Hi, I run my first game in the Sprawl. How do you apprehend “owned” ? Wich degree of control have the “owner” ? Especially when the owner is a Corp. Do you establish the specifics individuals who have control of the character as a Threat ?
Cause the players dont have the possibility of delete “owned” without the major advencement, this seem very oppressive for the player owned. “Do that or we kill your family/ you/ we place your brain in a tub and your mind in a isolated matrix construct until you say yes”.
In the trilogy of Gibson, “owned” is very hard.
I’m very curious about your thinking about that. For “hunted” too, in fact.
(I’m French, please tolerate my english ^^)
In my game, they slipped (difficult) jobs towards that character, and also “side goals” for other jobs (copies of the stolen data, for example). If jobs were against that company, and the owned PC didn’t let them know beforehand… Consequences. Bad ones. Fuck up enough, now you’re hunted instead.
All of them are more or less just ways to make life way harder for your PCs when you feel like it. I used 1 or 2 per mission, pretty much always as hard moves when they missed a roll. Talk to your players, too. What do THEY say owned means? I had 1 PC who was EXTRA hunted by the nastiest corp to be hunted by, so that was always a much harder move than the others. As always, follow the principles, and use your best judgement.
I usually say that +owned means that the corporation believes that when they say jump, you will say “how high”. The character always has free will, but yes, The Sprawl is an oppressive dystopian setting, so the consequences of bucking corporate authority might be severe.
Both +hunted and +owned give opportunities for the MC to bring the corporations into play to put pressure on a particular character, exactly as Harpal Khalsa says.
It’s more clear (and this is impressive of obtain speed response of the author imself ^^) Thanks !