Another RPG bundle - The Sprawl

[ffutures]

This is an all-new bundle featuring the cyberpunk RPG The Sprawl, published by Ardens Ludere and using the Apocalypse Engine rules

The Sprawl

https://bundleofholding.com/quick/Sprawl

This new Sprawl Bundle presents The Sprawl, the Apocalypse Engine cyberpunk SFRPG from Ardens Ludere. The Sprawl is a game of mission-based action in a gritty neon-and-chrome future right out of William Gibson. You are deniable, disposable assets of vast multinational corporations, performing tasks those multinationals can't do – or can't be seen to do.

The tools in The Sprawl rulebook and its supplements let you run fast-playing, fiction-first cyberpunk missions Powered by the Apocalypse. Create your own Sprawl at the nexus of bleeding-edge technology and fragile humanity, or use these full-featured rules as a drop-in replacement in games like Shadowrun or Cyberpunk Red. Play hardbitten professionals balancing ruthless corporate interests. Glide through secure computer networks, crack the ICE, cut power to the alarms, slip past the auto-sentries, secure the prototype, flick chrome blades from your fingers, and slice through that corporate response team between you and the exit. Collect your fee and watch for double crosses. Next week, hit the street and do it again.

The Sprawl corebook recasts basic cyberpunk elements in Apocalypse terms:

• Principles like "Chrome everything, then make it dirty," "Make everything Corporate/Make everything personal," and "Treat your NPCs like disposable assets."
• All the appropriate playbooks: Driver, Fixer, Hacker, Hunter, Infiltrator, Killer, Pusher, Reporter, Soldier, Tech.
• A powerful range of moves like Fast Talk, Hit the Street, Mix It Up, Play Hardball (intimidate), Declare a Contact, Produce Equipment (have the gadget you need at the right time), Go Under the Knife (install cyberware), and "Acquire Agricultural Property" (that is, buy the farm – that is, die, or barely avoid dying).
• Task lists for many mission types like Destruction, Guard, Extraction, Infiltration, Smuggle/Courier, Capture, and Hunt.
• Lots of computer-hacking moves that play much faster than the Matrix rules in (say) Shadowrun.
• Even getting paid is a move: Your success roll determines if you get your money (or mark experience), attract unwanted attention, or get ambushed. You never get away clean.

The Sprawl corebook provides all the elements players need to collaboratively create an atmospheric Sprawl setting and straightforward genre missions. The setting supplement November Metric adds specific mission backdrops like Lagos, Paris, Miami, Los Angeles, the Great Lakes Megalopolis, a South Pacific arcology, Jurczyk Munition Research Laboratories, and North Korea, which, in the year 2070 after a prolonged civil war, is facing a violent corporate cold war.

And for Shadowrun players looking for alternative rules, two Touched supplements introduce magic into the setting. Touched: A Darkening Alley is set in the 1980s as magic starts to manifest in the world. And Touched Prime jumps to 2050, when nonhuman "kin groups" have appeared, and the corporate system has seamlessly absorbed magical practice.

This new offer presents the entire Sprawl line for an unbeatable bargain price. We provide each title complete in .PDF. Like all Bundle of Holding titles, these ebooks have NO DRM (Digital Restrictions Management), and our customers are entitled to move them freely among all their devices.

The total retail value of the titles in this Sprawl Bundle is US$83. Customers who pay just US$17.95 get all five complete titles in our Sprawl Collection (retail value $83) as DRM-free ebooks, including The Sprawl core rulebook (retail price $21, previously in the November 2017 Indie Cornucopia 5), plus the introductory mission The Downtown Dataheist; the campaign sourcebook November Metric (retail $18); the ten-scenario collection Mission Files (retail $19); and two magic supplements that transform your Sprawl into cyberfantasy: Touched: A Darkening Alley (retail $12) and Touched Prime (retail $13).

This is an interesting system since it offers many of the same features as Shadowrun but the magic rules are not a core part of the setting, they're an optional extra in the Touched supplements. It's also pretty cheap, and even if you don't like the Apocalypse Ending rules it should be usable for other systems. I think it's well worth a look. Having said that, I've noticed that the introductory adventure contains a lot of typographical errors, missing letters and spaces where there shouldn't be one. For example, it looks like every instance of the word "flashback" (which is used a lot in this scenario) is given as "fl shback". The core book seems OK, so this may be a garbled file rather than bad proofreading, I'll update if I find out more.


Update - introductory adventure problem (caused by something arcane involving fonts) now sorted.