Author: Scott Owen

The Sprawl Play Report — Session 5

Motor City Madness by Kevin Whitaker

Note: This is the final entry in a series of retrospectives on running The Sprawl for my local gaming group. I’d recommend you start with part 1 to get some background.

Welcome back, operatives. Last week our team worked through the legwork phase of their latest job: escorting a shipment of food through the streets of Old Detroit, on behalf of Kellogg’s Artificial Nourishment. Kellogg’s suspected that a third party; which turned out to be their shipping partner, Fail Safe Corporation (FSC); was going to attempt to sabotage the delivery.

The characters had a string of mostly great rolls, which set them up with an abundance of gear, intel, and mostly-favorable conditions. This included the name of the person leading the counter-op: Warsaw. On top of that, the team’s Infiltrator, Zero, had managed to switch their shipment with that of a decoy, hopefully ensuring that the goods would be delivered either way. With the preamble wrapped up, it was time to get to the action.

Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It…

As I mentioned in my previous report, these two sessions don’t exactly line up with the corresponding play reports; the team actually began the action phase last week, but were still playing, so I didn’t want to post the mission clocks then. Now that the operation has been completed, I can lay out the stakes.

Legwork Clock

12:00 — Everything’s fine.

15:00 — FSC’s operatives hear rumors that someone is looking for them, and gets more careful: -1 forward to Research.

18:00 — The two teams are stepping on each other’s toes as the mission draws near. -1 forward to Hit the Streets.

21:00 — FSC is alerted, and scraps the hit at the port. Advance the Action Clock.

22:00 — FSC has some counter intelligence on Kellogg’s plan. Advance the Action Clock.

23:00 — FSC has concrete intel on who is leading Kellogg’s team. Advance the Action Clock.

00:00 — FSC knows everyone on the team, and what their plan is. Advance the FSC clock.

Action Clock

12:00 — FSC is unaware, and their mission remains unchanged.

15:00 — FSC knows their team or plan have been compromised, and their operatives are on edge.

18:00 — The FSC team brings heavier gear to hit the shipment than they need; grenades, assault rifles and armored jackets.

21:00 — FSC doesn’t trust their operatives to complete the mission on their own, and sends in a Fisher-Price & Wesson commando.

22:00 — FSC brings in additional commandos to assist (x2).

23:00 — FSC authorizes the use of air support.

00:00 — FSC gives the purge order; FPW commandos kill both teams of operatives and destroy the shipment.

I chose FSC for this mission for two reasons: (1) the characters hadn’t had any encounters with them, and (2) because I had been wanting to bring them in ever since session 0, when our players created Fail Safe as a company who deliberately self-sabotages in order to get large bailouts from the government. That idea had been so absurd that I couldn’t end the campaign without leaning on it at least once. In this case, I figured that FSC would get paid for the successful delivery of Kellogg’s shipment but, due to some byzantine cyberpunk contract negotiations, would get paid more if the delivery failed.

If FSC at some point decided that their contractors weren’t doing well, they could call in additional resources from Fisher Price & Wesson, in the form of a hardened spec-ops team. Given that the player characters were given to maximum violence, I thought the resulting carnage would make a great capstone to the campaign.

Since the characters had done so well in legwork, it meant that (once again) my penalties for that phase never had a chance to manifest. This is a testament to the elegant design of the system (by which I mean most PBtA games); while I had created an escalating system of consequences, I hadn’t had to do tremendous amounts of prep for things that might never be required. Therefore, I wasn’t upset when the characters didn’t engage with my “hard” work.

Convoy

Legwork complete, the team headed down to the docks of Lake Eerie to pick up the shipment and get moving. Given that this game takes place in the future, the trucks in question were actually drones; they could be driven by human operators, but didn’t have to be. Once they had the trucks, the team quickly assembled a plan; Riyoh the Pusher, who had an implant for remote-controlling drones, would sit in one of the trucks and pilot them both. Nikki the Tech would be in the second truck to provide cover with her grenade launcher. Zero the Infiltrator would take up the rear in the car he was “borowing” from Python the Hunter, who was absent for the first part of this mission. Leading the pack would be Henry the Killer, who quickly stole a motorcycle for the purpose.

The group decided that, this being the cyberpunk future and all, these trucks would have augment-reality advertising running along the sides. As the drones belonged to Kellogg’s, the default mode for these ads would be a simple Kellogg’s branding. Wanting to be discreet, Zero decided he would swap the current branding for that of Bud Light Optics, hoping this would throw off any observers. Unfortunately for Zero, he just barely succeeded. Zero’s player decided that while the Infiltrator had found a BLO advertising package, it was extremely garish and eye catching; a giant floating bottle of Bud Light hovered over the trucks, and streams of bubbles trailed the convoy while the advertising was in place. While this hid the true identity of the convoy, it had the opposite effect when it came to keeping the group low-key.

I ticked the action clock up to 15:00.

The convoy slowly wound its way through Old Detroit, herded along the only route available to it. Everywhere the characters looked, alternative routes were either under construction or otherwise blocked off. As the team approached a large underpass (think the Dark Knight), Henry was struck by an IED, and his motorcycle went skidding off into a pylon. Unwilling to compromise the mission, Riyoh gunned it and the rest of the convoy plowed through the flames and down under the main streets. As Zero’s car slipped beneath the main road, two junker buggies (ala Fury Road) slipped in behind the remaining vehicles, guns blazing as they tried to overtake the convoy.

Nikki tried to shake the trailing vehicles loose with a shot from her grenade launcher, but she rolled poorly and missed. In the mean time, their attackers were trying to block off their escape by way of parking a dump truck in front of the exit from the underpass. Riyoh attempted to hack the dump truck and move it out of the way, but she also failed. With the opposing operatives now aware that their targets had drone hacking capabilities, I upped the action clock to 18:00.

Their exit blocked, and with enemies in close pursuit, Zero decided it was his time to shine. Gunning the engine of the car, the Infiltrator burst past the leading trucks and crashed headlong into the dump truck, stopping it from blocking the exit in a spectacular explosion of glass, steel, and gasoline.

Luckily for him, Henry wasn’t out of the fight.

As his bike had skidded into a pylon, Henry had succeeded in rolling and avoiding the worst of the damage. The Killer came to rest at the feet of one of Warsaw’s thugs. Before his enemy could make a move, Henry kicked his synthetic nerves into high gear, and blew a hole in the unfortunate thug with his loud, breaching shotgun. That had given Henry just enough time to right his bike, blaze a trail past the buggies, and scoop Zero out of danger at the very last second (he rolled very well to assist Zero).

It was pretty slick, and all of my players were excited to see it come off so well.

As they cleared the trap set for them in the underpass, the group took a moment to get a sense of their situation. Nikki, who hadn’t been rolling terribly well this session, managed to spot a dark, ominous vehicle shadowing them from a few streets over. While she couldn’t make out who it was, she let the rest of the team know they were still being pursued by Warsaw’s crew.

Since the team wasn’t privy to the action clock, they had no way of knowing that the vehicle following them wasn’t Warsaw’s. While Zero and Henry had pulled off an awesome stunt, the fact is that those kind of theatrics were bound to get attention; in this case, the clock ticked up to 21:00, which let me send in the FPW assassin. To be fair, this was kind of a raw deal — the team had done well, and since they hadn’t failed in any meaningful way, I should have laid off the stakes. But, this being the final session of the campaign, I wanted to give them a tough fight. Maybe you can forgive me for bending the rules in this case, or maybe not. I’d love to hear your thoughts, either way.

Rail Yard Blues

With the dangers of the streets behind them, the convoy, including the two vehicles pursing them, roared into the rail yard and made for the drop-off location. Their progress was quickly stopped, however, when they ran into a literal roadblock; Warsaw’s crew had the presence of mind to drop two shipping containers into the main drive leading to the rail depot. The two buggies pulled in behind the team, and the stage was set for the final showdown.

Things got off to an appropriately violent start.

Henry, with Zero riding behind him on his battered chopper, had been leading the convoy. When the Killer saw the shipping containers looming on the road in front of them, he tried to bring the bike to a skidding halt, after-which he would effortlessly slip off and start shooting. Too bad he rolled so poorly. Instead of pulling an Akira-style dismount, the bike slid out from under the riders, crushing Zero’s leg and sending Henry tumbling across the yard.

With two of their quarry down, the opposing operatives leapt from their vehicles, guns blazing. One made for the truck Nikki was in, and she dispatched with a burst of rifle fire as he approached. The other skirted around her truck and made for Riyoh, in the lead truck. Riyoh’s player was unable to attend our final session, and had asked me to write her out in an appropriately dramatic way. Nikki heard the sound of a vehicle door opening, followed by the staccato beat of a submachine gun, and the crackling hiss of Riyoh’s mono-molecular whip. By the time Nikki could look to her colleague, the Pusher and her assailant were both dead; killing each other in a brutal exchange of violence.

While the immediate threat had passed, the team was still blocked from going any further. Henry and Zero were down (but not out), Riyoh was dead, and Nikki was trying to come up with the best way to move the shipping containers. It was at this point that Python the Hunter, who had been absent for the last two sessions, arrived.

It had been established that Python had been sick, probably from eating some spoiled Kellogg’s product, and had been unable to participate. It was Python’s (previously Abel Kaine’s) car, in fact, that Zero had “borrowed” and subsequently crashed into the dump truck.

