Question for all the MCs on here: How much do you prep and how much do you improvise?
I’ve been running Cyberpunk RPGs (CP2020 and Shadowrun, mostly) since the early 90s, so I default to preparing a good deal. But it seems like you could run The Sprawl entirely improvised, once you got through the Preparing the Play phase. You could just write Mission Directives and leave it at that.
I’ve prepared 2 missions so far, and I’ve done a lot more than just write Mission Directives. I filled in all the details around them. I customized the Kurosawa Extraction to my PCs, for instance, and created lots of NPCs and locations. I didn’t OVER-prep. I wound up using almost all of it without any railroading. The second mission, about the same.
Here’s what I prepped:
> How they were contacted to get the job (two simultaneous offers)
> The mission was to track down a black market dealer and get a copy of a milspec chip from them, so I prepped the chip and the dealer, where the dealer was hiding, what dangers were in the area, what rival groups were after the chip, and how the Action Clock determined how the race to get the chip was going for the PCs — this was almost like prepping a small dungeon crawl for D&D, except I didn’t make a map and label 5′ squares and encounter locations. Still, I prepped some “encounters” — my PCs being a reporter, pusher, tech, and fixer, they’re not “goblins attack” encounters, more like “there are squatters the gang here probably pays to pass word to them, what do you do?” encounters. Of these, two exist to complicate the mission directives and two exist to let me throw pointed Personal Directive moments at them. Well, they all exist for PDs, because IMHO that’s what makes The Sprawl so good; but two ONLY exist for that 🙂
> Made a custom move for the contamination in the failed arcology the dealer and chip were hiding out in
> Made a custom move for intentionally tripping out on the contamination like the squatters and gang does, similar to Open Your Brain from Apocalypse World (inspired by my own AW Hocus who huffs mold).
> Wrote a few Trello cards to connect this situation to my PCs’ personal directives, so I would have material ready to push those. (The whole mission is based on their personal agendas – the black market dealer is a contact of one PC who disappeared, one corp rival is an NPC nemesis for the Reporter; the gang in the failed arcology is a rival of the Pusher’s gang’s, though they’re currently not at war, etc., etc.). Also a card about how the reporter’s Story could connect on this mission.
Overall, about 2-4hrs of work, probably 3,500-4,500 words if I had to guess.
How much do you prep?
I put this in Actual Play because most of the post discusses my actual prep, and we’ve already run through half the mission, so half of it’s been played 🙂
I might think of a plot hook and that’s it.
This a sample mission from Necropolis so it has super natural elements but it is representative of my prep. I run the scenario from this and nothing more.
docs.google.com – Necropolis Mission: It’s Too Bad She Won’t Live…
Jesse Burneko That’s a lot like my prep, except since I’m running a campaign, I have a lot of detail in the places where you say “tie __ to a personal directive.” I think I flesh out the NPCs maybe just a little bit more, and often include pictures since I’m prepping and running using Trello. But that’s about it.
Nigel Clarke Really? Do you just come up with the clocks and mission directives on the fly? That’s cool. I should give that a shot. I can run Fate or AW that way, for sure. Thanks!
I tend to do a similar style of prep but keep the action clock more “narrative beat” based where possible – like having a clock step be “a PC’s ally gets caught in the middle”. This allows a lot of flexibility when the players get to the action phase, since things often go pretty off the rails. Having moves that push on personal directives in mind is pretty good practice, I feel.
Yes, certainly I have never bothered to prep anything more and often don’t bother to work out anything until I know which archetypes are being played. I have been doing this for around 40 years so I’ve had plenty of practice in coming up with stuff on the fly.
I actually also lean towards limited prep, I read the room and typically let rule of cool prevail. I’m probably going a little easy on my players, but it has made for an interesting story so far 🙂
I tend to use mission done by others. I flavor the mission and make some adjustments. After that, keeping track of the clocks and the consequences generate a lot of the rest. Until now, Sprawl has been the easiest games to prepare, because it has a strong structure.
If you want a mission, Augmented Realities has a random table of cyberpunk missions. I have no lack of ideas. My issue is how much to prep.
But having finished 4 missions by now, I’m mostly happy with my medium-prep approach.