Hey is anyone else interested in Red markets? I'm still waiting to get the playable rules, but I was hoping to try running it or at least getting a group together for it.
>>47954937
Sell us on it.
>>47954937
What's the reason for the hype I've been hearing about it? I haven't really been able to listen to one of RPPR's actual plays on it yet. Can you please explain a little OP?
What's this game about? First time I've heard of it
>>47954956
>>47954957
Well, a simple way to describe it is "American S.T.A.L.K.E.R". You play as grimey survivors in the wasteland of a zombie apocalypse, trying to scrounge resources and enough money to buy your way into the safety of the east coast.
>>47954979
I know there are zombies but that's about it. What other STALKER elements are there?
I think the one thing I like most about red markets is the usage of modern and near-future tech. I like the idea of PCs with boston dynamic drones or google-glasses improved guns.
>>47954937
I listened to a podcast of this game GMd by its creator. That killed any interest I had in it.
>>47954995
The general griminess of what cities would be like without people maintaining shit for a few years plays into it. Theres also a heavy emphasis on resource management for things like making sure youre fed/your phones and computers are charged/your family has money to pay people to not throw them out of their house while you're gone.
I guess the S.T.A.L.K.E.R stuff comes in with an overbearing feeling of shit being broken, and you being broke.
>>47954995
There aren't any. It's just a generic zombie apocalypse but you have to worry about paying for stuff now for some reason.
Which is stupid.
>>47955019
Things cost money because there are things still left that have value. A guy who owns the solar panels can rent out their usage so you can charge your phone. People in the safe zones will ship you gear by drone courier, but not for free.
>>47955061
I'd be more onboard with this if it was still an option to just steal things. Like if some shmuck is alone in a shed and demands money for stuff I need, why can't I just kill him and take it?
>>47955073
Yeah, that was something that bothered me about the RPPR actual play. They were pussies about ever just killing a guy and taking shit they needed.
>>47955061
What's to stop me from just offing solar panel guy and taking his business? Besides GM fiat, I mean. Because of course he's going to have bigger guns and an army and all this bullshit the second I express the intention of harming him.
>>47955106
Depends on the situation I guess.
Like if you gun a guy down in the middle of a settlement then it'd go poorly, but then you could try to be sneaky about it. But then eventually you have to ask yourself if the amount of effort it takes to kill a guy is worth whatever they have.
>>47955168
If it's not worth killing them over, I'm sure as hell not going to buy it in the first place.
I actually had an idea for a red markets game I'd be willing to run.
The players would be based out of Seattle, and specialize in making runs down the coast into California to break into celebrity mansions to steal collector memorabilia/family heirlooms/stupid valuable shit actors own.
>>47955223
That actually does sound kind of cool. You could end up killing Bill Murray just like in Zombieland.
>>47954937
>zombies
dropped
>>47955019
>>47955073
>>47955106
Do we have any fluff of it, because I seem to remember a summary put up on the guy's blog about it or something?
From what I heard, only half of America got fucked over, and is in an exclusion zone because of the zombies. Outside of that half, there's still an economy, Starbucks, TV, internet, the police, the military... Basically all the amenities of life. To run around murdering people and taking their stuff would basically have the same results it would if you went out with a gun and tried that now.
Characters go out into the exclusion zone because there's still half of America out there, and treasure to be found, and mansions and gold and shit still has value because there's still an economy in which those kinds of things have value; the Red Markets. In fact, some people actually clear out a good portion of those areas and just up and live in mansions, or so you've heard.
Also, characters have money, social, and mental stats which can fuck them up good. Pretty much every choice comes with a drawback to one of them, much like Don't Starve. Just buying up all the gear you can and surviving pretty well in the exclusion zone might keep you alive, but now you're out of money if that didn't pay of. You can just kill zombies by the hundred but that'll drop your social because nobody wants to hang out with the guy who just shoots former people all day. And you can work a dead-end office job to help you get your money up, but you can lose mental with that stat, and you need mental to keep you from putting your gun in your mouth.
It's not exactly an RPG about murder-hoboing in a generic zombie apocalypse, it's succumbing to the lure of treasure and hope, because as long as you have $5 in your pocket you have a chance at something big.
