The Sprawl – Page 11 – Powered by the Apocalypse G+ Archives

Yesterday was our first mission of Sprawl.

Yesterday was our first mission of Sprawl. I was the MC, with two players, one being my wife. I was really surprised at how cool it was too simply make a single roll for a full scene, unless the PCs described other moves. I also enjoyed the collaboration of the story telling, putting much of the narrative in the players’ hands.

The game was fun, fast paced, and did a wonderful job of putting everyone in the fiction.

I ran a mission yesterday and my hacker got some paydata.

I ran a mission yesterday and my hacker got some paydata. And we were wondering how much cred one gets from selling it by hitting the streets?

These are the last two questions.

These are the last two questions. Although, I guarantee that I’ll have many more after the first session, as questions come up in play.

Second question: Should recurring NPCs be created like a character, or would you recommend simply making them named threats?

Third question: When the PCs are engaged in a furious melee or firefight, do I simply use “mix it up”? Or, do the players “mix it up” while the Threats inflict Harm?

Redid the playbooks in US Letter format, black ink only.

Didn’t do much differently to the playbooks except:

1. Grouped the playbooks under some archetypes to facilitate one-shot play at conventions — they’ve got Machine, Mastermind, Matrix, Meat, and Metal tags (or combinations of).

2. Redid the “Names” section to be called “Street Name”, just with a list of names (no “a spooky name, a fruit-based name” here — just names) and added street names from characters in cyberpunk games I’ve run.

3. Changes the name of the Killer’s “More Machine than Meat” move to “More Metal than Meat” ’cause I’ve classified that playbook as Meat/Metal. Machines in the rough classification are things that aren’t part of your body: drones, vehicles, and the like.

4. The Incoming Datastream hex can be used for the Touch stat, if you’re planning on playing the upcoming Touched setting.

The whole point was to format these as-is, then copy and modify them for some convention games I’m planning on running.

Comments appreciated!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xqqavnsfqcmfsxw/custom%20playbooks%200422.pdf?dl=0

Hey y’all!

I’ve been game mastering Cyberpunk after buying the original, what’s now called “2013” from Mike Pondsmith at GenCon 1987, hot off the press… and, I’m still running the genre today.

That said, I’m completely new to the Apocalypse Engine, and from reading The Sprawl, I’m excited to play this game (only one week until my first session).

I’ll probably be asking basic questions, until I get a full handle on things. Which brings me to my first question.

What sort sort of things, aside from the dice, playbooks, and rules, should I have in front of me too make running this game as smoothly as possible for our first session?

A little cyber-discussion this evening (ET)…

Originally shared by Kira Magrann

TONIGHT at 8pm EST, CYBER SHOCK. A twitch show where me Hamish Cameron, Fraser Simons, Phil Vecchione, and Banana Chan chat about cyberpunk media and genre stuff and our cyberpunk games. Come watch us get our nerd on here: http://twitch.tv/peregrinekiwi

Question for all the MCs on here: How much do you prep and how much do you improvise?

I’ve been running Cyberpunk RPGs (CP2020 and Shadowrun, mostly) since the early 90s, so I default to preparing a good deal. But it seems like you could run The Sprawl entirely improvised, once you got through the Preparing the Play phase. You could just write Mission Directives and leave it at that.

I’ve prepared 2 missions so far, and I’ve done a lot more than just write Mission Directives. I filled in all the details around them. I customized the Kurosawa Extraction to my PCs, for instance, and created lots of NPCs and locations. I didn’t OVER-prep. I wound up using almost all of it without any railroading. The second mission, about the same.

Here’s what I prepped:

> How they were contacted to get the job (two simultaneous offers)

> The mission was to track down a black market dealer and get a copy of a milspec chip from them, so I prepped the chip and the dealer, where the dealer was hiding, what dangers were in the area, what rival groups were after the chip, and how the Action Clock determined how the race to get the chip was going for the PCs — this was almost like prepping a small dungeon crawl for D&D, except I didn’t make a map and label 5′ squares and encounter locations. Still, I prepped some “encounters” — my PCs being a reporter, pusher, tech, and fixer, they’re not “goblins attack” encounters, more like “there are squatters the gang here probably pays to pass word to them, what do you do?” encounters. Of these, two exist to complicate the mission directives and two exist to let me throw pointed Personal Directive moments at them. Well, they all exist for PDs, because IMHO that’s what makes The Sprawl so good; but two ONLY exist for that 🙂

> Made a custom move for the contamination in the failed arcology the dealer and chip were hiding out in

> Made a custom move for intentionally tripping out on the contamination like the squatters and gang does, similar to Open Your Brain from Apocalypse World (inspired by my own AW Hocus who huffs mold).

> Wrote a few Trello cards to connect this situation to my PCs’ personal directives, so I would have material ready to push those. (The whole mission is based on their personal agendas – the black market dealer is a contact of one PC who disappeared, one corp rival is an NPC nemesis for the Reporter; the gang in the failed arcology is a rival of the Pusher’s gang’s, though they’re currently not at war, etc., etc.). Also a card about how the reporter’s Story could connect on this mission.

Overall, about 2-4hrs of work, probably 3,500-4,500 words if I had to guess.

How much do you prep?

So my players, in session 2, discovered they could Assess to get +1 forward on Get the Job and Get Paid.

So my players, in session 2, discovered they could Assess to get +1 forward on Get the Job and Get Paid. It’s legit — after all, those scenes are tense scenes harboring a lot of secrets. And a 6- on Assess would certainly steer the scene in bad ways even if they roll 10+ to Get the Job / Get Paid. Keep in mind, they already have one of the PCs with the best Edge do the talking and make the Get the Job roll to start with.

But how do you all feel about that?

Pros:

Assess is appropriate given the secrets hiding in these scenes.

Assess can fail, leading to consequences as bad as or worse than failing the Get roll.

Cons:

If you have someone who’s really good at Assess, it’s commonly going to land a +1 on these scenes — they always move slow enough to give a character time to Assess, after all.

The flavor of the failed or 7-9 Get roll is so good! It’s sad to see it made vanishingly unlikely.

RAW: You could argue that Assess gives the acting character +1 forward, and Get Paid is a group roll, or even a meta roll, not a character’s action, like Get the Job is. So you COULD deny the Assess bonus on Get Paid. Should I?

Hey guys!

Hey guys! I’m looking for some players for a game group. We explore different games, but right now, we’re about to delve into The Sprawl. At present, I’ve got two players and we get together bi-weekly on Fridays at 7pm EST. If you’re interested in joining us, please post a follow up here. We might be exploring character creation this week as I don’t have anything going on, but our normally scheduled game session will be next Friday (April 27).