I know almost nothing about Mark Diaz Truman’s upcoming PbtA game, but I can’t think of a more compelling real-world subject.
Jesus, what a clusterfuck it is down there. “Down there” being a two hour drive from my house.
Cartel
I know almost nothing about Mark Diaz Truman’s upcoming PbtA game, but I can’t think of a more compelling real-world subject.
Jesus, what a clusterfuck it is down there. “Down there” being a two hour drive from my house.
Yuuup. This is exactly the kind of thing that happened in my demo game yesterday!
Sorry I missed it!
Also, just saw the bit in the story about taking out an army helicopter with a rocket propelled grenade, good lord. Wide open no-shit warfare.
How we haven’t sent all the drones down and blown up every cartel compound, I’ll never understand. For years I’ve followed the interplay of the various families and operations, how they’ve infiltrated every authority, the insane escalation, and I’ve never sussed out the US response, formal or otherwise.
There are a few problems:
1) We are often working with some cartels to get at other cartels. See Whitey Bulger. 🙁
2) We don’t know who to trust in Mexico, so all of intelligence is suspect. 🙁
3) We don’t really care. Provided the cartels keep the violence south of the border, most Americans are happy to ignore it. 🙁 🙁
So what’s your take in Cartel? Do you play cartel members? Kingpins? Corrupted officials? Overworked police? I’d love to hear more. The subject is way-high on my personal interest list.
All of the above! The ashcan will come out at GenCon, featuring the following playbooks: El Narco, El Cocinero, La Polizeta, El Halcon, La Sicaria, La Esposa. (All playbooks are gender neutral.) I think of it as “Breaking Bad meets El Mariachi.”
Cool man. Keep me in the loop please, I’d love to throw some pixels at it.
Of course! I’m almost done with my first draft of the SRD, so I’ll circle you in on that for some early feedback.
The playtest we had was wonderful and horrible all at the same time. The game is great, the people we were playing had this awful darkness to them, but also nuance. I loved it!
I was in the game last night. I most enjoyed how the game handled the misadventures of my lowlife PC while handling the vicious machinations of open cartel warfare and the violence that follows.
Also, my PC was pretty funny, and it didn’t feel unwelcome, which surprised me. (I felt like I was playing my guy, but worried that I might be futzing with the tone, in the end, it was all good)
Well, invoking El Mariachi brings grindhouse gonzo to mind, so I imagine Mark is going for a pretty flexible tone.
I didn’t realize you lived so close to me, Paul. We’ll have to do something about that.
Tempe, AZ.
I know. I’m in SD. It’s not that far. Easier if the USA had trains that actually worked.
Yup! I keep hoping for a good SoCal convention.
You and me both, though I failed to go to any SD cons this year, so I don’t have a good sense of things.
It’s weird how otherwise qualified places are convention wastelands.
Phoenix is uniformly terrible. I could be the change I want to see in the world but man that’s a lot of work.
I feel similarly. There are cons here and in LA that we could piggyback on, like they do with Gamestorm or Dreamation. But it would take some real work: lots of people running lots of weird games to attract and alienate the right people.
The right people
I like the cut of your jib, sir.
Or you all could come to NewMexiCon!
Seriously, we’re trying to make it the indie game convention for the Southwest: http://newmexicon.com/
I’m gonna be there, Mark.
Well, sure. I don’t want to play a surrealist freeform larp with a bunch of 16yo white boys who make gay jokes and have only ever played 5E. That sounds like a special kind of hell. But you kinda have to do that for a while when you run an open community, hoping they eventually grow up or go away and that slowly you attract a more diverse and interested audience. Or you build a smaller non-open community slowly, by invite, while trying not to look like elitist jerks. But that can be tough too.
Mark Diaz Truman That’s a good suggestion Mark. I’ll see what I can do.