>>47955223
>>47955236
Actually, it's very much like that already.
>>47955268
America east of that big Mississipi(?) river is walled off and safe, just kind of dystopian and poor. West of the river is the zombie infested shithole. Players are people stuck on the western side trying to earn up money to pay for fake passports n shit to move to the east coast.
>>47955268
I think the social and mental health mechanics can be a bit overbearing.
>>47955247
You probably miss out on a lot in life huh? Not just with zombies (which I even think is over played at this point) but the general dropping of something based on a single word.
>>47955268
See, I read a very different story on the kickstarter page that all the Takers aren't allowed to leave the quarantine zone. People are trapped there, but still have to pay for shit for some reason. It's a gigantic plothole for a number of reasons. Also
>Mechanics dictating how your character feels or what they do
Ech.
>>47955353
Pretty sure they function a lot like money in this case. You can build them up but if they drop below certain points things go badly for you. Essentially they're different health bars. Actually are social and mental the same, and it's health/money/social? It's been a while since I read about it.
>>47955353
Yeah, the idea of taking san loss for killing zombies seems silly. Like I can understand that for murderhoboing a shopkeeper in town, killing your fellow man and all...but fuck, who's going to sympathize with zombies?
>>47955383
Nobodies allowed to leave it, but that doesn't mean people don't break the law. The point is that you're smuggling your way to safety, and have to pay people for services and paperwork n such.
>>47955247
You forget to tell us that you're leaving /tg/ and never coming back.
>>47955388
The three mental health bars are stress, detachment and trauma. Different bad things happening causes damage to different bars.
>>47955426
Ah, there we are.
Detachment I guess goes with >>47955400; I mean zombies are still very much human-shaped. After a while I suppose you stop seeing zombies and start just seeing people-shapes. And who is going to talk with the guy who never talks and just kills zombies all day?
>>47955381
>zombies
dropped
>>47955421
no
>>47955463
I'd feel better about this if it depended on how you killed zombies. Like if you're just opening up full auto into a crowd VS creeping up to them individually to put an ice pick in their skull.
I would probably avoid ice pick guy, but it's not like spree shooter is picking out individual zombies to kill.
I'd care a lot more if the dependant thing was more flexible.
Like rather than being stuck with family, can I try to help get dogs from a shelter into the safe zones?
>>47955417
You just poked another hole in this thing. If anyone with a bit of cash and the right connections can leave the quarantine, why isn't the entire U.S. crawling with zombies by now?
The whole concept falls apart if you look into it for more than a few seconds, and the mechanics sound like they try to reign you in if you even try to exploit the broken logic of the setting. It's a shitty theme-park version of an apocalypse, where everything is really bad you guys really but don't touch anything because muh status quo.
>>47955503
Though there's something to be said about a guy who just unloads a magazine on a crowd of former humans. Like, maybe he was always itching to do that, and carnage on a large scale can kind of desensitize you, even if at a different degree than up close and personal. Of course, if you're using a sniper rifle you're at once distant and removed but still very close and personal through the scope.
>>47955628
The east coast is relatively safe because they've got a giant wall keeping the zombies out. Humans can come and go because it's not like someone can just carry the virus with them, sneeze and start a new outbreak.
>>47955630
At a certain point I think there needs to be a certain level of malice involved to make it creepy. Like if some guys job is just throwing molotov cocktails into warehouses and waiting for the moaning to stop while he reads on his tablet I don't think that would be very mentally taxing.
The main issue I have is that zombies are just old hat, especially vanilla zombies with no twist on them.
The necromorphs from dead space were basically zombies but they had a twist which kept them from being totally stale. Or even left for dead's specials.
I guess the main issue is that I just don't get the appeal to zombies. First off, zombie plagues generally don't make any sense unless magic is involved. Secondly, the zombie apocalypse has been so done to death any gameplay would probably end up being reenactments of movies and video games.
And the setting of Red Markets I don't really get either. Why is the east coast safe? Wouldn't it be ground zero for zombies with all the transit and people. There'd be no way to quarantine NYC.
Also why are people still using fiat currency when the whole world economy has collapsed. The US economy is already a house of cards, and that's without zombies eating everyone. Shouldn't people barter? Or use gold?
>>47955649
Someone with a bite could.
