Welcome back to my adventures in GM'ing a Cyberpunk Red campaign, and since it worked so well last time, that I've decided to once again let a table and a random number generator create my next adventure from whole cloth. If you don't want to bother with reading through the last post to see what I'm talking about, here it is in a nutshell - instead of using someone else's pre-generated adventure, I cooked up a table that allows me to randomly create one. It worked well enough for my last CPRed session that I am doing it again for (as I type this) this weekend's session. Let's see how this one falls apart goes, shall we?
Lessons learned from last time, namely not be afraid to throw more combat at the party and give them a little more stress in the execution of their plan, and I also should do up a screamsheet for the adventure. Did I do any of that? Yes to the first part, or at least I plan on throwing more combat at the party and putting pressure on them, but the 2nd part... well, let's just say I've been lazy and haven't quite generated a screamsheet for this session. And I may not. Let's talk about what our "roll" on the table generates for us and I will discuss the screamsheet situation along with it.
So I "rolled" (the table has multiple fields that don't line up with your standard dice options, so I use a random number generator app where I can tweak the range of numbers) and got Ziggurat as who is hiring the party; the party is hired to do "defense"; against Biotechnica; in Little China; and the twist is "the target is not who they seem (roll again on To Who column to determine who they actually are)". On the reroll, turns out the target is Reclaimers. The Hired By and To Who columns are only vaguely interesting, but the Hired To Do result is the interesting part in this table. And I've left all of the entries in that column vague on purpose to give myself the greatest latitude in what the party is actually doing in that adventure - are they physically defending a location? maybe they actually have to steal something or smuggle it to a new location or hide it to keep it away from the "bad guys"; maybe they have to protect someone or a convoy or whatever else I can come up with that technically falls under the category of "defend" - and in this case, with Ziggurat getting the party to defend something in Little China against Biotechnica (but not really them, actually Reclaimers), I went with a classic Night City tale. Ziggurat has their eye on a building in the combat zone of Little China to do something with it (I would say a rebroadcast tower, but we already did that one with WorldSat in The Apartment, so maybe just a server farm) but the Reclaimers beat them to and are trying to make the building into a (soup kitchen or a homeless shelter or whatever I think will tug on the heart strings of the party). Taking a building away from "Biotechnica" to give over to Ziggurat is not really what I would consider defending it, but with the twist of it actually being Reclaimers and not Biotechnica, I really want the party to show they have a soul and pitch in to help the Reclaimers defend the building from Ziggurat, who will just hire other mercenaries when they learn the party isn't wiping out the Reclaimers in the building.
I typed the preceding paragraphs before the session was to take place, but as I type this part, the session has passed... and it didn't happen. For a variety of reasons, two of my players had to drop out the day off, and so we played board games instead. Board games - good fun for when you can't run your regularly scheduled session! I'll start typing this again when we get closer to the next session and see how it goes from there.
Finally, after two months of illness and small tragedies, the group got back together and we finally got to play the adventure. I messed up and didn't check my notes very closely, so when the Ziggurat rep talked to the Fixer, I used WorldSat as the fake bad guys instead of Biotechnica. It does make more sense, WorldSat had tried to take the apartment building away, word about that little caper did get around, so Ziggurat was just doubling down on their bet. The other mistake I made was thinking the party would follow their morality and not their wallets. Did they know they were Reclaimers and not WorldSat? Yes, yes they did, found that out pretty early. Did they try to tell the Reclaimers who had hired them and try for a higher bid to turn on Ziggurat? No, nor did they really care that Ziggurat had told them a lie, they went straight to hustling the Reclaimers off the property, and then calling Ziggurat with a "mission accomplished!" And then the Tyger Claws, who the Reclaimers paid protection money to get the building in the first place, they showed up and a firefight ensued, more because the players messed with one of the Tyger Claw's vehicles and then pointed a weapon at the Claws. You never know what your players will do, try to make sure they have options to do as much as they want and then let them run wild, because that is what they will do.
So, overall I think my players had a really good time. Sure two of the party started things off early with other party members out of place, twice, but the party rallied each time and everyone felt like they contributed. At least, that is what it seemed like, as everyone was smiling and laughing at the end of the adventure, and it was completed successfully. They could have earned more money and IP by talking more to the Reclaimers and working with them, but they still put a W in the Win/Loss column. Oh, and you potential or current GMs out there, never, EVER tell them what they could have gotten if they had played things differently - they got what they got, and leave it at that. Unless you want that to be the next adventure, where the party has a big investigation scene or series of scenes, tracking down all the info they didn't collect earlier, and then rolls into trying to get back what they missed out on. But still, you don't tell them outright, the party has to figure it out for themselves.
Will I keep up with these randomly generated adventures? For the time being, yes, as I do have some more structured content further down the line, and I want the party to be better equipped when they face that content. Which means, for the time being, smaller challenges for the group to build up their funds and get some increases in their skills and Role Abilities. I'm already looking forward to next month's randomly generated adventurer. What will the table give me to throw at my players this time?
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