Category: The Sprawl: Actual Play

The game last night started with a mission that was a cross between and heist and a data substitution. It involved a plot to covertly install a data device in a shipment of sex dolls (in the Ghost in the Shell definition of doll) and ‘fail’ to hijack the shipment as a cover. The shipment was going from Japan to China via ferry although we didn’t find that out right away.

So the employer approached the one guy who had previous employment with the corporation doing the shipping and offered him the job for 2 creds a head. He checked Get the Job and got job pays well, identifiable employer and +intel. The Infiltrator used Declare Contact to bring a transport section employee from his old corporation (the one doing the shipping) into play. Meeting him in a karaoke bar the Medi-tech (whose cover was a fast food truck 

salesman) offered him some ‘special’ sauce in exchange for the information about the route the truck was taking and the actual date of travel. Rolling Hit the Streets the Medi-Tech got a result of takes some time, unwanted attention and costs extra making it 2 cred for the information. This is when we found out that the truck was travelling by ferry to China.

We then did some checking for extra equipment and the Breadboarder checked his Storage unit and found 3 +gear (electronics) that he thought would come in handy. One of these was 

determined to be a close range EMP device that would cause the shipping truck’s engine to fail via radio command. The Medi-Tech didn’t get anything useful from his Storage unit.

Boarding the ferry we found out that the shipment was the transport truck, a command car and a some sort of armed and armoured ‘protection’. We too had three vehicles and brought them along, an ambulance/fast food truck (Medi-Tech), a sedan and a armed vehicle owned by the Driver.

Using Assess we worked out the guard routine which involved at least three guards with the vehicles on the vehicle deck all the time. The truck had a hand print device securing the rear door so we needed a guard’s hand to open it and gain access to the cargo. The Medi-Tech 

and his fast food franchise was our way in and he dosed some food with laxatives and sold it to some of the guards. While waiting for this to take effect the Driver decided to make a distraction for the guards in the cafeteria. Approaching their table he tried to stumble in to it and cause some problems. He failed his Act Under Pressure roll and got tasered for his pains leaving him immobilised (lousy Harm roll).

Back on the vehicle deck our Infiltrator was sliding along under the three vehicles trying to damage each a little bit to slow them down or stop them travelling too far once they got off the ferry. Failing his Under Pressure roll he was spotted by one of the poisoned guards who was standing by the truck hopping up and down needing the bathroom. The Medi-Tech tried to jab the guard with a fast-acting sedative but missed his Under Pressure roll leaving him vulnerable. Two other poisoned guards were at the foot of the stairs with a fourth one ascending to the cafeteria deck. The Breadboarder Tech used Under Pressure to toss a gas grenade to take out the two at the bottom of the stairs (one unconscious and one choking (lose track). The one on the stairs got hit by the Killer and the one by the truck tasered by the Infiltrator.

At this point we had to halt as we were out of time at the club.

Some comments: most of the players had not done any more than skim their individual Playbooks at chargen, one had played Dungeon World before and most were experienced role players. As far as I could tell only myself and the MC had read any cyberpunk material 

although the majority had at least seen Bladerunner or another relevant film. That much was obvious when setting up the world and corporations at character generation. The mission format could have been better stressed by the MC as most people didn’t understand the

mission format (Get the Job, Legwork, Action, Get Paid) as they had not bothered to read the rules and got confused about how to proceed so some heavy handed direction was needed to get on track. Once we got going the concept of use a Move and test for a result was easy although one player, a notorious min-maxer, kept trying to use class moves he hadn’t actually chosen, not sure if it was deliberate or not though. The Countdown clocks function wasn’t brought out by the MC so I don’t know if the other players were mechanically aware of the problems that were going to arise by the clocks being incremented or indeed why they were there. There wasn’t, as far as I could see, any suggestion of an amount of Cred to offer or ask for for a mission and as yet no example mission to provide clues so that is something to consider.

Summing up: The game plays well and has a good foundation but needs buy-in from the players and our format of 4 GMs pitching something and players voting to join particular games may 

not work well for players who couldn’t see past the Cyberpunk label and were thinking that 

The Sprawl is something it isn’t. Some of our players were trying to play it like a Spycraft v1 game as they didn’t understand the stuff about clocks or have an in-depth understanding of the Cyberpunk background.