I am replying to Game Designer Workshop Episode 8 here because it is easier to link images in the forum.
Caleb brought up the question (iirc) of "am I writing too much of my own personal philosophy into the game"?
Red Markets as currently described is an
extremely novel game. It reminds me of Eclipse Phase when I first picked it up. It was full of interesting High Concept ideas, but how do you implement it? To be honest, I didn't get a good read from any of the Eclipse Phase books or adventures on how to run a campaign UNTIL Know Evil came out. In fact I think that is one of the non trivial elements that has contributed to Know Evil's popularity.
So I agree with you Caleb that you need to be very specific and clear about how your game runs and what players will be getting into.
To an extent you are running into the Dark Souls problem. Dark Souls frustrated a lot of people except those who were willing to accept something new. Dark Souls
failed in explicitly informing its audience that it was a different type of game until the Prepare to Die edition was released, and that is ONLY because "Prepare to Die" is in the title. It is an instruction and a descriptor.
The game that successfully prepares its audience for its unique type of gameplay? Darkest Dungeon.
Less than a page, and no references to other games.
Recently there was a International Roguelike Developer Conference where the question of "how do you engage an audience to keep playing and learn from permadeath" was addressed.
The talks are archived here I believe:
http://www.twitch.tv/irdc_usa/profile/past_broadcasts
