Redmarket. The ideas I get while listening to the actual plays.

[Gorkamorka]

This thread is for ideas I want to jot down while listening to the actual play podcasts of Redmarket.  It will be story hooks, equipment ideas, NPC and location ideas.  It will probably also include a lot of unapologetic backseat game design.

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FEEL FREE TO ADD YOUR OWN.
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1.
This game needs bore spears. Every latent should have one.  Boar spear is a long strong spear with a crossbar just after the blade.  So once you stick something you can hold it in place.  Like say, hold a vector 7 feet away from you while your buddies shoot it.

[Adam_Autist]

Something along those lines is happening on the current cover (sans crossguard). I imagine that the drawback is that it would be a pain to lug around. An upgrade could be to make it telescope somehow.

[Gorkamorka]

Something along those lines is happening on the current cover (sans crossguard). I imagine that the drawback is that it would be a pain to lug around. An upgrade could be to make it telescope somehow.

You need those cross guards to keep the casualty/vector to just walk up the shaft and eat your face.

[Jace911]

Something along those lines is happening on the current cover (sans crossguard). I imagine that the drawback is that it would be a pain to lug around. An upgrade could be to make it telescope somehow.

You need those cross guards to keep the casualty/vector to just walk up the shaft and eat your face.

:V

[Adam_Autist]

True. I was just saying it fits into the setting due to being in the cover art. But yes crossguard is very important for playing the keep away game.

[Alethea]

Boar spears or naginatas. You really want the naginata since, not only can you stab with it, but you can also slice. And it has the cross guard

[Gorkamorka]

2.
Latent make really scary suicide bombers.  All they need is to sneak into the place they hate and off themselves. 

I can imagine a really scary cult leader that would style himself after "The old man on the mountain" and have all bunch of latent cultists/assassins that he could send out to terrorise anyone settlement that does not pay the protection fee.  The Red Market version of Hassassins.

"Pay up or my latent ninja will sneak into your settlement and spit into your well.  And if you catch him, have fun dealing with the vector"

[Gorkamorka]

3.
A deaf person could make a living teaching sign language to takers.  A group of takers that know sign language would have a definite advantage of being able to communicate silently close to casualties without making them self a target.

Same with semaphore for long range communication.

[Gorkamorka]

4.

In the lost everyone travels by bicycle. Ok maybe not everyone, but bicycles and drawn carts are going to be a big part of most peoples life.

[trinite]

Rivers would be the fastest and safest way to cover long distances. I could even see a small-scale mobile enclave built on a collection of barges or paddle-wheelers.

[Vivax]

3.
A deaf person could make a living teaching sign language to takers.  A group of takers that know sign language would have a definite advantage of being able to communicate silently close to casualties without making them self a target.

Same with semaphore for long range communication.

Maybe an entire enclave was made out of a school for the deaf. The Casualties didn't hit it as bad because it was quiet.

[Twisting H]

Rivers would be the fastest and safest way to cover long distances. I could even see a small-scale mobile enclave built on a collection of barges or paddle-wheelers.

Up and down the Mississippi? Called the Huck Finners?

Alternately a former casino river cruse ship, teaming with zombies; crewed by one of The Meek, intent on moving from port to port and letting off his zombie cargo to spread the plague.

Maybe the players are a group of victims turned latents on the ship abandoned in the "zombie making" pile and they must fight towards the engine room/navigation room to prevent the ship from reaching the next port.

Might make a good one shot intro to the world/system. 

[Twisting H]

In Red Market's #3 (aka The Ballad of Drift), Caleb talked about the men, women and children of the fallen enclave that had turned into speed demon zombies.

I had a twisted idea.

Children are suppost to be very flexible. Far more flexible than adults.  Add to this that zombification removes all/most physiological governors of pain and so forth from an infected physical abilities.

So imagine a classroom of five year olds running at full speed in a close knit wolfpack after some unlucky taker.  Now imagine the Taker shimmies up a 40 foot wall because he can grasp the handholds.

Now imagine the classroom of moaning and sobbing infected kids looking up at him drooling, and then starting to instinctively form a human ladder with child after child doing insane olympic level acrobatics to jump onto one other's shoulders so that some of their numbers can climb the wall and bring the precious precious brains down to them.

I'm suggesting a variant of zombie that infects a group of children turning them into a super acrobatic and agile psudo hivemind.

The "bonus" to this is that the question of "how many five year olds can you beat up in a fight" meme that keeps floating around the internet can be realistically addressed in game.

[Alethea]

So imagine a classroom of five year olds running at full speed in a close knit wolfpack after some unlucky taker.  Now imagine the Taker shimmies up a 40 foot wall because he can grasp the handholds.

Now imagine the classroom of moaning and sobbing infected kids looking up at him drooling, and then starting to instinctively form a human ladder with child after child doing insane olympic level acrobatics to jump onto one other's shoulders so that some of their numbers can climb the wall and bring the precious precious brains down to them.

I'm suggesting a variant of zombie that infects a group of children turning them into a super acrobatic and agile psudo hivemind.

Well that's terrifying. I salute your sick and twisted mind, Twisting H

[Redroverone]

You know, given what little Caleb has described in the intro stuff he's shown us, there are two things that stand out to me.

1) Although he talks about breakdown of higher brain functions, there's nothing there that prevents Casualties from having basically a form of long-term Alzheimers where their cognition increases randomly as Twitch makes random neurons still alive in the dying parts of the brain fire. I'd imagine a lot of people got caught solely because they treated Casualties as unthinking or unable to plan in short bursts.

2) Vectors may start losing higher brain functions immediately, but I could easily see someone who was infected and starting to Vector using their weapons they died with, since they'd have enough higher brain function to remember that killing things makes them edible.

In a different tack, there's nothing to prevent Latents from living on Casualty meat.