The Hunter came onto the scene, quickly assessed the situation, and decided the best way to help is companions would be to remove the roadblock. With that in mind, he made for a nearby crane, and ran smack into a Fisher Price & Wesson operative.

Henry’s crashing of the bike had given me the roll I needed as GM to tick the action clock up one more notch, to 22:00. This activated the additional commandos, and the three of them had fanned out through the maze of shipping containers. One had positioned himself near the crane, knowing it would the be the logical place for the team to go. Another was set up in a sniper’s nest, and the third was stalking his way through the yard to pick off anyone who still remained at the roadblock.

Python did not roll as well as his companions had, and things went poorly for him. The Hunter took an extreme amount of damage in just two rolls, while also wounding, but failing to kill, his opponent.

While Python was fighting for his life elsewhere, Henry was struggling to his feet. A loud shot rang out, and the driver-side window of Nikki’s truck shattered all over the Tech seated in the cab. Henry, knowing the sound of a sniper rifle when he heard one, bolted into the labyrinth of containers to find the shooter. Zero, in the meantime, had dragged himself into the maze as well, and just in time. The third and final FPW operative slipped into kill zone, and, seeing a trail of blood leading between some of the cargo containers, ignored the trucks in favor of an easy kill. Free from immediate threats, Nikki slipped past Riyoh’s body and into the truck she had been driving. The Tech eased the vehicle forward, and started trying to push the roadblock out of the way.

Give it One More Shot, Kid

Zero hadn’t rolled well enough to completely escape the pursuing assassin, but he had been successful, which let him take the advantage away from his pursuer. Also, the Infiltrator had a move he could roll for these situations; a roll which went far better for him than his previous one. As the FPW hired gun swept around the corner, he found a partially open shipping container with a trail of crimson leading to it. The operative slipped up to the half-open door, opening it further to investigate. At this point, Zero sprang his trap, and with a tremendous effort, pushed the operative inside the container and slammed the door.

There was hiss and a crackle, the smell of ozone, and the operative collapsed into multiple pieces; each charred and cauterized by the heat of Zero’s mono-molecular whip. Having done so well on his Infiltrator move, Zero had prepared a quick trap by slinging his whip up in the entrance of the container. It was a crude but effective means of dispatching his foe. With his pursuer dead, Zero righted himself on his good leg, and made off to find his teammates.

While Zero had been dealing with his assassin, Henry had been tracking another. The Killer rolled well to assess where the sniper might be hiding, and in short order had come across a squat tower of containers, the barrel of a gun peaking out from the top of it. Henry quickly vaulted up the side, and was confronted by none other than the leader of the FPW commandos. The Killer kicked his synthetic nerves into gear, hoping for an advantage, but was surprised to find that his quarry moved just as quickly as he did. Henry’s hand went to his machete, hoping his shear ferocity would give him the edge in the fight. But where Henry was a blunt instrument, this commando was a well-trained killing machine. Henry rolled poorly, and before he knew it he found himself falling backwards off the makeshift tower. He hit the ground with a thud and a crack, and the commando came down on him hard, landing in an expert roll before positioning himself above the prostrated Killer. Things were looking bad for Henry.

Python, in the meantime, had finally managed to dislodge himself from the third commando. The Hunter got off a mortal, but not instantly lethal, shot against his opponent, and used that to once more make for the crane. He had just enough time to activate the device before the FPW commando came up behind him, slashing him with a combat knife. As the crane roared to life and began to lift one of the containers blocking the trucks, Python was locked in a hand-to-hand struggle for his life.

Nikki, on the other hand, was having a better time than the rest of the team. She had made slow but considerable progress in pushing her way through the roadblock, and with the cranes now helping, was soon past it. As she came around a corner, she spotted Python fighting with his assailant. The Tech leaned out of her window, aimed her assault rifle, and with Python holding the commando at bay, shot the attacker in the head. The Hunter, grateful for the help, quickly hopped into the cab with Nikki and made for the drop-off point.

While Nikki and Python were closing in on the objective, Henry was staring at his soon-to-be killer. At that moment, however, Zero appeared around the corner, and shot the commando with a taser. The Infiltrator spent some intel to establish that while the FPW gear would be good against lethal weapons, it wouldn’t be as robust against non-lethal damage. Zero rolled well, and told the operative that he could leave with his life, or stay, and lose it. I decided at this point the enemy would realize his own squad was dead, and would withdraw to fight another day. With this threat neutralized, Zero helped Henry to his feet, and the two of them helped each other limp towards the objective.

Zero, who had never killed anyone in his life before this, told Henry what he’d done to the operative in the shipping container, expressing some confusion and regret. Henry, never a man to mince words, told the Infiltrator “Give it one more shot kid, before you decide to swear off it.”

The team had a pretty good laugh at that.

Warsaw Fizzles

Henry and Zero soon joined Nikki and Python at the drop-off point, and found themselves in a sad scene. Several Kellogg’s employees were dead around them, and Nikki had stopped the trucks just short of the cranes that would unload them. Standing above them, massive rocket launcher on his shoulder, was Warsaw.

Henry, in true action-movie style, told the rest of the team to leave. Nikki and Python, remembering that Zero had switched shipments in the previous session, obliged. After all, assuming the “decoy” made it to Denver, their job was done. Zero, also in action-movie style, stubbornly refused, and stayed with the Killer.

Warsaw gloated and monologued a tiny bit, with Henry peppering insults back at him. Then, the moment came, and Warsaw pulled the trigger. Henry spent some intel, knowing that he’d had Warsaw’s arms dealer sabotage the rival operatives gear in the previous session. He and Zero used that intel to get a bonus to their rolls to Act Under Pressure, and they both succeeded. Warsaw’s sabotaged rocket launcher misfired, giving Henry and Zero the chance to gun him down. With the last threat dispatched, the mission came to an end.

“You were right,” Zero said. “It was easier the second time.”

Last Lessons and Final Thoughts

And that was it. With our final (for now) session wrapped, my players and I took a few minutes to discuss the game. Two of them said it was one of the best games they’d played in, which of course meant a lot to me. I enjoyed it, as well, though, as always, I had some take-aways.

The fact is, in my desire to keep things moving along quickly, and to give everyone the opportunity to shine, I hadn’t brought many of the tools at my disposal to bear. For instance, I hadn’t made use of the shipments being switched. Had the action clock made its way to midnight, I probably would have destroyed the “decoy” train, thus ending the mission. That being said, I didn’t use that threat in any way, which might have added more drama to the mission.

I also didn’t bring either BLO or the Madmen into play. Both of their clocks were high enough to have done so, but frankly, the thought didn’t really occur to me while I was in the midst of running the game. Next time, I need to make sure to make some notes beforehand, outlining possible threats to bring to bear. I had all of that recorded in my larger “game notes,” but that stuff was on my computer, and not in my notebook, where it would have been the most useful.

Also, my “big bad” ended up being kind of a dud. The fact is, this entire final session had been fairly one-note; just combat stacked on top of more combat. While I liked the car-chase aspect of the beginning of the action phase, the latter half was a little flat. The players enjoyed it, and I enjoyed it as well, but I think there might have been different ways to introduce some more variety and tension into the game.

And of course, with Riyoh’s player absent, I had no way of leveraging the neat Fail Safe triangle she had created during legwork. That’s just how it goes some time, but if I had brought in another corporation, I might have been able to put pressure in different places.

In the end, all of these are notes to myself on what to look for next time. The game, as a whole, was a success, and we all came away with a deep respect and genuine affection for the Sprawl. If you’re looking for something elegant, quick-to-play, and dripping with style, then I recommend you give it a try. While I think some of the systems are a bit over-complicated (I see you, Matrix moves), the overall package is one of the best games I’ve played in years, and I’ve been running and playing games for more than two decades.

As for me and my group, we’ve got a break this week, and after that I’ll be running a bunch of zero-level peasants through a Dungeon Crawl Classics slaughterhouse. While these two games are fundamentally different, I’ll be bringing some of the lessons I’ve learned here with me, especially in terms of pacing and keeping decent track of what’s going on in the meta-game.

As with this campaign, I plan on making regular session reports for my DCC game, and hope you’ll follow me from our cyberpunk future, into our dark, fantastical past.

In the meantime, stay jacked-in, cowboy.

https://medium.com/@kwhitaker81/the-sprawl-play-report-session-5-9c391011cabe

https://medium.com/@kwhitaker81/the-sprawl-play-report-session-5-9c391011cabe

The Sprawl Play Report — Session 4

Escort Services by Kevin Whitaker

Note: This is part 5 in a series of retrospectives on running The Sprawl for my local gaming group. I’d recommend you check out part 1 to get some background.

Welcome back, operatives. This week’s session saw the group; fresh off the high of a successful mission; contacted by Kellogg’s Artificial Nourishment, who, up until this point, hadn’t had any business with the team. My gaming group is moving on to other games soon, so this would be our penultimate session of the Sprawl. Know this, I wanted to keep things straightforward and exciting. We had to end on a high note.

With that in mind, I chose something a little different; an escort mission. A representative from Kellogg’s made contact with Zero the Infiltrator in order to contract the team to ride shotgun on a shipment of “food” bound for the nearby Denver Megaplex. Kellogg’s had gotten intel indicating a third party might make a move against the shipment, so they had taken the precaution of setting up a decoy; a fake shipment would go straight from the port on Lake Eerie to Denver by train, while the team would escort the real shipment through the streets of Detroit to a drop-off point. Basically, I wanted an excuse to do a Dark Knight/Fury Road style car chase adventure.

