The manon, the grid, the world of cybertechtronic reality.

Nobody is getting a pizza while the Agonarch and the decker sit alone and play the game.

An Integrated Battlefield

Putting heat aside for a moment, moving everything onto the same battlefield instantly makes asymetric tactically interesting terrain. Yes, it's a standard corporate floor plan, but if the Network Access Node is behind that door, and there's two mages sitting in the middle of a ley line on the second floor, those are tactically relevant goals. Since these objects dramatically improve the utility of those who use them, even a wild random assortment will create emergent tactical situations.

So if it's just a question of standing there shooting at targets, it becomes kind of tedious. Once you're discovered, well, you're on a clock. I'm not a particularly big fan of clocks. I think they are kind of disingenuous. After all, does 'delaying' a real clock change the time? This not a serious comment, but my skepticism about their overuse.

Heat

Heat is triggered by action, but the results of heat are almost certainly going to cause heat to raise. Let's step through the following stages.

☆☆☆☆

at zero heat, you're still in the alert/infiltration portion of the operation. It provides no modifiers or disruption.

★☆☆☆

Heat rises to one if you pop alert, or if you are identified as an outsider or seen performing a suspicious activity.

The result of this happening is a AR sensor drone is deployed at your location and security personnel are sent to your location.

★★☆☆

A gun being fired immediately raises the heat to two. If you're confronted or identified by the guards, heat rises to two. If the sensor drone is destroyed or you engage in suspicious activity visible to it, heat rises to two.

When heat rises to two stars all intruder responses are activated, and all personnel converge on your location. At this point, the intrusion is considered a crime and has a 50/50 shot of raising the heat in the sector during fallout.

Also: During this heat level, all player tests get a free bonus die.

★★★☆

Any kind of explosion or escalation in response raises the heat to three.

Peaceful resolutions are, in most cases, off the table. The entire facility is notified and attempts to stop or eliminate you. Heat will rise by one in the sector during fallout.

Also: At three stars of heat or above, the target number drops. Three on veteran, four on professional, and five on prime.

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Finally, any death or significant loss, or an engagement that doesn't end within two rounds raises the heat to four.

At this point, containment and responses have failed. High threat response teams are notified and will arrive in 2d6 rounds.

Also: All characters gain an extra action.

It's important to note, that these are not necessarily sequential. If an explosion goes off during infiltration, heat rises immediately to three.

The Solution to the 'action economy'

Finally, yeah?

I often talk about how Sinless is descriptive not prescriptive. The above resolution is adaptable to the specific unique situation of the mission. It's a guideline for the flow and pacing of the mission that's conformable. It doesn't tell you what to do, it describes different stages which are adjustable to specific implementations of operations. You don't fit the operation in the procedure, you adapt the procedure to the operation. Descriptive not prescriptive, yeah?

Assuming a general case, the above sequence is going to last, on average 11 rounds. It's possible for it to be as long as maybe 18 on the outside, and could be as short as six. The average is a little more than twice the number of turns in a miniatures game like Warhammer 40k, and it's approximately the same length of significant turns taken in tactical games like Age of Wonders to resolve a large conflict.

This is long, but "how long till the Heater Strike Force Murderface Five arrives" is an unknown quantity, and their arrival is generally noted by your sudden and violent death. It could be as short as two turns after they are notified. Suffice it to say, there's a risk/reward to this pull.

This information, although hidden, is objective. Do not rob your players of success by denying the possibility of failure.

The Tactical Flow of Play

Let's take a look at what all needs to be accomplished in those 11-ish rounds, in the context of the evergreen 'extraction' operation.

The target has to be located, secured and removed from the site safely.

The information recorded by cameras and surveillance equipment should be erased.

Optional goals need to be completed. (Erase records of the person you're extracting, steal encrypted information for the Johnson)

The network should be searched for paydata.

All of this is happening while mages cast spells, drones attack, augmented reality drones make things difficult for your deckers and riggers. Locked doors have to be hacked open.

Base movement for characters is 3" per action. Obviously this can be modified by having a grappling arm, replacing your legs with Iron Man style repulsors, or a variety of other options. This is why a charge adds variable distance, just like it would in a sand table miniature battle.

Here's where a lot of things come together to create a pretty amazing experience.

You see, the four pools of dice power both offensive and defensive actions. During conflict, this tactical phase of the game, the pools only refresh at the start of the round.

So you see, you can get extra actions with cyberware to fight in melee, or extra actions for drones using your VCR, extra actions on your deck. But it doesn't make you more powerful, just more flexible. This is why the clarity of the odds is so important. Players are bidding their efforts, their focus, towards many more actions then they have time to accomplish. And they power these actions by eliminating their resistance towards attacks that may be coming their way.

Once heat begins, they have to accomplish all the goals they have left on a very short clock. There are, very simply, too many things to do in too short a time.

So, you can see, within the context of these limits, emergent gameplay goals abound. Somebody has to do something about those two mages on the leyline right now or things are going to go to hell, and you can't move on because the decker needs to open a door, but he's pinned down by a pair of AR ICE constructs. And a robot dog with a rocket launcher on it's back just slid into the other end of the hall. And do we even have a location on the target yet?

Everyone is playing as a team, on the same board, in the same battle as time runs out.

Actions are resolved very quickly. . . the choices not so much. But the outcomes and risks of those choices are immediately clear to the players. The math is simple, and, oh man. Do I really only have four dice left in my finesse pool to dodge?

One final thing. You may have noted I started this by talking about how all life is life, and we're going to have to deal with things that are not us. Here's an open secret—there's no difference between the green and the blighted and humans. They are all just humans. Synths are indistinguishable from life and they reside in things like autocannons and drones. Humans are people working jobs. Dogs and animals are uplifted, being attacked by a dog is terrifying, but when he's also saying "I'm gonna tear your fucking throat out", I mean, what are you, some kind of cop dog killer?

Deodands hunt people, yet have speech. Is something that exists solely to hunt humans worthy of life?

I told you it wasn't an action game. It isn't just retrofuturism. It's cyberpunk.

I mean, sounds like a good time, right?