>>47955649
If the virus is only spread by obvious zombies how did it start in the first place?
>>47955707
>"Welcome to The Wall"
>"Okay, just step into this changing room and strip so we can inspect you for bite marks"
>"Woops, looks like you're bit, just step over there and the guard will administer a courtesy bullet"
>"Thank you for visiting The Wall"
>>47955697
I honestly can't answer a lot of those questions. The creator said he's working on a pdf for what it's like around the world but it's not out yet so...
But the zombies aren't all the same. The gist of how it works is everyone initially infected is super fast, 28 days later style. But once they go too long without food they starve into normal zombies.
As for the east coast vs west coast thing, I think it's implied the outbreak started in L.A and expanded outward.
>>47955730
Well, that makes it pretty obvious.
I mean you'd have to get bit, then get all your papers signed and moved through quarantine before your 20 second time is up and you start berserking. Not really any chance of hiding it.
>>47955728
We've already established that people can bypass the wall illegally. If they couldn't, they'd get found out in a fucking millisecond.
>Welcome to the Wall
>Let's just take a look at your credentials here
>Whoopsie! Looks like your passport doesn't check out! Back into the zombie infested hellscape you go!
>Thank you for visiting the Wall!
Nice try.
>>47955730
Whoa... zombies..... that run ?!?! ....... in credible
>>47955858
A couple weeks ago somebody posted their homebrew zompocalypse setting, and one really neat thing I liked was how when people first got infected they would just scream and scream and maniacally run around everywhere being Crossed-level violent to whatever living things they encountered. It was only after a few days of constantly screaming and beating up your own body that they started becoming the moaning, shuffling, slow-moving familiar undead.
I think there were also lurkers which hadn't been damaged that badly, that could just get up and sprint at you if you got too close.
>people actually taking the effort to post "I don't like zombies" in a thread about a zombie RPG
>>47955933
It's too samey and at once too different for their liking. It's not zombie enough with its take on economic and psychological mechanics but also too much zombie by having zombies in it. As such it needs to be criticised without a thorough reading of the setting or mechanics that prop up the setting, instead insinuating the setting works the way it works in other prominent zombie genre settings work and then insisting there's plot inconsistencies and contradictions because it doesn't follow the rules of those other settings.
Nobody wants change or likes change, and to have a different take on zombies where the emphasis is less on mass-murdering the undead and instead trying to keep your cool and make it through to civilization with some of your humanity intact represents a big change for the genre, where zombies aren't antagonists but environmental hazards and the real enemy is your own brain.
>How did the outbreak start in the first place if it's only transmitted via bite from an obvious zombie?
>Why is the U.S. government allowing people to live in the quarantine zone? Why is any government allowing that to happen?
>Why does the government have a quarantine in the first place? Why have they let the outbreak go on for so long that it's engulfed more than half of one of the largest nations on the planet? Why haven't they taken care of this thing?
>Why didn't they take care of this thing before it began? In the age of smart phones and the internet, someone must have recorded it in the very early days, so why did nothing come of it?
>Why didn't the people do anything about it? Is zombie media a thing in this universe? If it is, anyone could have recognized the signs and nipped the entire issue in the bud, right?
>Why is the economy still functioning on a large scale on the uninfected side when most of the country is decimated and non-functional?
>Why do people have a problem with killing zombies, but apparently have zero qualms about killing someone who's been bit?
>Why would people ever go into the quarantine zone? There's established work and revenue on the safe side, so why bother scavenging stuff? The risk is too high and the reward is too low for any sane person to go there, so why bother?
>Can't you just murder someone who has something you want? Are there laws against that in the Quarantine zone? Who's enforcing them? Are they enforced on a large scale?
>Couldn't your PC just get a day job on the safe side? Why does that give you a sanity hit? Does living in zombie town U.S.A give you a sanity hit too?
>>47956049
>Nobody wants change or likes change, and to have a different take on zombies where the emphasis is less on mass-murdering the undead and instead trying to keep your cool and make it through to civilization with some of your humanity intact represents a big change for the genre, where zombies aren't antagonists but environmental hazards and the real enemy is your own brain.
Makes for a pretty dull RPG, though.