Now, this play report will be a little different. The group may still be playing this mission when this post goes up, and I don’t want to spoil anything for them. As such, I will post the clocks and any hidden goodies I have next time, when we wrap the entire session.

Let the Adults Do the Talking

Zero’s player asked if he could be the point-person for taking the job this time, being young, eager, and having a lot to prove. The group thought it would be fun to play out, and it was; especially when Zero bombed his Get the Job move. This meant that the group was entirely at my mercy in terms of favorable treatment. Their Kellogg’s contact was none-to-impressed with the young punk’s posturing, and the meeting ended with barely an indication as to what they were shipping, or who might be coming after them; both during the mission and after it. While last week’s mission hadn’t resulted in a higher clock for the Madmen, that group was certainly looking for the team responsible for killing one of their top executives.

Here were the directives presented to the players:

When you take the job, mark XP.

When you map the route, and plan security, mark XP.

When you learn who is attempting to stop the shipment, mark XP.

When you deal with any threats to the shipment, mark XP.

When the shipment is delivered, mark 2 XP.

With the (very) basics of the mission known, the group started their legwork to try and fill in the gaps. I reminded them that they could each declare a contact once per session, as we hadn’t really done much of that in our prior sessions, and it would provide some good opportunities for roleplay.

Shell Game

Henry the Killer was up first. Being the blunt, straightforward individual that he is, Henry decided to hit up Mickey, his contact from the first mission. Our Killer got things off to a good start with a solid roll when threatening Mickey, and soon learned that another group of operatives, led by someone named Warsaw, was shopping around for heavy gear.

Riyoh the Pusher was up next, and she decided to meet with a peer of hers at the Fail Safe Corporation, figuring that since this was a shipment of some sort, FSC might have an idea of who was involved. She also rolled well and chatted up Shae, the Project Manager over some noodles and tea. Riyoh let it slip that she had heard rumors about a side project with Kellogg’s, and she wanted to make sure the security detail was solid. After promising Shae a favor, the PM promised to get back with her. Having discovered the identity of the people financing the hit, as well as one of the rival operatives, the team marked XP, and it was Nikki’s turn.

Our Tech decided her time would be best scouting the best route to take, but she rolled poorly, unlike her colleagues up until this point. Nikki hopped into an auto-cab and started scouting the streets, but everywhere she looked, things seemed to be under construction. The net result was that there was only a single viable route from the port to their destination. I asked Nikki if she was aware that this was deliberate, but her player decided it would be more interesting if Nikki didn’t make the connection. Fair enough; I ticked the legwork clock up by one.

Zero, hoping to redeem his poor performance with the Kellogg’s contact, decided to ply his hacking skills next. The Infiltrator was concerned the group was being set up to take a fall, by way of transporting the decoy instead of the real thing; contrary to what they had been told by their employer. He more-or-less successfully hacked into the system, and after some digging, managed to come out with some intel, as well as confirmation that Kellogg’s had been straight with them; their cargo was legit, and the one on the train was the fake. Which is when the rest of the team decided to ask him to switch things up.

I hadn’t been expecting this, but I must admit that on the inside, I was ecstatic. I had my own plans for both shipments, and this would just make things so much better.

Zero obliged the group and swapped the cargo around; now the team would be transporting the fake shipment, while the real shipment would be on the train. Then Riyoh; who works at Fail Safe, and who has a directive which rewards her for advancing her position within FSC; decided to tip her manager off to the switch. This caused FSC to rearrange the security detail and I just can’t even express how happy I was. It’s like my players gave me an early birthday gift.

What we see here is the concept of character triangles; that is links between two characters and some piece of the fiction (NPC, objective, etc.) causing drama within the group. In this case, our triangle was between FSC, Riyoh, and the rest of the team. Boom; instant tension. As a GM, I live for this kind of stuff.

Henry rounded out the legwork phase by declaring a new contact, Zucker; another underworld lowlife who was helping coordinate gear for the opposing team; and paying him a visit. Another excellent roll later, and the group had one more piece of intel; some of the gear Warsaw had acquired was going to be sabotaged.

Legwork done, the team decided to get started on the action, which I’ll report on next week, when I can present it holistically.

Applied Learning

So, last time I realized that not showing the mission directives to the players was a mistake, and that point was driven home in this session. I made sure to explain the directives, and repeated them at various points to let the characters know what they needed to be working towards. This not only kept things tighter, but it also helped the team focus their efforts to the various ends they wanted, while still pushing forward on the main goal. I’ve collected some additional thoughts, but I’m going to save them for the last session report.

Until next time, stay jacked-in cowboy.

// Incoming message

// Sender: **@failsafe.corp.gov

// Subject: Additional assets

// Begin message…

,

I’ve got some concerns about the team we’ve hired to deal with the partner shipment. I think they might be bringing too much attention to themselves. We’re getting word some of their contacts have been compromised.

I think it’s time to activate the additional assets. We only need them on standby, for now. Just in case.

What do you think?

Need you to get back to me ASAP.

// End message

https://medium.com/@kwhitaker81/the-sprawl-play-report-session-4-b48082764689

https://medium.com/@kwhitaker81/the-sprawl-play-report-session-4-b48082764689

The Sprawl Play Report — Session 3

Young man, there’s a place you can go by Kevin Whitaker

https://medium.com/@kwhitaker81/the-sprawl-play-report-session-3-e6207f909290#.qtq9o5z25

Welcome back! Last session we saw our team of operatives fail in their mission to retrieve a piece of technology from the Bud Light Optics Corp; with two of them ending up in BLO custody, two of them dispersing into the night, and one of them dead on the street. While things hadn’t worked out as planned, they had opened up some interesting possibilities for the next mission, and that’s where we found ourselves when my group got together to play.

As can be expected with the drop-in, drop-out style that my group runs, some people couldn’t make it, or could only make it for part of the mission. Two people were only present for legwork (which actually took place during the second half of the previous week’s session), and we got a new player for the action phase. As always, the group had fun, and I learned a few things to help next session be even better.

Back Online; Systems Check

Reality came back through a haze; unfamiliar sights filtering in through unaugmented vision. She was so dazed that it took her a minute to process this last bit–her AR screen was off. She lurched upright in a mild panic, using just her eyes for the first time in, what, years? She was on a hospital bed. The room was bathed in the clinical white light of an over-bright bulb. As she tried to shake the fatigue from her brain, she felt the familiar thrum of her neurolink coming back online. Belatedly, the boot sequence appeared in her vision.

“Oh good, they told me you’d be awake soon. I’m glad they were right; we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

She whirled in the direction of the voice to see a posh young woman dressed in business casual, sitting with a data pad in the corner.

“I’ve got a job for you…”

Things did not end well for Riyoh last mission; she had taken a shot to the gut, and passed out from the trauma as some BLO goons were looming over her. Henry was in similar straights, having been captured by BLO just as he was chopping some of the concert security into pieces. But while this was obviously bad for the characters, it was great for the game; it provided a straightforward bridge into the next mission, which I was determined to make more streamlined.

After looking at everyone’s moves and character directives, it was pretty obvious that violence was key to this team; most of them either had directives for inciting violence, or directives for preventing violence, which I hoped would let me set up some interesting conflicts between the characters.

So what are character directives? Well, if you’re coming from a game like Dungeons and Dragons, they’re basically “alignment,” but more specific, and with a tangible experience reward attached to them. They act as “if-this-then-that” instructions, and tell the MC what the characters want to see in the game. Here are the directives for all of the existing characters in my game, including those who did not participate fully this week. Each character has two:

Riyoh — Improve her standing (or harm a coworker’s standing) within the FailSafe Corp, and use violence to solve a problem when another solution is possible.

Henry — Take physical damage and endanger the mission to settle a score.

Python — Aid the innocent and harm the arrogant.

Nikki — Discover new information about BLO, and preach the idea of a world without corporations.

Zero — Put protecting Python ahead of the mission, and let his status as a hacktivist cause problems for the mission.

Rook — Preach the idea of perfecting the physical self by any means, and take physical damage.

If you’ve been following along with this series, you’ll notice two new characters here: Zero and Rook. I’ll introduce them more formally later on, but for now just know that Zero replaced the deceased character Abel, and Rook was the character our new player created.

Like I said, there’s a lot of violence here. With that in mind, I decided that the new mission would be a simple retaliation; BLO had captured Riyoh and Henry, and after giving them some “upgrades” would contract the group to attack the Madmen — the very group who had originally hired them to steal from BLO! An assassination was in order, which I thought would slot into the team’s skill set perfectly.

Just because the objectives were straightforward, however, didn’t mean I couldn’t through the team a curveball.

When you create a mission in the Sprawl, you set out mission directives as well. These directives work very similar to the character directives; when the characters achieve a mission directive, they mark XP. They’re also a great tool for the GM, in that they allow you to pace the mission, and give the character’s milestone rewards so they feel like they’re moving towards the end goal.

