So my players, in session 2, discovered they could Assess to get +1 forward on Get the Job and Get Paid.

So my players, in session 2, discovered they could Assess to get +1 forward on Get the Job and Get Paid.

So my players, in session 2, discovered they could Assess to get +1 forward on Get the Job and Get Paid. It’s legit — after all, those scenes are tense scenes harboring a lot of secrets. And a 6- on Assess would certainly steer the scene in bad ways even if they roll 10+ to Get the Job / Get Paid. Keep in mind, they already have one of the PCs with the best Edge do the talking and make the Get the Job roll to start with.

But how do you all feel about that?

Pros:

Assess is appropriate given the secrets hiding in these scenes.

Assess can fail, leading to consequences as bad as or worse than failing the Get roll.

Cons:

If you have someone who’s really good at Assess, it’s commonly going to land a +1 on these scenes — they always move slow enough to give a character time to Assess, after all.

The flavor of the failed or 7-9 Get roll is so good! It’s sad to see it made vanishingly unlikely.

RAW: You could argue that Assess gives the acting character +1 forward, and Get Paid is a group roll, or even a meta roll, not a character’s action, like Get the Job is. So you COULD deny the Assess bonus on Get Paid. Should I?

6 thoughts on “So my players, in session 2, discovered they could Assess to get +1 forward on Get the Job and Get Paid.”

  1. Makes sense to use it to me… but I would want the player to describe exactly how they are assessing. Make them work for it—they will give you more ideas to work with, esp if they miss!

  2. Which question(s) they ask might govern whether they have +1 forward in that particular roll, but otherwise it’s okay rules-wise.

    Have you done the numbers to see for what values of Edge and Legwork Segments it actually improves their odds, given the chances of failing the first roll as well as the +1?

  3. Get the Job: The Pusher’s Edge is 2 (he’s got a plan to boost it to 3 when he gets past 5 advances), and with the +1, that makes an 8% chance, and mixed success a 33% chance and total success a 58% chance. That’s not terrible, but so far we’ve only had 10+ results on Get the Job.

    I don’t think this is bad. I mean it might be not quite what you intended, for the roll to be so “easy” but it’s certainly workable as an MC. If I want to add a lot of mystery about the mission, I can just add complications by using their discovery of what corp is hiring them or how the Johnson avoids unwanted attention or why the Johnson seems to be paying so well to inject mystery and surprise.

    Get Paid: They haven’t used it on Get Paid yet. I think that’s because the whole group rolls to Get Paid, so it’s unclear if they can claim the +1 forward. So far they’ve ended The Kurosawa Extraction with 3 unfilled segments, and the next mission I wrote with 4. They haven’t quite learned the value of Intel and Gear yet, and with a Pusher, Tech, Reporter, and Fixer, they’re real good at legwork.

  4. If the team is able to control the job meet and the payment meet, that just moves the space for intrigue and complication to during the job itself. That’s fine in terms of how the game works, although it might require more prep of interesting side missions and on-the-job complications by the MC.

  5. Hamish Cameron Yeah, exactly. But The Sprawl is all about adding on-the-job complications based on the PCs’ motivations, so I’m very comfortable with this. It’s not really a flaw, just an observation. And now I think of it, maybe it’s good that Get the Job only totally bombs 8% of the time.

Comments are closed.