I’m planning a Con game for early 2017 and I wanted to get feedback from people that ran The Sprawl at a Con.
I’m half-tempted to start the game In Media-Res, in the middle of a mission by using a loveletter type setup and then offer flashback scene showing the legwork.
Should I rather keep the existing structure instead (Setup/Legwork/Action/Getting paid)?
How much of the missions should I commit to paper beforehand?
Should I go through the full game setup (Corporation creation and character creation)?
I think I will have 3-4 hours for the game. I’m affraid if we spend the first hour/hour and half setting the stage it will take too long to get to the action but then again if I prep everything beforehand, the players will have less investment in the fiction.
What has work for you?
PS: I might just have the pre-con jitters and might be looking at prep where there shouldn’t be some, except of course absorbing tons of cyberpunk media.
PPS: I write this while listening to the most cyberpunk music I know: https://open.spotify.com/artist/244uLu9lkdw39BJwlul3k8
It’s full of chromed out synthguitar-wielding rock babe!
I run The Sprawl in 4 hour con slots regularly. I do full chargen and corp creation in about 60-75 minutes, with the caveat that I know the process really well. I’ve seen people say it takes them longer than that. I find that 60-75 minutes is an okay time to invest in getting into the world and characters, but much more than that and it would start to eat into the experience.
I have also run The Sprawl in 2 hour con slots at GenCon. For that I pre-generate corps, do full Chargen, abbreviate the links phase to a set of pregenerated realtionships with corps (essentially modular love letters with some gaps for them to fill in), give them the mission, have them make a legwork move each which serves to describe the mission, then give them a 5 minute timer to plan the mission, then a full mission phase. ardens.org – Operation Indianapolis: The Sprawl at Gen Con (I plan on writing this mission up and making it available in the near future). That’s very heavy on the improv, but it shows some of the places you can compress table time.
You could also consider partially generated characters. I did that for drop in players who didn’t attend the chargen session in the multi-session con campaign we ran at OrcCon (Operation Angel Basin: http://www.ardens.org/2016/06/aar-operation-angel-basin-setup/). I basically filled out moves, stats and cyberware and let them do the rest. That has the added bonus of not having the explain stats and moves in as much detail up front… you can explain them when they come up.
In medias res with legwork and get the job flashbacks is also cool though! I suggest that in the book, but I can’t recall if I’ve ever done it myself. I’ve definitely done it with Dungeon World.
All that is to say, I think you should keep the mission structure, but bend it to your requirements. So much of the game pivots around that structure that it might be a problem to completely remove it.
Oh, and thumbs up to Perturbator! I first encountered them on a Spotify playlist that Stephen Hood made for an incredibly atmospheric game of Always/Never/Now played in a high-rise hotel overlooking Indianapolis. \m/ Now I use that playlist all the time!