My playtests at Big Bad Con crystalised my dissatisfaction with the current stat highlighting XP system that I'm using in The Sprawl.

I'm planning to go the TSOY route and use some variation of keys. At the moment I'm thinking each character will have a key and the mission will have a key. This will also provide more structural guidance for the kinds of things that happen in different kinds of mission. My intention is that they should be relatively modular or modifiable so that if the MC devises a mission that comprises, say Wetwork, Extraction, and Sabotage, then different parts of different keys might apply at different times.

More to come as time allows.

I give my players 2 each as well. Full slots at the start.

Skillwires is something I need to think about generally, as well as come up with a big list of example chips.

Good question! That's an editing slip; I haven't written it yet. I have a few ideas, but I'm sitting next to a copy of the Max Headroom DVDs and waiting to get a copy of Transmetropolitan before I write it.

Thanks, Dionysus! I'd love to hear how it works for you in play, if you get a chance!

In particular, did the legwork and mission clocks work well when you used a pre-written scenario?

Great, elcapitan! When you have a chance, I'd love you hear more about how the game went, any problems you encountered, and which aspects of the rules excited you! Any chance of an AP thread?

Now, here's a fun twist: if somebody from another Skin picks up "Soul Debt", then they go into the Darkest Self for their Skin when the Dark Patron gets five skins. So a werewolf, say, wolfs out if they deal too much with their demon. Also, they don't get the "get rid of strings by fulfilling demands" clause that the Infernal gets in their Darkest Self, which means the only way those strings will go away is if their Darkest Patron uses them according to the normal rules for an NPC using strings on a PC. Which is a kind of interesting dynamic.

That is a fun twist. I've been looking at some out-of-skin moves for my Vampire...

That's how I originally understood it, but I didn't really get it. In every other case, the Skin changes into some darker colder nastier version of their particular idiom. What's the change for the Infernal?

In regular Infernal mode, you make bargains with the dark power and he gains strings on you which he spends to have you do things. Then when you get to five, you keep making bargains and he keeps gaining strings and spending them to have you do stuff?

Is the intention here that the Infernal gives his dark power strings until he reaches 5, enters Darkest Self, then can't give any more strings until he's worked them all off again, so it's a constant oscillation between 0 -> 5 -> 0 _> 5 etc?

Or is the Infernal in his Darkest Self whenever the dark power has a string on him?

Or something else I'm not thinking of?

I ran The Sprawl at Gateway in LA over the weekend. I've quoted my comments on the game below, and the relevant day of my con report is here. It contains a fairly detailed example of character creation. If you follow the "The Sprawl" tag on the linked post, you'll find other con reports, usually with brief descriptions of characters, corporations, and links.

There were four players and we created the following list of corporations:

    Virtual Interface (Data storage and cyber security)
    Aeon Nova (Translation Software)
    IrisTech (Optical technology and consumer electronics)
    RadCom (Hazardous waste disposal)
    Vaser (Manufactured goods)

The characters were:

    Mé Moi (Gina), an articifically sweet looking Killer with a metallic cyberarm. Her father was a corporate exec for Virtual Interface; after he was killed, she was raised by the corporation (owned x2).
    Taylor (Jim), a Hunter with an tacky augmented reality visor implant (cheap cyberware); disowned from a wealthy family.
    Spectre (Mook), a small Infiltrator, utilitarian and nondescript down to the cybereyes. Indentured to IrisTech.
    Shard (Nicco), a burned-out ex-simsense star gone open-source Pusher. Hunted by the holder of all the copyrights on his 24/7 life experiences, IrisTech.

Unsurprisingly, IrisTech and Virtual Interface featured heavily in the Links phase:

    When Shard still worked for IrisTech he filmed an exposé against RadCom (Taylor found where the malpractice was occuring; RadCom clock at 1800).
    Mé Moi assassinated an IrisTech exec who had come into possession of VI proprietary data, and recovered the data (Spectre was the exec's bodyguard; IrisTech clock at 1800).
    Spectre was sent by IrisTech to steal the data back! (Shard distracted the IrisTech security; Mé Moi was investigating the security breach; Virtual Interface clock at 2100).
    Taylor investigated a Vaser VP's personal life (Mé Moi was having an affair with the VP; Vaser clock at 1800).

None of the clocks were very high, so there was no pressing need to alter the mission accordingly. Character generation had taken 1:15.

I've run this mission (The Essilor Sterilisation) a couple of times before and it has played out quite differently each time. On this occasion, the team spent about an hour in the Legwork phase investigating the site and gathering resources. It seemed to take a while for them to make a plan (possibly because the Infiltrator was hacking the facility's system, but not very well!), and they eventually settled on a frontal assault with an EMP blast to knock out the extensive camera system. A couple of key misses (and hard moves) resulted in a well advanced Legwork clock (2200), so the target knew they were coming.

Security was quick to respond to the breach and a bloody firefight erupted inside the building as the team met the internal security forces, and outside, as the external security forces arrived in force and outmatched Shard's enthusiastic gang of open-source simsense fans and activists. Shard himself took several bullets, going down. In the final assault, Taylor put a bullet through the head of the the guy they were supposed to extract. On the brink of failure (Mission clock at 2300), the team evacuated the bodies of Shard and the target; the former was rushed to a hospital by his fans, but too late; the latter was rushed to the meet with their employer. They handed over the body and received their payment, but as they looked, somewhat unbelievingly, at the briefcase full of money, they were bathed in the light of a dozen or so halogen spotlights. The credits roll to the sound of safeties clicking off; Taylor had missed the Getting Paid move. (The whole mission played out in about 2 hours - I rushed the end a little as I incorrectly thought we were running out of time.)

It was the first time I'd seen a non-Hacker use the Matrix rules, and it was good to see that it worked, but was suitably difficult. It was also the first time I've seen the team miss the Getting Paid move; previously the clocks haven't been nearly so advanced at the end.

One of the beauties of games Powered by the Apocalypse is that all the most commonly needed rules are right there on the character sheet and the move sheet. I think it helps that the GM/MC moves are all narrative as well.

Number Appealing, that sounds hot!

That would save me working on DungeonHearts...

I'm totally OK with a character doing more damage on a Defend but taking damage in the process. I think it's also worth pointing out that the holds gained from the Defend move don't stack. If you have 1 hold left from a previous Defend and then roll a 10+, I'm pretty sure you *don't* have 4 hold but still only have 3 hold. The Defend move says "you hold 3" and not "you hold +3".

As a contrary opinion, I think they do stack. It does say "hold 3" not "choose 3" (as in Discern Realities). I also don't require the defended target to be "about to take damage right now", just "under attack" broadly. ("The orc army begins its charge, what do you do?" "I stand in defense of the Wizard!" "Great, roll+Con"...)

Of course, if a player just spends the whole fight defending, they'd better find some way of making that interesting, for their own sake, if nothing else!

Character creation get quicker as you get more familiar with running it (as a GM). I didn't time myself at GenCon, but I managed full pregen and short game in 2 hour slots. It also depends on the style of game you run (e.g. high energy pulp action vs slow-paced and atmospheric dungeon crawl). Did you full pregen character or partially-gen them?

Also, most of the classes have a multi-class move which lets them take a move from another class.