>>47956119
Why this wasn't a boardgame is beyond me. You would think a boardgame with the trauma/detachment/stress mechanics would be much better. Much easier resource management and a sky view of the situation and abstracted values, plus you can add elements of random events to fuck you over by die roll or card stack, which really put stress on characters to get out there and try to score a good haul to deal with them.
As an RPG, I can see it working, but I think if the emphasis was on mechanics, it should have been a boardgame. Maybe it would have to compete too much with zombicide?
>>47956049
Making insanity points the main threat in the game isn't fun or ground breaking, it's just dumb.
They should be a side mechanic to HP, not the main mechanic. When I'm playing an RPG I don't want my main focus to the mental health of my character. Sure going crazy after fighting cthulu or demons is cool, but it shouldn't be my main concern.
>>47955933
>>people actually taking the effort to post "I don't like zombies" in a thread about a zombie RPG
You asked if /tg/ was interested in this game and a lot of us said "no, it's dumb". If you didn't want people's opinion you shouldn't have asked.
If you wanted people to suck you off over your job simulator with zombies you should have made a general.
>>47954937
I think it looks alright. There is a lot of cringey "DAE Capitalism is evvvvvilllll! XD" shit in it. But the system seems kind of fun and the setting okay if you ignore the annoying economic undertones.
Are people going to be looking for games of this in the gamefinder when the rules are available?
I think this is an issue of fluff over crunch. It's best off to leave the mechanics and take the setting tk another game.
>>47956397
The setting is terrible though.
>>47955247
Thanks for your input.
>>47956243
I would think as a boardgame it could be pretty neat.
Think of it like being inside safety, but while there's more stability, reductions to damages, and a low but steady income, there's also a huge risk because you might get hit with a random event card which puts you into debt, makes you homeless, requires you get surgery... Like, you're making [1 Resource/turn] working at a starbucks, but suddenly you get hit with an emergency surgery your kid needed and now you have [15 Resource] of debt you need to pay off in 5 turns or you get massive penalties (stress and detachment from homelessness, trauma from lack of medical care...) and suddenly you're really tempted to go back out into the wilderness again to search for stuff, so the game is divided into two stages: downtime in safety, and going out into the wilderness.
The wilderness, though, rarely leaves you with nothing to show for it, but always makes you pay for whatever [Resource] you bring back from it in the form of stress, detachment, and trauma, which need to be payed off themselves. And as everyone plays as a team cooperatively, losing a team member out there can increase stress and detachment and trauma hugely, though less so if you lose it in town. So even if someone is out there ill-equipped for it because they're low on cash, it's in your best interest to keep them alive because the team will eat shit harder if you lose them.
Think of it like The Game of Life meets Don't Starve meets Darkest Dungeon. There's low but steady rewards in safety, but also crippling risks, and there's great rewards out in the wilderness, but the risks, while heavy if you don't work well together, are somewhat lower or spread among your stats.
In that way, hope is actually your worst enemy. So long as you've got that $5 in your pocket, you can always gamble on that big score, and lead yourself along just another turn to try and dig yourself out of the pit you've gotten dug into.
>>47957016
I like the perfect expression of risk vs reward. I'm really looking forward to the first email back. Apparently were getting a set of play-ready rules.
>>47954937
Got a PDF for us? It looks awful (who thought combining zombies and inventory management would be a good idea for a game?) but I'm happy to be proven wrong, if you're willing to play ball and not just another shill pimping a shitty Kickstarter.
>>47958173
If when I get the PDF they're not numbered and name tagged I'll share what I can.
>>47958234
I remember when I got my Numenera PDF it had my name on it and I found that really weird. Is that common for kickstarter rewards?
>>47958173
Kickstarter's over>>47958173
>>47958288
It's an anti-piracy measure sort of like those ink tags clothes at malls got on.
It won't stop anyone who is dedicated, but it puts up enough resistance to make enough decide it's not worth the bother.
>>47958173
I personally love the idea of inventory management. I don't want it in every game obviously, but I would like to play a campaign or two where how much food and water I have actually matters.
>>47958815
The inventory management is heavy enough where things matter, but not so in depth that you're counting liters of water. It's like "Do I have enough bullets to fire my gun 5 more times?"
I feel like this is some kind of rust/generic survival sim simulator, more than a zombie horror game.
