One of my players brought up something strange after the game last night. Is there a reason why there is no way to purchase Intel and Gear directly with Cred (without “fishing” for an appropriate 10+ roll)?
One of my players brought up something strange after the game last night.
One of my players brought up something strange after the game last night.
You can always exchange Cred for specific gear or specific intel. Like, “I slip the clerk 1 cred and ask where the prisoner is.” Is totally legit.
Gear and Intel are meta-currencies used to basically introduce new stuff on the fly. So that requires the risk of making moves to acquire.
There are two potential questions: “Why can’t we just purchase [Intel] and [Gear]?” and “Why can’t we just purchase information and equipment without rolling?”
The first question, Jesse Burneko did a good job answering.
The second question: If you’re talking to someone who has information or equipment you want, you can offer to buy them off them with Cred, like Jesse said.
However, if you know someone who might have or be able to get that kind of information or equipment, and you want to find out if they have it and what it’ll cost you, you have to roll to Hit the Street. “Something interesting happens when you go visit a contact” is a staple of the noir, tech noir, space opera, and cyberpunk genres. The Sprawl works for all of these genres, and I recommend doing Hit the Street, even for basic “I want to get a new holdout pistol to replace the one I used in a crime” actions. Entire campaigns can flow from the result of that roll^. One might even say Hit the Street is one of the central mechanics that drive the story.
^ One of the major story threads of my current campaign arose from a 6- Hit the Street roll. True fact.
Mmm, interesting. So it’s intentionally done to limit the availability of flashback/recon abilities. We played Blades last week, where flashbacks were pretty free flowing (esp since it was a one-shot), so the contrast is pretty striking. I did feel Sprawl is more “noir” while Blades is more “heist”. I’ll have a conversation with them to set the right expectations.