Running Hot megagame report - Part 1
Jon Searle played Running Hot, designed by Paddy Rose in September. Here Jon recounts is experiences of the game. Part 2 of the report is available here.
At the start of 2020 I signed up to a new megagame called Running Hot by Patrick Rose. Then: coronavirus. Unable to run the game as an in-person event, Patrick moved it to an online format and even kept the original date. Very cool stuff.
Running Hot is billed as “pre-cyberpunk”. In the future the British government is presented with incredible economic strife and decides to copy a wildly successful “Megacorp” experiment in the USA. The experiment runs thus:
Let Corps buy land and make their own microstate with their own laws
Please don’t look too closely
Profit
This new microstate inside Britain is called Procatorion. It’s near Sheffield.
This is an account of my day, followed by some of my thoughts on Running Hot as a megagame and vague musings on online megagames. Fair warning, it’s quite long and still only covers a tiny fraction of the day’s events. All errors are my own. Let’s get to it.
EDIT: Actually there’s something else. As I was finalising this report I found out that someone else has written one (with cool pictures, no less). By pure chance that person played ‘Next’, my team leader on the day. If you’re interested I’d strongly encourage you to read them side by side.
https://thewretchedbeast.wordpress.com/2020/09/30/a-thing-i-played-running-hot-megagame/
Cycl3 of the G33Ks also ran a twitch stream for the day, which can be found here.
In the game there were runner gangs, Corp teams, freelancers, and other interested parties with competing and conflicting goals. The Corps specialised in mass media, AI, energy, genetic modification, and ‘defense’.
I played Ghost, in a gang called the Facers. With me were Vamp, Wicker, my rival Con and our leader Next. The Facers are among the cyberpunk runners of Running Hot, who would be attacking Corp facilities to advance our agenda. Operating from the Valentine Cinema we had but one goal: to give voice to the majesty of one Case Aniclog. Case was a movie star, but to us he was more than that. He was artistic perfection. An irreplaceable marvel. The Facers existed only to let people know that they needed more Case in their lives. I would often use the word ‘messianic’ to describe Case. After all, I would loudly and frequently observe, ‘Case Aniclog’ is an anagram of ‘coalescing’. Only Case could bring the human race together.
Yes. We were a cult.
Turn one: we discussed what we could do, as runners, to promote the word of Aniclog. I suggested we break into servers and plant data packets which would show that Next was a cultural expert others should listen to. Next suggested we find ways to blackmail influential people. I pitched hitting Gordon Corporation, an international news outlet. Gordon was the Corp used in the pre-game rules explanation and no-one would think of going straight back there, right? Next said we should attack their facility named ‘Gordon Corporate C’, because Case’s name began with a C. This was the level of strategic planning we would employ throughout the day.
However when we got to Gordon’s Corporate C we found there were members of another gang, the G33Ks, already there. Rather than fight, they wanted to buddy up. See, we were already ‘coalescing’. Great stuff!
The G33ks and Facers run on the Gordon facility, overseen by Facility Control Dan
Running Hot’s run mechanic mimicked that of the card game Android: Netrunner. The Corps would set up a gauntlet of Protection cards defending a facility. Runners tackled these one at a time, testing their abilities against various challenges. Failure meant Consequences. The runners might take damage, make noise in the form of Alerts, have to repeat the encounter, or the run might end abruptly.
Our first Protection encounter was a simple Security Team, which we dispatched easily. The second encounter was a lowly Keypad. The Keypad had the ‘Retry’ keyword, meaning that we could keep trying as it generated Alerts. Despite having eight people on the run we failed twice in a row, which threw us into disarray. I gather this would be the first of many humble Keypads the G33ks would struggle with over the day.
Getting through the physical Protection cards we moved into the layers of cybersecurity. As I recall we encountered a virtual Orc which beat up Con, and then met an angel. It trounced us, causing an End The Run effect. Though the rules allowed us to push past it at a cost, Control called time on the action phase and we were all forced to return home empty-handed.
We said goodbye to the G33Ks and returned to the Valentine Cinema, bloodied but armed with experience. Our first problem was the challenge difficulties, so I grabbed pen and paper and we began comparing stats. Which I kind of wish we hadn’t done as it immediately became apparent that I was, mechanically speaking, crap. My one saving grace was an Armour item card that still seemed a bit mediocre. By contrast Wicker led the field in raw competency and was immediately put in charge of all future runs. It had also become apparent that taking a huge squad of runners wasn’t such a genius strategy.
Our second problem was simply time in the action phase. We resolved to be sharper in our planning, calling our targets, and executing the mechanical steps of the run.
Turn two began, and whilst I talked to a freelancer named Reso in the Cinema’s box office the other Facers had come up with a master plan: hit Gordon Corporate C again. As soon as the action phase began we made a dash for- oh sod it people were already there.
