Red Markets: A Game Of Economic Horror

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girth brooks part 2: Sep 6, 2011; Bush did 911; Fun Shoe

NutritiousSnack posted:

Going try an set up a campain/maybe just a oneshot on here to run either Fri, Sat, or Sun. Keep your eyes open.

I'd definitely be up for that, schedule permitting. I've never actually gotten to play a game since none of my friends are willing to put on their robe and wizard hat and step behind the screen.

I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I was kind of surprised the preview doc is 350 pages. The book is going to be an absolute monster.

# ? Jul 2, 2016 00:10

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# ? Jun 7, 2024 18:19

Twibbit: Mar 7, 2013; Is your refrigerator running?

My available times on those days are limited, so I'll wait till I see when you want to run it

Edit, Made my first test character. The Cracked status from believer is not marked in because I was not sure how you mark it in exactly. https://1drv.ms/b/s!Av3M6WdWhkEflkqVVKMGFsrCkTNb Math Teacher turned zombie killing Black Math cultist. Still does have a retirement plan, but it has less to do with leaving the loss.

Twibbit fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Jul 2, 2016

# ? Jul 2, 2016 20:27

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

STEAM SUMMER SALE recommendations

Hey guys. Check out the following if you like post-apoc survival games LIKE RED MARKETS.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3088761/software-games/more-steam-summer-sale-gems-15-great-games-under-5.html#slide3

quote:

Neo Scavenger UNDER $5.

Speaking of ugly, brutal, and wonderful games, fans of tough experiences will want to check out Neo Scavenger ($4.94 during the sale).

You wake up in a wasteland with no idea what�s going on, and must survive long enough to figure out the randomized world. Saying that�s harder than it sounds would be an understatement. The game�s mechanics don�t let up, with the constant threats of hunger, weather exposure, dehydration, and devastatingly dirty no-holds-barred combat looming. The fighting, wound system, and inventory are all gloriously, sometimes frustratingly realistic. And did I mention that when you die, you stay dead, and have to start over? There aren�t even experience points in the game�you just learn how to play it better.

Neo Scavenger won�t be for everyone. But if you like it, you�ll love it, and it�s worth rolling the dice when the game�s selling for under $5. The combat system alone is worth it.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/248860/

Watch a video first though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRI9Q8LDHZY

quote:

This War of Mine
This War of Mine ($4.99 during the sale) puts you in the shoes of civilians simply trying to survive in a war-torn land. It�s not �fun� in the classical sense. But This War of Mine is stark, sobering, eye-opening, and incredibly well assembled. It�s the antithesis of Call of Duty, and well worth your time.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/282070/

quote:

Metro Redux series
Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light are tense, deeply atmospheric first-person shooters set in the subways of post-apocalyptic Russia�until you�re drawn into the wastelands left on the surface. These are some of my favorite story-driven shooters of all time, with a cool STALKER-like vibe. The recently released Redux versions polish up each game with more fetching visuals.

The games are $4.99 a pop during the Summer Sale. If you can only afford one, grab Metro 2033 first.

Bullets are currency.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/43110/

# ? Jul 3, 2016 00:58

NutritiousSnack: Jul 12, 2011

Recruitment thread is up.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3782068

# ? Jul 4, 2016 00:22

girth brooks part 2: Sep 6, 2011; Bush did 911; Fun Shoe

I noticed kind of a idiosyncrasy with the default damage system, but apparently Taker's take more damage to their left side than their right side. I know he points out some weirdness, and suggests ways to fix it, but it just occurred to me and I though it was kind of funny..

# ? Jul 5, 2016 22:29

Twibbit: Mar 7, 2013; Is your refrigerator running?

As an alternative for those with more insane and inconvenient gaming schedules, I am going to be making a pbp Game for SA. We will probably be doing the create an enclave method.

Still to help set up character concepts I am going to set up the state before hand. I am thinking Montana mainly so I can exploit my knowledge and familiarity of my own state. But before I go too far in setting things up I want to make sure that at least some of you would be interested in the location, I can always end up setting it in a another state.

# ? Jul 6, 2016 18:44

clockworkjoe: May 31, 2000; Rolled a 1 on the random encounter table, didn't you?

girth brooks part 2 posted:

I noticed kind of a idiosyncrasy with the default damage system, but apparently Taker's take more damage to their left side than their right side. I know he points out some weirdness, and suggests ways to fix it, but it just occurred to me and I though it was kind of funny..

Damage is best handled as a separate roll and I think the hit locations will change a bit for the final game.

# ? Jul 6, 2016 19:01

ThreeStep: Nov 5, 2009

Twibbit posted:

As an alternative for those with more insane and inconvenient gaming schedules, I am going to be making a pbp Game for SA. We will probably be doing the create an enclave method.

Still to help set up character concepts I am going to set up the state before hand. I am thinking Montana mainly so I can exploit my knowledge and familiarity of my own state. But before I go too far in setting things up I want to make sure that at least some of you would be interested in the location, I can always end up setting it in a another state.

I'm interested in a pbp. Know nothing about Montana but that's what Wikipedia is for.

# ? Jul 6, 2016 20:27

paradoxGentleman: Dec 10, 2013; wheres the jester, I could do with some pointless nonsense right about now

ThreeStep posted:

I'm interested in a pbp. Know nothing about Montana but that's what Wikipedia is for.

I'm in the same situation. A quick read through on the Wikipedia page should be enough, shouldn't it?

# ? Jul 7, 2016 12:05

Moto42: Jul 14, 2006

Rename the rule-set to the SweepTheLegs System, release karate-kid rpg.

# ? Jul 7, 2016 19:20

Twibbit: Mar 7, 2013; Is your refrigerator running?

paradoxGentleman posted:

I'm in the same situation. A quick read through on the Wikipedia page should be enough, shouldn't it?

