I’m wondering about when to bring in certain directives, especially those that might reference people and organizations outside the group, like Network, Intimate, or Protective, among others.
A lot of the structure of The Sprawl seems to be designed to encourage a tight focus on the mission at hand, with some relatively quick legwork beforehand.
Is it fair game to come at the PC’s with their chosen obligations as moves during the legwork phase, when it’ll draw them away from the main group?
Related question, does any part of a session take place outside of the relatively rigid mission structure? If players wanted to stock up on supplies, or chase down personal stuff from their directives before they “get the job”, how would you run that?
On Directives, those can be hard to work in if you’re doing a mission on the fly, certainly. I’d build a list of the Directives for your PCs, and maybe think up very rough outlines of situations that might call them up, then when you see opportunities to introduce them in the game, go for it.
The classic during an actual mission would be coming across a twist that is basically the choice of “Do I indulge my directive or not?” Does the hacker dig into the system instead of monitoring security because they get a whiff of something that isn’t paydata per se, but certainly fuels their goals? Does the hunter let go of the trail when they come across a corp exploiting some innocents – and actually have a chance to stop it?
Give yourself a list and you’ll likely find more opportunities to pull from it than you might expect.
As for non-mission actions, I figure the usual cadence of the campaign would be something like a couple of missions, countdown clocks advancing, and then everything switches gears as one or more corps are out gunning for the group.
A really enterprising group might find a way to spin that into a business opportunity (who says runners have to be passive salesmen?), but chances are they’ll have to undertake a mission where the objective is simply “get the corporate assholes off our back” – so it might end up very similar, but the kick-off will certainly be different.
As for “personal stuff,” I think I would almost let the players narrate that how they want – viewing it as an opportunity for them to indulge in a bit of characterization. Maybe interjecting a bit with feedback based on countdown clocks.
Out-of-mission scenes are perfect material for a Pusher or Reporter, certainly.
In terms of personal stuff, think of how a TV show would handle it. Is it interesting to show Zero on a shopping trip, or do we just see the results when she pulls out some new tech in the next mission?
If it’s interesting, which is also to say, are there interesting consequences if she fails, then it probably should happen in the legwork phase. If it’s not interesting, then it probably should be hand-waved as something that happens in downtime (i.e. between missions).
This might depend on your group’s play style. Note that there is already precedent for handling downtime scenes in the case where Links resets.
Got it. I guess the deeper question is, do you see almost everything the players do as taking place inside the formal structure of a [mission]?
For example say there was a threat like a gang or similar that the players wanted to confront, fight etc. But it isn’t necessarily involved in the current mission, to steal a cutting-edge prototype from a megacorp. Would you:
A.) Make it its own mission and play that for the session (might be too small a thing for a whole mission though)
B.) Have it take place during the Legwork phase (players would be burning valuable time / clock segments doing this unrelated thing)
C.) Have it occur before the players Get the Job, or after the mission concludes, and just sort of freestyle it
These are all sort of theoretical questions because I haven’t played yet, but just tossing ideas around.
I would do A or B depending on the scope of the problem. If it’s a small problem, use the Mission Packages (pp.220-221) during the legwork phase (and note the third example in the example text on p.221!), if it’s a big problem make it a mission in its own right.
Whether it’s a big or small problem is actually more about whether it’s a interesting problem or a boring problem. How much time do you all want to spend on it? Is this a 5 minute narration of team badassitude or a few hours of planning and execution?
Nice, thanks!
That example is an interesting one. I guess the legwork phase is more comprehensive than I thought, it can be a lot of little plot turns that get as much attention as you want them to, depending on how interested everyone is.