Red Markets: A Game of Economic Horror

Print on Demand please?

Any chance of printing more physical copies? Or knowing a place to order one?

Any plans for POD since it does not seem to be available on IPR anymore?

How does the system work in the basic sense, is it dice pool, d20, etc. Also, does Roll20 have sheets for it?

How many players are required for Red Markets?

Best zombie RPG I have been able to find out there. Negotiation rules are epic.

I thought that the red market was "in the context of economic theory, refer[ing] to the trade of human flesh and blood in the form of sex racket, child trafficking, organ selling" and other heinous acts like slavery. Does the game refer to these issues/themes?

Any chance of a high res version of the map on page 45?

out of all the systems I've ever run, this one is hands down my favourite. I ran a campaign with the play test version of red markets and my players ended up knocking out a horror that defies nature, filling it with stims, and setting it loose on the locals so my players could escape without being shot. Also my teams medic solved most problems with huge amounts of drugs, the bruiser got shot in the leg and can't walk? fill him with stim sauce! we need to run away faster? stim sauce! we are going to see terrible terrible atrocities against nature? bottles of happy pills!

seriously while everyone else kept on buying gear, anti tank rifles, incendiary mortars, and leveling up their skills, my medic went through the game with a pistol, a medkit, and a bag of drugs

In the end, the words that they wrote there were meaningful.

:-)

Nice background, and lots of it, so even if the Profit System isn't for you could run this with pretty much anything you fancied.

I backed the Kickstarter. Post-apocalyptic Ocean's 11 heists with a Call of Cthulu-type sanity mechanic.

This is more about seeing how far you can get when everything is against you as opposed to being the Big Damn Hero. Combat is alright but what I really like is the non-combat side. Negotiation, planning, providing for dependent NPCs, upkeep on your precious gear, and all while trying to keep your humanity from breaking. And you won't need an accounting ledger for this, it's all presented in the abstract. You can spend resources to get information or to say you have some rope when you find you need some. But you have to be cautious about how you do that because you can successfully complete an adventure and end up worse off than when you started.

The book is setting, rules, and how to run the game. The game mechanics can be adapted to other genres, it's not really that dependent upon the zombie motif. I've been tinkering around with adapting it to a more cinematic crime setting....See more I recommend it.

When will this be available for print on demand?

What Red Markets provides that so many other games don't is a reason for your characters to adventure. It's a reason that is immediately and viscerally available to anyone who wasn't born wealthy. Hustle and live, or get eaten by a system that doesn't care about you, that lacks the capacity to care about you. Hustle long enough, well enough, and you can not care, too. This is what separates Red Markets from other horror games. You don't have to stretch your view of the world to include inscrutable outer gods or post-singularity machine gods. This horror is economic, and it's personal. It may take a little while to get used to the negotiation mechanic mini-game, but you'll catch on. It's going to feel frustrating that the game penalizes you for accumulating possessions and dependents, but overcoming those constrains is the whole point of the game. Think of them as formal restraints when composing a sonnet or other metered and schemed poem. Wrestling with the structure forces you to be creative, and raises the stakes....See more In closing, this is a game that hits close to home, rewards creative thinking, and with its goal-based storytelling promotes investment in your character and their story. Highest possible recommendation.

Full Disclosure: I (like others here) backed this book on Kickstarter. I have both the PDF and hardback copy like many here.

A game for post-apocalyptic enthusiast, occult-conspiracy theorists, and plain misery junkies. Gone are the trappings of your best qualities burned away by the fall of civilization in a crisis, instead all of your inefficiencies and weakness laid bare before the monumental task of just surviving. It's not a game about Zombies, it's a game about poverty, loneliness, doing what it takes to survive. The "Casualties" are just one more detail of your bullshit job. It clings to coining the phrase "economic horror" with it's Profit system, where no rolls are free and must be carefully rationed out with limited resources. With it's Boom and Bust rules you can tailor it to be a hardscrabble and heroic romp through a dead civilization like S.M. Stirling's: Dies the Fire or as bleak and unforgiving as Cormack McCarthy's: The Road.

About the Physical Copy:...See more /> I used to make hardcover books for a living so here's what I can tell you about the physical book. The casement is sturdy with glossy, heavy weight covering of most nice RPG books.
The headband/binding cover is an attractive red color that brings to mind a crashing bottom line on an economic chart. The real thing that shines about it though is the art is bled to the edge of the page, no margins, no layout marks. You see a page with art on it and it ends at your fingertips. Wonderful 500 page monster book.

Another backer here: This game skews dark. As written it leads to interesting moral choices and a sense of impending doom. The players are eternally one job/paycheck away from ruin. Altruism inevitably has deeply personal costs to the characters and those characters families, making heroism all the more heroic. I have some criticisms, but they're very minor, because the game is so well done. It's obviously a labor (pun intended) of love, but don't get it because of that. Buy the game if you want to grapple with a type of horror, financial, that many deal with every day. Spend money on this product to support critiques of capitalism!