>>47959850
It's a game about economic horror.
>>47959960
So are games like dayz when you think about it.
How many human lives is a pair of pants worth?
>>47954979
American S.T.A.L.K.E.R would be called R.A.N.G.E.R
STALKER is a slav thing and so is the zone in Ukraine if a zone were to pop up in America it would be completely different since each one is different.
>>47954975
The zombie apocalypse happened, except it wasn't evenly distributed among socio-economic lines. In parts of America, the apocalypse is in full swing; in other parts, the government has fought back the hordes and erected quarantine zones and gotten about the business of being a nation-state. To maintain quarantine, the government has declared everyone on the wrong side of the quarantine zone as legally dead.
The differential between these two regions has created a "red market" - that is, an economy that is not illegal only because the people carrying it out are those declared legally dead (and therefore incapable of breaking the law). These people would be YOU ASSHOLES. Essentially, you're surviving out in the wastes and taking part in the Red Market through the trade of Bounty (an abstract currency based on the eventual reclamation of the continent requiring legal documents, ID's etc to thrash out things like who died, who inherits what, what land is up for grabs). Your objective is to earn enough Bounty to get fake ID's, hire some smugglers and get the fuck out of the apocalypse.
>>47955073
>>47955102
It IS an option (in fact it's arguably encouraged because hey, free stuff you don't have to buy, right?) but the game has a Humanity system that would kick in at that point.
Essentially, Humanity is your sanity mechanic modelled around "being THAT GUY in the zombie movie". You know, the one who goes crazy and sees his wife in the horde so he opens the gates, or grows so callous towards other humans that he throws people to the horde in order to get away himself, or is so traumatised by events that he keeps his zombie-child chained up in the basement, incapable of accepting that she's no longer human. The types of Humanity damage are Trauma (seeing horrific shit), Detachment ("fuck humanity") and Stress ("oh no, my stuff!").
"You have thing I want therefore I kill you" is a thing THAT GUY does in the zombie movie, and probably it falls along the Detachment track.
>>47959850
It's a system (the Profit system is how you do inventory management, upkeep etc) with a zombie horror setting attached. The designer is entirely open to setting hacks and has in fact invited suggestions. There was a really good one about being time-travellers in a global Maoist state's planned economy, reaching into the past to steal the shit the failing State economy can't provide for you.
>>47958815
>>47958826
The inventory management is light enough that you're not literally counting bullets, but it's omnipresent throughout the system so you always FEEL like you're gambling with bullets etc. So, for instance, you have your gear and you have Refresh - so instead of "I have 10 spare mags", when you empty out your gun you spend Refresh to refill it. OR you spend Refresh to refill your rations that you burned through... That sort of thing. Also, "one charge" on a gun is not the same as "one bullet" being fired from it, it can represent a burst of fire etc.
>>47955001
Go on plz
>>47960159
>STALKER would be called RANGER
Surely P.A.T.R.I.O.T?
>>47955019
I am trying to figure out how there is material scarcity of non pershabiles when 99% of the population is dead.
The running out of ammo in the apocalypse meme is especially silly to me. I worked at the Ammunition Supply Point at Camp Pendleton when I was in the Marines. There is so much small arms ammo in storage in the US for military use it is incomprehensible to most people.
>>47956330
The creator's actually talked about how he's gotten backlash from both camps about this, actually.
EITHER he's a hippie communist who hates freedom because he makes a game about how being poor sucks OR he's a Randian fascist corporatist for making a game about trying to stop being poor.
I guess it goes to show that trying to make something with any sort of message, theme or point is really offensive to people who hate content.
>>47956259
>They should be a side mechanic to HP, not the main mechanic
They are though. A zombie will kill your character way faster than a trek through the depressing wastes will break them.
>>47960569
Depends when in the apocalypse you're setting it, plus how dead the world is.
In Red Markets, I think I remember the fatality rate as being about 50% globally? Enough that the US government has been able to slice off a good chunk of continent , put up a sign saying "NO ZOMBIES ALLOWED" and shoot everything that doesn't have a pulse. Now, that would have cost them a lot but they are still making shit (admittedly with fewer material resources at their disposal) and still have a lot of mouths to feed.