Pretty much. I am also making a list of good locations for enclaves if people want it narrowed down. Main things that effect red markets is that Montana is the 4th largest state but the 44th in population. Loooong distances between most notable areas so I am probably going to give you a truck for free to begin with. If you break it though, it will be on the PCs to replace it.

# ? Jul 7, 2016 23:00

Twibbit: Mar 7, 2013; Is your refrigerator running?

Cross Posting from the various social Media Groups

Roll20 Sheet open for basic Testing
https://app.roll20.net/join/1473261/bNJ5Gg
I made a folder in the campaign with test characters, go ahead and mess around with them to see if they work like they should and so you can provide basic feedback. Only thing really missing is the upkeep section, but other than that this should be feature complete.
Once I get your guys feed back and I get the upkeep section in, I;ll look into submitting it to roll20. I can also provide the HTML and CSS files for other pro users to use if they don't want to wait

just join the game and mess with them and tell me what you think
Current HTML/CSS as of this posting: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0ipqxw8u071l0si/AADiBDt4SHgxE0TU-AGPSbQsa?dl=0

Twibbit fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Jul 26, 2016

# ? Jul 26, 2016 00:26

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I know "ripped from the headlines" plots might be less than tasteful, but the recent hullabaloo with companies jacking up the prices of epi-pens and insulin would make some great Score fodder.

# ? Aug 25, 2016 11:45

clockworkjoe: May 31, 2000; Rolled a 1 on the random encounter table, didn't you?

August update: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/159466030/red-markets/posts/1664315

Other Red Markets fodder: Li-fi is internet through light transmissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Fi

As for epi-pens, I could see a job for some other medical device - perhaps getting legal proof from a company's server in the Loss of a patent or destroying that evidence.

# ? Aug 25, 2016 18:52

RocknRollaAyatollah: Nov 26, 2008; Lipstick Apathy

clockworkjoe posted:

Other Red Markets fodder: Li-fi is internet through light transmissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Fi

That would be great for an underground enclave or one made out of materials that limit WiFi transmission. It would also keep the DHQS out of your enclave's closed network. You could also throw in a curve ball that casualties can see the Li-Fi lights, even though they're probably not being transmitted at a level humans can perceive, and are attracted to them.

# ? Aug 25, 2016 21:35

Twibbit: Mar 7, 2013; Is your refrigerator running?

He ran his kickstarter backer game http://roleplayingexchange.com/2016/09/15/actual-play-red-markets-kickstarter-backer-game/

# ? Sep 20, 2016 16:42

clockworkjoe: May 31, 2000; Rolled a 1 on the random encounter table, didn't you?

Caleb also posted some background material on the RM subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedMarkets/comments/53hepf/rm_core_book_text_first_drafts/

# ? Sep 20, 2016 19:40

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

clockworkjoe posted:

Caleb also posted some background material on the RM subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedMarkets/comments/53hepf/rm_core_book_text_first_drafts/

Thanks Ross!

Reposting for redditphobes.

quote:

Author: Caleb Stokes

Our Reddit community is getting a little too dead (pun intended) for my tastes. We still have a long way to go on the project, but I want a lot of different communities up and running when the book does release. To try and keep up the interest, I'll periodically be posting sections of the core book text that I'm currently drafting. This stuff will be in it's earliest stages: it hasn't gone through editing, and it might not even make it to the final project. Still, I hope it's enough to keep fans excited about Red Markets until the release.

This is from the section called "History of the Crash." It's written from the perspective of Gnat, former programmer at Ubiq and leader of the Moths. In this passage, she's trying to lay down a historical record explaining to the next generation the inexplicable reactions of the populace when confronted with the Blight and zombies, monsters for which culture had trained them that they still failed to react appropriately to. The explanation is a psychological phenomenon known as "The Romero Effect".

The Romero Effect

Those familiar with the phrase �The Romero Effect� have probably heard it used as a singular answer to some multi-faceted questions. Why did it take so long for governments to react to the threat? The Romero Effect. Why were so many of their solutions idiotic? The Romero Effect. How did anyone survive the combination of certain doom and our continued bungling? The Romero Effect.

As an answer to all those questions, the Romero Effect is paradoxically too reductive and absolutely accurate.

First off, the term has an official definition that we rarely cite when talking about it. The phrase was coined by Dr. Emily Dale a year after the Crash in the same paper where she diagnosed the populace of the US Recession with Post-Apocalyptic Stress Syndrome. She used director George Romero�s name as a label for a cadre of cognitive biases causing serious harm to the mindset of Crash survivors.

I�ll save you a lot of dry academic reading here: I�m going to breakdown the list of pre-existing cognitive biases that combined under the Romero Effect to almost kill us. As an example of the principles in action, I�ll place myself firmly within this history of human stupidity by describing how I suffered from them in the early days of the Crash.

An Example

Individuals are cognitively incapable of telling when they are lying to themselves because once they become capable of it, they�ve already stopped lying. So I�m as guilty of confabulation as everybody else was in the early days. I stupidly listened to appeals to authority when the news told me everything was under control, and I looked to every status update, working streetlight, and open business to fuel confirmation bias for that pleasant illusion. When I was out with friends touring a food truck festival in Denver, we heard a scream blocks away. But no one else did anything, so I didn�t do anything, and we all fell in for the bystander effect. And as the occurrences of odd screams, unexplained �car backfires,� dogs choking mid-bark, and sprinting footfalls in the night built up in the tonal landscape, I kept up my conformity to the norm of doing nothing. If I acknowledged something was going on, I�d betray brand loyalty to my sense of self. �I�m not a callous, selfish person like everyone else� my brain would repeat to itself, silencing the terror growing outside as I slept like a baby in my loft apartment.

