Intel: How powerful or flexible is it in your games? Do you use it in wildly crazy and extravagant ways? Or do you keep it more grounded in causality? Please say how you’ve been using it in your games. We played the game for the first time recently and I felt that perhaps we stretched things a bit too much. We are experienced in Blades in the Dark, where all manner of crazy use of “Flashbacks” are fair game, but I don’t know if this is really appropriated for the kind of gritty & dirty cyberpunk games we are looking for in The Sprawl. For example, how would you deal with these two situations:
1) The group was on a hurry to escape from a research lab in the 30th floor of a building. We already established that the only access was through the main elevator. Question: Would you be Ok if a player wants to use Intel to establish there is a new emergency elevator somewhere in the floor, even if contradicts what was established before? Would the character specialty and the way he acquired this Intel have a say in your decision? Say, if he was a hacker that got the Intel on a (matrix) Research move and justified that he looked into some old public blueprints, would it be fair game? How about he was a Hunter who got his Intel from some street kids with little knowledge of the instalation?
2) The group faces a squad of guards in the way out of the building, and a player wants to use Intel to dictate that he already met the guards beforehand and bribed them into letting them slip by the gates (and paid, say, 2 creds for this). Would it be fair in your game? How about the character is a Fixer full of style who deals in info brokering, would you allow it? And if the character was a killer with no style nor related background?
Thanks in advance!
1. I would allow intel to invent a new elevator. I would ask why it was closed and use that to fold in a new danger. Street kids knowing about this elevator would push the limit of believability. Maybe the kids know where the blueprints are located but not able to hand them over.
2. I be hard press to see how intel would allow you to bypass guards who have seen you. I could see intel showing a guard tends to leave his keycard in the cafeteria and allow the players to pick it up to get past a lock. But I just don’t see how intel gets you past a fast talk or hit the street… That said if they wanted to spend an intel for blackmail info that makes fast talk makes more sense and gives +1 to fast talk. Well that’s great and gives more fiction to base the action on.
Intel is powerful in how it can invent alternate routes or approaches. But I don’t think it allows for flashbacks that would of triggered another move. Like a bribe would be a hit the street in my game.
Without stress its hard to figure how to allow flashbacks. The action clock being retroactively increased can feel pretty wonky. I think the planning in sprawl is much more concrete compared to bitd.
The first example is very plausible, as long as the Intel makes sense fictionally. If you got the Intel taking to Lenny the bartender it probably would make sense. Researching the building or a contact that had access makes total sense.
For the second you could use fictionally appropriate Intel to say how the patrol worked, maybe even which guards were on shift but not that you knew them.
For the first scenario, maybe. I would generally discourage use of intel to establish facts that contradict previously-established facts, but if it works, go for it. But the thing to watch for is this – if they entered the building believing that there was only one elevator, when did they pick up the intel that told them about the second one?
If they picked it up during the mission, that’s fair… they’ve found new information that modified what was known. But if they’re spending intel they already possessed before the mission, that’s questionable, because it implies they already had that knowledge… they’ve begun the mission knowing there’s only one exit, then retroactively declared that they knew about a second one all along. Personally, I’d veto that…
The second scenario, I’d agree with Aaron and Matthew… using intel to retroactively declare that you’d met and bribed the guards, that’s going too far… you’re essentially bypassing a scene that would certainly have resulted in rolling some move, with all the associated risks. I’d definitely disallow that.
A more reasonable example would be to spend intel to declare that you’d done your research on the guards, giving you some leverage for interacting with them now… perhaps allowing you to fast talk them with an offered bribe, or play hardball with a reminder that you know where they live and where their children go to school. Intel might buy you an opportunity for such social interaction now – but not retroactively.
Simon Geard
It shouldn’t matter WHEN intel was acquired. If you allow it to start mattering then you have to start dictating to players when and where they can spend every piece of intel they acquire. Suddenly intel acquired during the Legwork phase isn’t useful during the Mission? Really?
The first example of the magical elevator is trivial to rationalize fictionally: It’s a new elevator, it just got put in and most of the schematics floating around are old, except for the updated one the players snagged…
Why didn’t they realize this earlier? If you every been stumped by a really tough puzzle/riddle and then have the answer come to you when you aren’t actively looking at said puzzle/riddle then it’s easy to see that the PC’s brain was chewing on the info they had seen before but hadn’t quite understood what they were looking at when they first saw it. I assume that Archimedes had taken plenty of baths before he shouted Eureka for the first time…
Omari Brooks – I’m certainly not saying that intel gained during the Legwork phase isn’t useful during the mission. I’m saying that spending intel has to be justified in terms of the fiction, and while the entire point of it is to retroactively introduce facts, players should be discouraged from creating continuity issues in the process.
So if you picked up some intel early in the legwork phase, I don’t think you should be spending that intel to introduce facts that could not plausibly have been obtained early in the legwork phase. And if you walked into the target building with an established fact that the building has one exit, it doesn’t make sense for you to declare that you already have a detailed map showing the second exit. That’s a continuity error, so no go.
You could, on the other hand, spend the intel to declare that while the map only shows one exit, you can see where a sufficient application of violence or engineering skill could create a second exit. Because that wouldn’t contradict an established fact.
On the other hand, if the intel was obtained during the action phase – e.g by the hacker working over the building maintenance system – then it would certainly be reasonable to use that intel to declare that it showed a new elevator, or secret passage… some option that was unknown until you acquired that intel.
Note – this is my preference, not an argument that this is the only way to run things. But my view is that when you gain intel, that’s the point where you acquire whatever piece of information it happens to represent. You don’t need to decide on what it represents until you need it, but you shouldn’t use it to contradict anything that happened after you acquired it.