Ammo is actually relatively easy to come by in Red Markets. It's so easy that it's kind of abstracted into Charges and Refresh. Basically, one "shot" doesn't represent one bullet; it represents the bare minimum of firing a weapon with a reasonable chance to inflict meaningful damage on target. That MIGHT be one bullet, but it might be a short burst... Refresh is also abstract in that it just sort of assumes you MAYBE had been able to scrounge up enough ammo for this job - if that's what you choose to spend your Refresh on instead of extra rations, or spare batteries...
>>47956102
>How did the outbreak start in the first place if it's only transmitted via bite from an obvious zombie?
It appeared all at once, more or less all over the world, and is spread through any infected bodily fluid (including sweat and saliva). The virus explicitly doesn't follow conventional epidemeological models.
>Why is the U.S. government allowing people to live in the quarantine zone? Why is any government allowing that to happen?
They needed to secure as much as they could but only had so many trained manpower, so many resources they could risk. They blew the bridges and said "if they're not dead on the other side, they are now."
>Why didn't they take care of this thing before it began? In the age of smart phones and the internet, someone must have recorded it in the very early days, so why did nothing come of it?
In the age of Buzzfeed, "Man bites other man's face off!" is dismissed as clickbait bullshit or "Oh Florida" by most people.
>Why didn't the people do anything about it? Is zombie media a thing in this universe? If it is, anyone could have recognized the signs and nipped the entire issue in the bud, right?
They did. It does; in-universe it's called "the Romero Effect" and it has upsides and downsides. The upside is that when zombies happened they were close enough to movie-zombies that people could sort of fight them; however, people were also overconfident and didn't anticipate the ways it DIDN'T follow movie-laws and it got a lot of people killed too.
>Why is the economy still functioning on a large scale on the uninfected side when most of the country is decimated and non-functional?
It's not; it's explicitly stated to be in a constant state of economic depression, buoyed up only by the land grab and speculation caused by people preparing for the eventual reclamation of the continent.
>>47956102
>>47960740
>Why do people have a problem with killing zombies, but apparently have zero qualms about killing someone who's been bit?
Not sure where this one is coming from. But in terms of why someone who has JUST been bit is worse than a shambler, Red Markets has two types of zombies; Vectors are fast cannibals whose every bodily fluid is infectious and they're people in the early stage of the infection. One Vector can spread it to a thousand people in an hour. When the Vector dies, the infection eventually reanimates it into a shitty Casualty which is far less of a threat. So "Bob got bit! Shoot him!" is a far more urgent concern than "oh, a shambler is also present in this building".
>Why would people ever go into the quarantine zone? There's established work and revenue on the safe side, so why bother scavenging stuff? The risk is too high and the reward is too low for any sane person to go there, so why bother?
The quarantine zone is most of the continent and people still need resources. Also, the Reclamation project is kind of the only thing keeping the Recession from totally collapsing economically so it is important to be able to trade in legal documents, proof of death etc. Also, bear in mind most Takers are FULL TIME in the quarantine zone (living in shitty little survivor colonies called enclaves) and TRYING TO GET IN to the safe zone.
>Can't you just murder someone who has something you want? Are there laws against that in the Quarantine zone? Who's enforcing them? Are they enforced on a large scale?
There might be laws, but they're local and not enforced on a large scale. Depending on the size, manpower and social structure on enclaves in your area, you might have a kind of "common law" Yes, there are Raiders who go around being Mad Max all over the place because SHIT THE WORLDS ENDED TIME TO WEAR HUBCAPS, right?
>>47955001
Why's that?
>>47960740
All of your answers suggest that the setting exists and functions the way it does solely to perpetuate itself.
That doesn't make a good setting.
>>47956102
>>47960740
>>47960832
>Couldn't your PC just get a day job on the safe side? Why does that give you a sanity hit? Does living in zombie town U.S.A give you a sanity hit too?
You're not IN the safe zone (called the Recession). You're TRYING to get over there and get a day job etc. It's about GETTING OUT of the zombie apocalypse (the area called The Loss).