People started ranting about hordes of the undead on social media. I ignored them; they�d fallen into that stupid zombie meme going around. As if we needed more found footage horror�.

True to the third person effect, I considered myself above such petty persuasion even as I continued suckling at the teat of censored news coverage. When other people in my networks started dropping out entirely, the misinformation effect assured me they�d just gotten tired of all the zombie poo poo too and unplugged. They definitely hadn�t been eaten. Besides, they were just internet people, not the 150 or so real people Dunbar�s number allowed my brain to consider real.

On the last day I drove from Ubiq City to the corporate campus � before I came to live there permanently � I saw a man in torn, bloody pajamas chasing a cyclist down the street. He was screaming nonsense and crying blood as he tackled the biker onto the sidewalk. The poor guy managed to kick the attacker off and start sprinting down the street � the strangely abandoned street. The bloody guy landed in the crosswalk, prone for a few seconds.

I could have run him over with my car. It might have saved a life. But what if it didn�t? What if I was misunderstanding? What if I murdered a sick man for no reason? I�d lose my job, my stuff, everything I�d ever worked for. I�d spend the rest of my life in jail because I thought�what? Some guy was a zombie? Would my defense be I�d seen too many movies? Yeah, right.

And so, due to loss aversion, I protected myself against a possible loss of comfort that I understood rather than gambling on the benefit of saving a man I didn�t know from a threat I didn�t understand.

Besides, the guy in the car behind me got out to help; my brain played the public goods game and assured me that sucker could handle it. I was free to fall into the introspection fallacy for the rest of my commute. I even tried to call the cops a couple of times. They didn�t answer, of course, but I�d tried, right? That�s what a good person would do.

At work, when the cafeteria turned into an abattoir and we ended locking ourselves in the server farm, I couldn�t pretend anymore. But it was okay. We had a couple of guns from the security office. We could take back the administration building and secure the fence around the Ubiq campus. They were just zombies right? We knew to aim for the head. It was just point and click.

So we stupidly left the safety of our building, largely because I stupidly advocated for it. But when we saw our first vector, no shots rang out. Refusing to murder people is a behavior human beings have to learn. Shooting a coworker requires overcoming the extinction burst that tries to keep that old behavior alive. When it kept our gunners from firing the second they saw the vector? They were already dead. Then another dumbass programmer picked up a gun and failed even harder, unable to shoot a friend.

And that�s how the dunning-kruger effect, the illusion of control, and too many zombies movies helped me whittle the initial 44 survivors down to only 7. I hid in a janitor�s closet for three days. I had nothing to do but poo poo in a bucket, stay quiet, and relive what a fool I�d been. By the time the soldiers rescued us, I hadn�t been cured of my biases. They�d memory once used to store them had been overwritten by my shame.

In short, The Romero Effect refers to all the reasons why the human brain was fundamentally incapable of accepting the Crash�s shifting reality. It also encompasses the idiocy of most reactions when cognitive dissonance finally failed to keep the truth out. Finally (and most insidiously), all those cognitive biases responsible for Romero exist to keep people sane: they maintain the sense of self and filter our perceptions down to a manageable level. Those lucky enough to survive the first two stages have their biases removed, at least in regards to the undead. But the removal of such a vital cognitive coping mechanism can drive a person inexorably, incurably insane.

My story was being repeated all over the world. It always ended one of three ways: people denied their doom until it consumed them; they ran towards death with false confidence; or they reacted appropriately, contained the threat, and were forever scarred as a result.

SIDEBAR The Last Zombie Movie

The last fictional zombie movie ever made was called �The Creeping Vine.� It was a micro-budget, found footage horror movie shot over the course of one week and released for digital download mere days after the end of principal photography. Zombies as intellectual property, which had been had been considered fair use for the majority of film history, had been slowly snatched up in bits and pieces by copyright trolls over the years. The advent of all this �homemade zombie footage� for viral content opened up the genre again, and a B-movie studio start up saw an opportunity.

They scrambled to make a movie about a group of teens that get sucked into an alternate reality after viewing a �ghost feed� broadcasting from a world destroyed by the undead. The movie�s quality is poor, even discounting its timing. However, �The Creeping Vine� is a prime example of the Romero Effect, as it literally shows filmmakers confusing reality for filmmaking. The movie is also of historical significance.

At least three scenes in the film were reenactments of online content that later turned out to be authentic emergence events for the Blight. As tasteless as it is to watch amateur actors unwittingly redo snuff films for a quick profit, many of the scenes portrayed don�t have real world corollaries. This could either be because they are original content, or it could be because the actual event being spoofed was lost when the old networks failed. After all, if it didn�t get backed up by a Ubiq user, it�s likely lost forever.

As everyone involved in the production is dead or lost, �The Creeping Vine� remains a matter of great contention among Crash historians. How much was taken from reality, and how much was pure fancy? The prospect of one day finding a surviving cast member to ask tantalizes the Recession academia to this day.

END SIDEBAR

# ? Sep 21, 2016 00:52

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Part 2

https://www.reddit.com/r/RedMarkets/comments/54fvuc/rm_core_book_text_the_american_nightmare/

quote:

I promised a game of economic horror. Don't think y'all are getting through the setting text without some financial nightmares joining in on the fun. What follows is a section of the text about the American economy and the global financial crisis underway as the Crash hit.

The American Nightmare

That�s enough generalities. Every nation Crashed in their own way, and I�m not about to claim to speak for all of them. I�m an American, and my country died an American death. Which is to say...it was needless, fueled by ignored problems and ungrateful excess.
The USA made it�s own crosses to bear. They weighed us all down when it came time to run.

