Our campaign begins with us getting our bearings, reason for the campaign's time limit and the first Job: "And Now, the Weather". I was running two other campaigns concurrently with this one, so I wanted to make my job as a GM as easy as possible.
While I appreciate the freedom of choice Red Markets and other Job-based games (such as Blades in the Dark) offer, I find it frustrating and taxing to prepare several missions with the knowledge that my players might only play one or two of them. So I used both official and fanmade content as much as I was able.
(BitD eventually became easy enough to run that I could mostly improvize the actual Scores, but Red Market's proved crunchy and heavy enough that I couldn't just wing appropriate challenges.)
Not much to say about the session itself. Our group was still new to the system, our characters, and each other; and this was a basic Job to familiarize ourselves with it.
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We begin our game in Blue Diamond, a fortified casino on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Our crew has been bolstered by two additional takers:
HK, a somewhat psychopatic hunter-scavenger, and the Man, a dudesque former Fenceman.
I set the scene in a New Year's Party thrown by the enclave's leaders. There's food, better quality moonshine and someone even dared to launch a firework. Our crew happens to hear a drunken rant by someone from marketing. They claim that every known and reachable casino has been emptied and the enclave cannot support itself on tourism. Blue Diamond will last a year, if they're lucky.
Next morning our crew, the Diamond Dogs, makes a decision: they'll have to speed up their retirement plans. And find a Job.
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They hear about two potential Jobs: a group of Recession rich people are hiring guides for a Z-safari and a reclusive climatologist wants a crew to tag some casualties. The Crew loathes the idea of babysitting some rich kids, so they begin negotiations with Dr Hamilton for the tagging job.
Felicia, their negotiator fails Leadership critically (and I roll 2 for length). They barely manage to agree on market price.
Anyway, it's all they have.
The Job seems simple enough: RFID tag some casualties and lead them to a nearby Stampede. Hamilton has even located some C's conveniently in torpor. (This is a fan-made scenario by Oiharkin.)
On the way they scavenge a fallen Ubiq balloon, which doubles their pay.
When they arrive at the site, an abandoned small convenience store, our vet Salty Dog scouts the area. He sees that the C's are not in torpor but bound by bear traps. He also deduces someone lives in the mall, and uses his military attitude and the threat of the stampede to convince the small group of enclavists to leave.
Then our Hunter and Latent get to work tagging and freeing the bound C's, while the Man and Felicia search and loot the mall. ("We're retrieving your belongings", they tell the enclavers").
Then it's simple enough job to evade the Stampede and return home.
Back home was when the Horror began. Their pay wasn't enough to cover most of their Upkeep and some had to neglect their Dependents. They resolve to loot more on the next Job. (We skipped one Leg with an Interlude. Apparently this is not happening again!)
Regardless, we liked this somewhat depressing first Job and economical desperation was what I used to sell this campaign to my players. Still, I'm resolved to offer more risks and more rewards next time we play.
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We also fleshed out our enclave a bit more: there are three rough factions in Blue Diamond. The original Employees, Gamblers that could not get out and Migrants, who arrived later. The Enclaves birth was very chaotic as it's original owner established a short dictatorship before dying in muddy circumstances (he either went insane, had an accident or was killed. Or all three). Now the enclave is ruled by a loose council consisting of former management, organized criminals and other vital personnel.
Our Crew has one native rival gang of Takers: the High Rollas are a group of adrenaline junkies that traded gambling to Taker work. There's also at least one enclaved casino in the area, and the two are not on their most friendly terms.
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