Number of players: 3
System: Cypher System
Genre: Science Fiction, Noir Investigation
Setting: The Revel from The Stars Are Fire
Campaign Length: One-shot adventure, 1 Session, 5 hours
Adventure Hook: Lucy LaRue, a daughter of Ibis CEO Victor Larue, has gone missing on Luna One, and a kidnapping is suspected. There has been growing unrest within the anti-AI faction “Neural Dissent”, and Lucy was last seen associating with one of their members. The PCs have been assigned the case.
Characters: An undercover cop in the Luna One peacekeeping force (Masan Vale), a hacker/mechanic Criminal Informant from Luna One (Argent), and a Private Security professional from Ibis (Major Elwood Major).
Scenes: Alleyway shootout, Case briefing in Tranquility Tower, Drinks and Information at the Shallow Crater, Making a deal with a smuggler, Neural Dissent recruiting meeting, Final showdown at the Safehouse
Alleyway Shootout
Wanting to open with a Strong Start, and not a relatively boring infodump, I had the group sent to pick up some rowdy Neural Dissenters for questioning. While lethal force was not authorized, Major Major used her flechette pistol to take out the legs of one thug. A solid GM Intrusion led to a hostage situation with a civilian, but Masan was able to de-escalate. Of the four thugs, the group was able to arrest 3, with 1 fleeing.
Notes: The pre-planned GM Intrusion of having a busboy enter the alley to toss out trash, and become a hostage, was a huge success. It really amped up the tension and broke through the back-and-forth of the combat. We did not expect anyone to use their flechette pistol so soon, this was meant to be a fistfight – stunsticks at the very most!
Case Briefing
A pretty standard infodump scene. The players did a good job finding some character quirks and gathering info.
Drinks at the Shallow Crater
The group skipped our expected initial clue repository altogether! While they were advised to talk to Lucy’s ex-boyfriend in the “country club” dome, the characters were not comfortable in that setting and chose to look for information directly from Neural Dissent. We had to do a bit of scrambling here, but our prep notes were simple enough that moving clues around was not a big deal. The big reveals here were that Lucy had another paramour, a Neural Dissent member, but that Lucy had recently decided to head off-world and out-system – and bluntly left the paramour behind. Much sympathy from the players here for this jilted lover, but also some confusion – was this really a kidnapping?
A random GM Intrusion here led to a patron mistaking one of the PCs for someone else! In a memorable scene, the tough NPC reacted badly to confrontation, but in a show of bravado, offered for Major Major to take the first shot. Nearly knocking out the NPC, the party exits quickly before more chaos could ensue.
Making a deal with a smuggler
The group engages with a known smuggler to see what it would take to get a person off-world. After some fast talking – and fast hacking a trusted smuggler profile on the dark web while promising to smuggle goods back to the Ibis spiral – the group gets a ticket and the address of a safe house.
Neural Dissent meeting
The crew sits in on a dissident meeting, expecting to hear something about a “big operation” or news about how the group is “fighting back” – really any reference to them kidnapping an Ibis heir. But – nothing. It’s mostly empty rhetoric, burnt coffee and stale donuts. These aren’t kidnappers, they’re barely able to put together a meeting. This isn’t a kidnapping, and Neural Dissent isn’t even involved! The team rushes to the safehouse…
Confrontation at the safehouse
The team arrives, speaks the passphrase and is ushered into a warehouse to wait for the spaceport to re-open. Lucy is in the back of the warehouse, with 4 professional toughs guarding her. Argent hacks the security system to cause the back door to lock, and 1 tough heads up front to try and figure out the problem. Argent locks that door too. Major Major considers making a ruckus as a distraction, but just before that happens, Masan offers up a cigarette, defusing the growing tension. Argent is able to capture the attention of Lucy, leading to conversation…and revelation
Lucy just doesn’t want to be ruled by AI, and wants to go to a colony world and start anew, from the ground up. She hates living on the moon, and doesn’t want anything to do with Ibis or its AI development goals. Finally, Major Major pipes up and says, “That’s all fine then – just call Daddy and tell him you’re safe.” Immediately everyone stands up, guns drawn in a three-way standoff. But once it’s clear that Major Major’s goal was to find Lucy, not drag her back home, cooler heads prevail.
Lucy calls Daddy and tells him she’s fine, just going on a vacation for a while. The party has solved the non-kidnapping, and considers anything left between Lucy and CEO LaRue to be family business.
So ends our one-shot adventure, titled “Lucy Lucy LaRue, Where Are You?”
Lessons learned:
Grateful our prep notes were open-ended enough to move things around when the party went AWOL from the expected path. Always expect the unexpected.
The party was VERY upset that they didn’t get to personally interrogate the thugs from the opening scene. Argent even wanted to hack the cameras in the interrogation room so that they could get the info immediately.
As usual, pretty much any plot hole in the story that appears, the players will try to drive a truck through it. This is the most important part of being a GM – thinking quickly!
Of these 3 players, only 1 had ever played Cypher before and for the other two, it was their first time.
The biggest complaint about the system was how psychologically hard it was to use pool points for Effort, especially if the roll still failed. But we discussed that, as they tier up, that becomes less of an issue.
The biggest compliment to the system was its ease of storytelling, even for the players. These D&D 5e veterans were thrilled that it was so easy to just “do stuff”. Definitely a point in favor of fewer character rules, comparatively.
Best of all really, everyone just had a lot of fun, the game stayed loose and it was a blast.
Busy Wyvern 