The Education Default

Speaking of deathless monsters, how �bout them student loans?

For decades, more and more people went to college, but the debt accrued to pay for it left enrollment numbers in the dust. Even at the most forgiving interest rates, any student loan would saddle the recipient with decades of debt slavery. With the exception of those with full-rides or people majoring in finance, most college graduates could expect to pay on loans for the rest of their lives. Wages that had stagnated since the goddamn 70�s just weren�t going to cut it, and the bankruptcy exemption meant the situation was literally hopeless. Even a Casualty goes down with a head shot�student loans hunt forever.

The job market couldn�t react appropriately. Calls to increase vocational education and return to manufacturing were ignored. Thousands of jobs with little or no academic component required bachelor�s degrees nonetheless, and so many for-profit schools sprang up to fulfill demand that a Master�s degree became the new signifier of �real� college. Even more years of school. Even more debt.

It was a complicated issue. Politicians promised to forgive all debts overnight, cap tuition, genetically engineer money trees, etc. It didn�t matter. Each solution received so much pushback from the various factions that it stopped dead the moment it was proposed. So the problem metastasized: rising demand and costs saw the private sector greedily choke down whatever the fed loans didn�t want to touch.

It was the �07 sub-prime mortgage fiasco all over again. Huge amounts of student debt were privately traded among financial institutions, bundled into monstrous clusterfucks of excel sheets that were sold to the highest bidder for collection. Everyone wanted a degree because they wanted a job, whether they had the chops to graduate or not. Loans were given out to 4.0 pre-med students and 1.4 professional fraternity brothers alike, all to feed the beast of debt buyers. The requirements went down and down until they went away. Being rejected for a federal loan meant less than nothing when a dozen banks had kiosks in the student union.

The only purpose fed loans served to the banks was as a bellwether for the default margin. See, they never expect everyone to pay up. People die, go ex-pat, stay unemployed, etc. The risk margin was already built into every loan bundle. And, like the crash before it, everything was fine until it tipped over an invisible line.

I don�t know if the panic started when the default rate hit 15%, 16%, or higher. It�s as likely an issue of memetics as mathematics. The media�s reporting on the issue certainly didn�t help consumer confidence. When the debt buyers started to cut and run, it made the math worse, which made the default margin look worse, which caused more to cut and run, etc.

I don�t know who was defaulting either. Maybe the straws broke the camel�s back when cost-of-living and cost-of-loans became mutually exclusive for one too many. Maybe people just got tired of the rigged system and all gave up at once, or maybe one of the defaulting movements finally got enough people to realize that there weren�t enough taxmen in the world to come for all of them. I don�t know, and I don�t think anyone ever will. The dust of the economic collapse hadn�t settled before zombies came stalking out of it.

Midway through the crisis, we got President Hunter. New promises were made. Obstructionist congress got out the knives as usual, but, this time, an actual bill passed out the other end. A bloody, diseased scrap of law. The solution proposed�got the government out of the loan business. That�s it. They threw the whole thing on the private sector and said good luck. No bailout. No forgiveness. No nothing. We finally had a far-right president that truly believed business could do everything, and now they were being asked to prove it.

The panic redoubled. Mass layoffs. Colleges closed. Unemployment offices already crammed with farmers and pre-hybrid mechanics were now flooded with professors, to say nothing of the already desperate hordes of adjuncts. Public education failed to find a new god after �college prep� went all Cthulhu, and, with fewer universities than ever before, financial institutions shifted as much blame as possible onto the only educators left standing.

Sharing (the Scraps) Economy

As is the American way, the education default illuminated a whole bunch of other poo poo we were pretending wasn�t a problem.
For decades, we�d been eroding job security and workplace protections. Sure, the laws to protect against undue termination and workplace harassment were in place, but they�d been in place for so long that every rear end in a top hat in the world knew how to get around them. During college, I had a job at a coffee shop in this ritzy neighborhood. I got fired because I was black (no, I�m not being the angry black lady; I heard the bastard use the n-word). I could try to sue, but my emailed termination letter merely said I �wasn�t a fit with company culture.� Unless the psychos trying to ruin your livelihood were dumb enough to tweet out their illegal prejudices, there was essentially no such thing as worker protection in the United States.

But maybe getting fired is for the best; at least they can�t steal your wages anymore. The US was (and is) one of the most notorious wage thieves in the world, stealing billions in unpaid overtime, denied vacation, illegal deductions, misclassification, and off-the-clock hours. Considering the total lack of worker protections, the only solution to stop the theft was �quit,� which wasn�t really an option at the beginning of another massive economic depression.

Unions? Please. By the time I was born, I was more likely to meet a unicorn than a functioning union. They were almost completely dismantled decades ago.

If you look at articles from the time, everyone seems so excited about the sharing economy. Cloud-distributed taxi services, massively-open online courses, international piece meal work apps � they were going to save the goddamn day. I�d be lying if I said people didn�t appreciate the freelancing �funemployment� gigs, but scraps when you�re starving are nice too, even if they don�t solve the problem. The new entrepreneurs kept the economy limping along by providing enough for the weekly grocery bill and that�s it. No healthcare, parental leave, overtime, transportation, or anything else. But it was enough. It�s hard to start a revolution on a full stomach.

So what did it really amount to? What was the reality on the ground? More people were renting than ever before. Birth rates were way down, especially amongst the educated. Minimalist living went from a fad to a necessity. Owning a 400 square-foot house became a luxury: at least you owned it. If it couldn�t be downloaded to a device or quickly packed in a duffel bag, it just became more poo poo to move when you inevitably had get out of town.

