Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TTRPG Tuesday: Three Means Of Resolving

Hi it’s another TTRPG Tuesday! First of the year.  Let’s get right into it. Saw a challenge on Twitter to make some resolution mechanics.  I can do those! Here we go: Hand to Hand The player performing the action and the person running the game or otherwise opposing the action both put their dominant fists toward one another, bounce them three times to get a rhythm, and reveal a number with their fingers, 0-5.  Sum the two numbers, and if the number is greater than 5, subtract six, so that the final number is always between 0 and 5.  On a 0, the action fails catastrophically, on a 1-2 it fails, 3-4 it succeeds, on a 5 it succeeds spectacularly.  The player taking the action starts the game with all five fingers up on their non-dominant hand; after an attempt, they may lower fingers on that hand to add to the sum of the attempt. Ex. Alice attempts to seduce Cat’s character over to the coup conspirators.  They put their dominant hands together (right for Alice, left for Cat) and thro
Post a Comment
Read more

TTRPG Tuesday: Minimum Viable Product for WWDW?

Hello and welcome back to TTRPG Tuesday! I’ve put together a barebones introductory document for We Won, Didn’t We? and, well, I think it speaks for itself.  Check it out HERE ! This introduces the skeleton of the game, as well as walking through the steps; I’d say next up is a rudimentary character sheet, and maybe I can bring this to a Playtest Zero session and see what folks think of character creation within one of the starting Bulbs.  I’ve opened the doc up for comments, so if you have thoughts dear reader, fire away.  Brain fried, go read the doc, til next time!
Post a Comment
Read more

TTRPG Tuesday: Beliefs as Roles

  Hello from high above the Rockies, as I make my way back to Chicago from Big Bad Con 2023.     This was my first con in five years, and only my second ever.     I had a better time at it than I did at GenCon, which I understand derives largely from this being an industry con vs a consumer show.     I made a modest number of purchases but it was easy to stick to the constraints of my limited luggage space, which was fine; shopping and new releases were not the attraction here.     Gaming, panels, and (as I soon learned) networking were. This con was certainly less overwhelming and I think my expectations were clearer and my FOMO much lighter, but I’ll readily admit that I had a lot to learn.    I misunderstood or made mistakes regarding almost every event I signed up for, including happy accidents like sitting in on the wrong panel only to learn a ton, or expecting a mending workshop to be about fixing one’s writing when the application was rather more literal, which was a fascinat
Post a Comment
Read more