Author Topic: Red Markets Alpha Playtest  (Read 274092 times)

Capitalocracy

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #90 on: June 17, 2015, 07:03:32 AM »
Twisting H actually brings up a pretty good point... it might make sense for the market to be going up, because theoretically we're recovering from a major apocalyptic crash here, but it might feel less optimistic at first sight if it were going down (for reference, put "euro dollar" in Google ;) This could be accomplished by moving the text to the right, but the actual artwork definitely prohibits it. I wonder how it would look with a significant downward dip at the tail end...

Tadanori Oyama

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #91 on: June 18, 2015, 12:39:17 PM »
If the market marker is the players than they are on their way up. A starting character in Red Markets is someone who had a wind fall or has had a good stable tend of economics to put them high enough on the hog to even try and risk Taking as a job.

trinite

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #92 on: June 18, 2015, 03:07:24 PM »
If the market marker is the players than they are on their way up. A starting character in Red Markets is someone who had a wind fall or has had a good stable tend of economics to put them high enough on the hog to even try and risk Taking as a job.

We might be over-thinking it. What matters is what works best as a visual design, in relation to that cover image (which is awesome, by the way).

That said, I actually do think a final "crash" downward on the line, if it started above the glasses-guy's head and went down to the right of this head, would look pretty good.
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Tadanori Oyama

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #93 on: June 18, 2015, 03:59:35 PM »
If the market marker is the players than they are on their way up. A starting character in Red Markets is someone who had a wind fall or has had a good stable tend of economics to put them high enough on the hog to even try and risk Taking as a job.

We might be over-thinking it. What matters is what works best as a visual design, in relation to that cover image (which is awesome, by the way).


Never! Everything is shades of meaning... just take a hit of this and you'll understand why the lizard people are speaking through Caleb's commissioned artist's cover art when they already have psychic powers...

Tadanori Oyama

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #94 on: June 24, 2015, 05:22:42 PM »
Enclave idea: Shenandoah, Iowa

"Seed Capital of the World", "The Fifty Families"

The town is home to a Walmart, a rural airport, and a clean energy company which can produce ethanol.

The enclave was pulled together out of the disperate families that took up shelter in the various safe places around the town during the inital phases of the Collapse. As each set sank their claim and plied their specialized trades, intercooperation blossomed and eventually the whole sprawl came to be considered a united Enclave.

Not so secure as most other Enclaves, the Fifty Families are mobile and flexable by requirement. The Walmart, energy facility, and local schools have been fortified for their purposes and interconnected while many outlying facilities must be left unconnected.

Over the last few years the Families have broken themselves into Jobs to help facilitate their way of life.
  • Roof Gardeners collect soil and seeds, planting and tending to the many rooftop gardens that help to feed the population. They are also responsible for keeping as many fields of soybeans tended as possible to help fuel the demands for food and fuel.
  • Fuelers operate the few solar power arrays and more importantly operate the 'clean energy' plant that produces biofuel and soy protein feed to keep the horses and animals fed.
  • Stablers tend to the horses. A section of the Walmart has been converted into a stable. They also train people to ride and assist with anyone of the other Jobs that needs to move around the Enclave quickly.
  • Flooders manage the water supply from the river and streams. They keep the pumps pressurized and ensure flowing water for the citizens.
  • Pilots maintain the small collection of drones available to the Enclave. They provide long range recon to forecast Casualty movements and weather dangers.
The heads of the five Jobs are the authoritative voice of the Enclave, resolving disputes for the good of the Enclave and representing the interests of their follows.

The Fifty Families for the majority of the Job staff, the upper class of the Enclave while "late comers" are forced to find whatever means of survival and contribution they can to earn their keep. A rare few who already possessed the skills required for a Job have been allows into the ranks but the majority are stuck effectively slaving at menial tasks.

With access to sufficent water and a huge storage of seeds, Fifty Families primarily exports seeds, food stuff, and some biofuels. They import medications, comfort goods, and much needed raw materials (wood and metal) to maintain their machinery.

Cthuluzord

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #95 on: June 26, 2015, 11:48:13 AM »
Quote
Enclave idea: Shenandoah, Iowa

That's awesome, Tad! This kind of write-up is exactly the kind of world building I'm hoping to encourage in Red Markets.

God, I've got to write faster. People that haven't even read the game are starting to play it without me....

clockworkjoe

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #96 on: July 06, 2015, 04:48:15 PM »




BEEP BOOP BOP LUDWIG IS A GOOD BOY

Tadanori Oyama

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #97 on: July 06, 2015, 07:26:13 PM »
God I want to play this game so badly...

Addition: Correction, I want to play it badly but I want to hear the RRPR crew playing it desperately.
« Last Edit: July 06, 2015, 07:27:58 PM by Tadanori Oyama »

Alethea

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #98 on: July 06, 2015, 08:10:48 PM »
Addition: Correction, I want to play it badly but I want to hear the RRPR crew playing it desperately.

Seconded.

I'm now at three systems and counting of RPGs I want to learn/play because of listening to the RPPR crew.
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Thesauradon

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #99 on: July 09, 2015, 01:23:23 AM »
Can't delete this post in the wrong thread, I'll think of an intelligent response when I have one.
« Last Edit: July 09, 2015, 01:39:03 AM by Thesauradon »

Twisting H

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #100 on: July 09, 2015, 09:41:23 AM »
Looks like Molly Crabapple of The Guardian is part of the Red Market's playtest

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/08/new-york-stock-exchange-suspends-trading-wall-street-aftermath

Quote
I was met by fires in the streets, the screams of the dying tourists and the shouts of former traders offering sacrifices to their new gods.