Right before the apocalypse, we made sure a huge segment of the population was on the road; separated from social support networks by digital-only workspaces, geographic isolation, and working poverty; trapped in cheap, temporary housing not fit to withstand a thunderstorm, not to mention a cannibal horde. It�s a wonder they didn�t get all of us.

The Silver Fallout

For awhile, it looked like most everyone was content to pass the buck to younger generations and blame it all on �intellectuals.� It�s a move that had worked before, and it looked like the new revenue streams would keep us limping along. But then the retirement funds got threatened.

Thanks to the boomers, the US held more pension debt than every scrap of currency in circulation could cover�three times over. We woke up when the California Teacher�s Fund tried to ask the fed for a bailout quietly least they have to publicly declare bankruptcy. Of course, hackers leaked the news before things got settled. The media whipped the markets into the biggest panic yet, and it may have even been justified. California�s was the biggest fund save for Social Security, and after they broke the seal on admitting they�d been gambling pension debt against education debt, other major private and federal funds began reluctantly raising their hands to join them. Hey, at least it wasn�t housing this time?

It became common to see scandals where entire job sectors would lose decades� worth of retirement funds on some stupid investment. Each one implicated more and more pension funds sidelining in student loan debt. Investor confidence tanked even harder. Things started to look grim: hobos and soup-lines grim.

Outright, it�s-raining-stockbrokers level of panic was averted by the scheduling of congressional hearings and rumors of a bailout, but only just. The weeks leading up to the Crash were ones of tense anticipation. Everyone tried to hold their poo poo together and prevent further collapse, but phrases like �The Greatest Depression� were on all our minds. At that point, we considered another long recession a �win� scenario; this was before the retreat behind the borders and the term became more literal.

In retrospect, we were kidding ourselves. There�s nothing the government could have done. Our dependency ratio � the rate of working-age employed citizens vs. the combined mass of the country�s children, elderly, and disabled � had been thrown completely out of the realm of prosperity by the �silver tsunami� of boomer retirement years earlier. The experts had hoped for years that the �Boomer Echo� would sustain us, but the demographics were never sustainable. People were living longer than ever before, and record low birth rates worsened under the pessimism caused by the education default. When you factor in the institutionalized greed of the corporations we�d sold all the social safety nets to? The most anyone could have done was slow the collapse�at least until China faced the same dependency ratio problem as a result of three-decades of one-child policy.

I pirated this Recession comedian�s show once. He was going for �edgy.� He made jokes about getting rich during the Crash; he had four grandparents in nursing homes after all. Them getting eaten was like winning the lottery.
If that�s a joke, it�s observational humor. The truth is only separated from that lovely standup by a matter of scale. We�d gotten ourselves into a mess that our population demographics couldn�t hope to solve. As repugnant as it is to admit, the lose of life might have been even greater if the Crash hadn�t happened at all. In many ways, the singular measures taken by global powers to secure the Recession hit the reset button on what could have turned out to be an economic apocalypse. The system had a poisoned limb, threatening the whole body, before a Casualty came along and ripped it off.

Now, those critical readers in the class might be wondering what all this says about the conspiracy theorists claiming the Blight was intentionally engineered. Suffice it to say that thinking about zombies as a �gift� isn�t a great way to sleep well at night.

# ? Sep 28, 2016 02:45

girth brooks part 2: Sep 6, 2011; Bush did 911; Fun Shoe

I was thinking about zombies the other night, and came up with an idea for spider zombies. For the most part they're what you would expect, they produce an excess of tendrils and use them to pull them selves about, whip and snare prey, or build vehicle stopping webs. On windy or stormy days, though, they like to gather at a good height and release large tangles of tendrils into the air to get snagged by the winds and pull them into the sky to glide off like Mary Poppins.

I imagine a group of these infesting an area near the walls could be both scary and extremely lucrative.

# ? Sep 30, 2016 00:35

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

I'm also thinking of a zombie Venom.

Helical Nightmares fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Sep 30, 2016

# ? Sep 30, 2016 01:01

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Part 3

quote:

The Why: Explanations

To recap: we can�t determine when the Bight even started. The loss of records and the crush of misinformation ensure that we likely won�t ever know.

On top of that, we�ve only been able to identify the disease�s symptomatic stages. There�s no consensus as to its classification as an organism, or even it�s classification as matter. As for what prevents symptoms or results in latency, our understanding of human biology in no way indicates what essential, recurrent element fights off the Blight. We just scrape each other�s bone marrow out, mix it with a the most caustic antibiotics we can find, and pray it will work when the Blight comes.

Yet, despite this heaping mound of ignorance and lies, any history of the Crash is considered incomplete without some bullshit musing as to why all this had to happen. What�s the context? What does it all mean?

loving please. Real Takers have a saying: �Asking why is how you die; asking how, we do right now.� But, like the nihilectic nonsense, I�m going to get called out for punting on the issue by every jackass that reads this.

So fine. This is the part where we all mentally masturbate and wipe up the leavings with tissue-paper thin narratives pulled from even thinner loving air. Let�s just make it quick.

The Failure of Science

Science doesn�t work on the Blight. Most people don�t want to believe this, but, then again, most people don�t have to. For those that aren�t science literate enough to understand the problem, it�s easy to blame the lack of progress on human error, or conspiracy, or whatever else helps people sleep at night. If someone that can�t explain how a microwave works, it might as well be magic, right? Well, the reverse is true. Something our every instinct screams is magic might as well be poorly understood science, for all we understand of the former. In fact, throwing up our hands over the whole thing might be the only healthy reaction.

But actual scientists � especially those tasked with studying the Blight � don�t get the luxury of that response. Trust me. Every Blight researcher in the world would love to believe themselves incompetent. But they can�t. Instead, those that study the Blight are confronted, on a daily basis, with the constant certainty that the entirety of human knowledge has unequivocally failed.

