I have discovered The Sprawl recently and I have buying the book. I have played to some parties as a player because I’m not enough good in english to understand all rules for MC. But hope !!! The french version is near ! Before knowing The Sprawl I played a lot to Cyberpunk 2020 tabletop game. I have find lot of character’s profils from Cyberpunk in the sprawl. You can play a Solo, a Fixer, a Techi and even a Rockerboy. But I don’t find a equivalence for play a Corporate, a Cops or a nomad ? Is it because the Sprawl put his focus on an mission game or existent’s playbooks can do the same ?
I have discovered The Sprawl recently and I have buying the book.
I have discovered The Sprawl recently and I have buying the book.
It’s a bit of both. It’s also because my background is more in Shadowrun than CP2020.
To me, Corporate, Cop and Nomad all describe employment or social roles, rather than mission roles. Depending on what you actually do, a Corporate or a Cop could be a Pusher or a Fixer (with corp/cop contacts), for me, those are both more about who you know and leveraging certain groups. In many ways that’s fictional positioning.
The Nomad is similar, but is also embedded in the extra-urban world of CP2020, which is dependent on the setting. The Sprawl doesn’t define what the world looks like, so if your world has roving bands of Nomad-types outside the cities who occasionally split off and act inside the cities, then either that’s a skin on an existing role, and fictional positioning for certain kinds of action, or you could make your own setting specific playbook.
The Nomad always seemed to me like CP2020 wanted some Mad Max in their Cyberpunk, which is fine, but I prefer them separate, at least as a baseline.
I understand what you want to say. Social roles / Missions roles. So a Cops could be a hunter or a killer, depending of his profil. Maybe this cop was an inspector or just a simple brute.
So second question how can I integrate a Pusher in a mission ? I feel that this playbook have nany faces, and could be a gang/new church leader, an rocker, a bimbo with lot of follower, or juste a man that he want change the world like a terrorist or a politician engaged.
You could create new Fixer jobs to represent the different “day jobs” of a Corp and Cop.
The Pusher definitely requires thought and it will depend on their vision. The Pusher’s vision will tend to drive the overall themes and plots of a campaign in a specific way. In this way, it’s similar to the Reporter, whose desire to pursue specific stories will push towards certain jobs.
As the MC, these are things (especially along with directives) that you should take into account when you design missions for a team that contains a Pusher or a Reporter.
Yes, Hunter is an excellent playbook for a Cop. As soon as the character starts to get advances they can start getting moves from other playbooks as well (so a Cop/Hunter could get the Fixer job and backup moves. To represent their beat and their fellow officers.
So the better advise that I could say to my players is ” don’t see playbook as a job or a solid class, but as a concept that you called as you wish”. I project to run a partie as MC and one of my groups know absolutly nothing on the AW system. This players are customers of Cyberpunk 2020 (like me).
But before running a game, I need to mastered the clock system. If I understand each corporation descripted by each player has a clock. The legwork has a clock and the actionwork has a clock. If there is a pusher or / and a reporter there are a clock for the reporter quest or the pusher vision.
Sometime there is an event that give a clock as personnal event. Exemple : The hunter is in operative situation and he receive a call that say that his sister has been arrested and be transfert to a very secured area. A new clock come to represent the transport, the moment before the player can’t do nothing.
Have I right (maybe I have forgot a clock) ?
You could use clocks for that Hunter situation and the Pusher’s vision, but neither are in the game as written.
The main clocks are:
Legwork & Action Clocks
Corp & Threat Clocks
(Special clocks for the Reporter)
Harm Clocks
(And as you illustrate, clocks can be a useful tool for other situations too.)
The main thing to “master” is balancing when to raise a the Mission Clocks (Legwork or Action) to handle the pacing of the mission. This mostly comes with experience and reflection on your own sessions. It’s often a matter of taking the sense of pacing you already have as a GM or a consumer of fictional narratives and working out how it aligns with the Mission Clock mechanic.
Mmmm…. It’s true that the mission concern one or more corporation put in game by players, and they are more subject to anger ^^
The mission clocks are the main thing to master because those happen in real time as you play.
Corp clocks are mostly between sessions, so you can ask for help or advice here between missions.
This clock system is new for me. I have many cyberpunk 2020 parties behind me but I never used this sort of clock system. Maybe is a part of my fear to launch me in The Sprawl (and some vocabulary used, because my english is limited to his academic form). I had buy the rule book at his release but never launch a partie as MC… Shame on me… Khelren and some other french fan help me a lot to enter in the game.
Go for it Michael! I think you’ll have a great time once you have things figured out a bit better. And it will still be fun if it doesn’t go perfectly. You’re clearly enthusiastic and willing to ask questions and learn. That’s all you need! And maybe the French version before long 🙂
The clocks aren’t complicated… just think of them as a way of tracking things that are happening in the world. For example, a corporate clock basically means “on a scale of 0 to 6, how much does Megacorp want to kill the PCs”? Similarly, the legwork clock is “on a scale of 0 to 6, how much attention have the PCs drawn to themselves?”.