I wake up from my whiskey stupor to the scent of burning motherboards, and I know that something is wrong. Out the window in New York’s Financial District, two men in torn bespoke suits roast a body over an oil drum. It looks like Thomas Friedman’s, but I can’t be sure.

“Brother can you spare a bitcoin?” one screams.

In the distance, I see fire.

I haul myself up, wipe the cigarette ash from my hair, and put on a flak jacket made solely from Golden Parachutes. “War. Horror. Hatred. Death.” I say, to no one in particular. “Looks like I’m gonna get a fucking Peabody.”

“Reporting live from the frontlines of #NYSEDown!” I tell my phone cam. Then I run out the door.

Outside, I take in the scene: street preachers denouncing Gnosticism, a lone banker trying to garrote himself with ticket tape, and the Bull – that gold, beautiful bull – running through the streets like Zeus. I chase after it for a quote, but, like the dubious financial transactions powered by super-compressors, it is too quick.

At Freedom Tower, lost German tourists ask “Where is 9/11?”, but the commemorative booklet sellers who cater to them have disappeared. FiDi’s new currency in the wake the stock market shutdown is glossy pics of The Twin Towers exploding, and the commemorative booksellers already made their killing and moved uptown.

Smoke. Weeping. Screams.

My face attractively smeared from the ash of burning cocaine, I pause for a selfie. Then, I see it.

All the tourists are dead. And missing their spleens.

I hire now-former JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon as my local fixer. “Tell me the ways of your people, caught as they are between the present and the ancient past”, I demand, offering him half a hotdog as payment. Instead, he weeps. He tried to seek shelter at the dungeon of his favorite pro domme, he tells me, but when his black card bounced she slammed the door in his face.

“She was the only human I ever loved,” he splutters. I pat his head in a sensitive but professional way, wiping excess hair gel on his shirt from Pink.

“War is hell” I tell the camera, while manfully clenching my neck.

In Zuccotti Park, once the home of Occupy, the ex-Goldman Sachs boys have built a squatters city out of Hermès gift boxes that were meant for their mistresses. They communicate only by wiggling their fingers. No cops try to roust them. Behind us, Tiffany’s burns.

Then we hear the chanting. Dear god. The chanting. Dimon and I run towards it.

“ALL HAIL THE GREAT GOD HSDSDAOOOF!”

That’s when we see those pile of spleens – some glistening fresh, others roasted black – presented as an eldritch offering before the Google Data Center. “HSDSDAOOOF! HSDSDAOOOF!” the traders shout, beating their CrossFit-sculpted chests. One climbs to the top of the data center’s ledge and throws himself into the pit. “I am the god of light and math”, he chants. The tubes rise up to consume him.

“Dimon! Ask them how much a spleen is going for?” I demand, and he translates. Though this is my beat, I never learned to speak Suit.

He asks, but does not translate the answer. Instead, he jumps at me, clawing at my left rib. I think I make out his local dialect: he wants my spleen, to sell it, and get money, and then give it to his Pro Domme. Perhaps she might love him again.

I see the Bull, leaping and golden, and jump onto its back. “My savior”, I whisper into its metallic ear. “Take me away from all this.”

But he has his own secrets to tell: the bull’s testicles contain the power of capitalism, which is why the police barricaded him during OWS. But his blue-clad servants became lax and, one night, a former occupier gave his balls an irreverent slap.

When Occupy uploaded the footage to Instagram, the crash was born.

The Bull sheds a single brass tear. “If you survive this hell, tell future microsecond traders of my fate”, he gasps, before dying like Aslan.

I sell his spleen. War is no time for sentiment, and I have my own deals to make with the old gods. I want a Polk Award.

I run past the looted Fed and past Ciprianis, where Jamie Dimon’s corpse now hangs from the balcony from its intestines, wearing the rumba panties given to him by his one true love.

The stock market looms in front of me, adorned with the severed heads of unpaid interns. Anderson Cooper poses before it, wearing his tight black t-shirt of war. He rips it off, to reveal another, tighter t-shirt.

“Shit’s gonna get real,” I say into my phone cam, as I turn my face to the more photogenic side. But I know that if I keep taking selfies, my phone will run out of juice.

Meanwhile, atop the barricades of The Autonomous Republic of Fie Die, Jamie Dimon’s rumba panties are flown as a flag. His dominatrix has declared herself the Emira of Goldman Sachs Caliphate. I kidnap Anderson Cooper, and sell the story to CNN using the last of my iPhone’s power.

Above me, I hear the whirring of drones.

Then, they release the bees.

Tadanori Oyama

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #101 on: July 09, 2015, 11:32:48 AM »
Quote
Above me, I hear the whirring of drones.

Then, they release the bees.

"Drones Filled With Bees" is my "Blood on the Gauges" cover band.

constructacon

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #102 on: July 10, 2015, 12:26:25 AM »
quick question caleb you said you had a word document that you had that a prospective gm could use to run an Alpha playtest of...i have a group that playtested several of the NWOD books and are willing to help if you still need it.

Tadanori Oyama

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Re: Red Markets Alpha Playtest
« Reply #103 on: July 10, 2015, 12:51:23 AM »
quick question caleb you said you had a word document that you had that a prospective gm could use to run an Alpha playtest of...i have a group that playtested several of the NWOD books and are willing to help if you still need it.
Exterior playtesting hasn't started yet, unfortunately. At last official word it'll probably be sometime after GenCon 2015.

clockworkjoe

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