Re: Cutting Up
I like the parts in movies where the heroes are breaking into a secured facility with aerosol fogs, and bunji cords, and sliding on cables from the nearest skyscraper as their tools. However, this is very hard to do in a roleplaying game.
One way to look at it is 'dungeoncrawling for thieves' but in a modern world. Because the typical infiltration team is desperately trying to avoid contact, and so most of the heroes would in a D20 sense be primarily Rogues.
One other part of the problem is that most players don't know enough about infiltration for them to plan it out, and perhaps, its partially a lack of knowledge on the GM's part too as he might not know enough to be reasonably predictable. As the saying goes 'the world's best swordsman has nothing to fear from the second best swordsman; it is the amateur he has to fear.' This is because the amateur might do something crazy.
I tried to do this infiltration somewhat with Alexis in her 'Why Spy?' world, and it did work to a degree.
One problem is that you don't want to just feed the player lines, and then have him spit them back at you. "You're facing a twenty yard abyss between skyscrapers, remember you have a crossbow with a trailing cable..." You could simply say 'you have whatever might be reasonable for you to have', and that could work. I do that in my D20 games for player backpacks. Instead of making the player list their frying pan, and different types of spices, I simply give them a "Basic Adventurer's Backpack", and if the item they request is something slightly unusual, I roll for it. If its way unusual, I say no. Way unusual items they have to write down themselves when they are getting outfitted. However, some players might need more help, and perhaps that takes away from the thrill of pre-planning, of being that perfect chessmaster genius who foresaw the traps, and prepared for them.
Perhaps the way to do it is to give the player a little help, and ground the GM in a shared consensus....give the player a list of the highly likely situations he might run into. And then he prepares the tools for what situations he likes.
This is reasonable as the typical counter-security guy knows the likely moves and counter-moves of the typical security guy. Your real life infiltrator has a mental encyclopedia filled with types of pressure plates, police reaction times, and some several dozen other bits of information.
I guess that either a Basic Backpack, or a List of Likely Situations could work.
I haven't played very many cyberpunk games, so perhaps I speak from ignorance, but it seems to me that RPG's are lacking in the particular area of Super Cool Infiltration.
Thoughts?