It�s a hard truth for a laymen to grasp, and I struggle with as well. I work at Ubiq because I�m smart enough to know how to make the servers work and write decent code. Even I�m spared some of the true horrors of the Blight, distanced by my ignorance. But I read too many stories on Lifelines of crusaders gone nuts with study sickness to fool myself into thinking progress is possible. I�ll do my best to explain.

Alright, class is in session. See those black veins in a Casualty? The ones you can watch crawl through a corpse in torpor? Same as the ones spidering through the skin of your latent friend, outlined in itchy red inflammation? What are they made out of?
Black poo poo. Sometimes they leak a juice the experts call NHPD. And that juice looks like�wet black poo poo.

So look closer. Way closer. Get an optical microscope capable of going down to .3 nanometers, the smallest measurement available to modern equipment. Use the shorter wavelengths of ultraviolet light to improve spatial resolution. Hook-up some GUI software and blow the image up on an ultra-HD plasma screen where the whole lab can study it. What do you see?

Black poo poo.

Change the light wavelengths. Inject every fluorescent agent known to man.

Black poo poo. A plane of indistinguishable, black nothingness where even the smallest cells in existence would be flashing their cell walls and organelles and secrets. Matter so tightly packed as to be completely indistinguishable and indivisible. A seamless, black smear of pure void.
gently caress it. Get out the electron microscope. This is the extinction of mankind, after all; spare no expense. Bombard the sample with a tightly focused beam of electrons with a wavelength 100,000 times shorter than a visible photon. Get to the bottom of this.

Marvel at the perfect, indistinguishable tube of Blight as it cuts through the dizzying, messy array of actual human cells. Look at how it maintains the appearance of an absolutely solid plane no matter where you look. Look at how it maintains that utter seamlessness even when cut open, the severed edges closing like thick black paint around a stirrer. Realize that finding the seams of this unholy thing is like trying to separate two water molecules armed with a butter knife and a magnifying glass.

Fellow academics will try to comfort each other at this point. It�s not as it the black poo poo simple IS. It can�t exist without a single handhold upon which we might grasp it conceptually. There must be chinks in it�s armor, lurking down in the femtometer or planck ranges. Some future generation will learn to magnify images to that level, and god is certainly not so cruel as to show them that same�black�poo poo.

The process of perceiving the Blight is merely the first of many. It has wildly different reactions to the same chemical experiments, reproduced perfectly. It responds uniformly to certain human biological elements(I.e. Immune bone marrow) even though those biomasses share little or no other similarities. It ignores or simply poisons other animal tissue�until it doesn�t in some rare Aberrant only hinted at in rumors.

It produces exotic radiations�but only sometimes�or maybe the equipment malfunctioned. It seems to absorb heat�until it creates it. It sends electrical signals to the activate necrotic nerves from a central nexus of tissue in the brainstem�but the energy for those electrical signals were metabolized from nowhere, and no cellular materials were ever moved to the nexus through anything we can recognize as a circulatory system.

If you stare at the Blight long enough, through enough lenses both literal and theoretical, one of two things can happen: The first option is to quit. The world gets no better save for keeping one rational, healthy human being in it. The second options is to presevere. Keep looking at it, continue the crusade for a cure, and go inexorably loving insane in the process.

It�s not enough that the Blight wants to eat you and everyone you love; it wants to obliterate your very concept of reality. In order to do that, you have to stare into it � long and hard � until it stares back.

So, my advice? Don�t look. The Blight�s nothing more than black poo poo. Keep it that way, and keep it far away. Ain�t nobody got time for no existential crisis out in the Loss; there are bills to pay and cards to pull. Let it be black poo poo. You focus on being human. If someone is capable of figuring it out? They�re either already nuts, retired, or refusing to tell the rest of us. None of which is helpful to think about.

Now that we�ve acknowledged how loving impossible and counter-productive this whole discussion is, I�ll throw some wild rear end conjecture around so we can say we tried.

# ? Oct 5, 2016 16:57

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Global Outbreaks by Caleb

https://www.reddit.com/r/RedMarkets/comments/57i29n/global_outbreaks/

quote:

It's my birthday! In other news, here's the latest excerpt from the setting text in progress. This one is about the Global Outbreaks and how they eventually defined the borders of the world after the Crash settled down.

Before anyone asks, the setting information is "canon" insofar as I can't write possibilities for every alternate history. If some place being Loss or Recession doesn't work for your game, feel free to change it. We shan't have any of that WoD meta-plot around here.

Global Outbreaks

Those looking to separate the signal from the noise in determining where the initial outbreaks occurred need only look at a map. Find the borders of a country�s or continent�s Recession: the majority of outbreaks occurred on the other side, usually far away.

In the US, the West Coast got the worst of it. If we believe the proto-latency theory, California is a major contender for the singular origin of the Blight. It got hit with emergence events in multiple locations along the coast, not to mention outbreaks in Oregon, Washington, and Nevada. The militarization of it�s police force and the sensationalism of the media kept the state from standing out as a frontrunner during the early days, but hindsight puts the brunt far West. Texas was bad off too, but sparse population density and a propensity for military bases left the Blight running left to right rather than south to north. The East Coast had minor incidents in Virginia, but the really bad events like the fall of Manhattan and the Maine migration didn�t occur until later.

I�m an American gal, meaning I received the same total lack of geography as everyone else in my sad little empire, but my position at Ubiq has allowed me to understand the gist of how the story went down globally.

Canada got hit along the northern border of it�s population band, but the barren cold of the North made sure the vectors hunted southbound. They would have probably fine were it not for our "Preemptive Genocide" (more on that later), but the nukes shattered governmental response that could have been coordinated from Easter cities. Canada's surviving state power is scattered, nomadic, and operates under an inconsistent political mandates ranging from "reestablish healthcare" to "kill all Americans."

