19 thoughts on “Some downtime moves for The Sprawl.”

  3. I’d suggest a slight reword do that you specifically call out spending cred. Something like “when you spend cred to deal with x roll +cred spent” it’d not very clear in either the first move, or the Corp move whether I’m spending and rolling spent or spending and rolling remaining.

  5. Thanks Colin!

    Robert Gardner: Agreed, changes made.

    Alasdair Sinclair:  I think the answer is no at the moment … would you prefer it: 

      * In a discussion section at the end 

      * In every move

      * Associated with each bullet for choices?

    On a 7+ pick, one.

  6. In a discussion.

    A lot of these Moves are neat for moving the pace of the game in downtime forward, however it should be noted in the discussion that they are not replacements for roleplaying these kinds of scenes, just ways to facilitate them and the story.

  7. Definitely. I would say it’s up to the MC and players to decide if they want to make the scene into something bigger than just a bit of narrative, or if they’d like to just bounce the dice and move on.  The consequences of the move, however, must come out in play.  The discussion should make that clear.

  10. One of the big discussions I had with Hamish Cameron  early days on The Sprawl was that it had become a pretty niche genre… there’s not a great depth of genre familiarity, and what there is has a lot of other genres bleeding across. More than a game, what I wanted from The Sprawl was as much a summation and holistic perspective on the genre as a game to play. That’s basically what any RPG needs to do these days – what is the visiion? I was intrigued, for example, in one of his interviews where he talked about the physical body-horror of cybernetic replacement as a key motivator – something that was fascinating, interesting, and immediately suggested story hooks, but which I had not even seen a glimmer of in his alpha rules set.

    So for this latest set of moves… what I want to understand is what the significance of these moves is – what are the political, practical, personal, aesthetic, cyber, implications of these moves and outcomes? What options speak to the interests of the game and the genre? Otherwise you’re not really adding value compared to me just winging it.

  11. Interesting chicken’n’egg comment, I think you need more background information to draw in gamers unfamiliar with the genre, but, I think, these rules are mainly going to appeal to gamers who are already cyberpunked. In that case, I think, continuing the ongoing gameplay narrative, as written for the character generation may provide sufficient impetus to the MC’s deliberations.

  13. ‘Seek a Handler’ ~ when I show this option to the players, I don’t think I want them to necessarily know at this time that He/She/They have …a hidden agenda…?

  14. Alasdair Sinclair I agree that would be useful and interesting, but to me would be something for an official stretch goal / micro-kickstarter / expansion for the game. I was mostly just throwing these moves out there for people who might want to use them, which may indeed not be better than just winging it.  I think it would be Hamish Cameron’s task to talk about significance in the world, I’m just a rules geek 🙂

    Mike Cowles: Added the rival corp option, a clear omission.  On the other hand, I think the hidden agenda is okay for two reasons:

    1.  AW (and by derivation The Sprawl) has the tenet of public knowledge — don’t hide things from the players unless really necessary, even if the characters don’t know it yet.

    2.  *Everyone* in The Sprawl should have an agenda 😀 so it should be no surprise that the anonymous sponsor isn’t just giving them something for nothing.

  16. You are increase your status within the Corp, keep track of this per named Corporation.

    superfluous ‘are’.

    Otherwise, I’m looking forward to throwing my group into this.

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