: Red Markets Inspiration

« on: May 06, 2016, 04:44:17 PM »

"The Subtle Design Features That Make Cities Feel More Hostile"



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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RPGs / Re: Eclipse Phase - What happen in the first 24hrs of the Fall? - Thoughts?

« on: May 04, 2016, 03:46:02 PM »

The book is understandably scarce on precise details, but I never got the impression that the Fall happened overnight or even in the course of a week. Even discounting the protracted World War Three that preceded the actual rise of the TITANs I always imagined the Fall as a slow-motion apocalypse happening over at least a few months. It's not like most apocalypse movies where the family wakes up, has breakfast, and then sees "END OF THE WORLD!" on the news and realizes things are going to shit in front of their eyes. It wasn't jarring or sudden, but gradual and telegraphed and above all else inevitable--everyone knew they were witnessing the end of the world, and everyone knew there was nothing they could do to stop it. And they had to come to terms and live with that knowledge day in and day out, wondering if they would wake up the next day or if it would all be gone the next time they opened their eyes.

And then, somehow, miraculously, the end of the world that everyone saw coming and accepted...didn't happen.

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RPGs / Re: Core Activities in Role Playing Games

« on: May 04, 2016, 03:39:21 PM »

Role play?

:V

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RPGs / Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder

« on: May 01, 2016, 04:38:26 PM »

This looks like the kind of shit I would toss in front of my players in a conspiracy game to throw them completely off the scent of the real mystery.

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RPGs / Re: Watcha gonna do? Delta Green: Agent's Handbook is coming for you!

« on: April 29, 2016, 06:38:46 PM »

New episode of God's Teeth comes out after half a year and suddenly I am Delta Green trash again.

"Old Forgotten Things" and "Killing Time" are the two scenarios I've already run for my group, and when we get back to DG (Currently running Star Wars, then revisiting Red Markets for the Kickstarter) they'll get to experience the rest. They'll be my first attempts at running my own original scenarios for DG rather than adopting and modifying published ones.

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RPGs / Re: Red Markets Inspiration

« on: April 27, 2016, 03:04:12 AM »

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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RPGs / Re: Red Markets Inspiration

« on: April 25, 2016, 09:38:55 PM »

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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RPGs / Re: Redmarket. The ideas I get while listening to the actual plays.

« on: April 24, 2016, 04:36:00 PM »

"Realdolls Over The Mountan" was the name of my high school ska band.

Nobody came to our shows.

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RPGs / Re: Redmarket. The ideas I get while listening to the actual plays.

« on: April 24, 2016, 02:37:11 PM »

I got an idea for a Twin Cities Red Markets setting. I live there and I think one major feature makes it a novel place to set a game. The Mississippi River. In the setting detail Caleb describes that the river is the moat to the zombie barricade. So i imagined Two Cities on each side of the river. The St. Paul Safe Zone which is part of the Recession. And Minneapolis Enclaves which are part of the Loss. This has made the Minneapolis Enclaves actually a central Red Market trading hub. Other Loss enclaves send traders there to buy and trade in needed goods that were traded across the few bridges still in place.

This makes Minneapolis (what's left of it) a Taker Mecca. It also has agents from Ubiq and DHQS embedded in the populace. It is a place of intrigue, commerce and violence.

That's a great idea, somewhat similar to my ideas for St. Louis, Missouri (which would be a huge hub for trade and infiltration from the Loss to the Recession, since the Missouri River is the safest and fastest way to get from the depths of the Loss to the border).

I think a border-centered enclave is likely to be a major sub-setting for a certain campaign style. Working right on the border is going to have a totally different feel than a game set way out in some place like Colorado or on the West Coast.

Thematically, I'd say a border campaign would emphasize the economic horrors of wealth disparity, black markets as a response to over-regulation, and corruption. A more western/deep recession game would likely focus more on resource scarcity, environmental damage, and isolation. And a West Coast game would focus on smoking weed and surfing.

