My group has played three sessions with the template rules so far. To date, outside of giving me some flak for calling the team "Street Trash," there's not been a lot of activity with it. Our erstwhile team leader pushes for everyone to make a contribution to the team edge pool at the beginning of every session, but until this last game, it just sat there unused. In fact, at the beginning of this session that little factoid caused our sam to refuse to put in more than a couple points, because he uses his aspects in every single combat and wanted to keep his edge for himself. If I were a bigger nerd, I'd go on about how this conflict of the character vs the team is great and that it happened with a street trash team seemed particularly appropriate.
Okay, chip truth, I am that big a nerd, but I'm still going to move along. Oh, on a related note, I renamed the template "Street Level;" the players appreciated that gesture immensely.
Anyway, things were chugging along as normal, with the group planning a raid against a policlub but trying to make it an elaborate confidence job that ended with gunfire but still involved a large number of rubes. The planning got so complex that they lost track of their own scheme and wound up implementing something of a hodgepodge of elements from multiple drafts of the plan. It was a gigantic logistical nightmare.
It did, however, still end with gunfire.
And this is where the team plot editing power started to come in. After a massive firefight with a side of rioting, Lone Star had locked down the area and were doing weapons checks (there were too many people for mass arrests, so they were just nabbing those most likely involved in the violence). The party was physically trashed; combat had been hard and they paid for victory with an awful lot of blood and die penalties. The rigger refused to let anyone else drive his car because it was his car and no one else is ever allowed to drive it. Unfortunately, his Sleaze isn't so hot, and they really wanted to just slip away rather than risk a road chase in a mob scene with more Lone Star forces showing up any minute and Red Samurai lined up nearby (they were right on the border of Renraku territory, close to the archology). So, drive and Sleaze it was, or it would have been.
Instead, the player picked up a chip out of the team edge and invoked their dumb luck power. For no good reason outside of pity from the spirits, they waltzed out of the situation with a bare minimum success level, which was good enough for them.
I expect they'll be contributing more eagerly to the team edge pool in the future.
Seeing this in action makes me eager to see some of the other templates in play, though I can't really see this team ever shifting away from this team type. They're not the sort to sign on with a corp, and while a syndicate has hooks into them, it's not a voluntary thing. And quite frankly, the players don't take the game seriously enough to ever get the professional freelancer template; they revel in being screw ups far too much. Ergo, street level it is, and likely will remain for a good long time. At least that template should get a workout.
FWIW, the goal is to use the various things we've been given in new, and imaganative, ways. You might call it exploit, or maybe just "playtest." Either way, expect the idea of methods to be pushed and used, now that a few sessions have gone down without any major upsets or changes.
ReplyDeleteAnd you're right, no one is goign to drive my car, because they're douches. They're lucky they're allowed in the front seat.
I regret tossing the team die so quickly, actually. An effort should've been used to Sleaze out, and when that failed a testing of the chase rules could have been run, THEN the easy way out.
But, it was after alot of stuff. People were tired, and I had a long night ahead of me.
Team templates is good, shame your players are all too obnoxious and flippant to use them, eh? Yer gonna need some new friends...