London 2049 Campaign - The Sprawl

 Last night I wrapped up my cyberpunk campaign using the Sprawl after six sessions. Because of scheduling those six sessions took place over the course of six months, and I had told the players at the start that it would be a mini-campaign. We had a session zero where the three players made up their characters and relationships as per the rulebook and then we got to it.

Campaign Image by Midjourney

We had a hunter, a tech and a driver. Since we live in London I suggested we use it as the setting, and I went on to suggest that in the future London has become a haven for those doing business off the financial grid. My vision of the city was that it is mostly empty, with little to no industry. There would be buildings that catered to visiting corps and crime syndicates who wished to meet and make deals, without the worry of surveilance and financial records. While I imagined the rest of the world's major cities would contain the more expected cyberpunk tropes like massive arcologies, I wanted London 2049 to be a bit more gritty and backward. The players seemed to want more of the high tech vibe, so in keeping with the Sprawl's principle "chrome everything, then make it dirty" I tried to allow the players to create futuristic concepts for the city, and then in my descriptions of them make them more run down.

Jack Wellbeloved, P.I.

Jack was our hunter, a former copper with the Met, London's corrupt excuse for a police service. He had left under a cloud so to speak, before setting up as a P.I. working small cases at first, but eventually ruffling feathers among the high-ups at the Met as well as other major players in the city.

Dice (Image Unavailable)

Dice was our tech, a scientist who had worked for Sonsoft, a corp that specialized in cyberware. He managed to get out after he found out they were working on ways to control those who used their implants. He specialized in counter-surveilance, and had a collection of old cars and other retro technology.

Sweep

 

Sweep was our driver. She was a courier for high-end deliveries, no matter where the route led or what the danger was along the way. Her family had fallen foul of corrupt corporations and she primarily blamed Lloyds of London, the world's foremost bank for criminals and black operations.

We created three corporations in session zero to serve as the antagonists for the campaign. Each player created one, linked to their character, and I created Mitsubishi-Honda, specialists in surveilance technology and software. Since we had so much content related to the three player-created corporations mine didn't get used much, but I could have brought them in if needed.

I had run the Sprawl before, for three sessions in an online campaign. I would say I hadn't really gotten to grips with the system back then, and it had been a while. So as expected it was a few sessions before I felt I had a handle on how to run the game well. In the first session the team had a retrieval mission. I fudged the whole legwork phase/action phase thing, but the mission was still interesting and fun. And funny. The whole campaign had a lot of comedy moments.

For the second mission I had decided to let the legwork phase take up the whole session, hopefully with a cliffhanger, and then launch straight into the action in the next session. Unfortunately Sweep's player couldn't make it to the first session, and the other two characters ended up in Scotland during the legwork phase. Fortunately a superbike can cover the distance pretty quickly, and the action went off well in the second session. I think splitting legwork and action into two sessions makes a good change of pace.

Session five involved a heist, where the team decided to relieve Lloyds of a data stick containing a huge amount of crypto currency that the Met had kept on ice for years. The heist was a success, but for the Getting Paid move, the player chose not to take the option "it's not a set-up or ambush" which led nicely into our final session.

In the final session I used the mission directives structure to lay out three plots against the team. An old-school hitman known as the Jackal had been hired to kill Jack. Thanks to a contact he knew if he could kill the hitman the contract would expire, and with the help of the team he managed to do it.

Meanwhile Sweep had a tip off that her life was in danger, and a team of suits from Lloyds soon showed up to her garage. She was able to escape though.

In the case of Dice, he had a former colleague in Sonsoft who tipped him off that the corporation was planning to bring him in, presumably because his knowledge was crucial to one of their projects. He faked his own death and blew up his workshop, along with a 2009 Bentley.

I had a great time running the campaign, and I feel a lot better about the system now. I want to run Dungeon World next, in a fairly standard fantasy setting. Hopefully another game with the same system will really make it click with me.