The position on that scale guides you in terms of the opposition the PCs should be facing…
Ok I see . But is the clock legwork and actionclock increase alone if player “do nothing” (Do a personnal quest or… go eating sushis) or the clock only increase when player roll 6- ?
The clocks increase when the MC decides it is fictionally appropriate.
Increasing the clock is a move the MC can make when a player rolls 6-, but rolling a 6- doesn’t meant the MC must increase it.
Likewise, spending time doing something unrelated to the main mission might increase a clock, depending on the fictional circumstances, but also might not.
These are all subjective choices by the MC. The only time the MC must increase the clock is when the player rolls a 7-9 and chooses a complication that the clock increases.
This is why I mentioned the MC’s “sense of pacing” in my comments above.
Thanks for your explanations. It’s more clear.
I have another point that block me. The first stap of a mission. How play the brefing? If I do a meeting with employer and players, this ones will ask lot of question that could be covering by the move “get a job”. How could I play a fictionnal scene and keep in mind that some questions cannot find answer because they are not be chose when “get a job” ? I thought that I could escape the brefing and say : “you have been contact by an Arasaka VP to do that, roll “get a job” and depending the result you could have more precision about this job”.
But I don’t find it ….immersive.
I will prefert play this scene in this darkest bar with lot of smoke and this jazz man in corner that he play a lonnely song. Around the table the player and a corporate asian man in black vest…
But how manage the “get a job” in this way ?
I play out the scene in the atmospheric way you suggest. When it comes to a point where you really need to know how the negotiation is going, roll the move, then carry on with the scene to play out the results.
It does involve a bit of what is sometimes called “director stance” where you take the position of a director rather than an actor, so if that is a problem for you or the group, you might work out a different way of doing it. Maybe play out the scene and then afterwards roll to see if the employer was being straight with you as far as the information goes.
Ok I will see how I can manage it in my first run of the Sprawl, but I feel that it will be rock & rolls .
How work Corporation Clock ? I mean, what do it when one or more coporation clock down to 00:00 ? I know my players and some of them have no remorse to do lot of noise…
The higher the Corporation Clock, the more that Corp is devoting resources to eliminating the team on a broad scale.
When the clock is at 0000, the Corp will respond to any intel about where the team is and what thy are doing. They’ll interfere in other missions, be actively trying to eliminate the team’s contacts and assets, eliminating the team is a top priority.
Yes I understand that, but how I can use it in game ? The players can continues to have missions but with a nemesis corporate team behind them ? Or the corporation destroy them (“toc toc toc Sarah Connor ? Bang Bang Bang !”) ? Or they can’t get any missions because they smell the dead mens ?
Yes, the players keep having missions, and the 0000-Corp are constantly on the lookout for how to interfere. Fake jobs that are actual traps, Corp kill teams showing up on misses (not every miss, but show them the barrel then escalate as usual), interference in payment meets (the 0000-Corp is the “third party” par excellence).
Ok I see 😊
I another question about “Mix It Up”. If a player choose “an ally takes harm as established by the fiction” and this ally a other player is not agree with it, how do you manage this situation ?
The MC decides which ally takes harm, so handle this like you would handle any other disagreement between MC and player, by talking it out.
Ok I see. when I read “mix it up” , I m dubious. I think that something is forget, especialy when fight don’t concern directly the mission. For exemple, if I temporary get away from the mission to validate my directive “kill my nemesis” on a opportunity. I go alone and mix it up from my ennemy and his band. the only choise are “taking harm” and “break something of value” because I m away from the mission and I have no ally with me. Maybe I think that the move need another option to have more diversity in some situation. Maybe something like “another danger / complication comes right now”.
The options on Mix it Up are intentionally more visceral than that. When you use violence to resolve a problem in The Sprawl, stuff breaks. Either roll well, or get ready for some immediate painful consequence.
You could add the “complication” option, but it feels like a soft “out” that will always get chosen.
Whether you decide to modify the options might also depend on how you use Mix it up. The temporal scope of the move is open. I usually use it to resolve an entire combat (as with siege with force in AW), but you can zoom in to resolve action beats (as with Hack and Slash in DW)–see the advice in the book on doing that, namely that you might consider lowering weapon harm values.
I see what you say, and I agree with you combat must be with serious concequence. But I know that my customer players like zoom in combat because they are D&D players and they like lot of “rounds” in combats not it be resolve in one dice check. Where are the advises you say is in your book (page) ?
…mmmm and if an option permit to MC to play a move… maybe it could be more dissuasive and not a “soft out” option ?
I don’t have my book on hand, but I think it’s in the Hacking The Sprawl chapter.
Thanks I will read it. 😀