We Interrupt This Bad Writing With A Much Too Personal Anecdote Tied To Red Markets.

 I haven't seen anything other than the preview chapter, and I haven't any better grasp of the mechanics of Red Markets other than what everyone else who listens to the Actual Plays does, and yet I really really really need to run this game. Why is that?

 Let me answer with a number. 19.1%. That was the unemployment rate in my hometown at a point shortly before I turned 12. One out of every five people you saw didn't have a job. It's the unemployment rate of a third world country. And that's when I watched my dad turn into an odd-jobs worker for a landlord, which is the closest analog to Taking that I've ever seen in America.

 Odd jobbing and scrabbling for money - most of my gaming circle (and to be told, most of the people I associate with) have never had to see or deal with it. I see it at work, too - talk to the people who do it. It hasn't changed over the years, and probably not over the centuries, if I had the perspective. The guy who goes junking on his days off, the immigrants who wait in the Home Depot parking lot for some gringo who needs a lawn done or a fence built, the guy who talks to himself while he raids dumpsters for aluminum cans and mislaid lottery tickets - it's a squalid fucking existence.

 It's getting up before daylight and heading out hoping the boss has something for you to do that day. If not, then it's a day at the bar, commiserating with your buddies (not your friends, you don't really have those at the bar). If you do get a job, it's long hard work for not really enough pay, and you don't dare NOT take it, because there's three more guys who'll be more than willing to take your spot.

 It's going out in freezing rain and brutal heat and everything in between, and Gods help you if you've got a bad neck like my dad and it starts acting up, because every day you don't work is both a day your family gets a little poorer and one more reason for the boss to drop you like a bad habit, because you're a dime a dozen and no one cares other than your family.

 It makes you hard of heart; you don't donate to charity because the closest your kids get to a luxury like cheese comes in a white box and looks like old Velveeta. It makes you careless about the future, because you've got no future other than the next day, when you wake up with a hangover and a sore back and bills you still can't pay. It makes you careless of other people, too, because to the world at large, you're shit and you know they think you're shit and you could die in a fucking ditch with your whole family and the most reaction you'd get is complaining because the storm drain clogged. And you want to get out, Gods, you want to get out SO BAD. You'll blow money on lotto because there's one more chance than you've got on the street, and you'll blow money on booze or drugs or God knows what else because every minute you feel good is a minute you don't feel shitty, and you won't get those minutes because you don't deserve them.

 If you don't harden yourself, you'll hate yourself into the grave, because when Capital makes the rules, those who don't have it have the Mark of the Beast. Your family too; spend a dollar of food stamps and watch the good people give you the stinkeye like you broke into their house and stole their TV. Get in a line at church for old off brand peanut butter and canned goods and people will still claim that you're eating lobster and T-bones off of silver platters on their dime. Poor people only count as far as you can use their labor until they fall over, and then you just get another one.

 So, yeah, both the better angel of my nature and the vicious asshole that was formed by my childhood want to run this game, real bad. It might be 'nerd-troped', but it's probably the closest that a lot of people whose biggest worry is what's in their next Loot Crate will get to the horror that is being poor in America. And no Boom rules for them, either, Comrade.

Red Markets, 6/1/16 - Day 9.

THE COMPLETELY TRUE AND ACCURATE TRAVELS OF HOBO JOHNSON IN THE LOSS AND THE DESCRIPTION OF SEVERAL ENCLAVES THEREIN (PART THE THIRD)

June 1 - Came back to town to find Hobo dead drunk in front of his shack.

'Skeevy, you old bastard! Let's talk shop! I got the alk.' Old what? Asshole's got at least 20 years on me. I wonder how he puts his pants on in the morning some days, let alone go out Taking solo. But hey, he's got booze, bounty free? I'll talk all the goddamned shop he wants.

Couple hours later, we're talking security around the Enclave, he gets serious sudden-like. 'Skeevy, I know we got a good location and good people here, but this ain't near 100% safe, even up on this hillside.'

So I ask him how the hell zeds are coming up here? We all know they run downhill. Casualties don't mountain climb.

He replies 'Son, you've been out there. I know you're not as dumb as your crew looks. Lemme tell you a story.'

Oh shit, story time. And me without the bounty for new hip waders. But he wanders on.

'I was in Sicily couple years back. Place called Erice. Nice place, secure as all hell, lot more than this.

Place had two roads in, but they both ran uphill and funneled everything to the big fortified castle with churches in it. Perfect goddamned free-fire zone. A striaght up meat grinder. Once they got it clear of casualties, the leaders set up shop in that castle, used the upper part for housing and a bit lower down, wine making. Wine making's big in that area, so that was a big export. Convoys used to come in through the groves and up to the shops twice a week.

I took off, though, after one of my contacts told me there was trouble brewing. Seems another Enclave further north was looking to expand - and between the fight over wine and the' - and here he coughed - 'local civic groups' - I knew what he meant. Italy, right? - 'SOMEONE was looking to get rid of the competition. And boy, did they.'

Evidently, according to Hobo, it was simple as hell and horrifying as fuck. SOME crazy fuck - he didn't know who, and if he did, he wouldn't say - had taken one of those wine presses that's all the rage in Italy and filled a few tank trucks. But it wasn't wine he filled em with.

You can guess what happens when a few thousand gallons of casualty juice gets blown off with a couple hundred pounds of explosive in the middle of a crowded market. Town fell apart in half a day. Hobo claims no one still goes up there. Can't say I blame them. Fuck, I like people less and less the more I talk with this crazy asshole.