Realized I posted this to my own feed, and not here as well.
Wrote this as part of my Necropolis text yesterday.
The MC’s Modified Agenda
For the most part the MC’s agenda for Necropolis is the same as any game of The Sprawl. The focus is still on mission-based action featuring competent professionals. However, to bring home the gothic style the MC has a couple of tweaks to his agenda to focus on.
Make Necropolis dirty, high-tech, excessive… and claustrophobic.
The new part of this agenda is the element of claustrophobia. Everything in Necropolis is narrow and winding. Streets and hallways seem to close in. Mist and clouds limit visibility. Most doors are locked. Nightclubs are packed. And there doesn’t appear to be anything outside the city itself.
But the physical world is only one dimension of space. Consider more abstract spaces, such as the emotional state of the characters, and make those claustrophobic as well. Have NPCs be inappropriately intimate with the character’s feelings and and willing to casually manipulate their fears and desires to the NPC’s own end. The world of Necropolis is a mirror waiting to show the characters the darkest reflections of themselves.
Fill the character’s lives with action, intrigue, complication… and horror.
The goal of the MC is not to scare the players or their characters. The world is too awful and the characters too hardened for that (although see the new Keep It Together move for an ounce of frailty). Instead, the MC is working toward moments of horror.
Horror is the momentary sense of disorientation one experiences when they can not properly reconcile what just happened with their standing expectations of how things ought to be. In keeping with the MC’s agenda to play to find out what happens these should not be specific planned events (although they may be lurking in the MC’s mission prep) but instead the MC should be opportunistically looking for openings in the fiction to up-end the character’s understanding of their situation, particularly as the basis for a hard move.