Now, you might say "can't I get a day job in the enclave" (the areas survivors in the Loss have walled up and turned into small towns) and you certainly good; there are optional rules for running side-businesses, yes. But by definition, the game is about the people who AREN'T happy to sit and do subsistence farming for 20 years, just like D&D is about people who don't do that and Shadowrun is about people who DON'T slavishly follow the letter of the law and work 9-to-5 in cubicle offices for their entire lives.
Also, enclaves need shit. Total self-sustainability doesn't really exist, so your enclave might have farmland but lack medical supplies and you need to be able to trade, scavenge etc if your enclave is going to be able to keep going.
>>47960879
Some of those questions are literally "why does the setting exist and not not-exist?" which aren't exactly great questions.
>In a setting with magic, why hasn't the universe already been destroyed?
>>47958815
Maybe look into Torchbearer.
>>47960879
>this thing exists and functions the way it does solely to perpetuate itself
Welcome to economics.
>>47960912
They're all valid questions to issues brought up in the thread and beyond. I don't think it's too much to ask for logical and consistent answers that don't boil down to "otherwise there wouldn't be a game."
>>47960969
And none of the answers were that.
Some of the questions were based on flawed premises/underlying assumptions ("if zombie fiction exists, everyone would somehow be more skilled at surviving a zombie apocalypse" or "people believe everything the media tells them" or "acknowledging the inherent absurdity of zombie viruses by making it explicit is bad") but that's not my problem.
>>47960969
No offense but do you understand suspension of belief?
>>47961167
Hey if you can't give me a total life cycle of every stage of the zombie virus and explain how it doesn't violate thermodynamics and can't do that backwards while humming then you're not getting my disbelief no sir.
Im forever DM of a well established group playing together the 6 of us for over a decade. I already know what my players will do....
They will essentially refuse to participate in the economy and strike off on thier own to build a fortified settlement.
>>47961662
A settlement of 5? Who farms? Who gets water? How do they get what they need without participating in the economy?
What, are we talking they go full Raider and just steal everything?
>>47961662
When you say "refuse to participate in the economy", what does that even mean? Like, even theft is an economic action.
>>47962794
There's no way to create a sustainable, closed loop economy. Like period, I don't even have to qualify with "in red markets".
Eventually the players would need something from someone other than them.
>>47961801
If the party goes full raider they are literally entirely reliant upon other people. If they kill everyone in a radius far enough that they will starve to death before they find someone to kill and rob...
>>47963235
>>47963278
That would be causing players to face consequences for their actions, which is not allowed.
>>47963278
Or attract enough attention that someone comes out with resources to deal with them.
I mean if the government gets fed up with their bullshit, they might well just send out a tank.
>>47961433
Part of the premise is that the blight seems to violate physical law in a number of ways. There's a specific mental disorder developed by people who obsessively try to study and understand why this is the case.
>>47963856
Calling it a mental disorder is unfair.
Theres a cult of scientists who went crazy studying the virus because if does in fact defy the laws of physics n shit.
>>47963936
I mean, all the meth they took probably didn't help.
>>47954937
I'm interested.
Skype's brian.overton2
>>47964073
I'll be posting in gamefinders when I get a chance to read the rules.
But if someone who knows how discord works would be willing to setup a general chat thing, I'd be up for that.
>>47963235
Let me clarify. In Red State 3/4 of the USA is under no state control. My players did this shit in the last Morrow Game campaign I ran. Went off on their own and did what they wanted sort of ignored Project directives/missions and I had to sandbox it and they played their own adventures. It was a fun but it wasn't Morrow Project more like Post Apoc free for all.
The premise of Red State as I understand it is that players goal is to buy their way into the safe zone by doing Shadowrun type plausible deniability missions out in the quarantine zone. This becomes a constantly moving goal post because they are reliant on the safe zone for equipment and supplies.
If I have misunderstood the premise of the setting then apologies.
>>47965106
You don't neccessarily have to do shadowrun jobs.
Like you could do a job of going out to an abandoned gas station and hauling a tanker of fuel to a big compound that needs it.
The crux of the game is you need to earn more money than you spend doing work, and then deal with the possibility of sudden hits to your wallet.
>>47965106
>>47965148
The american government made a declaration at some point that they had saved "Every last living american citizen" and then walled off and blew all the bridges along the river, ignoring the survivors left behind.