This time they were from the Dancers gang. Dance was a vastly inferior art form to film but we agreed to run as a stack, led by Wicker. It went much better for us than on turn 1. However due to my Armour card I was rolling the one d8 I contributed separately (nb: Paddy later gave me a ruling that I was doing this wrong). It would generate a hit on 4+ rather than 5+, and failed the first seven times. To quote my notes: “All this bastard armour is doing is isolating me for ridicule”.
Despite my fumbling we got in and split the loot. The Dancers were content with getting a ‘special research dossier’ (I never did find out what that was about), while we took a fair few creds and a miscellaneous Gordon Corp blackmail file. We returned to the Cinema and Next intoned the wise words “It’s cool to do crimes”.
Turn three started. I said I’d work the blackmail evidence as I brought little to the runs. The other Facers split into pairs, trying smaller runs on more facilities. One would be on an energy Corp called Augmented Nucleotech (AN), and the other a genetics group, Genetic Equity Engineering (GEE). Around this time I became a little detached from the rest of the Facers, acting independently and then checking in at team time. Those who know me wouldn’t be surprised. This was the exact opposite of coalescing, though like any good cultist I justified it to myself out of necessity.
To work the blackmail evidence I approached Plot Control (a role wonderfully taken on by Ed Silverstone):
After a little think I arranged for Plot Control to send an “anonymous” (but not particularly subtle) message to Gordon Corporation on my behalf:
I returned to the Cinema. The other Facers had had a rough turn. Only one of their runs was a success but time was called on the action phase and they had to leave empty-handed. We had picked up a rumour from the other, failed, run: somewhere in Proctarion there was a lump of amber with Case’s DNA in it, along with one of Case’s leather jackets. Despite a bad turn the Facers were excited.
Next decided that Gordon was somehow behind using Case’s DNA. I have no idea why they thought that as opposed to GEE, the genetics specialists. None of us questioned it.
Additionally, we saw that we were trailing in the Notoriety rankings. Notoriety was an established mechanic, based on who was saying what. Though it had yet to come up, we figured we should at least say “Hi” to the press.
Okay, being at half the notoriety of the Gruffsters (a bunch of beer-swilling thugs who didn't understand culture) was mildly concerning
So at the start of turn four Next went to talk to the Runner press, an outlet called Th3 Undergr0und, whilst I went to talk to the boring and respectable Business Times. We’d agreed to give the same story- Gordon were profiteers looking to play god with Case’s DNA. Our conversations went a little differently:
Me, having a perfectly civil conversation with the Business Times
Next, using their time with Th3 Undergr0und to declare war on Gordon Corporation
So Next had declared war. Cool. To quote Next, they’d said “we’ll crush Gordon”, and “anyone who has stock in Gordon better sell it now”.
Back in the Cinema, I saw a Trade Envoy from Pactial over in the US loitering in our box office. I fulfilled my now de facto role of secretary and went down to talk. The Envoy wanted us to lay off Gordon. I said we would never do this whilst Gordon perverted the legacy of the one person who could surely bring humanity together. We haggled, and after some less-than-subtle nudging the Envoy suggested that maybe Pacital could have Next recognised as a cultural leader in Proctarion. Why yes, what an excellent idea.
However the Facers agreed we’d be running on Gordon until the Envoy had something concrete. The gang was together for this run and it went well, apart from my armour continuing to mark me out as pathetic. We broke in, took creds, and performed a full recon of all of Gordon’s other facilities. Hopefully we would find out where they held Case’s amber (if they had it). There were snafus though. Later we discovered that we’d assigned ourselves far more money than we had actually taken. We’d already spent some of the creds so deducted an equal amount from across the team. The other snafu was that we didn’t get the recon information until two turns later, and we then didn’t know if it was accurate at that time. No hard feelings though- Megagames are tricky beasts to wrangle, and we had enough on that this didn’t slow our roll.
More importantly, whilst we were running I’d noticed that Th3 Undergr0und had made a bit of a mistake when writing up Next’s story to them:
HOW DARE YOU
Though almost certainly an innocent mistake, this was a prime opportunity to spout fervour and make news in the name of Aniclog. Whilst waiting to talk to Th3 Undergr0und I met CYCL3 from the G33Ks. They were there to promote their gang, rather than just berate the press. How pedestrian.
Attacking the press is a pretty dumb move. However I didn’t feel like I was playing a very smart game, and it seemed suitably fanatical. Plus it sounded like the kind of behaviour that might grant Notoriety (looking back I’m 90% sure the Notoriety mechanic absolutely did not work like that). So I told Th3 Undergr0und to publish a retraction, an apology, and get it right in the future, or I’d do violent and thuggish things with their head.
I’m fairly certain this had no positive effect.
We gathered back in the Cinema on a high. We’d heard rumours that one or more Facers was a Corp mole. Or sympathiser. Or agitator. It varied. This was concerning, not because of any underlying truth but because at that point I had been the only Facer to be alone for any length of time.
