The Sprawl Play Report — Session 4

Escort Services

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.