>>47965148
Through what game play mechanics are players divested of material wealth if they won't deal with the Recession areas? Plausible or not I'd like to hear about them.
My opinion is that material scarcity of non-perishables with 50% population die off seems very contrived for the sake of story to me. It is a common and silly trope of the zombie survival genre.
>>47965234
Ok so what sets this game apart from every other zombie rpg if you don't have dealings with the walled city states?
It's supposed to use the zombie apocalypse as a metaphor for modern day class dynamics.
So basically we're back to the 50's, symbolism wise.
>>47955061
Also, things cost money because a big part of the setting is that society hasn't actually crumbled yet. The Safe Zone or whatever it's called is still a functioning piece of postmodern USA. People have apartments, go to work, earn money, spend it on coffee, go back home to watch television. This is where the economy is centered. It's just that players play the guys who don't have the means to live in the Safe Zone.
>>47955933
Crossed was a pretty original take on the genre, though. Same for Steven King's "Cell". Fucking creepy as shit.One day, out of the blue, a "pulse" happens and every person who was on their cellphone at the moment goes batshit insane violent cannibal. The creepy shit comes when several weeks later, they all calm down and turn into a hive mind of hyper intelligent, telekinetic... human things.
>>47964373
https://discord.gg/CVf4B
>>47969303
The Recession is the name of the region of America still under government control; it more or less covers everything east of the Mississippi river. Everything to the west of the river is given over to the dead and is called The Loss (as in, it was written off as a loss).
>>47965282
They aren't divested of wealth if they don't deal with the Recession. The game is mostly about trading between survivor enclaves in the Loss, with the eventual end goal being saving up enough to move into the Recession. They need wealth in order to keep operating at a certain level of effectiveness through their gear and skills.
Stuff breaks down and needs maintenance to keep functioning as intended. For instance, a gun needs ammo, oiling, new parts. You also need to practice, which means time NOT spent earning money plus an active expenditure on things like ammo. If you've ever had a gun, you'll know that ammo costs add up, that weapon maintenance can be time consuming, especially if you're spending enough time practising to actually be a good shot.
In Red Markets, every piece of gear you have comes with an Upkeep value. That represents an abstract folding-together of maintaining the gear, keeping it topped up with ammo/power, time spent training to keep your skill with it relevant etc. Your Upkeep is important because if you don't earn at least that much in each job you take, your gear starts to be less effective; you might lose weapon upgrades, or between sessions your Charges don't replenish. So it's a tactical balance between loading up on as much gear as you can versus keeping your expenses low enough to actually be able to maintain all that gear.
>>47963758
That's a good point. It's safe to assume the average hubcap wearing neo-barbarian would be a good deal more cautious if he had to worry about a drone strike up his tailpipe.
>>47968702
Zombies have always been how we talk about Totality, yeah. If you want a game about weird, forbidden desires you make it about vampires; if you want a game about brutality and the savagery at the heart of man, you make it about werewolves. If you want a game that's about huge, Hobbesian leviathans crushing down on the individual, do it with zombies.
Bump, do I need to repost the discord link or does nobody care?
>>47971839
What's discord? is it like skype?
>>47971867
I'd say it's closer to IRC with embedded voice chat.
>>47971867
Its a more anonymous, lighter chat program. People are using it now instead of things like Skype or teamspeak.
>>47971925
>>47971991
Okay, I've signed up for it.
>>47972050
All you need to join a discord channel is a link, no friends list shit.
https://discord.gg/zKhsY
If anyone else is interested in a general RM channel.
How viable is using a katana?
>>47974553
I mean, zombies tend to not be wearing armour so as long as you've got one that's forged pretty well, maintain it...
The problem with going melee with zombies is the risk of infection - not just getting bitten but getting any infected fluids on you. Your best bet when making a melee character is to be Latent (already infected but asymptomatic) or Immune (in which case, keep your immunity to yourself - people want to dissect you to make vaccine).
>>47975171
Wait so any contact with a zombie body can cause infection? What happens in those rivers where they walk in and apparently just float along? Is that riverwater deadly now?
>>47972081
The link expired, post it again
>>47975833
https://discord.gg/HUvTPx8
There you go, I also posted a time-unlimited link on the RPPR forums.
>>47955933
sauce on that pic plz