The directives for the mission were as follows:

When you accept the mission, mark XP

When you decide where and when to make the hit, mark XP

When you deal with security, mark XP

When you make the hit, mark XP

When you get paid, mark two XP

Like I said, the mission was going to be a fairly straightforward affair. However, a couple of the character directives involved preventing violence, protecting other members of the group, or making a choice to use violence if there was another way. These directives got me thinking about the target of the hit. I decided this person, while undoubtedly a criminal who had sanctioned terrible things, would also be a “Robin Hood” on their turf; funding after-school programs, handing out turkeys at Thanksgiving, hosting block parties; stuff like that. This person would also be willing to make a deal with the team in exchange for their life. So, I added two hidden directives, which would only come into play if things went a certain way:

When you fake the target’s death, mark 2 XP

When you fool BLO, mark 2 XP

By offering more XP than normal, I thought that the players would have a good incentive to really consider bucking BLO.

With the directives in place, I consulted my copy of Augmented Reality† to come up with some interesting traits for the target. I rolled a name (William Ar’Hama) for him, and then generated some random personality traits; arrogant, shy, and spontaneous. I must admit that I kind of fell in love with those traits, and was looking forward to playing him out.

Understated Professionalism

The group sat gathered around a battered conference table, staring at the data readout she had brought. Two of them were in; they needed the cash, and the job would turn down the heat a little. The Killer, however, was not impressed.

“Nobody owns me,” he growled as he pointed a thumb at his chest.

With that, he sat up, casting a glare at the group.

“I’m going to take care of this shit in my head, and then I’ll be back to help you settle the score.”

As he turned and walked out of the room, the team gazed uneasily at each other. Without any real muscle, this job just got harder.

“Fuck’em.” offered the Tech. “I’ve got a girl I can call…”

You might recall that the last time the group did legwork, they managed to do so poorly that they started the action phase with three ticks on their clock. Having seen how quickly things could escalate, I wrote a custom move for this mission in anticipation of a similar outcome:

When the Action Clock hits 15:00 (1 segment), take -1 forward on Research.

Essentially this represented the Madmen filling the data stream with bogus intel in an attempt to throw off any snooping. I did something similar for Getting the Job, the move the characters use to see how badly they are going to get screwed when the accept the mission:

When Getting the Job attracts attention, take -1 forward to Hit the Streets.

In combination, these two moves would make it difficult for the team to accumulate Intel and Gear, respectively. Remember, Intel and Gear are currencies which the team can use to provide bonuses to rolls during the action phase of the mission. Taking -1 forward means that the next time someone in the team makes the moves listed, they get a -1 to that roll. I wanted there to be consequences for poor rolls, but I didn’t want them to be too harsh. (As a side note, I should say that I totally cribbed these two moves from Adam Koebel; he used them during his set up for the second mission in Roll20’s game.)

It turns out I should have been more optimistic about the teams chances.

While Riyoh did roll poorly when she got the job, the team didn’t end up using the Hit the Streets move. Instead, they decided to leverage the moves in their playbooks. Doing so allowed Nikki to produce +3 Gear, and Riyoh chose to get +1 Gear when she took the job. Zero and Python were able to use their moves to produce a total +2 Intel, and the group then decided that was enough. By the time legwork was over, the legwork clock was only at 15:00, which didn’t have any associated consequences.

This phase went very well of the team, and they decided not to push their luck, given how things had gone last time. In fact, the action clock only ticked to 15:00 after Riyoh decided to wager a large amount of Cred (the stat representing reputation and currency) on the outcome of the mission. Since legwork was done by the time this happened, my move associated with Hit the Streets never came into play, which I was fine with.

You Know What the Plan is; This is the Plan

Funny thing about living in a connected world; it’s hard to hide your patterns. It was William’s job to be visible in the community, and that made him easy to mark. Sure, hacking the schedule had provided them with the best possible location for the hit, but that was just icing on the cake, really.

Please with himself, the Infiltrator leaned back in his seat as his cyber deck transitioned him gently back to meatspace from the virtual.

“This is going to be such easy money…”

As part of legwork, the team had to determine where best to hit William. They indicated a desire to get at him outside of his base of operations, so I used Augmented Reality’s excellent city block generator to come up with three buildings; a car dealership, a gym, and a bank. The gym struck me immediately as the best option. William was a pillar of his community, after all, and so I decided that the gym was actually a YMCA, and that he was scheduled to give some kind of youth leadership talk there. The team then set about investigating the adjoining structures to find possible entrance and escape routes.

After some quick rolls by the group, we determined the car dealership shared a basement with the YMCA, and the two were connected by an old and forgotten door. The team also learned what William’s usual security detail looked like (a couple of armed goons), and what kind of vehicle he would be using (a RV converted into a mobile ad-hacking station).

It was at this point that Nikki the Tech put in a call to an old friend of hers, Rook the Killer. Nikki and Rook had been in the beauty circuit together, before an accident destroyed half of Nikki’s body and Rook started chasing her goal of ultimate physical perfection. Rounding out the team was Zero the Infiltrator; a street kid who had been saved from the madness at the BLO concert by Python. The Infiltrator playbook was an interesting one, as it shares some traits with the Hacker. This meant we had an opportunity to use the Sprawl’s Matrix moves for the first time.

With the plan and team in place, the characters met at a local fast food joint to iron out the last minute details, before heading in. Zero acted as the “inside man,” bluffing his way into the presentation by pretending to be one of the neighborhood kids the YMCA catered to. In the meantime, Riyoh, Nikki, and Rook all went shopping at the car dealership in an attempt to find their way down to the basement.

And that was about when the group stopped rolling well.

Before I get into the details, here’s the action clock for the mission:

12:00 — Business as usual

15:00 — The Madmen start sending counter-intel into the matrix. -1 forward on Research

18:00 — Extra security is added to all mobile offices and mid and high-ranking Madmen

21:00 — Madmen deploy heavies, as well as military-grade AR security measures

22:00 — William is put on lockdown; no one in or out without extreme vetting

23:00 — The Madmen call in a favor and bring a Fisher-Price & Wesson security detail on board (Small gang, well trained, well armed)

00:00 — William is moved underground OR the Madmen and FSW deploy overwhelming force, and the mission fails. Advance the Madmen Corporate Clock x 2

Remember, the clock was only at 15:00 when the action started, so the team had a lot of room to screw up — which they did to fantastic effect.

Zero was the first to roll poorly; he managed to get into the event, but drew attention to himself in the process. This ticked the clock up to 18:00, which meant extra security arrived on the scene. Riyoh, Nikki, and Rook saw the new goons arrive, and decided to hang back a bit.

Next up was Rook. She decided to try and play dumb with a car salesman in order to give Riyoh and Nikki a way down into the basement. Rook rolled ok, and chose to call unwanted attention to herself, thus increasing the clock again. I decided that as the new security detail was walking the perimeter, they spotted the three ladies at the dealer. Game recognizes game, and the goons knew something was up. I revealed the increased security presence by having two of the goons come out to the van and exchange their smart looking suits for serious body armor. Tick tock, and we were up to at 21:00, or halfway to mission failure.

Finally, Zero slid away from the main room in the YMCA to try and hack his way into building security, and we were into the Matrix rules. I’ll talk more about this game-within-a-game shortly, but the quick summary is I remain skeptical.

Zero managed to log in, but then immediately got caught when he attempted to hack the actual security. I chose to activate some ICE (countermeasure programs) and start a trace; which meant that William’s security was starting to track Zero through the Matrix; and I also chose to have the ICE send out an alert, which bumped the action clock up to 22:00. In retrospect I feel like I could have chosen one of the other options available to me; the clock was ramping up fast, and this took away some of the opportunity for the team to be nuanced in their execution of the mission.

With Zero more-or-less made, all hell broke loose. Recall that at 22:00, William gets put on lock down. I illustrated this by having Nikki, Riyoh, and Rook watch him get bundled out of the YMCA in a huddle of security personnel, and into the waiting corporate van. Before the van could leave, Nikki shot out one of the tires, and the fire-fight was on.

We’re Going to Need Guns. Lots of Guns.

The door of the advertising van flew open and a security thug let loose a spray of indiscriminate weapons fire. People screamed as bullets flew everywhere; the teens and parents in the youth center ducked for cover while motorists skidded cars to a halt and crouched low in their seats. The Killer kicked her synthetic nerves into gear and became a blur of smooth motion, racing down the street at lightning speed and gracefully sliding along the pavement as bullets streamed all around her. The nano-blades on her forearms snapped out in anticipation of a kill as she used her momentum to spin herself into a striking pose.

In her haste, however, she hadn’t noticed the delivery drone barreling down the street; oblivious to the danger and unable to recalculate a route that could avoid slamming into her…

Once the shooting started things actually smoothed out for the group. Each member of the team had some particularly forceful moves and toys, and the team also possessed a glut of Gear they could bring to bear.

Rook ended up rolling poorly as she tried to close distance with the crippled van, and got hit by an errant food delivery drone in the process. Nikki’s first grenade went wide and she found herself being tackled from behind by one of William’s bodyguards. Riyoh and Zero faired better at the start, with both of them able to get in close to the van. Once Nikki and Rook recovered, they were able to provide support and covering fire while the other two worked to get to the target.

Everything just kind of “clicked,” and the tension was noticeably high. The team knew what the action clock was showing, and the players weighed each roll against the possibility of failing the mission. I think this was the first time that all of the systems in the Sprawl came together perfectly; the team had to complete the mission or bail, but each outcome could lead to disaster. It made for really good play.