Mexico was a failed state before the Crash; the last thing it needed was for the initial outbreak to start in Mexico City. Our southern neighbors were among some of the first nations to fall, and their population of dead migrated in every direction.

South America didn�t need Mexico�s undead to help. Emergence events in Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Uruguay dotted the whole continent with infection. Brazil was hit hardest of all, which makes it all the more remarkable that any clean territory remains. Those refugees that managed to escape their infected homelands did so across the Andes, but the Chilean�s extreme anti-immigration measures doomed most. However, it�s arguably the only reason the Chile survives.

The UK was actually hit very early in the process, but the surveillance state they�d set up minimized the amount of time time took for the government to believe what they we seeing. In spite of that, England, Ireland, and Scotland owe more to the efforts of EU nations fleeing the terror of mainland Europe: Spain, Germany, and France all had unchecked emergence events, and the exponentially growing hordes fed in every direction. The remains of their shattered security forces proved the deciding factor in the war to cleanse infection from the UK islands.

Similar to the Brits, Italy mainly survived by dent of geography and the assistance of foreign military diaspora. The Scandinavian states handled outbreaks in their isolated populations centers with relative ease, and their later intervention helped Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania survive. Each had been sparred initial outbreaks and managed to cap the slow advance of casualties through frozen, mountainous terrain. Sweden, which already had geographical isolation and a militarized populace going for it, suffered no emergence events. Aside from some lost imports and exports, life goes on there largely unchanged.

Ironically, the sheer hellishness of the conflicts raging across the Middle East kept it safe. It had few emergence events, but those that happened were isolated enough by desert that there were few secondary infections in major populations centers. Most of the cities that did get hit hard were already in the midst of civil wars (meaning the citizenry was armed and fortified) or got blasted to hell by the Iranians and Israelis. By happy accident, Turkey�s invasion of Greece and Russia�s continued Ukrainian and Georgian aggression served to buffer the onslaught of European casualty migration, insulating the largely clean Arab states. Sadly, the respite did nothing to dispel the endless hatred and in-fighting of the region, but at least the world still has its major oil suppliers. Otherwise, the almost apocalypse would have finished the job with an energy crisis.

Africa�s thick jungles, endless savannah, and crap transportation infrastructure meant the initial outbreaks that got out of hand never coalesced into giant stampedes seen on other continents. Mali fell early, but the Blight fallout that took out surrounding nations never spread quite so far as to take out Libya, Egypt or the Sudan. The Democratic Republic of Congo is the corner of area known as the African Loss, a box which starts on the West coast, then bisects the continent laterally until it runs against the lakes of the East African Rift zone. The swamplands and rivers kept the dead from migrating, so the East Coast survived and Madagascar became a literal bastion for the AU. Angola and Zambia are barely hanging on against the corpses trickling down through the Congo�s jungles to the North, but they�re supported by the relative prosperity of every nation further south.

Many nations owe their eventual survival to the military buildup they were forced to undertake to deal with pre-Crash Russian aggression. However, those same wars left the bear ill-equipped when the Blight started in Moscow. Though the state still technically survives behind the Urals, there�s nothing of the old nation left beyond nomadic bands that fled into Kazakhstan and Mongolia, trailing hungry dead behind them. India was really the worst case scenario for emergence, and we know of at least three distinct different sites where primary infection occurred. The population density doomed the whole country. As Indian casualties flooded over the border into Pakistan, both countries nuked each other to glass, but not before millions of dead flooded through the mountain passes and complicated China�s already disastrous Blight problems.

The Chinese government still survives, occupying themselves with the three-way navel war for territory against the shaky Thai alliance and Australia. I couldn�t tell you where the capital was located, though. The outbreak was so diffuse and China so huge that there�s no characterizing what happened after things settled down because things haven�t settled down. A Chinese city will be there one month, gone the next, and then the refugees pop up a week later in some ghost city constructed in the middle of the Mongolian steppe. The government maintains its flotilla of ships, but the Chinese on the mainland survive by migrating away from the dead, hopping between pieces of the state�s surplus infrastructure.

North Korea�s inability to do literally anything right kept South Korea safe as Chinese casualties consumed their impoverished populace. However, keeping the North Korean infected from crossing the most militarized border in the world proved easy enough (Throwing a couple low-yield nukes over the wall at the NK missile sites certainly helped).

And I think Japan�s okay? Their navy is still in play and someone answers the phone whenever big players needs to talk, but the populace is completely off the Ubiq network. Maybe they reverted to isolationism out of old habit? Or it could be that the Crash hit them real hard and they�re bluffing. They can�t afford to let the South Koreans or Chinese smell blood in the water.

Australia and New Zealand are fine. One major outbreak occurred in Sydney, but the population retreated to the interior, euthanized the casualties after torpor, and reclaimed the coastline. They only thing that keeps Australia from becoming the world�s major superpower instead of the Saudi�s is the constant invasion attempts from the Thai alliance and China seeking to house refugees on their unspoiled continent.

As I read all this I can already imagine the pissed off comments from every corner Ubiq about how ignorant I am. A topic as big as post-Crash international relations deserves its own thread, and I haven�t even figured out my own country yet. Suffice it to say that prosperity and resources certainly helped nations survived the Crash. It wasn�t the only factor, but many well-off nations repelled infections 100 times larger than the ones that consumed poorer states. The Blight started thinning our herd amongst the poorest, and the map today is the high-water mark of how far it got before the old power structures woke up and protected those that remained.

