Author: Randy Stoda

I think I could use some advice on when to advance Countdown Clocks. I played through a mission (The Downtown Dataheist), and we didn’t get much movement on the legwork clock. There were not a lot of missed rolls, and when the players rolled 7-9, they didn’t choose options like “It attracts attention,” so I didn’t feel like there was much for me to do on the legwork clock. We had more fails in the action phase, and with alarms being triggered as a fight broke out, I felt more justified in bumping up the action clock. But it still feels a little like GM fiat. I’m fine with that, but I guess I’d like some guidelines or advice on what other people do on advancing clocks.

Quick rules/ruling question. I’ve watched a live-play example of The Sprawl where the characters were in an airborne vehicle flying over restricted airspace to get to the destination for their mission. On the way, an automated air traffic control system asked them for the appropriate authorization codes. The players wanted to use [intel] or [gear] for these, and were told by the MC that they it couldn’t be used in this case, as [intel] adds +1 to a roll, and that this information wasn’t really [gear]. What are your thoughts?

Now, to be fair, not having the codes did not stop the players from continuing on with their plan, and so maybe it was a situation of using the MC move “Make their lives complicated,” but it seems to me like at least [gear] could be spent in this way (maybe the codes are on a datachip)?

Has anyone, by chance, done Corporate Logos for the 5 corps in “The Downtown Dataheist?”