Ultimately the team won the day. Riyoh and Zero breached the van as Nikki and Rook mopped up the goons. Zero killed the driver and programmed the auto-drive to take the van somewhere discreet, and Riyoh served William a face full of flechettes from her pistol. So much for my opportunity to present a moral quandary! The team then made good their escape, and wrapped the session with a successful Getting Paid move, wherein they learned the name of their employer. Augmented Reality’s random tables to the rescue, once again.

Lessons Learned

There’s been a lot for me to consider and unpack after this last session. As is always the case, some things worked much better than others. I thought I was being clever with my hidden directives, but the players weren’t really interested in talking to William. During legwork, I had tried hard to paint a picture of William as a person who cared a great deal for his community, and was always surrounding himself with those less fortunate than himself. By having the event at a youth center, I had thought the team might have second thoughts about killing the guy; at least not before getting him to another location, and thus, giving me time to characterize him a bit.

Well, now I know a bit more about the type of game my players want to play 😜.

One area where I seriously screwed up was in not showing the team the mission directives. I’d let them know when they hit a milestone and could mark XP, but I neglected to show them the whole list. This would have short-circuited any “hidden” directives I might have revealed, had the players engaged with them. I’ve already written a giant note in my GM notebook to the effect of “SHOW THESE TO THE TEAM.”

Next time I’ll also manage the action clock a little differently, too. Or rather, I won’t be so quick to move the clock if there are other options. In some cases I had no choice; the players either chose to bring attention to the team, or the move itself had advancing the clock as a consequence of failure. In other instances though, I chose to advance the clock, as that was an easy way to increase the tension. Looking back, I feel like it was a bit of lazy GMing on my part, and I’ll definitely be using other options when they are appropriate next time.

About those Matrix moves, though.

The more I think about them, the more I feel like this is the area where the Sprawl really misses the mark. For those who are not familiar, most Powered By the Apocalypse games break “moves” up into a few categories; the game has basic moves for handling the run-of-the-mill stuff like hitting things or shooting things or figuring things out; advanced moves for more esoteric things like leveling up or making camp; and character moves, which are the unique moves each different type of character can do. The Sprawl has these, and then adds on a final category of Matrix moves for dealing with hacking and traversing the virtual reality network; both of which are mainstays of the cyberpunk genre.

I understand the impetus for these specialized moves; hacking is intrinsic to cyberpunk, and it is also very difficult to represent in a compelling way for people who don’t know how computers and software work. I’m a software developer in my day job, and I can’t even imagine how boring making a game out of what I do would be.

That being said, I think the Sprawl tries for too much here. There are special moves for hacking into different types of systems within the Matrix (software security, physical security, login, etc.); moves for dealing with the ICE countermeasures; moves the ICE makes when it encounters a player; programs a character can execute; and even a miniature character sheet for the characters deck (computer), with stats to track as they make or fail rolls while executing these moves. This amounts to the Matrix being a game-within-a-game, and it’s too tedious. I was only dealing with one hacking character, and he decided to abort once things got too hot. If the team had multiple hackers, each attempting different things, I could have easily spent the entire session dealing with that.

I wonder if reducing the Matrix moves down to a few more generic things wouldn’t be better; a catch-all Hacking move for infiltrating networks, a Cybersecurity or Cyber-defense move for dealing with ICE, etc. It might break the verisimilitude of the game, but I think it would be a more streamlined, and ultimately more fun, system to engage with. Maybe I’m wrong though, and I’ll see something I’m missing the next time we play. I’d love to hear some thoughts or opinions on this, or any of the other topics I’ve covered.

Until next time, stay jacked-in, cowboy.

Block 17 News Bulletin

Special Report

## Beloved Community Leader Shot Dead in Street

William Ar’Hama, a much beloved figure in the Block 17 community of Old Detroit, was murdered yesterday while giving a talk on youth leadership at the YMCA on South EngleWood. Ar’Hama, who was known for his boundless generosity and good nature, had just begun his presentation when he was assaulted by a cadre of highly skilled professional operatives. The assailants disabled Ar’Hama’s security detail before brutally murdering the man as he sat in his corporate vehicle.

When reached for comment, the leader of the Madmen Consortium had this to say.

“This heinous and barbaric act will not go unanswered. The Madmen will bring the full force of law to bear against William’s murderers. There will be no place they can hide, and justice will come swiftly and harshly for them.”

William Ar’Hama is survived by his mother, two brothers, and sister. The family has promised to establish a community outreach center in William’s name, to continue the work he was so well known for.

https://medium.com/@kwhitaker81/the-sprawl-play-report-session-3-e6207f909290#.qtq9o5z25

The Sprawl Play Report — Session 2

Tank You Very Much By Kevin Whitaker

https://medium.com/@kwhitaker81/the-sprawl-play-report-session-2-a93090e6d272#.5g44ptvoh

Note: This is part 3 in a series of retrospectives on running The Sprawl for my local gaming group. I’d recommend you check out part 1 to get some background.

We’re back! After two weeks away from our cyberpunk future, my group — the full group even — and I were able to jump back into Neo-Detroit and wrap up our the team’s first mission. Things… did not go as planned.

When we last left the team, they were deep into their mission to recover a piece of hot new augmented-reality tech on behalf of the Madmen; a shadowy advertising co-op making a name for themselves in Detroit. The target of the mission was a free concert sponsored by Bud Light Optics (BLO), who were going to use the venue to test the new device. The three operators; Henry the Killer, Nikki the Tech, and Riyoh the Pusher; had managed to cut the power and get the crowd moving out of the abandoned factory-turned-theater. A gun fight had broken out, and Henry and Riyoh had fallen prey to the sensory-warping effects of BLO’s device. Nikki, meanwhile, was busy being shot at by drones responding to her sabotage of the power grid. With Henry and Nikki pinned down, and herself being swept away from the target by the panicking crowd, Riyoh decided to make a call.

The Way of the Gun

Far away from the raucous crowds of the concert, people were going about their usual nighttime business. The neon signs and soft AR glow from day-time advertisements had been replaced by garish signs and ads describing less respectable services as the curtain of night had fallen across the Old City. A few vehicles drove along the ancient arteries of the city, passing clubs and bars where the thumping sounds of synth rolled out of windows and patios. And he was watching it all…

The nano-gears inside his cyber eyes whirred and hummed as they adjusted the focus of his optics. He was scanning for someone — a mark he’d been hired to track — and he knew his mark was somewhere nearby. His AR overlay scanned the faces of each passerby, try to match them against the face he was seeking and, if they weren’t a match, cataloguing them in case he was ever hired to chase that person down. A beep startled him out of his task, and the optics snapped back into normal focus. He picked up his comm — the source of the noise — and looked at the screen. Riyoh was calling, and he knew that could only mean trouble.

As I mentioned in my last report, this mission started two members down; neither our Hunter nor our Fixer could make it. Luckily, they were able to make it for this session, but that presented a challenge; how should I get them involved in the current mission? The answer was simple enough; things had gone south, and Riyoh decided she needed backup. We didn’t have to contrive this; the action clock for the mission was at 22:00, which meant they were only two ticks away from total mission failure. So, she called up Python, the Hunter, and asked for help with the extraction. Python, in turn, dialed in Abel, the Fixer. Abel, who had a fancy set of wheels, picked up Python in stylish fashion and they arrived at the concert just as things were coming to a head.

While all this was happening, Nikki had successfully dodged her drone attackers by ducking into the surging crowd, and had run into Riyoh in the process. They agreed to try and get back inside to assist Henry, who was, at that moment, busting down the door to the room where the tech was being kept. In our previous session, Henry had dispatched the guards with explosive results, but he knew that something was waiting for him inside the room. That something turned out to be a cyborg heavy; military-grade and wired to kill. Henry, not wanting to waste an opportunity to be visceral, opted to attack the thing with his machete, rather than his big gun. He might also have wanted to avoid damaging their target, but I prefer to think of him just being bloodthirsty.

Into all of this stepped Abel and Python, screeching their ride to a halt just in front of a pack of security goons who were, at the time, trying to keep the panicked (and hallucinating) crowd from over-running them. Abel slipped out and tried to Fast-Talk the first goon he saw; this was a security job, and they were here to extract an exec’s kid from this mess. It was a great setup, and I was ready to roll with it–until Abel’s dice came up snake eyes. Instead, the goon decided he didn’t have time for this shit, and cracked Abel in the jaw with the butt of his gun. Python responded in true action movie fashion; by leveling his own gun at the goon, and trying to intimidate him. That didn’t go well either, and before you could say “oops” we had a standoff; eight very angry people pointing guns at each other as a crowd prepared to trample them all to death.

I ticked the action clock up to 23:00.

Mine’s Bigger Than Yours

A loud and unintelligible garble screamed across the comms, and he winced at the sound, momentarily forgetting about his bleeding lip. Then came a noise which sounded like a dozen heavy feet marching rapidly from beyond the warehouse the crowd was pouring out of; which meant whatever it was, it loud and VERY heavy. He looked over the barrel of the submachine gun pointed at his face, and saw a large form moving rapidly along the edge of the crowd. It was insectoid in shape, and about the size of a sedan. The back section was segmented, and tapered up to what could only be described as a head, which itself was studded in various sensors and what he assumed were guns. As it skidded to a halt nearby, an artificial voice boomed over a loudspeaker.

