Hello, Hamish Cameron!
First of all, I wanted to thank you for the great game that gave me and my friends many hours of fascinating adventures and unforgettable emotions. Keep it up! Thats was cool!
However, after several sessions we had a few questions that we could not find an answer in the book. I very carefully used the search in the community and did not find in your comments the answer to these questions. Please, tell me how to solve this?
1) How much same gear does a character have at start of game? For example, he chose “gas grenadeS”. He has 2 of them? 10? An infinite number?
2) And again about gear. Trauma derms and EMT kit allow you to treat injuries. How many “charges” do such items have? 1? An infinite number? Or until the first unsuccessful throw? (soft/hard move)
3) The move MIX IT UP allows to achieve the goal with the help of violence. Can a little girl with bare hands “take control” a huge war-robot? Army of armed people? A squad of cyberninja? In full fight situations, just coz she roll 10+ (and at 7-9, but at cost).
4) Between the missions, the characters are healed. But are drones / cars healed too? If not, then, if the team has a Tech (expert in this aspect), can it be “repaired” for free?
I will be extremely grateful to you for the answer. We discussed these questions for several hours 🙂
📍
I can provide my input if you don’t mind for some of these? To question number 3, right off the bat NO. Absolutely not. Fictional positioning is a key thing. The little girl would first have to find a way to be in a spot where it’s even possible for her to control the squad of cyber ninjas. What does that look like? Is it a device? How does she get it? Answer those questions first through play before you ever pick up the dice to roll to just control them.
As for the EMT kit and grenades, My players and I found a happy medium of agreeing on what we felt was reasonable amount of supplies to have. If they wanted extra, I’d either allow it or they’d pay a cred for it. Same with gear and drones during downtime. The Tech being in the group is nice but they still are spending time and money to repair stuff: that opens it up to spending more cred if you as MC are so inclined to ask that the players do so.
Cody FromSideThree he-hey, man! Thanks for the answer! I like to listen to different opinions – the truth is born in a dispute 🙂
But where does this thin line go, when a girl can take control of the situation? When she has not a bare hand, but a gun? When comes a shotgun with a lot of damage? When she have synthetic nerves?
After all, purely theoretically, can a girl shoot a crowd of armed people with just one gun? Several headshots. Or bare hands? If she is “master of martial arts” with Meat = 2? 🙂
Where is that line, when the player says: “I want to do THIS”
And you say: “No, you can not. Do not even try to roll a dice.”
And, if you dont mind, what exactly “charges” you give to your players, when they buy pretty new trauma derms or EMT kit? I am curious.
Personally, as an MC I’d say no to the idea of a child taking control of a war robot. So let’s ignore the child example and move to just a generic PC attempting to gun down a crowd or take control of a robot.
The crowd? Are they just civvies? That seems pretty easy to me. I don’t think I’d even have them roll. PCs are supposed to be capable operators so unless someone in the crowd is also trained and aware of whats about to happen? The PC gets to do the deed.
The robot: How are they taking it over? Are they hacking it? Is the robot connected to a wireless network of any kind to even be hacked? Does the PC have to get onto the robot and pry open a cockpit or hack into it that way? Those all present a number of potential rolls of the hacking moves and such to allow control to be taken.
Where the line for these things are is honestly decided at the table. What do the MC and players feel makes sense while taking into account fictional positioning?
as for the Trauma kit stuff, I decided on it being either 1 cred to resupply that stuff between missions and allowed 1 to 2 uses during a mission before we agreed the supplies were gone.
So I went through a related (not exactly same) confusion with Mix it Up. For me, I realized Mix it Up is NOT for when the PCs want to kill the NPCs, and the NPCs want to kill the PCs. If it’s a straight up shootout, just exchange harm. I went so far as to add an “Exchange Harm” move to my move list in Roll20 and Trello, so my players can see it. Mix it Up is only for achieving some objective OTHER than killing all the enemy.
See, once you make that distinction, it doesn’t MATTER if it’s a weenie vs. a black ops cyborg. The weenie is Mixing it Up to do something OTHER THAN just kill the cyborg. The problem THAT solution caused me is that Mix it Up is now almost synonymous with Act Under Pressure, but there’s still a distinction.
>>>Weenie vs Cyborg: Goal is to Kill
Weenie: I want to kill the cyborg. I start punching him as hard as I can.
