I had some problems with making Legwork and Action Clocks properly visible for the players on the table.
I had some problems with making Legwork and Action Clocks properly visible for the players on the table. So I made this and put some improvised tokens on it. Maybe you will find it useful too!
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Pa6-8clyYvGAwQ2hGy5VQhI-kpsaSyso
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Pa6-8clyYvGAwQ2hGy5VQhI-kpsaSyso
Sprawl story from last Sunday.
Sprawl story from last Sunday.
So we started off sometime last year, I think? It’s been a while. Played a bunch of missions, it was rad, but some interpersonal breakdowns meant that the group had to be rerolled and someone replaced. But we decided to continue playing in the same universe, with unfinished threads from the original campaign still dangling loose and old characters having cameos every now and again.
We brought in a new guy, who did not have much RPG experience, but is a cool guy with a lot of potential. Unfortunately, the characters we made for the new session tended to suffer from meme overload, partly because the new guy was not housebroken yet and this had a ripple effect on the rest of the bunch. I tried rolling with it, couldn’t, failed miserably. So after a few months of not playing I threw a bit of a tantrum and talked everyone into de-memeing their characters, and everyone decided that’d be for the best and actually the easiest way is to just kill them off. So we played a session where we did just that.
Except for ech0 the Hacker.
Ech0 was the most normal of the entire party, and his shtick was solely that he was a huge no-life and had a sweet bike. So when at the end of the mission where everything went wrong, the bike was taken in by Lucky Land Communications’ hit squad and he spent all of his Cred on getting out of Japan and shipping himself to Berlin, where he spent whatever he had left on a new bike. He is now at 0 Cred.
And as we all know, that’s a perfect excuse to mess with a player.
So right now he’s living in an old capsule hotel for gastarbeiters with a bunch of angry Turks who can’t get citizenship for five generations now. He keeps the lights on by troubleshooting at a tech bazaar on Prinzstrasse. Nobody respects him, nobody knows him, and for all his posturing the only “hacking” jobs he could get were through Mr. Wizard the Tech, back when he worked for the police (he’s since been severed after getting shot at fried his comms implant and the force has been privatised anyway).
So Bill Lowrey the Infiltrator goes to get the job. And, as it turns out, his contact Klaus has a corporate extraction all lined up! You need to pull a woman out of the Bayer-GSK arcology on the west side of the Berlin Wall. Then clone a transponder chip she has implanted in her and stick it in a genetically-identical corpse to feign her death. Luckily, she has a twin sister, except nobody knows where she is. But I already lined up a crew for you, Bill!
Meet Blazej the Hunter, a cool, solid professional. He’s a Pollack, but what can you do. He’s on the team to find the missing girl.
Then there’s Mr. Wizard the Tech. Ex-cop. He’s gonna help you build an interface for the chip! (Klaus neglects to mention Mr. Wizard is not a cybernetics specialist.)
Obviously, you’re also gonna need a Hacker, right? To write the software. I got you a Hacker! A great Hacker! Her name’s Terzi Basha. The girl is amazing. Although a Turk. But you can rely on her!
Oh, and there’s also this expendable errand boy. Goes by ech0. I pay him just enough to pay the rent, but it’s okay, he’s so transparently illegal if you think he’s acting up just call immigration services and he’s at Lampedusa before the weekend.
And this little setup worked perfectly. Ech0 has a huge chip on his shoulder and it’s so damn transparent everyone else is actually scared he’s gonna pull off something stupid. The first thing he does is go dig for dirt on Terzi. He keeps trying to pull everyone into his little harebrained schemes to undermine her, and everyone sees it. He also volunteers for jobs he has no business doing just to get anyone to respect him. Bill, who’s supposed to be the chief of the crew, does not trust him at all.
Thus when, after three real-time hours of crying wolf, he actually finds a tracking bug in his motorcycle gas tank, everyone roundly tells him to go fuck right off.
There’s also the story of how Bill went to a luxury German brothel to see if the missing sister is there and moved the Legwork clock three segments in the process, but that’s for another time.
Hey, I’ve just noticed a discrepancy: the Hunter Playbook sheet says he gets two core moves and picks one, while the…
Hey, I’ve just noticed a discrepancy: the Hunter Playbook sheet says he gets two core moves and picks one, while the rulebook says he gets two and picks two. Errata on either?
I’m preparing for my first “real” session tomorrow evening, and I’m somewhat stumped for Corporation moves for some…
I’m preparing for my first “real” session tomorrow evening, and I’m somewhat stumped for Corporation moves for some of the Corps my players have created.
Vishkar New Media is a huge media conglomerate that essentially wants to be 22nd Century Buzzfeed. They rely on automatically generated lowest-common-denominator content produced in overwhelming amounts just so one of those billion things goes viral and they can start pushing merchandise within hours. They have no qualms about abusing copyright law and shamelessly stealing other people’s content. Their market practices are extremely aggressive, earning them the ire of other corps.
Rikimaru Foods is a junk food conglomerate that constantly bribes public health authorities, scientists and journalists to claim their garbage synthburgers cure cancer rather than cause it. They have a significant media presence; their face is a fat, obnoxious female chef.
HDD Conglomerate is a merger of Disney, Durex and a bunch of smaller companies. Their business model is essentially “sell them drugs, then sell them cartoons to watch while on drugs, then a truckload of dragon dildos once they grow up a bit”. They control huge tracts of land in Central America, where they put up hundreds of theme parks.
All of these are very evocative, instinctively repulsive, and dirty chrome. So that much is good. You can see where they can start to come into conflict. But I kind of can’t think of any cool moves they could make that would be both unique to them and clearly visible to the players.
For Vishkar, I was thinking so far:
– Steal someone’s spotlight (one player has the Illustrious Directive, another is a Reporter)
– Buy someone out and shut them down (but this hardly feels unique)
– More?
Rikimaru:
– Lie through their teeth (while evocative and could interact nicely with the Reporter, I’m not sure how to frame it in practical terms, what could it really result in)
– More?
HDD:
– Corrupt and abuse the innocent (sounds largely like a long-term thing, though)
– More?
I’d be glad to hear your thoughts.
Two questions about the Infiltrator:
Two questions about the Infiltrator:
1. Neural Interface for the infiltrator says “You get the hacker move jack in.” Do you also get that move if you pick Neural Interface up later? Is the move completely free?
2. Are Cat burglar and Face mutually incompatible? If you choose one at character creation, can you choose the other later on?