Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Some Sprawl Enemies / NPCs

Just some NPCs / enemies for The Sprawl. I wrote out 'moves' for these folks - these aren't quite the same as Threat Moves or MC Moves or the like. It's more like how this NPC could Make Their Lives Complicated Now or Inflict Harm or the like. Or just things the NPCs might try to do if the PCs flub hard, which lets the MC offer up a choice - now Sandman and his crew are splitting up, the woman on a folding moped with... a rocket launcher? Or an electric van, or a VTOL 'copter? The Wire Dancers are harassing some merchants and heading your way, maniacal looks in their eyes. A skyscraper's window shatters and you think you see a stealthed microlight whip out into the night, but you can't quite track it without trying to Assess the situation. That kind of thing. Just ways of thinking about how these crews normally operate.

Razor: Stealth melee assassin type

  • He's armed with a sword, wearing a stealth suit, grav harness, and has a microlight and a briquettes of hexa-C4. 
  • He has dermal armor, exposed in places like his cheekbones and knuckles, and stainless steel teeth. Can survive 4-5 harm. (Deprecated corporate vat-grown security.)
  • Helpers: Meeks and Scoot, tazers, knives, stealth suits, microlights.
Moves: 
  • Ambush suddenly at hand range 
  •  Cause an explosive distraction
  •  Misdirect the players from something Meeks and Scoot are doing

Bristol: Owned Pusher working for a Corp hunting a PC

  • Implanted weapon, holdout gun, armored coat, flashy methane-powered car
  • She squats with the Upstreet Folks in Lower Downtown, a gang of entertainers and technical kids run by a real fucker, Harvard
  • Works for <BIG CORP> and her fervent beliefs are related to their goals
Moves:
  • Use Vision Thing / Fast Talk against a PC. The PC can mark experience if they do what she wants or are Acting Under Pressure to deny her, for Fast Talk. Vision Thing would give her hold and let the MC hand out +1's or -2's. I don't want to track hold, but if you feel like you're giving out XP like candy, it's an option.  
  •  (Anyone trying to Fast Talk or use Vision Thing against Bristol has to Act Under Pressure first. Good luck!)
  •  Rouse up an angry mob and send it after the PCs. Medium gang 0-harm, close, 0-armor, can take 2 harm. Of course as a medium gang it'll do 2 harm to any one PC who gets in range of it.
  • Send some technical Upstreet Folk against the PCs, directly or indirectly 


Crash and the Boys: Hacker collective

  • Fights as black ICE (Crash) or Red (the Boys)
  • (Note: I have no deckers in my game presently, so, most of their moves are about what they can do in the world. Also, not much info on who they are. The PCs would have to do some investigating, these guys are pretty obscure / intentionally anonymized.) 
Moves:
  • Take over something in the immediate environment which can't hurt the PCs, but they can tell something is strange as cameras glitch out and then focus on them 
  •  Announce themselves with old school animation cutups  
  • Take over localized gun turrets 
  •  Set off alarms and direct security towards 'heavily armed bath-salts-smoking thieves/murderers/barbarians/raiders' - the PCs
 
Devona and the Wire Dancers: gangers, protection rackets and combatants

  • Small gang with monofilament weapon implants, cybereyes with night vision mods
  • Armored clothes, can eat 4 harm, have 1 armor
  • Nikki and Mina: VTOL bike riders with molotovs 
Moves:
  • Blow lights in the immediate area 
  •  Set up an ambush with some stolen incentive (weapons, cyberwear, etc) 
  • Fall back, hide in dark decaying buildings, lay mines and noisemaker traps 
  •  Interdict trade in their territory

Sandman and Spotters: Snipers

  • Sandman has a 4 harm far/extreme rifle with thermographic, night vision scope. 
  • Sandman has carbon-fiber and anodized titanium eyes and an old chrome prosthetic hand which belies her seeming youth. 
  • Sarah and Sleeper are spotters/backup. Sleeper has a 3 harm far/extreme rifle with a regular glass scope. Sarah has a micro-missile launcher (near/far 3-harm breach) and a flechette pistol.
  • Sarah's chipped with skillwires around rocket launcher use and breaking & entering. Sleeper has 4 prosthetic limbs of varying length, and cybercoms.
  • VTOL 'copter, electric van, foldable scooter. They don't travel together if they can help it.
Moves:
  •  Announce themselves as a laser beam traces over someone's face  
  • Kill from extreme range - someone the PCs can see
  • Kill from extreme range - someone the PCs know  
  • Fire on the PCs from extreme range
  • Split up and disappear  




Monday, September 12, 2016

The Sprawl in Space: Firefights

I don't want to run Firefly or Alien in The Sprawl, but I wouldn't mind my PCs heading up a space elevator for a mission, like Case and Co. in Neuromancer, or the last episode of Cyber City OEDO.

I read somewhere that flechette weapons were really designed for space, because they can kill without catastrophically compromising a space habitat. So the rules reflect that. I also wanted decompression to be orthogonal to winning or losing a fight. You can win and still have your AP rounds pass through your enemy and hit a silk flexiwall just wrong.

When you shoot people in a space habitat using non-flechette weapons or ammo, roll + the number of people you shoot. Add +2 for a breaching weapon, +2 for explosive or airburst ammo, +1 for AP ammo.

10+ Catastrophic decompression event. Nearby pressure bulkheads fling themselves shut to isolate the damage, as atmo fires itself (and any loose contents) out into the void.

7-9 Slow leak. You're going to need to a suit, a leak seal kit, a route away from the area, or some combination of the above, and very soon.

6- It's all good.

Anyway, I feel the breach/explosive/airburst/AP is maybe a bit too fiddly. At the same time, I don't want those things to automatically cause problems. Will try to run this sometime and see. I also need to come up with decompression rules. Act Under Pressure seems like a good enough fit in most ways.

In the spirit of being a fan of your edge runners, they'd probably know going up to space that regular weapons are extremely dangerous to use inside a space hab. Unless they're already wearing pressure suits...