Monday we’ll be playing our 2nd session of our the Sprawl game on twitch called Ashes to Ashes, Chrome to Rust and I’m trying to prep some stuff and re-read some things.
I’m primarily trying to find how and when corporate clocks advance. Do they only advance when a move or clock tells you to advance them? (Full legwork/action clock?) Or can stuff that happens fictionally but not necessarily mechanically affect them, too?
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Unofficially, I found corp clock increments handy to have up the sleeve for MC moves where I didn’t want to push the Legwork clock. For example, a hacker is trawling for financial information on a certain Corp. They roll 6- for Research, their question is answered but the resulting MC move advances the Corp clock (alongside associated fiction). I guess that’s mechanical, but not spelled out in the rules. I might advance a corp clock on a purely fictional trigger as well, but would be interested to hear an official line on that one.
The Reporter’s Gather Evidence move can potentially advance a Corp clock on a 7-9, and tangling with ICE can do the same, I think.
I watched the first session of Ashes to Ashes, btw, good stuff!
So here’s my issue, wouldn’t you advance the legwork clock on a miss for Research for instance? I guess my question overall is, is advancing a corporate clock a valid MC move on a miss/when fictionally appropriate, or can they strictly be advanced when a move/rule says they advance?
Awesome to hear someone actually watches our sessions, glad your enjoying it! We’re aiming for an episode every 2 weeks. It’s a lot of fun getting together with the guys and discussing/designing all the promo material and overlays, etc. I’m really happy with how Alex made our countdown clocks work in Roll20, looks really cool, imo.
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Yeah, I think the overall question is a good one. In the example above, we had only just previously advanced Legwork (possibly due to a miss on Login) and advancing the Corp clock felt like a more dramatically appropriate move – and less hard than doubling down on the Legwork countdown.
Like you say, the explicit opportunities to advance Corp clocks are minimal, so it makes sense to me for it be a valid MC move. On the other hand, maybe the intention is for them to crank up much more gradually over a campaign?
Those Roll20 clocks look great!
Dan Cameron The cost for players to reduce corporate clocks is not insignificant (losing creds or running payless missions) so maybe hit with a soft move first and then when they miss on mitigating that, then advance the corporate clock.
that’s what I was considering as well, Omari. It would be good if Hamish could shine some light on this matter. Are the corp clocks intended to advance slowly? It seems to me they might not advance at all if the players are careful enough.
I view the clocks this way: Legwork Clocks affect –> Action/Mission Clocks affect –> Corp Clocks. When a PC miss a move in the Legwork phase advance the Legwork clock by one tick. At 21:00 of the Legwork clock I advance the Action/Mission Clock by one step. I do the same at 22:00, 23:00 and at 24:00. When Action Clock gets to 23:00 i advance the Corp Clock and i do the same if Action gets to 24:00.
Basically my hours are broken out like this: 15:00
> Team is making some noise. 18:00>Target/Corp are hearing rumors. 21:00-> Credible information that puts target/Corp on alert (i then raise the diff of my enemies, individuals go from a pistol to a smg) 22:00-> Target is partially aware of plans against them (individuals become small gangs) 23:00->Target has reliable information about the PCs plans and is attempting to counter (calls in favors, brings in reinforcements) 24:00 -> THEY KNOW. (Overwhelming force will be brought in, if this is in the Mission Phase the PCs should consider the mission FUBAR and narrate their capture, escape or death). If this is the CORP clock the PCs should leave the country. The CORP can no longer abide the Professionals to operate anymore. This doesn’t mean TPK (it could) but they are going to extreme means to ensure the party is no longer a problem. Cortex bomb, kidnapped family, reveal their identity on the matrix.