A lot of legwork can go into casing a joint. The Face may pretend to be a client or service worker, the Hacker may download a schematic, the Rigger may infiltrate with a bunch of micro-drones, the Mage may summon some stealthy spirits, a Sammy might beat up a guard leaving the facility and steal his comlink (which the Hacker then mines for data).

What kind of benefits do you get from this work?
- Guard rotations
- Guard and sensor locations
- Floorplans
- Material composition of walls, floors, windows, furniture
- Location & accessibility of ducts, windows, doors, catwalks
- Schedules of events and personnel
- ... etc.?

I'd like to hear your ideas on abstracting & generalizing these benefits. Basically, I want to make it clearly safer to operate in a familiar environment than an unfamiliar environment, but in a way that doesn't require me to map out actual guard rotations & drone patrol patters, because I'm lazy.

Thanks, -- N

Don't forget passcodes. That sam who steals the commlink, or the hacker who asks around on the Matrix can probably manage to get in with possibly a security level account with no hacking needed, if you find the guard with disloyal thoughts. That can really open doors for you. (sorry )

Apply the level of detail you require for fun in your game. I generally follow the this general pattern

Difficulty of target, 1 - 4
- Matrix
- Magical
- Physical
- Consequences

Legwork Tests
For any test, for the number of successes, provide an important piece of information the team must plan around.

Any mix of skills, abilites and contacts can provide information. A Face could have a Hacker of Magical contact to provide that type of information. The Hacker could find the awakened employee file online. The Mage could read the emotional aura of the guard whose sister is in trouble. Many options, and cross pollinating gets people thinking about all the neat things they can do. Encourage the attempt, let the player tell you what they are trying, and go with it. If they don't have an idea, I can always give them one.

Run Execution

Examples
If the difficulty was 2, and they got 2 successes during legwork on stuff, then it comes down to reasonably executing the plan they come up with. Give them the situation, dice rolls, and off we go.

If the difficulty was 4, and they only got 2 success scouting it out, then there will be a minimum of 2 serious problems they will not know about till they get there and start executing the plan. Have fun with it. I usually wait till there's a glitch of some kind to spring one, but it can happen at any time.

Once again, for any difficult item to overcome, as long as they apply some skills towards it and gain successes, they have a chance to overcome the obstacle. The more appropriate the skills, the easier it is, but there's always an oppurtunity for fun out of hte box thinking.

Details

Depending on how detailed you get, you can either start with successes giving general info, or lack of meeting threshold withholding an item from your list.

If you wanted to abstract things without doing map outs you could give circumstance bonuses on social or stealth related tests during the run, or on technical or athletic tests to bypass the doors and walls. Now personally if the team is relying entirely on this kind of intel to make a stealthy approach I like to pull out the universe hates you dice and roll. If it hits a certain threshhold based on my mood and the ambient temperature in the room. If it gets the number I want or higher something has deviated from the plan, a guard has paused his patrol to get a drink of water or investigate a rattling air duct or some other item an employee is working late in the cube farm and is cranked up on Jazz to stay up making them perceptive. These things don't cause instant stealth or mission failure but are an obstacle the runners must hustle to overcome.

Basically I reward good planing and attention to detail but I am well aware that the first casualty is always the plan.

What I like to do is keep things fairly abstract, but only because I hate prepping and run mostly 'on the fly'. As long as it seems like the group is making every effort to do the proper legwork, I don't bother with too many details. Instead I award a temporary pool of group Edge dice that can be used while doing the actual break-in part. The Edge pool can only be used for that particular location and often only has a small window of opportunity in which in can be used (i.e. usually days, sometimes hours). Because its a pool of dice the group can decide who gets to use what Edge points and when.

You say you compare their hits to the difficulty, how do they roll? Is it as per normal checks like social, stealth ect, or is there a group dice pool you use to set their information against your difficulty?

I love your idea! I'm using that from now on.


The difficulty represents a number of tests that must be completed to make the job easier. For example, a location with a difficulty of 3:

• The face locates an employee: Charisma + Ettiquete (2) test.
• The street samurai mugs him: Charisma + Intimidate (Willpower + Intimidate) test.
• The hacker hacks his commlink: Hacking + Exploit (device rating, complex action) extended test.
• The hacker finds and extracts passwords from the commlink: Electronic Warfare + Decrypt (device rating * 2, combat round) extended test.

This is the first success.

• The mage astrally scouts the building, identifying astral and dual-natured guard critters: Magic + Assensing (2) test.
• The infiltrator watches the building and identifies employee and guard shifts: Intuition + Perception (6, day) extended test.

This is the second success.


The team decides that's enough legwork and execute the mission. Because the job has a difficulty of 3 and they successfully found two key pieces of intelligence, there will be one complication during the mission, possibly a surveillance system or drone threat.

Thanks, I quite like it, streamlines the legwork a tad, which my future players may/may not like, but I will.

Guard rotations: Less likely to encounter opposition.
Guard and sensor locations: Bonus to avoid detection.
Floorplans: A clear indication of where the target is, and potential entry points and routes.
Material composition of walls, floors, windows, furniture: Indication on what force is required to make new doorways.
Location & accessibility of ducts, windows, doors, catwalks: Floorplans+
Schedules of events and personnel: Less-likely to encounter opposition, or a potential entry point or disguise.

Any information the characters gather will rest in the back of their minds. Regardless of what the players say they're doing, the characters know to use this information and won't make mistakes. As GM, you can stop the team before they trigger a known security system, inform them exactly what equipment is necessary to burn/blast through a wall, and remove guard patrols the team know to avoid.

Perception: The PC observes what exactly happens. From these observations, certain points of information can be readily deducible, there are 3 guards on the outside (Threshold 1), they change shifts every 1 hour(Threshold 2), there are 7 guards on rotation (Threshold 3).

Some Knowledge skills key off certain Perception Thresholds: The fence is probably wired with sensors (Perception Threshold 2 Knowledge Skill Security Design 1) or The way the guards patrol probably indicates the ground near the R&D facility is mined (Perception Threshold 2 Knowledge Skill Security Design 2).

I reward good planning and good roleplay accordingly. If your PC does not have any security related skills and you try to use your OOC knowledge, if the plan is great, the job goes off without a hitch, but the character doesn't get good roleplay karma.