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Mechanic Monday: Debt Markers

For every Monday, there must be a Mechanic.  This was the maxim handed down by my past selves.  And though I curse their (my) name to the Heavens, like lowly Tantalus I keep coming back to this.
Oh we’re in a cheery mood eh? Sorry, I’m in the trench that is Tech for the show I’m acting in, so my vim and vigor levels are perilously low.  I’m also dredging up an idea from my reserve list, as opposed to expounding joyously on an idea that has caught recent fire in my brain.  So pray forgive me if the idea is a little more muddled, and my takeaways more head-scratchy.  It’s always tougher when I’m scrolling through my reserve list, trying to re-experience the moment where a mechanic granted me inspiration.  Casting my mind back, I believe this idea may have bubbled out of a froth based on some Dan Thurot reviews on auction games and Peace of Westphalia, as well as the debt cubes from Cole Wehrle’s John Company.  Anyhow, without further adieu:

Debt Markers
In GREEM, you take out Debt Markers in order to get the Liquid Currency needed to buy your investments from the Market.  Debt Markers from the Market are prohibitively expensive to begin with, whereas Debt Markers between players are based on mutual agreement.  Debt Markers can be worth whatever someone is willing to pay, but a player must clear all owed Debt Markers before they can win.  A player clears a Marker by paying off its holder whatever they are willing to accept for it, but a player may also pay a set amount (1.25x the most recent Marker clearing) to the Market to clear ANY one Marker, with none of that money going to the Marker holder.

Ok, so… the above is kiiiiind of a mess.  Nothing new for this blog, but really this is the kind of play that I don’t usually play in, but find very interesting.  There are some great auction and ponzi scheme games out there, which this feels adjacent to; but I’d picture it being a fantasy setting to suit the fantasy that you can ever indebt your way out of debt.  Because that’s the idea here; you take on debt to get the capital to generate income so that you can eventually pay off debt.  Some set costs (or fixed-but-dependent-on-multiple-factors) but otherwise value is completely based on negotiated value.  Tension between how hard you can hold someone’s debt to you over their head before they just go to the bank and drop big money just to clear it, without you seeing a red cent of it.  That’s the key experience I want - balancing the tight-fisted sleights of hand between players against the big blunt object of an uncaring institution.
Welp, I wrote most of this last week but at least I finished it this week.  Off to Final Dress hahahahaha.

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