#bibliolithid

Probably not super “cryptid” after all this time but... we’ll see what we get.

It stirred in the doorway.

What was it, that stirred? I couldn’t see it properly but it definitely smelled like fear. Like... rabbit fear, I was caught. There!

There!

It was so much longer. It was so much more curved and angled and... hushed. Hush. I tried desperately to grasp for my voice. I reached out but barely grazed it... no I passed through it?

I look up and I’d missed it. There’s barely an echo where the shape should be. But a whisper still lingering... breathing... 

I don’t think Red Markets would be a great pick for political gameplay, though it has some system hooks for running a small gang. It’s take on economic gameplay is if nothing else dedicated and pervasive.

Like, the flow of the game looks like it plays nicely with your standard dungeon delve structure, with maybe a bit more West Marches in its blood than say, Dungeon World. A halfdozen acquaintances get word of a job out in the dangerous wilds, you go do the job while racking up near death experiences, you get back, you get paid, you find another job. For all the emphasis on capitalism and the titular Red Markets, the movement of the economy as a whole is probably going to be unaffected by the antics of the PCs. The Negotiation rules are pretty well fleshed out though and seem like they’d broadly fit, and it has a chapter on PCs making investments and dealing with risk management as well as ROI.

Then again, right in the middle of that chapter is this passage:

“[The GM] should feel free to veto any individual investing that gets in the way of the core activity of being [an Adventurer]... the broker method keeps bookkeeping simple enough for [the GM] to focus on telling a compelling story.“

This is not to say that such a focus makes a game ill-fit for a focus on economic gameplay, and one should always take any RPG book’s claim to “focus on telling a compelling story” with a shaker or two of salt, but it is at least incongruous. Then again, I think there is a compelling narrative to be wrested from economic intrigue, so it kind of depends on what kind of economic gameplay you’re interested in!

The Supply/Demand curve involved in negotiation is a pretty broad interpretation of that term, and the section on Insider Trading involves basically any kind of chicanary done to improve your investments, Liquidity doesn’t have its value reflected, Rates of Return calculations seem pretty hard to get reliable odds on, lots of terms get abused this way. On the other hand, the terms are usually talking about the same general thing as their real world counterparts, and it is kind of cool to even have those options? Whether you’ll like that part depends on whether the coolness of inclusion outweighs the irritation of misuse for you.

I think it's a really good (in both senses of that word) story. It's really fun as a "surreal and uncanny" horror story (which is basically its own genre), and is well-written in both the "fun" and "emotional" senses. It's pretty much exactly the kind of thing I am into. (Some of the scenes I find unbearably nauseating (especially during the latter portion), some scenes I find so emotionally intense I have to take a brief break in order to calm down, etc. It's all a very distinctive and enjoyable experience.)

The second part is the "I'm so glad it's over and done with!" part.

For example:

Thank you! Awwww. Wow that flower is very small. And startlingly blue!