Of course, all this border-drawing happened far later; there was a lot of dying to do first. As drastically changed as the world is now, it�s hard to believe how disinterested we seemed when the Blight first began.

# ? Oct 16, 2016 18:50

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

From the Red Markets Facebook group:

# ? Nov 9, 2016 18:22

girth brooks part 2: Sep 6, 2011; Bush did 911; Fun Shoe

Newest update was pretty much business as usual, but apparently the Best Practices section ballooned up to three or four times it's originally planned 30 pages. Rather than trying to hack it up to fit in the book it's going be released as a separate supplement .pdf. It's not going to cost anything extra to backers or any such nonsense, a physical release is possible down the line but won't be for some time.

# ? Nov 29, 2016 23:04

clockworkjoe: May 31, 2000; Rolled a 1 on the random encounter table, didn't you?

girth brooks part 2 posted:

Newest update was pretty much business as usual, but apparently the Best Practices section ballooned up to three or four times it's originally planned 30 pages. Rather than trying to hack it up to fit in the book it's going be released as a separate supplement .pdf. It's not going to cost anything extra to backers or any such nonsense, a physical release is possible down the line but won't be for some time.

Yeah I'm working on Best Practices now but the reason is more that other sections of the book have grown quite a bit so there's no way to fit everything in.

# ? Nov 29, 2016 23:34

Father Wendigo: Sep 28, 2005; This is, sadly, more important to me than bettering myself.

Is there an approximate timeline as to when/where non-backers can pick up a PDF or Physical copy?

# ? Jan 15, 2017 22:28

girth brooks part 2: Sep 6, 2011; Bush did 911; Fun Shoe

Father Wendigo posted:

Is there an approximate timeline as to when/where non-backers can pick up a PDF or Physical copy?

I don't believe so, they seem to be taking the it's done when it's done approach. But from the updates it appears they're trucking along at a good clip, so I wouldn't be too surprised to see it maybe by late spring or early summer.

Drive Thru RPG is going to be fulfilling the backer items I believe, so it'll almost certainly be available there.

# ? Jan 16, 2017 20:22

Twibbit: Mar 7, 2013; Is your refrigerator running?

Enough of this procrastination by me,�Recruitment thread is live https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3805873&pagenumber=1&perpage=40#post468425806

It is�Red Markets in Montana, Sure there are theoretically less zombies, but with�how flat it is sound travels. so your undead friends will come from�much further.

# ? Jan 17, 2017 01:18

Scribbleykins: Apr 29, 2010; Any scientist with the right background can brew his own booze.

...

What do you mean electrolytes aren't used for brewing booze? That's silly!

...

Well when all you have are chunks of TNE and an overly large water ration, all the world looks like a still!; Grimey Drawer

Twibbit posted:

Enough of this procrastination by me,�Recruitment thread is live https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3805873&pagenumber=1&perpage=40#post468425806

It is�Red Markets in Montana, Sure there are theoretically less zombies, but with�how flat it is sound travels. so your undead friends will come from�much further.

We just had a dropout for this game, so if anyone's interested, they ought to drop by and ask if they could join in before we really get going. Twibbit even has pregens to throw at you, if you're interested.

Oh, and our party consists of two Roaches and a Steward. I foresee good times. :getin:

# ? Feb 1, 2017 00:19

Twibbit: Mar 7, 2013; Is your refrigerator running?

https://twitter.com/HebanonGCal/statuses/827597708722593792

# ? Feb 3, 2017 21:03

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Looking forward to starting a Red Markets campaign set to "tomorrow"

# ? Feb 4, 2017 11:16

Negative Entropy: Nov 30, 2009

Caleb, Ross, this is one of the coolest loving art pieces i've seen yet.

I realised I can just take a local road map, or even hand my players an old Refedex (fat city map book) and say "Heres the campaign map. Grab a pen"

I'm thinking I should have gone for a higher pledge.

Negative Entropy fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Mar 25, 2017

# ? Mar 25, 2017 04:08

Spector29: Nov 28, 2016

Any idea what the March update is for us Non-Backers who can't see it?

# ? Mar 25, 2017 07:46

Negative Entropy: Nov 30, 2009

basically: writing is coming along well.

# ? Mar 25, 2017 10:46

girth brooks part 2: Sep 6, 2011; Bush did 911; Fun Shoe

The backerkit is up, the pdf is finished, and the physical books are set to be shipped out in late August. The final page count ended up just shy of 500 pages, so it's a monster.

There's also an official website and forum right now. Caleb got dicked over by the person hired to do it, so it's a little bare bones since he's doing it himself: redmarketsrpg.com (it acts screwy when I try to link it for some reason)

If you wanted to back it but didn't get a chance you can pre-order it at: https://red-markets.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

I'm not sure if the pre-orders work the same, but once you fill out your info for backerkit you can download the final version of the .pdf.

# ? Jun 30, 2017 03:47

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I upped my pledge to the full hardcover book. I'm really hyped about this.

# ? Jun 30, 2017 04:20

Golden Bee: Dec 24, 2009; I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.

100 pages of unplayable backstory, all backed before the Trump presidency. Who wouldn't love this game?!

# ? Jul 1, 2017 06:26

Negative Entropy: Nov 30, 2009

gradenko_2000 posted:

I upped my pledge to the full hardcover book. I'm really hyped about this.

Wait, you're able to do that. poo poo. Back it up, I want a hardcover.

Is the softcover in colour?

# ? Jul 1, 2017 07:39

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 7, 2024 18:19

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Kommando posted:

Wait, you're able to do that. poo poo. Back it up, I want a hardcover.

Is the softcover in colour?

Yes, I did it through the BackerKit survey

IDK about the softcover

# ? Jul 1, 2017 07:59

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Red Markets: A Game Of Economic Horror

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