“CITIZENS! THIS AREA IS UNDER SECURITY LOCKDOWN BY BLO PACIFICATION. PURSUANT TO MUNICIPAL CODE 659, SECTION 2, BLO ASSERTS FULL AUTHORITY WITHIN A 2 MILE RADIUS OF THIS LOCATION. DEADLY FORCE IS AUTHORIZED. PROCEED IN AN ORDERLY FASHION TO THE NEAREST SECURITY CHECKPOINT, OR YOU WILL BE PACIFIED WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE.”

I hadn’t planned on dropping a tank on them during this mission, but I needed something suitably big to convey just how close the group was to failing the mission, and I’d just been reading my copy of Ghost in the Shell again. I had intended the tank to be something that the players would avoid; perhaps a way to start off a cool cat-and-mouse sequence as the characters outside the venue worked to keep it occupied while those inside worked to grab the BLO tech. In doing so, however, I forgot one of the cardinal rules of GMing: no plan survives first contact with the players.

Abel attempted to use the tank to his advantage. He succeeded in fast-talking the crowd into attacking the security goons, with Python helping by pointing the tank as a way of saying “hey, these assholes want to kill you!”. They both rolled very well, so I gave it to them. I decided that the people closest to them were hardcore punks who were spoiling for a fight after having their AR hacked. They jumped in and things got physical.

Meanwhile, Riyoh and Nikki had gotten split up in their attempt to get back inside the warehouse. Riyoh had found a way around the crowd, but had gotten shot by a drone (she rolled a 6 on her Assess) in doing so. Nikki had succeeded, but only just, and so had lost track of Riyoh. Henry had taken a few hits from the man-tank guarding the target, but was holding his own. It started to look like the team might just pull this off.

And then Python, in an effort to distract the tank, shot at it.

The roll came up as a 9, and Abel, who’s character was out to make things interesting, volunteered to take damage alongside Python (this is one of the options for a 7–9 result on a roll to Mix It Up in the game). So the tank took a tiny bit of harm, and then unloaded its auto-cannon into the knot of people standing where the bullet had come from, causing Python and Abel to each take 4 harm. Python, who was wearing armor, managed to survive. Abel, who was not wearing armor, was less lucky. Having already suffered some harm from being hit in the face with a rifle butt, Abel didn’t have the segments left on his harm clock, and those 4 new harm filled it to the brim.

So, Abel rolled his Acquire Agricultural Property move (the move a character makes when dying), and got a 6. Oops. Abel had been in the game less than an hour, and was already a red smear on the pavement. I was a little stunned, honestly, but Abel’s player took it in stride.

“I volunteered to take the harm,” was his response. The rest of the group nodded and shrugged a bit, and then proceeded onward.

Game Over

His machete came down more like a hammer than a blade, and sparks and lubricant flew as it bit into the shoulder joint of the man-thing. The cyborg wasn’t totally out, however, and it fought back against him with all the hydraulic strength it could muster. His synthetic nerves had given him an edge when we was at a distance; but now, locked in a death grip with the half-man, it counted for nothing. A blow thundered into the side of his head, and his vision swam. He responded by reaching into the cyborg’s open wound, and started pulling at anything he found. Wires, tubes, and plastic parts that might have been pseudo-organs came out in his hands, which were covered in a mixture of synthetic goop, and very real blood. He didn’t notice the cyborg had stopped moving until after the taser hit; someone had come up behind him and hit him with an electric shock that felt like being run over by a dump truck. As his vision faded out, he smiled–he could see the light in the cyborg’s eye go dim.

I hadn’t bumped the clock from 23:00 to 00:00 when Abel had died, mostly because I wanted to see if, in true TV-thriller fashion, the team could escape, making the Fixer’s death a noble sacrifice.

Unfortunately for them, things didn’t go that way. While Henry managed to kill the cyborg guarding the BLO tech, he didn’t roll well enough, and Riyoh, who at this point was coming up the stairs to help him, volunteered to take some damage along with him. That damage came in the form of a shot to the gut as she ran up and onto the landing and was met by a security goon. That amount of harm filled her clock, and Riyoh was forced to make the second death move of the night. Luckily, she rolled extremely well, and was able to survive.

With two players either dead or down, and the goons closing in, I advanced the clock to 00:00 and called the mission. Python grabbed a civilian and jumped into Abel’s now badly shot up car and drove off, while Nikki melted into the crowd to get away. Henry and Riyoh, on the other hand, were both captured by BLO, which provides an excellent hook into the next mission.

Lessons Learned

I must admit; I wasn’t expecting things to spiral like they did during the first mission. The players advanced the action clock quite a bit before they even got to that portion of the mission, which set them up for a harder time once things got rolling. Looking back, I also see some things that I could have done better.

The crowd became a kind of one-note obstacle. It was essentially a physical barrier the characters had to move against, rather than being a living, breathing thing. I probably should have used it more like a gang than an obstacle, as gangs have distinct rules in the Sprawl.

The cyborg “big bad” didn’t really turn out to be all that bad, mostly because I played that encounter fairly straight. Given that the fight was happening very near to a sensitive piece of technology, which was the team’s primary focus, I missed the chance to raise the stakes in a more compelling way than just “you get hurt.”

Dat tank, tho. In retrospect, I think I overplayed this. There were a lot of other options on the spectrum between “security goons” and “tank,” and given that this was the first mission, I should have opted for something less ridiculous. While I had hoped the players would engage with the tank differently, I should have expected them to shoot at it. Most of the team’s skills are about violence, after all, so that was always going to be the way they got its attention.

The final takeaway, for now, has to do with the action and legwork clocks. I am a huge fan of clocks as a way to track the various moving pieces of an adventure or campaign, and I might write an entire post on that alone. However, I came away from this session feeling like their might be a flaw in the way the Sprawl implements them; namely that there’s no mechanical method of advancing the action clock during play.

Here’s what I mean: during the legwork phase, if the players fail a roll, the game says to advance the legwork clock. Sometimes doing so will cause the action clock to advance, as well. But there’s no corresponding directive for when players fail a roll during the action phase.

When a character misses and the MC has the chance to make a mission move which represents the increasing awareness and alertness of the target, she will advance the clock.

That’s a bit hand-wavy when you consider that the mission fails if the clock hits midnight. While I appreciate the wiggle room, I feel like there might be a need for a harder, if-this-then-that kind of approach. But who knows; maybe I’ll feel differently after I play a few more sessions.

In the end, and despite the character death, everyone had a good time, and since the session ended a little early, we were able to let Abel’s player roll a new character, and even got started on the legwork for the next mission. I’ll cover that next week, so I can keep things thematically linked.

Until next time, stay jacked-in, cowboy.

// Incoming network request…

// Protocol authenticated; secure connection established.

// Sender: *@blo.com

// Title: New Acquisitions

// Begin message output:

Hey,

Things at the concert went to shit, but we’ve got a lead on who sent the operators. We’re planning a follow-up campaign for them, which will hopefully net us some more market share. I’ll fill you in on the details once the action plan gets out of committee.

In the meantime, I wanted to bring you up to speed on our new acquisitions. We’ve just finished installing the software upgrades into them, and I think one of them is going to be an excellent return on our investment. She’s already working her way through FailSafe, and I’m sure we can push her buttons easily enough to get her to apply herself where we need her.

The other one I’m not so sure about. We had to sedate and restrain him after he nearly killed one of our medics. I can appreciate his particular skill set, but I think there might be better options out there. Of course, depending on what the committee comes up with, we might be able to apply him to the counter-campaign. Again, I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, you should brush off your racket; I still owe you for that ass-kicking you gave me last week.

See you on the court,

// End of message.

// Secure connection closed.

The Sprawl Play Report — Session 1

Aggressive Advertising

By Kevin Whitaker – https://medium.com/@kwhitaker81

Note: This is part 2 in a series of retrospectives on running The Sprawl for my local gaming group. I’d recommend you check out part 1 to get some background.

Last week my gaming group and I spent some time establishing a gritty future Detroit, where crime syndicates and mega-corporations loomed large over the downtrodden and destitute. This week, we got to start playing in that rusty, crime filled sandbox.

If I’m being honest, things got off to a bit of a slow start; two of our players weren’t able to make it, and while we had a new player to help backfill, he had to spend some time creating his character. I did my best to keep the group engaged while the new player built up a Tech named Nikki, but I was also spending that time boning up on some of the rules after watching Episode 3 of the Roll20 actual play. Once the new character was up and running, however, things got rolling pretty quickly. While we weren’t able to complete the first mission in the time we had, we all had a blast getting to the cliffhanger I left us on.

The Crew

Three figures slipped out from the sleet and acid rain of the street and into the clamor of the Railyard. They picked their way through the stalls selling cheap imports, the ramshackle restaurants, and the bars carved out of the hulks of long dead train cars; the practiced moves of professional operators marking them as “not to be fucked with” to anyone with the guts to give them a second glance.

For this mission, we had three operators:

Riyoh, the Pusher — a true believer, working her way up through one of the corporations in an effort to bring them all burning down.

Henry, the Killer — “nature’s happy blunt instrument,” to quote the player. Henry is a violence tour-de-force, just looking for a direction.

Nikki, the Tech — a once beautiful woman who lost much of her organic body when the corp her father worked for had him killed. Now she’s out for payback.

While Nikki’s player didn’t get to establish a corporation of his own, he was able to make the world interesting for the entire group by setting up “links” with the other characters.

