Hi Guys, I’ve got some combat related questions that I’m hoping some of you can help me out on.
Ran my fifth session of The Sprawl last night and I came away from it feeling that the Action phase was a bit of a mess when it turned into combat.
For some context, the mission was basically a kidnapping/extraction job and the team had decided on a time and relative location on where they’d attempt to grab the target. As you might have expected, things didn’t go exactly according to plan. To make a long story short, the ensuing fight involved two cops, six gang bangers (several of which were heavily cybered), and a teenage target attempting to flee the scene. Once the target was apprehended, the team threw him in this repurposed military vehicle they ride around in, and a chase ensued with three motorcycles.
Dealing with that many combatants against a three person team felt a little overwhelming to me as far as keeping things cinematic and interesting, and a result of that was several of the combatants didn’t get very involved with the PCs until others had been dealt with.
So, do you guys have any tips for pitting your PCs against a larger group of enemies? I’m reluctant to condense it all into a small scene as I want to give the combat oriented characters a chance to shine and to drive home the danger of combat. I was also afraid about shortening things up into a quick narration would result in a short session. I kept things moving within the fiction and didn’t get too hung up on harm clocks for the enemies or the specifics of their weapons, but I just feel it wasn’t a terribly interesting combat situation. Are there any tips out there for prepping a combat situation without really knowing when/where/how the characters will engage in this fashion?
Once the fight became vehicular, I also realized that I had no idea how to handle car combat. The team had a Driver, and he was plugged in via Second Skin, so with that in mind, should the damage taken to the car be reflected on his Harm Clock? The gangers on bikes were armed and taking shots at the vehicle, blowing a tire out at one point, but I wasn’t sure how to deal with it mechanically. Sorry if this is covered in the book, but I wasn’t able to locate it.
Last thing I was wondering about was whether or not you guys had any tips on how to keep your Hacker engaged during a combat situation. After receiving advice from you guys here in another thread, I had talked with my group and concluded that hacking enemy cyberware was not worth the headache, so aside from hacking the police vehicle’s communication system so he could shut a call for backup down, and failing on a spoofed request to get the cops to respond to another call, he wasn’t sure what to do. In hind sight, I probably should’ve encouraged him to hack the motorcycles during that phase of combat, but hadn’t thought about it at the time. If you guys have some general suggestions for things a hacker can do during combat I’d love to hear it.
Sorry about the long post. Any advice on this stuff would be hugely appreciated.
Did you use the rules for gangs? I would run that fight as a couple of gangs and a series of Mix it up (and so on) moves for different objectives during the fight, so slightly granular. Gotta dash now, but can expand on this later if you like.
Hamish Cameron I actually hadn’t considered that. Upon re-reading that section just now, I’m not really sure how I would’ve ran that. I think I understand that a six man motorcycle gang is three more than our PC’s numbers, so they’d deal +1 harm and take -1 harm, but are those stats intended to be used to describe the actions of the entire gang? If that’s the case, are we to assume that the entire gang is attacking one target at a time? If the gang is adhering to these combat mechanics, would the party also be functioning in this manner? If so, would one player be rolling Mix It Up and anyone else from the team that’s also engaging in the combat would roll to help? If the gang in this scenario is only capable of inflicting 1 harm, and all of my players are armored up to at least a +1 degree, there’s really no way for the gang to inflict damage on their harm clocks (though I do realize there would still be harm rolls involved). Would the gang share a single harm clock? Am I understanding this correctly?
I have a feeling my experience with Shadowrun is confusing me on this concept, so apologies if this stuff is obvious.
“The gangers on bikes were armed and taking shots at the vehicle, blowing a tire out at one point, but I wasn’t sure how to deal with it mechanically.”
This has come up in this forum before; one option is to give important vehicles a harm clock. I wish there were slightly more detail vehicle rules for one specific reason I’ll wait for another thread to discuss…
“Last thing I was wondering about was whether or not you guys had any tips on how to keep your Hacker engaged during a combat situation.”
Environmental hacks.
In a car chase? Hack the traffic lights, the city’s traffic routing system, automated street barriers, traffic cameras, other self-driving cars that happen to be on the road at the same time, etc.
In a regular old building shootout? Hack doors, lights, heating/cooling/venting, etc. Force enemies into a choke point, trap reinforcements, etc.
Hack their cell phone and make the battery explode or electrocute them. No seriously. Actually if you have a chance to play the video game Watch Dogs you can get a few ideas on how to use hacking tactically during combat…
And make it possible to hack vehicles. This could force the PC hacker to also defend their own vehicle.
It’s hard to get to the core of this in the abstract, so I’ll use an example.
The Killer cuts the Hacker’s wires and hauls him to the back door. The hacker had previously rolled a miss, so there was a hit team covering the back. The Killer opens the door, the hit team opens fire, the Killer slams the door closed and dives for cover. Roll act under pressure. He rolls a miss. I say e gets into cover, but gets hit.
