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News from the rifts!

I’m deep in the middle of the first draft of rules for Touched and one of the things I’m most excited to try out is the high Touch setting I’m working on. See, I’m building the game so it can be played with varying levels of magic; specifically low, mid and high. The low is basically Lovecraftian horror cyberpunk, Mid is a fairly standard magic/scifi dirty Seattle style and high is a crazy trans-humanist scifi fantasy with dragons, immortals and spaceships; oh my.

I’m probably most excited to play a game set to high.. here’s the basic description from the introduction of the book.

High Touch – The rifts opened millennia ago and the worlds been flooded with Touch for so long basically everything is based on technology built to harness it. This is a Mystical Trans-humanist setting. Thanks to the Touch you can swap shells on a whim, manipulate matter and with enough money obtain effective immortality. The worlds ruled by Great Houses and they hire out to agents to get their dirty work done. No house wants to be caught dirty so they hire only the most discreet and professional of agents. The world is filled with magic, kin, robots, flying cars, spaceships, dragons, beasts from other dimensions and every other good thing you could want!

The ‘Get a Job’ move has a bullet point for ‘-1 from Complication Pool’

Where can I find more info on this pool of complications and what it signifies?

Sprawl news has been rather sparse lately (other than the Touched update, which was good to hear).

Sprawl news has been rather sparse lately (other than the Touched update, which was good to hear). How is the book coming along? Is playtest info still desired on Barf Forth Apocalyptica?

So, I was a bit broke during the Kickstarter, but things are stabilized and I would love to get my hands on the…

So, I was a bit broke during the Kickstarter, but things are stabilized and I would love to get my hands on the Sprawl. How would I go about that?

I have been working on Touched today and figured I would post a quick update.

The way it works is you get a certain pool of touch to spend on advantages and buying off disadvantages (all advantages will give you a disadvantage)

Currently I have around 30 advantages built! There will be a nice catalog of them and corresponding disadvantages! If you don’t use your touch during character creation you can use it to put rolls over during the game.

Another thing I am playtesting, that I haven’t come up with a name for yet, is a di that the gm can throw into a players roll. The di is considered negative and whatever is rolled on it is subtracted from the rest of the roll. It’s another way for the GM to use hard moves to increase the difficulty of a situation.

Anyway I will post some other updates throughout the next few months.

Another pestering question for all…

Players have all this great gear they get to select that does its various amounts of harm. I only see “mix it up” as a way for them to trigger this wonderful harm. But it also states “violence against an armed force to seize control of a mission objective.” How much narrative control does the player have here? For example, “i approach the guards and pull out my monofilamint whip, and attempt to decapitate them both / pull out my SMG and head shot both of them / whatever” then rolls 7+ the guards are neutralized?

I have no problem with the player success but I could see the players maximizing this and just casually walking through the mission. I have never done combat in the Sprawl yet so this may be a non-issue.

Again trying to anticipate problems for my game on Saturday.

First session experience : I ran my group through the Kurusawa Extraction (My first time using the system as well).

First session experience : I ran my group through the Kurusawa Extraction (My first time using the system as well). It went ok although a little long. Three hours in we finally finished up the legwork phase.

Is the Legwork phase merely information gathering or can it also be used to set up what they needed in the actual extraction or should that have shifted into the Action Phase ?

Also my players did comment that a 7-9 result does not seem to have ANY success with a cost result. It felt much less deadly than other AW style games. 10+ being great success, 7-9 a slightly lesser success and 6- a failure.

Was that just me or is this happening with others?

I will be running my first game of the playtest doc (kickstarter version) and something struck me.

I will be running my first game of the playtest doc (kickstarter version) and something struck me. I plan to run the Kirosawa extraction for a one shot that could lead to an ongoing game.

I am considering the twist being an opposing group of runners.

When the characters “mix it up” trying to eliminate a enemy using their fabulous gear, they do harm to the NPC, how do I apply that to the NPCs? There are no “monster stats” for opposing forces. Do I just pick a random number and when that is reached then they have been dispatched? I know the combat isnt just a kill everything but how do i gauge how they ar doing vs their enemies? Are their any guidelines?

I have played in a lot of AW style games but have only run dungeon world so maybe that has tainted my thinking 🙂

Some guidance would be appreciated.

Finally managed to loop my tabletop group’s resident cyberpunk junkie into getting a quick (for us) play-by-email…

Finally managed to loop my tabletop group’s resident cyberpunk junkie into getting a quick (for us) play-by-email game together with another tabletop group’s resident gun bunny and a third mutual friend. We will be testing this baby to destruction! One Techie, one Soldier, and one Infiltrator…and just for the gun bunny (‘He Who Plays Punisher Clones”) I think their first run will be a slightly messy and complicated grappling with the cheerful and benevolent combine known as SHIVA Enterprises. (Three guesses what business makes their bank balance tingle.)

More to follow as the (probably very slow) torrent feed provides. Two of three characters are done, along with the background discussion. I need to go nudge the Techie…

Category: The Sprawl