I didn’t think to highlight the “links” last week when I discussed character creation, but now I feel like they deserve a few words. In standard Powered By the Apocalypse (PBtA) games, characters establish existing relationships with each other by declaring them. In other words, my character Brutus the Barbarian distrusts your character, Melisande the Purple, because she once bewitched me. I declare the existing bond/string/hex, and you fill in some of the details of what your character did with/to/for mine.

This paradigm is reversed in the Sprawl. Instead of telling other characters what they did, you tell the group about a job your character undertook against a corporation, and then you ask the other players if their characters helped. If they did, they describe how, and then they take a “link” with your character. This, like many of the systems in the Sprawl, is very elegant, as it gets around one of the issues my groups often run into when playing games like Dungeon World; namely that you get to declare something about my character, and that takes away a bit of player agency.

As I stated above, “links” also tie into the existential threat of the corporations by letting the players dial in the amount danger they want at the start of a game. It works like this: for each player who declares a job against a corporation, that corporation’s clock advances by one. If every player uses one or two corporations to establish their links, then those corporations will be actively seeking the players out, which opens up plenty of hard moves for the GM. If the players instead spread their links around, then more corps are interested in the characters, but to a much less urgent degree.

The Job

The teahouse was hazy and poorly lit; red and orange light creeping out from underneath cracked glass lamp shades. Sparing barely a look for the hostess, the trio marked their contact in a booth at the back of the rail car; a slender man in a suit 150 years out of fashion, sitting next to a woman who was clearly wired for military action. The man smiled as the group approached. “As-salāmu ʿalaykum. You can call me Mr. Draper. Would you like some tea?”

Hamish Cameron, the author of the Sprawl, recommends that you start your players with a fairly straight-forward mission, and that’s precisely what I set out to do. I decided that one of our syndicates — a local crime outfit turned “legitimate” corporation — wanted to steal some technology from an out-of-town rival. In this case, the Madmen were after some sweet augmented reality blasting hardware from Bud Light Optics, which they would hire the characters to steal. To add a bit of flavor to the standard smash-and-grab setup, I decided that Bud Light would test their new hardware at a free concert, so they could see the effects on a large scale.

Last week I alluded to the structured nature of a play session in the Sprawl, and that extends to the setup, as well. With the job created, I created a simple set of directives — milestones which indicate when the players get to mark experience — and wrote them down with the rest of the prep:

When you take the job, mark XP.

When you decided where and when to make the hit, mark XP.

When you make the drop at the safe house, mark XP.

When you finish the job and get paid, mark two XP.

Writing this stuff down helps me to remember what, exactly, is important in terms of tracking the progress of the mission. It also gives me a very clear reference to look back to, and helps communicate to the players that they are making forward progress; something which is very important when you’ve got this kind of mission-based gameplay.

The last bit of prep I did for the mission was to write a custom move; a little something special that I could hit the players with which would make this mission stand out from any others. In this case, my move had to do with the hardware being tested at the concert:

When you get hit with BUD SPLICE, roll +Synth (Synth being a character stat).

On a 10, you’re fine; your hardware shuts down the ads.

On a 7–9, you’re handling it, but not well; you’re Acting Under Pressure until you can get some time to purge your systems

On a 6-, Bud Light is everywhere; literally everywhere.

That last option ended up tripping me up, as we’ll see in a bit, but overall I was happy with the mission, and we were ready to play.

The devil’s in the details

The trace was coming hard and fast, but she still hadn’t found the file she needed. All of her counter-programs were running at full tilt; the processors in her rig were screaming hot and threatening to turn into melted slag if she pressed any further. A sudden sizzle and pop from meatspace let her know that one of her cores was dead — either burned to a cinder, or destroyed by some corporate ICE. But they were too late; she had found the file. Now all she had to do was disconnect before the trace could lock her down…

When players in the Sprawl decide to accept a job, two things happen:

They roll the “Get the Job” move, which can set up advantages in terms of how much they get paid, how much intel they have about the target, how much they know about their employer, etc.

The initiate and engage in the “Legwork” phase of the mission; that is they role play a series of vignettes where the characters hit up their contacts or do some digging to prepare for the job itself.

Both of these systems are directly tied to the tension of the mission at hand. If the players roll poorly when they Get the Job (and mine did), then they lose out on key advantages — they have no idea what they’re getting in to, they get paid poorly, or worse, someone notices what’s happening.

Similarly, as the players play out the legwork phase, they run the risk of alerting their quarry that something is up. If the legwork clock for the job gets too high, then not only do the characters get paid less; they also start running up the action clock (the clock associated with the “doing shit” part of the mission). If the legwork clock creeps even higher, the corporate clock of the corporation they are acting against ticks up, as well. All of this plays into the over-arching meta-game built into the Sprawl; deciding which risks you are willing to take in the hopes of gaining an advantage later down the line.

This system, which gives players agency over the amount of tension and danger they are willing to deal with, is brilliant. It lets the players decide, in a tangible way, what the priorities are for their characters, and how much they are willing to wager on those priorities. It’s something I’d love to see in other games in some form or fashion.

Our group didn’t spend too much time on legwork. Nikki hit up her uncle, a man who works for Bud Light Optics, in the hopes of getting some intel about the security at the concert, and then followed it up by staking out the concert venue. Henry went sniffing for a street dealer to get some tech for the job, and Riyoh decided to try and do some research about the Bud Light hardware itself. Nikki succeeded at her first roll, and then all three of them failed the subsequent rolls. This let me push the Legwork clock up considerably, which meant that the concert would have heightened security and the action phase would start with one of the clock segments filled.

Now, I will say that I stumbled a bit with this phase; the gist of the system is that characters spend the legwork collecting intel and gear; abstract currencies they can spend during the action phase of a mission to gain bonuses to their rolls. In a nutshell, it allows the characters to have exactly what they need, when they need it, and then retcon why they know that particular detail, or brought along that piece of kit.

While intel and gear are further examples of the elegant systems at play in the Sprawl, their implementation tripped me up a bit. The rules intentionally want these currencies to be vague; if a character needs a smoke bomb, they can spend 1 gear to have brought one along. My players, on the other hand, wanted to seek out very specific things; Henry, for example, wanted a Mission Impossible-style rubber mask. The solution, I think, is to push the players to keep their actions a bit more vague during legwork. It’s something I’m going to have to fine-tune during the next session.

Death Metal

Bud Light knew their business, that was for sure. The promise of free booze and free music had brought out a throng of people; so many that they spilled out of the venue and into the parking lot. Huge virtual screens hovered in the air, making sure that those outside could enjoy same effects people inside were getting. The operators didn’t care; they had a job to do. Things going just as they’d planned, and then two of them dropped off comms as their AR gear barked and spat at them. Without warning, their ware was overloaded with a flood of ads for the latest Bud Light Optics tech and swag; their entire field of view choked off; the noise of the concert completely drowned out by an oppressive corporate jingle that just wouldn’t stop.

Once the characters were through preparing for the mission, it was time to move from the legwork phase to the action phase. Since the players had rolled so poorly during the former, they entered into the latter phase with one or two segments of the clock already filled. This meant that security at the concert, and around the Bud Light hardware, would be stronger than they otherwise would have been. In mechanical terms, this let me bring out some heavy threats for the group to push up against.

Things started simply enough; the characters formulated a three-pronged approach, where-in Riyoh would cause a distraction (and try to push her anti-corporate agenda), Nikki would attempt to cut the power, and Henry would grab the hardware and run. It was one of those plans that could only work in a RPG or cartoon, which meant it was perfect.

Once inside the concert grounds, things didn’t go as smoothly as they could have. While Riyoh got off to a strong start with a couple of great dice rolls, she failed when it came time to lean on her personal goals to sway the crowd. At that point, Nikki was successfully cutting the power, but also drawing lots of attention to herself in the process, and Henry was prepping his trigger finger.

It was at this point that I decided to have Bud Light test their new gear on the crowd, which highlighted some poor planning on my part. Nikki was outside of the venue, and wasn’t affected. Henry rolled a 7–9, so mechanically he just had to deal with some extra rolling to accomplish his tasks. Riyoh had a hard failure to withstand the effects of the BUD SPLICE, and the vagueness with which I wrote the move kept me from putting any meaningful mechanical consequences behind it. I didn’t want her Acting Under Pressure, since that was the consequence of rolling a 7–9. In hindsight, I should have more explicitly spelled out the result of a failure. Instead, I decided to give her a -1 ongoing to some of her rolls. This is another lesson learned; be explicit!

In the end, Riyoh ended up getting carried away by a panicked crowd while Henry was blowing holes in security personnel with his shotgun, and Nikki tried to evade some angry drones who were shooting at her for blowing the power. I felt like that was a good place to end, as we were out of time, and it seems like the players are all anxious to get back to the action and see what happens.

Curtain Call

Machine gun fire raked across the pavilion, biting into her body as she dove behind a nearby transformer. Luckily, they got the metal parts of her, rather than the flesh; she couldn’t afford to lose much more of that.

While the session was a success, I’ve got a few things to tweak, and a few challenges to prepare for before the next game. Namely, I need to handle legwork better, and I’ve got to get some better conditions attached to my moves. I also need to work out a satisfactory way to both bring the current mission to a close, and potentially begin a new one. The Sprawl tells you to try and give your missions (and characters) time to breathe, from a fictional perspective, and I don’t want to bleed this beginning mission into another. This will be particularly challenging if our other two players return, as I don’t want them spinning their wheels while the rest of the group wraps things up. I might have the current characters call on any newcomers as a way to help them with extraction, if that becomes necessary.

