Author Topic: Red Markets Alpha Playtest  (Read 273628 times)

Lordsloth

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #30 on: February 14, 2014, 12:18:08 AM »
Maybe something to do with the St. Croix river? 

Or Michelle Bachman.  Maybe she leads the Woodbury Enclave...

Bachman? Sheesh, I'd take my chances out in the wild with the zombie hordes.
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Cthuluzord

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #31 on: February 14, 2014, 01:08:55 PM »
@ Lordsloth

The Mississippi is thin enough up that way in some places that you could hope over it. The Western line is the actual river, the Eastern is the military lines of defense against the Casualties. Inbetween is a sort of DMZ. I can't decide what to do with that area during the Crash though. Part of me wants to nuke or gas the major population centers as part of the Premptive Genocide policy. It would help buy the government time to establish what is essentially the largest military cordon ever constructed in the nation's history and could be false flagged to justify their nuclear attack on the Canadian cities. However, I also like the ideas of survivors making in that northern wasteland, hiding from both government advance teams mining chokepoints against zombies and the Casualties pouring into the area.

@clockworkjoe

The lemming strategy will work depending on terrain. Just getting them in water won't do anything but disorient them and possibly scatter them with current. They don't drown. But sending a bunch of Casualties off a big cliff might work, or trapping them in a truly epic inferno. However, it only takes one Vector, Aberrant, or unreported bite to royally fuck up that plan. Like we talked about, I'm fine with the floating city ideas and some port city Enclaves so long as California isn't doing just fine or anything that extreme (-ly boring).

@Kamen

Zombies sink and don't have the motor skills to resist a current. They don't drown. I'm also going to note that the fluid the Blight excretes is extremely toxic to insects when consumed and Casualties just want protein from any animal, not just humans. That will answer the question of why fauna and insect-based decomposition doesn't solve everyone's problems in 3 years. So Casualties won't be eaten by fish, but they will break apart in salt water. The Blight relies on the flesh it inhabits to drive around, and salt water has a real bad effect on decomposing bodies. The massive rivers are used because they are deep enough and fast enough to thin out any Casualties going for a swim, and keeping away from the banks makes it that much easier to keep them from even trying. Most get slowly torn apart by the river bottom or wash out to sea, decomposing. Some make it across, justifying the government paranoia and defenses. But it's a manageable number rather than a great horde. Since the Western bank of the Mississippi has been luring zombies into the river's meat grinder for years, rural areas with clear sightlines to both banks are some of the safest areas in the lose because they've been bled out. Cities like St. Louis are still really bad though because buildings block view of the river and the tasty humans from most angles.

As far as tech, Amazon drones are already in the gear list. Monsters that fight for you like Dog are outside the pale (though if you want to train an actual dog to fight for you, I've written some rules for that). I actually want to include some of the advanced prosthetic stuff, but it will not be like Will Smith in I, Robot good. You can take off the governor of force and squash a zombie's head, but you'll risk doing it to items too. Plus, now a body part runs off the Tool rules, meaning you've got limited charges for use in the terms of batteries. So I hope it will be available in the final draft as a character option, but it will be a mechanical trade off. I don't want to write rules yet though because, the more I think about it, I think I need to take another pass on the gear and further simplify it. Just can't figure out how yet without totally abstracting things.

D6xD6 - Chris

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #32 on: February 14, 2014, 01:16:07 PM »
Amazon drones!?  SOLD.

I am also just going to assume zombie Apocalypse Amazon will offer two day delivery service on Red Market goods and payments.

This does present a cool question for the game:  how do successful,  huge companies respond to the new market conditions?  Amazon will always find ways to stick around and make money.

Cthuluzord

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #33 on: February 14, 2014, 01:57:03 PM »
Drone drops are how Takers stay alive in the Loss. They convert their Bounty to bitcoins using dealers in the Recession, then buy fresh goods they can't scavenge from the productive facilities in the Loss. It is technically illegal, but a lot of capitalism is, and drones are small enough and fly low enough that they remain almost impossible to track using radar.

As far as big companies, it depends. I was actually going to turn the Amazon distribution centers into Enclaves. For instance, the Cheggs warehouse is 600,000 square feet and can ship 17,000 textbooks per hour. Barnes and Nobles and Amazon have even bigger ones in the midwest. The walls are secure, the ceiling and floor could be removed to allow for farming, and they could trade books for food and services (survival manuals, for instance, would be in big demand).

Other places are even more mind-boggling. Ubiq is basically a reskinned google server warehouse. The Boeing factory in Everett, Washington is 98 acres big. That's an entire city, right there. The grain elevator in Hutchison KS can store 18.2 million bushels of grain. It could be a government Settlement shipping the stores back to the Recession, or maybe it became an Enclave when the repurposed the silos into vertical living spaces ala Wool. The government might want to take it back when more drone farming comes online.

D6xD6 - Chris

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #34 on: February 14, 2014, 02:09:40 PM »
The Amazon distribution centers as Enclaves makes perfect sense.  They are building one near me and it is. . . impressive,  to say the least.

One question about the drones.  If they are the key means for takers to purchase and receive supplies, would it make sense for there to be robbers that track and intercept the deliveries?  If so, that is one more avenue for players to survive (either by stealing the goods or collecting bounties on bandits)

Lordsloth

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #35 on: February 14, 2014, 02:15:01 PM »
Caleb, I like the ideas for that small area on the MN/WI border. The area is pretty heavily wooded, and I know (near here, and north of here)there are a lot of small, out of the way hunting shacks, state parks and forests that people could attempt to hide out.