So if Minneapolis is Mecca, what would then be the Lost equivalent of the silk road?  And where would that road go.  It would have to be the road of least resistance from a big east hub to a fairly large west enclave as an end point.  You could do it from east to west where things like antibiotics go from trader to trader ever increasing in prise as they go further west with bandits/warlords on the way taking their cut. 

Or you could figure out some frivolous non necessary material that the west can produce and the east wants.  In ancient Rome it was silk and therefore the name silk road.  Rome didn't need it, but the rich where still willing to fork over unimaginable wealth to look good.  So what can the Lost produce that the Recession can't?

The first and most obvious is food. The bulk of America's agricultural heartland is on the wrong side of the fence to feed the bulk of its surviving citizens, so the DHQS has drone combines remote harvest fields of grain and other crops. Enclaves in the Loss probably can't produce anywhere near the amount of food required to compete with that, but an enclave that grows something more exotic than grain could likely sell that for a fair profit over the fence. Fruits, vegetables, weed, poppy, etc.

The second, which is mentioned in the beta document, is the currency that the entire Loss-Recession exchange economy is built upon: Bounty. IDs, hospital death records, birth certificates, land deeds, green cards, etc etc--the only ones worth anything belong to the dead, and the dead occupy the Loss. The Recession wants all of that so it can sort out who gets what when the T-Never finally comes around, and to incentivize the exchange they placed a fixed value on it.

Third, access. The DHQS undoubtedly operates numerous bases in the Loss, but helicopters and Humvees need fuel that's in short supply nowadays. They can't afford to send a Blackhawk to every site of interest like the Harding ammunition factory in Episode 4, but they can afford to pay Takers to do it for them.

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RPGs / Re: Watcha gonna do? Delta Green: Agent's Handbook is coming for you!

« on: April 21, 2016, 03:27:55 PM »

I just got the Agents Handbook pdf yesterday! Can't wait for it in the mail.

What games is everyone planning to play once you get your DG:KS booty?

I am new to the game. I have wanted to play for a while now. When this came out it seemed like a PERFECT point to start playing and joining in. I've been thinking about games I could run, to some fellow newbies as well. I am planning to run "Last things Last" for some friends, hopefully on my podcast.

For a longer-ish game, I loved how Caleb approached DG in God's Teeth. I like the idea of the game as a Police Procedural, mostly because I'd only have to plan one scenario at a time, and we could stop and pick it up at any time, and take breaks. Because... well Delta Green. Not everyone is so cynical and nihilistic as I am.

I like the idea of starting the pc's as Friendlies or "Norwegians". Caleb used Norwegian as a term in "Lover in the Ice" as people exposed to the conspiracy or mythos that are a liability. I thought, what if that was part of my jumping off point. Also I love Fargo, and I"m from Minnesota. Thus the title I came up with, "No Norwegians." The idea is that every player stumbles into the mythos and DG has to decide what to do with them. Their first instinct is to eliminate them, so part of the first "episode" is DG agents trying to silence them forever. If they survive, DG recruits them into the program and they become Cell N, which is based in the upper midwest.

I have a scenario involving the cult of Ithaqua based in a family farm next to a reservation perhaps Red Lake, Turtle Mountain, or Pine Ridge, maybe Mille Lacs. Bodies showing up feet ground down to bone and bodies windburned so hard they have 4th degree burns.

Another one dealing with Cthonians causing earthquakes in North Dakota because Hydraulic Fracking is killing them. Because water melts them. So a cthonian cult is trying to stop the company from drilling. There will probably be a chase / shoot out in a trailer shanty town. Oh man.

Anyhoo, I'm not certain how to start it. Obviously the character's come from different disciplines and jobs, but will have a government job of some kind. Just maybe more state level at the start of the game. Also no one has made characters for this either. But any ideas on how i could structure or set up the first introduction or am I TOTALLY trying something way too unfeasible?

Let me know or share what games you're gonna play.

I do think Delta Green works best in an episodic sense, where the overarching focus is on the characters and their descent into madness as they are exposed again and again to the Mythos, rather than a band of defiant investigators trying to stop the stars from aligning in an epic campaign.

Looking forward to returning to the misadventures of the Seattle K-cell once my group gets more time in our schedules!