Out of character it was easy to reason away these allegations. No-one (bar me) had been alone for long, and if a Corp wanted to plant an effective mole they could do much better than in the middle of a load of movie fanatics. In character I could raise no such observations. So I went the other way and used the rumours as fuel for fanaticism, kicking up the rhetoric. I said that any mole in our ranks had better leave right now as if I caught them I’d burn them alive in a wickerman covered in old film reel.
The rumours were wild, though
Con said the rumours were a distraction tactic to cause infighting. True, but I didn’t feel like walking back on my Wickerman speech. Con was my rival, and was trying to gloss over the prospect of a mole. When life gives you lemons, talk to Plot Control. I slung a message and some spare creds to investigate Con and was informed that he was legit. Oh well.
These rumours lasted all day, though never seemed to hurt us (it might have kept our notoriety down?). However they did open several doors- people were coming to the Valentine Cinema to talk to us, people we wouldn’t have talked to otherwise. Corporate intrigue was an area of the game we’d not taken part in until then, so the players already engaged in it wanted to meet the new kid on the block. The box office became busy, with conversations spilling out into the concessions area and parking lot.
I found myself talking with the CEO of GEE. They wanted us to hit Gordon, saying that Gordon had something of Case’s. They said “there’s something special about [Case]” to which I replied well obviously there is, he’s the messiah who will coalesce the fractured spirit of humanity. All credit to the CEO for not walking off at this point. They pushed on: there was something special about Case’s DNA. If we could hand artefacts from Case’s life over to GEE, GEE could work miracles with it. “We could have little bits of Case Aniclog in all of us” was the pitch. After a bit more haggling and nudging the CEO floated that maybe Next could advise the Corp council on cultural matters? Why yes, what an excellent idea.
In the short term I agreed we’d hit Gordon for an upfront fee, and then get back to GEE if we found anything.
The Facers talked this over in the back office. Next took this as proof that Gordon were Officially The Worst. We considered possibilities: we could bring Case back to the screen. We could cast Cases to act in every role. We could have Case’s DNA in all of us. For my part I branded a lot of this as heresy. Thinking that we could control the legacy of Case was an act of hubris.
Starting turn five we were keen to get Case’s amber, but chose to wait on the results of our reconnaissance. The Pacital Trade Envoy had come back, again offering to help make Next a ‘minister of culture’ if we laid off Gordon. So we hit McCullough Calibrated Mechanical as something to do. I’m not wholly sure if I was on this run, as most of my notes for the turn read “SO MUCH TO DO FILM REEL WICKERMAN”. The game was in full swing.
Towards the end of the turn the Gordon team responded to my blackmail, though not in the way I’d hoped:
(Credit to the Business Times for a pretty cool headline there)
I was kind of miffed that my blackmail might be for nought, so got in touch with Plot Control:
I paused, then decided to cover my tracks with a misdirect. So I sent Plot the following, hoping that someone else would pick up and use the material:
GEE seemed to have a natural rivalry with Gordon. I included AN as a backup. The last line was a shameless and feeble attempt to make it seem like the message was coming from the Gruffsters, who operated out of a pub. I regret nothing.
Shortly afterwards I saw the following in the Job Postings channel, where Corps could put out work for Runners to pick up:
Hahahaha oh no I’m in trouble.
Turn six began and I found myself talking to Scorer from the Gruffsters who said that a) Con was a GEE mole and b) I was the most trustworthy Facer. I knew both of these to be untrue. Then Next dropped into the channel as Scorer was pushing a really strong anti-corp message. Next off-handedly said ‘well I did just declare war on the [Proctarion] council’, which was news to me.
I saw this much later. Next and I took... different… paths
Next’s rhetoric did better with Scorer than my own, so I sat back as they discussed the future of Proctarion. I occasionally chipped in to direct the conversation towards the Facers getting something out of it. Though I didn’t record the specifics this would mark the third conversation to have a verbal agreement that perhaps Next could sit on some kind of cultural steering committee? Why yes, what an excellent idea.
Despite not having the results from the turn four recon we hit Gordon again, probably on reflex. I tagged along. I’m glad, because it was the first time I met a Corp player overseeing a facility rather than Control. It meant the run would be harder and more dangerous, and moreover we could actually talk to the opposition. From the start we offered to go away if they could get us Case’s DNA. Or Case posters. Or Case mugs.
And so it was that whilst the run was a success, the conversation I had on the way out was the real prize...
That was part one of Jon Searle’s Running Hot megagame report. Check part two here, focussing on Jon’s shenanigans and his thoughts about the game and online format.
If you’d like to see your megagame report appear here, let us know! In the meantime, you can tell us what your thoughts were on Running Hot (or any other megagame) on our Facebook group.