Chados- the, uh... hands of fate.

Tadanori Oyama

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #36 on: February 14, 2014, 02:38:01 PM »
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The Boeing factory in Everett, Washington is 98 acres big. That's an entire city, right there.

As I started reading your post I thought of this and was mildly surprised you got there. Being a local I forget how unusual the Boeing factory actually is.

When I run this game the facility will be an Enclave for sure. It's gonna be the results of straight up atrocities from a bunch of the former engineers and workers, surrounded by walls made of collapsed highway and the planes that remained in the facility.

Discomonkey

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #37 on: February 14, 2014, 10:09:11 PM »
Just wanted ask a question about other countries. In Australia we have around 8 deserts separating the east and west coast.

http://www.cazr.csiro.au/connect/images/koeppen.jpg

What effect would the extremely high temperature, as well as the dry weather, have on casualties?

Cthuluzord

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #38 on: February 15, 2014, 10:53:37 AM »
Dry and hot weather doesn't do wonders for the flesh, but it doesn't speed composition as much as usual. insects aren't more prevelant, but the tissues do still dry out and shrink. The biggest effect of those deserts is population density and sightlines, which is why I have Australia surviving the outbreak and the only continent with clean borders.

Teapot

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #39 on: February 17, 2014, 11:26:39 PM »
What about wet/jungle heat on them?

Are people with immunity called 1%ers?

Guard dogs you say?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_Mastiff

Do the casualties regenerate? If one gets tricked off a 20 story building will they ever get up again? Can you bleed them out?

Can casualties be burned for warmth or power or any other useful product? Does burning them spread the infection or cleans it?

What other cyber currencies do people use?

I'm kind of imagining an ecosystem building around around hunting drones for their parts and goodies.

Cthuluzord

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #40 on: February 18, 2014, 12:13:35 AM »
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What about wet/jungle heat on them?

Along with insects, I'm thinking the Blight kills most other forms of microbiology as well. I don't think the heat and wet of the jungle would have as big an affect as it normally does on a corpse. They're still walking around out in there and will be for awhile.

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Are people with immunity called 1%ers?

No. They've got a big lead in the Loss, that's for certain, but it compensates for how shitty their lives will be if they get sold to a Pharma company, kidnapped by the government, or eaten by cultist that believe their flesh is magic.

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Guard dogs you say?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_Mastiff

Go for it, but while it can bite zombies for you, actually eating them will kill the pooch. Good luck paying it's food bill!

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Do the casualties regenerate? If one gets tricked off a 20 story building will they ever get up again? Can you bleed them out?

The Blight can, but not the body of the host it is infecting. I'm saving that kind of stuff for the Aberrant types. Falling off a building 20 stories tall would crush the skull and kill a Casualty instantly. They can't be bled out. It's a head shot, crippling shot, or you might as well as missed them. Everything else is just dead flesh dancing on millions of razor-thin, black sinews.

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Can casualties be burned for warmth or power or any other useful product? Does burning them spread the infection or cleans it?

Burned for heat? The human body isn't the most efficient fuel source. They could be used for physical power if you were crazy enough to strap them to a treadmill or something, but weigh the risks and rewards there. Burning them does kill most of the Blight, but you've got to burn the interior of the brain stem or the entirety of the body before they go down.

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What other cyber currencies do people use?

Don't know how much I want to get into it. While currency exchange rates is something I have no doubt a certain type of grognard would get into, I can't think of a way it would be fun at the table. That's why I'm currently leaning towards just expressing everything in Bounty.

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I'm kind of imagining an ecosystem building around around hunting drones for their parts and goodies.

That's a good idea, especially considering that the Enclaves and Settlements starving as result would be sending people to hunt those characters down. Rife for gaming material there.

Nulzilcho

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #41 on: February 18, 2014, 12:41:12 AM »
Quote
Can casualties be burned for warmth or power or any other useful product? Does burning them spread the infection or cleans it?

Burned for heat? The human body isn't the most efficient fuel source. They could be used for physical power if you were crazy enough to strap them to a treadmill or something, but weigh the risks and rewards there. Burning them does kill most of the Blight, but you've got to burn the interior of the brain stem or the entirety of the body before they go down.

I did recall something about animal carcasses being used to heat homes in europe and a hare-brained scheme to use them to power steam trains, then I found this: Council plans to use excess heat from cremations. Although I do believe that has more to do with disposal in the first instance and harnessing the waste heat from the ovens themselves in the second, as opposed to getting fuel from the remains.

Still, it could make a neat snake-oil pitch.
« Last Edit: February 18, 2014, 01:15:09 AM by Nulzilcho »

Tadanori Oyama

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #42 on: February 18, 2014, 12:45:45 PM »
Pretty sure mammalian bodies don't burn especially well because of high water content. If you really wanted to explore body based fuel than you could hang a body for a few days out in the sun to drain the blood and dry it out. Probably an area that hasn't been widely studied since it's pretty insane. Might make for a good atrocity.

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Teapot

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #43 on: February 19, 2014, 09:38:21 PM »
Do the  bodies degrade normally after you kill them? I'm not sure what I want the answer to be.

Makes me want to watch after humanity again.

So next thing, has ranching more or less vanished? What about the ecosystem in general? A mob of freshies would be a pretty apex predator and a hoard of old ones likely can/will still mangle even a longhorn.

Kamen

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #44 on: February 20, 2014, 10:52:09 PM »
GUYS! GUYS, IT'S HAPPENING! :D

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