In the end, we all had a great time, and I will continue to recommend the Sprawl to anyone who will listen to me. It’s mechanics are really a delight, and a I think anyone looking for something different from the standard PBtA fare would have a great time playing it. Sadly, you’ll have to wait two weeks before I can give you my next play report; I’m out of town for business, so there isn’t a session this week.

Until next time, stay jacked-in, cowboy.

!!! ALERT !!! ALERT !!! ALERT !!!

Incoming emergency response request…

Connection established.

Subject: Terrorist action against marketing project Z100-A34

Message:

Alert. Terrorists have attacked the concert venue being used to test . Request immediate heavy drone support and security response team. Subjects are armed and EXTREMELY dangerous. Multiple final-death casualties. Multiple critically wounded.

Repeat: request immediate heavy drone support and security response team. Special asset usage is authorized. Authorization code .

Connection closed.

The Gauntlet Houston began a new foray into the feverish future last Wednesday with our first session of The Sprawl. A dystopian cyber punk PBTA game by Hamish Cameron. Because I was finishing up a classic DW short, I will leave the words of Kevin Whitaker to give the game its due.

“The wind was blowing cold and hard off of Lake Eerie; locking the city down in a static of ice and smog. Through the haze, the glow of ancient neon splashed gaudy color across the backdrop of rust and decay that was Old Detroit.

I’ve been playing and running RPGs for a long time, and while I’m almost always excited about a new game, few games have piqued my interest lately as much as the Sprawl; a cyberpunk RPG created by Hamish Cameron. Being a huge fan of both cyberpunk and the Apocalypse Engine, I knew I was going to run a game of the Sprawl as soon as I could. Thankfully my lovely fiancee decided to grab me a copy for Christmas last year. So, I brought the rules to my local gaming group, and we were off to the (cyber) races.

As is often the case with PBtA (Powered By the Apocalypse) games, I couldn’t have been less prepared for, or more happy with, the outcome of our first session. Over the course of a couple of hours, we created a deeply flawed and interesting future Detroit, filled it with broken characters and power-hungry corporations, and set the stage for some seriously fun sci-fi roleplaying.

Being someone who works with technology every day, cyberpunk has always held a certain appeal for me. Themes of trans and post-humanism; class struggle; the limits of privacy versus appeal of convenience; and the rise of corporate entities as first-class citizens are all things which we are bearing witness to in the real world, and the opportunity to extrapolate and explore potential consequences of these things is what keeps me coming back to things like Neuromancer, the Matrix, and their ilk.

And let’s be honest, as of late, some of these themes have been sliding across the line from “fiction” to “fact” pretty quickly.

The Thing Itself

Red-brown carcasses of ancient train cars spiraled out from the central terminal of the Railyard, a once bustling center of corporate freight and commerce, now a gestalt bazaar serving a different type of clientele, with a different type of trade. Market sounds and smells made war with each other as hawkers and hucksters blasted as much AR advertising as they had the cred for, each angling for the next sucker to draw in.

If I’m being totally honest, I was a little worried at the outset that the Sprawl was going to be too rigid in it’s execution. You see, where most PBtA games are somewhat free-flowing in their setups, the Sprawl works off the concept of the characters being professional operatives who take missions on behalf of one group, working against another, for profit. This restricts some of the more sandbox-esque aspects of Apocalypse Engine games, which is a little weird if you’ve played games like Dungeon World or Apocalypse World.

Of course, the Sprawl isn’t the first PBtA game to do this, and after reading through the rules, and watching the first Roll20 episode, I don’t think it’s going to be a problem at all.

Here’s what a mission (session) in the Sprawl looks like:

Get the Job — a move that both sets up the mission and creates potential consequences.

Legwork — a phase where the characters describe how they are prepping for the mission, and by doing so accumulate resources to spend during the Action.

Action — the phase where the characters actually do the mission at hand.

Get Paid — another move where the characters try and get paid by their contact, who most likely tries to screw them over, especially if they did poorly when they got the job.

Retaliation — the last phase, where the corporation the characters acted against (maybe) comes looking for payback.

Each phase feeds into the other, often through the concept of “clocks;” a way to measure a countdown towards a particular outcome. For example, during Legwork, the characters try to accumulate gear and intel for the upcoming mission. Doing so risks moving the “Legwork Clock,” forward, which is bad; the closer the Legwork Clock is to “midnight,” the more prepared the target of the mission will be for the characters, and the less they will get paid at the end of the mission.

As a side note, I think “clocks” are a brilliant concept in terms of tracking outcomes, and I’ve started using them in all of my games. If you don’t believe me, go watch some of the Roll20 GM prep sessions Adam Koebel did for Apocalypse World. That shit will change the way you prep for games.

Building a Better World

The Raft looked a lot cleaner than it actually was. Nothing the corps did could totally shake off the grime of greed and corruption that clung to the mega-arcology standing sentinel in Lake Eerie. It loomed like some towering beast over the skyline of Neo Detroit, but the menace was only skin deep; inside it was all cancer, rotting from within.

Another way in which the Sprawl distinguishes itself from other PBtA games is the heavy emphasis it puts on world building. Step 0 of character creation isn’t “pick a concept,” or “assign stats;” it’s “create corporations.” Cyberpunk is all about the consequences of letting corporate greed and power run amok, and by putting that front-and-center, the Sprawl lets the players set the tone of the game they want to play.

So, after deciding to set the game in a balkanized and tribal future Detroit (yeah, I know; Motor City just can’t catch a break), our group went about creating the faceless mega-corps that were going to be pulling the strings.

Well, kind of.

You see, one of the first decisions we made as a group was that the corporations had actually left Detroit in the past; after they sucked it dry of any potential profit. In their wake, several crime syndicates had taken hold, and after a while, started trying to legitimize themselves by taking on the trappings of corporations. Once they started making money, the old corporations took notice again, and returned to try and muscle their way back in. I was really pleased with this setup, because it added an extra layer of antagonism between our corps; the old “real” corporations, and the nouveau riche upstarts trying to keep the old guard out.

The group also decided that they wanted an African influence, which added a new thematic spin on things. I know there’s a large Somali-American population in Minnesota, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch for us to imagine that those groups might have moved into Detroit at some point.

Rounding out the setting was the idea that unlike most urban cyberpunk settings, Neo Detroit wouldn’t be a megaplex, or grossly-large city, per se. It would still be huge (10+ million people), but nothing on the order of the BAMA from Neuromancer, or California in Snow Crash. Instead, Neo Detroit would be a large urban area between larger megaplexes; the equivalent of a future “flyover” state. This would help keep our stories more local, which worked well with the themes of tribalism and community the group had established.

With the setting built, we got down to making corporations and characters, which was as smooth as pretty much any PBtA game I’ve played.

Characters Big and Small

Four figures sat huddled around a table in the back of the dining-car turned cheap bar, alternating between taking sips of cheap booze and chatting in low whispers with each other. The music in the place was too loud and too wrong for the decor, but that didn’t stop someone from listening in…

There were four players at the table when we created characters, and we ended up adding two more for the next session. Those last two didn’t get the chance to create corporations, but I’m ok with that; five is good number to get the setting moving, and if we decide we need more in the future, the new players can take first crack at creating them.

Our cast of corporations includes Bud Light Optics, Fisher Price & Wesson, FailSafe Corporation, Kellog’s Artificial Nourishment, and The Madmen.

To conduct operations in their shadow wars with each other, these faceless entities would be calling on the services of our Fixer, Killer, Pusher, Hunter, Tech, and Hacker. The Tech and the Hacker are our late additions, and will be completing their character setup at our next session.

As I said above, character creation was fairly straightforward, even when dealing with the Sprawl’s addition to the standard PBtA flow: cyberware.

In keeping with the genre, every character is required to take at least one form of cybernetic enhancement; be it cybernetic eyes, a neuro-jack, synthetic nerves, or something else. Aside from making each character cool, it also builds the fiction; cyberware isn’t cheap, and to get it the characters have to take any number of complications along with their chrome. Maybe they’re owned by the corporation which paid for it; or perhaps they paid for it themselves, and it’s dangerous or substandard. There’s plenty of good hooks in the process for an enterprising MC to take advantage of these tags, and I constantly found myself saying to the group “I promise that won’t come back to haunt you…”

The Aftermath

If you want to know how well this game handles world building and setup, all I can say is that each one of my players and I had a huge grin on our faces when we left the table that night. All of us are excited to see what happens in this unique world we’ve created, and that, more than anything, is a testament to how good the Sprawl is at what it does. I’ll try to keep these play reports coming, so I can collect my thoughts and critiques on the game.

If you’re looking for more examples of what the Sprawl looks like in play, I would highly suggest you check out the Roll20 actual play. It’s seriously good stuff.

Coming next week; The Sprawl — Session 1 play report. Stay jacked-in, cowboy.”

Kevin’s play report can be found here: https://medium.com/@kwhitaker81/the-sprawl-play-report-session-0-8f02de1dfa7a#.6m9pofwsu . Kevin will be running The Sprawl for the next 7 weeks Wednesday nights for the Houston Gauntlet via our meetup, https://www.meetup.com/gauntlet-rpg/ .