Had an interesting experience with a plot map in Technoir last night and wanted to share it: I generated a mission seed, figured out what was going on, and then hooked the PCs.
But during the actual session, the PCs never got anywhere near the core of the plot map (the heart of the conspiracy defined by the original mission seed). Instead, they became completely wrapped up in a complex periphery of events that were being influenced or instigated by the conspiracy without actually being a part of it.
I’m now referring to this as the “untouched core”. Let me give a hypothetical example of what I’m talking about:
I generate a conspiracy focusing around a complex alliance of interests working to rig the presidential election in Ohio. The first impulse is that the PCs will work their contacts, shake a few trees, and eventually find a way to unmask (or at least de-fang) the conspiracy (presumably preventing the election from being rigged). But when the campaign takes the form of the “untouched core”, that’s not what happens: Instead, the PCs get tangled up in the street warfare of a small gang that murdered a campaign worker. Or end up investigating the illegal medical testing of one of the companies involved in the election rigging. Or wrangle a contract to protect one of the down-ticket candidates.
The point is that you end up with his sort of “cloud of activity” surrounding the conspiracy at the center of your plot map, and it’s fully possible for the PCs to get completely (and compellingly) tangled up in this cloud without ever worming their way into the heart of the matter.
This isn’t necessarily something that I could force to happen. (And I wouldn’t want to.) But it’s something I’m going to make a point of leaving myself open to and being all right with if it happens in the future.
By contrast, I think I inadvertently mucked up the first Technoir adventure I ran by pushing too hard for the revelation of the central conspiracy. I think I would have been better off simply letting the PCs resolve the local squabble they were tangled up in and letting the deeper conspiracy either pass them by or come back for a second pass in a different form further down the road.
Happens in my Call of Cthulhu games fairly often. In that game I can let the conspiracy progress a little before the players run into it again. I make sure they have something to recognise that tells them both that they have missed it and because of that things have gotten worse.
I’m not sure if Technoir handles that?
“I think I inadvertently mucked up the first Technoir adventure I ran by pushing too hard for the revelation of the central conspiracy.”
This happened to me as well, resulting in a fast pace / shallow roleplaying 3-hour session and frustrating my table (including me). It’s been months but I’m planning to re-run a new session, now knowing that it’s totally ok to not even scratch the Untouched Core.
Even more : one of the player at the table adapted his character from another play test from The Sprawl and his feedback was that he preferred the micro events we played back then. I was afraid of frustrating the players if they didn’t have a conclusion by the end of the one-shot and indeed rushed some key roleplaying moments (building/neighborhood descriptions, travel/encounter events etc) to focus on moving the conspiracy forward, which didn’t result in the fun we expected.
My approach now is more around a 3-to-4-session mystery, or even better into an open table game.
I have since then worked on a homemade NeoParis Transmission with a Deus-Ex/Cyberpunk style map where all of the surrounding cities are now part of a 70-district NeoParis. I’d be happy to share all that material if people are interested.
PS : first comment on this gem of a website, thank you very much Justin for all the time invested in sharing your experience either here or on YouTube.
Gatou, please share! That sounds fantastic.
I’m working on build up a huge Las Vegas Transmission with each part of the city either representing a 36 chunk of nodes or just having a huge pile of nodes to shuffle that represent the whole city. Still a work in progress.
Technoir has pulled so much TRPG excitement out of me like no other TRPG. The mechanical robustness and overall gameplay philosophy presented in the rulebook just clicks for me.
“come back for a second pass in a different form further down the road.”
very True Detective S1