So I finally played The Sprawl at a local anime convention’s gaming room (with Hamish!), on a playtest of Touched…
So I finally played The Sprawl at a local anime convention’s gaming room (with Hamish!), on a playtest of Touched (yay!) and I think the game overall went really well. So much so, that I’m going to pitch it to the online group for our next Shadowrunesque game.
Anyway, the one thing that bugged me about the game is the concept of Cred as both a measure of money and reputation. It’s combining the two coupled with staking some at the beginning of a mission that I keep having issues with. Here’s something I wrote a while back:
Tuck has 5 Cred and gets a job. She stakes 2 Cred on the job, which means on the actual job, she has 3 Cred to spend to get stuff. She needs to get something from her fixer for this mission, a quite illegal narcoject gun and some KO darts. That’s 2 Cred. She now has 1 Cred left. The mission is successful, but the crew didn’t choose the “job pays well” option: Tuck staked 2 Cred, so she gets that back and then 2 Cred more, bringing her hidden Cayman Island bank account to… 5 Cred.
But what if she staked 3 Cred? Then when she got that narcoject gun and ammo with her last 2 Cred, she’s down to 0 Cred. Job is done: 0 + 3 + 3 again = 6 Cred. Stake 1 Cred? Tuck starts off at 4 Cred, spends 2, dropping her down to 2. Job is now done, so 2 + 1 + 1 again = 4 Cred.
Where is the profit in crime?
Playing the game, my thoughts led me back to that, so I wrote a thing that separates money and reputation. My thought it is would wind up getting characters to a point where they’d have enough to retire from the biz. (I have a difficult time thinking of how a character could save up the 20 Cred to pull off the Retire to Safety move.)
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, even if it’s “Thomas, you totally misunderstand how easily it is to accumulate Cred.”
http://denaghdesign.com/separating-money-reputation-cred-sprawl/
