Today Detective Issac hits the streets to talk to a snitch that has information on the evil fabricant RMB-0.
If you're new to The Department you can click here to read my review of it.
To catch up on what's happened before click here for Mission 1 and here for Mission 1 take 2.
After last mission, Detective David Issac has accumulated 1 people evidence in his campaign against RMB-0. His budget is still looking healthy at 95. His mission today is called Meet The Snitch and it will cost him another 5 budget. Issac decides not to take any extra equipment or people thinking that he will be able to blend in better on the streets that way.
TURN 1 AND 2:
On turn 1 and 2 Detective Issac makes his way down the street towards his snitch. At the end of turn, 2 Detective Issac gets too near the angry crowd and I roll to see if the crowd does anything about it but nothing happens.
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| Turn 1 |
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| Turn 2 |
TURN 3:
On turn 3 Issac makes contact with the snitch and talks to him about what he knows. The snitch decides that he won't talk without a bribe so Issac pays him 3 of his budget and the snitch tells him what he knows, getting him 1 Financial Evidence but also nets him 1 Internal Affairs point.
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| Turn 3 |
TURN 4:
I roll again to see if the crowd does anything but nothing happens and Detective Issac has completed his mission without the crowd attacking the snitch.
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| Turn 4 |
END OF GAME:
Detective Issac completes his mission and retrieved the Financial Evidence he was after but gained 1 Internal Affair point for bribing the snitch. His budget for the campaign now sits at 87. Issac gains 1 experience point for gathering the evidence. Internal Affairs has started an investigation on Detective Issac and his 1 Internal Affairs point will transfer over to his next mission.
Overall it was a pretty fun game and though it wasn't too high on action, which is good considering what happened to David's brother. Next time Issac will be investigating a murder that may have ties to RMB-0.
I may be missing something, but thus far, I don't see much fun in the game. It may be a limitation of the scenarios to date, but a lot of time and effort "killing time" with things that in a movie would largely take place in between scenes and off-screen unless the gathering of information has something important going on. I'm a solo player, but even in a group setting the moving, waiting to catch up to the POI, the possible but non-interaction of the crowd, finding out that nr 2 isn't a POI after all, just feels off to me. I'd be inclined to take the scenario and reduce it to a series of dice rolls to set the stage, resolve minor issues, and only if an event was triggered would I move pieces to the table. My view might change as more scenario results are reported.
ReplyDeleteAside from that, I was wondering whether you though the rules would be an easy modification to use in a non-bladerunner type setting, whether trying to interrogate a mook about where Capone's delivery will be, or finding witnesses to the shootout between Diggie Max and Atlantis DuPree about who really owned the contract rights to the latest rap artist, to the streets of Mogadishu as the Marines are stying to track down a local warlord.
What do you think?
Cheers,
JJ
Thanks for you comment JJ! Before I start I'll just say that I had fun playing this game but I'll admit it was lower on action than it could have been. The snitch gave up his information without much trouble and I had no problem with crowd making this mission pretty easy. If you saw the first mission then you would have seen how bad it could go but that was part my fault. When you're playing the campaign with a goal to stop the crime boss more goes into it than just playing the missions in order. You only have so much budget to pay for the missions. Then you need to decide if you want to pay for extra backup or weapons. In that first game I should have brought more firepower but I thought I could finish the mission without trouble. That's part of the fun of this system, it can get bad very quickly and if you're not prepared for it you die. You need to balance the risk and rewards for each mission and that raises the fun factor of the game, at least for me. Another problem may be that the game isn't coming across how the game actually was which could be my problem and not the game.
ReplyDeleteAs far as if the game system could be used in other settings I would say definitely. The NPCs run off subroutine charts. One if the NPC is hostile, one if he's fleeing. It's not complicated but it works well. You would just need to adjust the subroutines for the specific setting.