The hit team are acting collectively as a small gang (+1 harm). They have assault rifles (4 harm). The Killer rolls a miss and I inflict harm as established. Killer takes 5 harm (minus armour) and makes the harm move.
The Killer collects himself for a second then bursts through the door with the hacker over one arm, custom breach shotgun blazing in the other and runs towards the hit team. His objective is to bust through and get out. He rolls mix it up and gets a 7-9. He inflicts 4 harm, -1 for the team being a gang, for 3. These are experienced opponents, so 3 doesn’t take them out entirely, but it takes out several. I say they’re no longer a small gang. It was a 7-9, so their return fire does 5-armour again.
The Killer is in bad shape, but he’s past the hit team and outside the compound. The Driver screams around the corner and the Killer jumps in with the hacker. The hit team open fire as they roar off. The Driver has to act under pressure. He rolls a 7-9; I say you get away, but someone in the car gets hit. Who?
He says “the hacker”. Dick move! But sure. The hacker takes 4, the hit team isn’t a gang, so no modifier there, -hackers armour, -vehicle armour. Say 2 harm.
That’s when the drones start strafing…
Adding extra groups wouldn’t change much, just the colour of the threat descriptions that I point at the players, and the number of options I have when they roll 7-9 and 6-.
Players are still taking base weapon harm modified by gang size. Players are still only taking harm as a result of partial success or failure (their own or other players).
Multiple groups just make for a more dynamic scene and more moving parts to describe in the fiction.
So, all that said, what am I doing here that you’re not doing?
Note in particular that if 5 cops are shooting at a character, the character is not making 5 act under pressure rolls or taking weapon harm x 5.
Nor do you have to pair up NPCs vs PCs. Note that I never defined how many members the hit team had. Mechanically, the opponents are acting collectively against everyone, so it doesn’t matter if there are 15 or 10.
I could certainly be more granular and say that the Killer just took out one guy, but made the others take cover, so now there are 14 so the hit team is still a small gang, but the Killer would still achieve his stated objective of “getting out”.
But I direct my action scenes like John Woo movies.
“The gangers on bikes were armed and taking shots at the vehicle, blowing a tire out at one point, but I wasn’t sure how to deal with it mechanically.”
Oh shit! Driver, one of your tyres has blown out, what do you do? Keep driving? Better act under pressure to make this turn!
(One of the play examples in the book has the car crashing too. This is all to say, I handle it fictionally, and continue the usual move conversation. You could track vehicle harm with a clock (and there are several threads about this here) but even then, you still have to tack it fictionally as well so that the conversation can continue.)
Hmm… I now have a hankering to watch a long drive/fight scene and plot it out in game turns…
Hamish Cameron I think my big problem was approaching this like Shadowrun or any other trad rpg. I actually think describing them simultaneously “The gangers all take cover behind the pile of cars that have amassed near the sidewalk. They’re occasionally peaking out from around the car, but for the most part they’re firing blind into the area. Bullets are whizzing past you and smacking into the mid-sized sedans nearby…” is a better approach than going “There are six gangers, three split off to one side and take a tactical formation behind the car cover of one side, the other two do the same on the right. One of them raises up to get a good look at you and raises his gun to take a shot. What do you do?” Honestly, that latter there was definitely my approach to combat, and it made things drag ass.
Thanks for providing me with an example. Thinking of this as describing a scene unfolding and less of getting bogged down into the individual movements of each NPC is definitely the better approach.
If you have any thoughts on Hackers in combat that wasn’t already covered, I’d love to hear it.
Even if you move away from it as a primary means of describing, you should keep the tactical view in your back pocket; sometimes it will be useful to get very specific. I tend to be vague about the numbers of large groups, but sometimes it’s relevant to be specific. There’s characterisation to be had in the difference between a character meticulously locating every scanner blip, and a character who simply reacts to a tide of opponents coming out of the goddamn walls.
In terms of hackers in combat, I think Omari Brooks covered everything I would have suggested. I had great fun in a Fate game set in the Shadowrun universe playing a hacker, I just put aspects on EVERYTHING. Kill the lights, flash the lights, open the door, lock all the doors, turn on stereo systems, etc etc. There are a ton of creative ways to help other characters by distracting opponents or by creating and removing lanes of movement and visibility. So much of a fight scene depends on who can see who and who can move where. Be open to unexpected ideas from the hacker.
And that’s before you even get to the Watch Dogs type stuff (exploding cell-phones, more doors, fake calls, hacking cyberware, hacking cars), which depends more on the kind of tech you have going on in your particular game.
I often find that the biggest problem with Hackers in play is that the player themselves thinks that the Hacker will be a problem. The conversational system and broadness of the helping move (and other moves) leave a lot of options for creative hacking.