MC: OK, you start punching the cyborg. You exchange harm. The cyborg extends ripper claws and deals 2-harm. You deal 1-harm, but the cyborg is wearing armor, so nothing goes through. You kind of push him a step back, is all. Mark 2-harm and make the Harm move.
>>>Weenie vs. Cyborg: Goal is Not Combat
Weenie: Oh no, a cyborg! I want to slip past and get out of here before he kills me!
MC: You’re Acting under Pressure. The pressure is the cyborg that’s going to fuck you up good if you’re not fast enough. Roll Cool.
>>>Weenie vs. Cyborg: Goal is Combat
Weenie: OK, we’re here to extract Kurosawa. I bust out of the van, push past his cyborg bodyguard(1), grab Kurosawa, and drag him into the van.
MC: OK, you’re gonna Mix it Up with that cyborg, though. Roll Meat.
10 plus: You actually do it! Justifying how a weenie got the drop on a cyborg and dragged a scientist into a van is a lot easier than justifying how a weenie KILLED a cyborg. When narrating the outcome, if the player says “I Bruce Lee punch the cyborg in the nose and he goes down dead,” the MC will intercede. “No, you’re a weenie and he’s a cyborg in milspec armor. And a helmet, dude. Maybe you surprise him and shove him away long enough to grab Kurosawa. He grabs Kurosawa, but only gets his lab coat. When you drive off, he’s left holding the lab coat and radioing for backup.”
(1): The only reason you use Mix it Up is that the player described a combat maneuver that wasn’t just exchanging harm. It’s very similar to Act Under Pressure, but “push past his cyborg bodyguard” triggers Mix it Up instead. When the PCs actually have guns and stuff, it’s a lot clearer when to use Mix it Up. “I bust out of the van, shoot the cyborg, and grab Kurosawa.”
You have to do a lot of player coaching to make this work. A lot of players, coming from trad games (like most of us) will narrate their character actions in more granular detail. So you’ll get this…
“I open the van door”
“The cyborg turns to face you.”
“I shoot him with my assault rifle.”
You need to coach the player a little here.
“OK, you’re probably triggering a move. To get an idea which one, can you tell me your plan here?”
“I want to shoot the cyborg so I can extract Kurosawa. I need to deal with the bodyguard, though, because he’s not going to let me just grab him, right?”
“Right. So it doesn’t matter if you kill the cyborg?”
“No, as long as I neutralize the bodyguard enough to get Kurosawa away clean, I’m good.”
“Clean?”
“Well I don’t care if the cyborg calls for backup. I’m wearing a mask, and I trust our Driver to get us out of here. I just want to get a head start.”
“Great. Then it’s Mix it Up.”
“10, awesome.”
“Cool. You put a round in the cyborg. It definitely cracks his armor a little, and he goes down, surprised. As he’s getting up, you grab a surprised Kurosawa and throw him in the van. The cyborg rolls for cover while you lay down some suppressing fire. Then you slam the door and Driver peels out. Driver, I need you to Act Under Pressure to get away clean before the NeoTek response team gets here.”
If there’s a plan for The Sprawl 2e, it might help to revise Mix it Up to be more like Apocalypse World’s Seize By Force move. That way, weapon damage matters a lot more, and I think The Sprawl’s pedigree in cyberpunk RPGs lends itself to a little more combat crunch (and it’s not like making Mix it Up more like Seize By Force turns this game into Pathfinder or something – it’s still fast to resolve and high on the drama). Either that or borrow weapon and damage rules from Uncharted Worlds, which has a combat mechanic similar to Mix it Up. Uncharted Worlds doesn’t exactly have weapon damage stats or health clocks. It’s more suited to this style of “10 plus you achieve your objective, narrate how” play. All guns do the same damage in Uncharted Worlds, and the harm move is roll plus Armor instead of plus Harm, which I like a lot better. I guess what I’m saying is either use a system where it matters that the PCs’ guns do different amounts of damage, or just don’t have guns do different amounts of damage.
Thank you all, guys, for your answers. I especially thank Jon Lemich that I painted the situation in such detail. This helped me a lot 🙂
Of course, I will be infinitely glad to hear opinion of Hamish Cameron (about all q), but your opinion and ideas came in handy! Ty again!