What do you do when the mission fails without the action clock maxing out?
So, I ran my first game on Tuesday and we all had a blast! The thing is, I used a failure to Hit The Streets to put my players into a little bind. The character who hit the streets was shot and needed medical care, and his contact offered to take him to a black clinic if he gave them an expose on the corp they were running against.
That whole thing? It was a ruse. He went into the car high on pain meds and then woke up in a very nice, corporate, medical facility. Turns out he isn’t the only one owned by the mega, so was his contact. At this point he meets up with Mr. Johnson (not the guy who gave them the job, a rival) who tells him they put a cortex bomb in his head, so he’d better be a good boy and sneak this chip into the security office at Chizu Cybertechnology and plug it into the terminal. He does so.
The next day is the day of the job, and they get an email from their original contact for the mission, telling them that the drop location has changed. They pull the job and deliver to a smiling Mr. J who pays them and sends them along their way.
You see, this was an escort mission. The first Corp was paying to escort their researcher to a clinic. Instead they took him to a rival corp’s clinic! I upped the corp threat clock for the original Corp since the crew disappeared with their prized researcher. What would you have done as a consequence of this kind of double cross (as unwitting as 2/3 of the group was)?
As an aside, I did a small wrap up scene were they saw Mr. J putting the screws to Chizu Cybertechnology, forcing them to sell to his company!
Sounds like they successfully completed the new mission. They should try to get paid!
Hamish Cameron Oh, they got paid. They just got paid by a different Corp than who hired them and unknowingly double crossed the aforementioned hiring Corp. That chip was a little virus that sent them the email with the new drop off location. The original contact (Mr Bahtra) was left waiting for his researcher, who was never delivered! They never identified who the crew was who was trying to abduct their researcher.
So Corp A hired the crew because unknown group B was known to be trying to abduct their researcher. Then Mr. J from Corp C tricked the group into delivering to him instead of Corp A. So the question is, should I have raised Corp A’s threat clock for not delivering? Might there have been. Better way to handle the fallout of the mission?
From your description, it sounds like it was fictionally coherent. I would raise A’s clock. They know who they hired and they know they didn’t get the goods!
I’ve definitely had players make the Get Paid move with other parties than the one that hired them initially. It’s a great opportunity to have their original employers drop a strike team directly into the meet to get the objective back.
But yes, this sounds like it would increase the Corps clock.