A trope, a seed
Back in the 90s, my GM ran a “Thieve’s guild” adventure for D&D. You know the drill: something’s going on in town, the PCs track a trail and find a secret entrance to a dungeon, they realize there’s a thieves’ guild creating the trouble, they deal with it and get the treasure. Then I found a few fan-written “thieve’s guild” but had no resemblance to my friend’s, just the main concept. Years later, while trying to wrap my head aroung Mage, I asked a friend what would be the “thieve’s guild” equivalent for Mage (he said it was “defend a node”). I now call these “seeds”, or maybe tropes (but I wouldn’t call them that for a long while).
The milk run
Fast-forward to just a few years ago… I had discovered Shadowrun and felt dry with ideas for getting started. I googled for a while and came up with a reddit post recommending a “Milk run”. Basically, have the crew tasked with snatching something from someone (the post suggests swapping briefcases), most likely a courier, and then just let them see how they go about it.
Perhaps you have to let them figure out how to track the mark or maybe give them a nudge. They get to decide if they want to do it stealthily or forcefully. Maybe the police arrives. Maybe the courier is armed and trained. And of course, maybe the patron never intended to pay them after delivery anyway.
Do you have any go-to seeds you like to use for SciFi games?
Image by ttrpg.network/u/roflo1, based on milk in a bottle, Matt Bango, CC0 and Bol, Petit déjeuner, Muesli.
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I want to give this more thought because this is an interesting idea.
Off the top of my head: extraction. The players are told a location and time window, and told they need to get the thing from there to a safe location.
Usually this means getting into an office building, finding the server room, defeating the IC, dealing with any security / police they alerted, and then getting out with a flash drive.
There’s room for social content. They can talk their way through a lot of conflicts here
They can also play it like a dungeon crawl. Just go in hot and get out before an organized response hits.
They can lean into planning and heist stuff if they’re into that. Find staff schedules, maps , HVAC, that kind of stuff.
You can also add a twist like “the thing you’re extracting is actually a person, and they don’t want to leave”. Or the thing is super dangerous: vials of a superflu. Radioactive stuff.
They also may have been set up. Maybe they’re a distraction for the real job, and they weren’t expected to make it.
If you have the right players and genre you can add more twists by giving them secondary, possibly contradictory goals. One player is secretly contracted to kill the target, not extract them. One player knows where there’s valuable data that’s not related to this job, but they’re the hacker: everyone will believe them if they say they need to hack a little longer, right?
Lots of ideas.
I think a good sci-fi campaign can always benefit from a Heist. Like a train heist or something.
The flip side, which is also fun, the convoy escort role. The crew is part of a convoy and must defend it from marauders.
And the Seven Samurai is a classic stationary version of the above that has been adapted time and again for sci-fi.
