As a roleplaying game, the Syndicate can be used for one-shot scenarios as well as for long-time campaigns. This chapter concentrates mainly on campaign ideas, and ideas and examples for independent or campaign scenarios.

This chapter also has some tips and information for game masters on how to handle various situations in the game, including guidelines on how to handle free-flow combat system.

High-Tech Campaigns

The generic problem of high-technology campaigns (and games) is to make them realistic but still playable. When all kind of high-tech systems are available it becomes very hard to do any illegal activities so common in normal near-future roleplaying games. How to realistically fight someone with so advanced systems like corporations do have? This is the basic problem that threatens the entire gaming world.

There are various solutions to this problem:

• Things could happen in locations without the latest high-tech systems. Like some Third-World country or a city which was just recently bombed by terrorists
• Some other corporation or entity can provide support to get past high-technology security systems, like cut the power to entire building. These things can possibly done by the player characters, too, but they rarely have contacts and skills for all occassions
• Player characters are in constant move. Each mission takes only some minutes and after that, thye completely leave the area and country. They may requiere some help in that.

These problems also give some restrictions to campaign settings which should be taken into account when planning the campaign.

Campaign Settings

Independent Mercenaries

The characters are independent professionals or just loners, who do various tasks offered or invented by characters themselves. They can be journalists, street fighters, hit men or just rock singers. The campaign is usually set to a certain country or city, and does not have any big effects on the world.

This is the traditional Syndicate campaign. It gives the greatest number of selections and choices to the players, but can have some problems, mainly with motivation and work.

Specialists for Hire

Characters are free specialists in neutral battleground, where several companies battle for political influence. Suitable places are countries and areas which have not yet fallen into total corporate control. Characters have contacts to various people arranging them jobs, to steal stuff, to hunt and to guard important people. Their loyalty is bought with money, and the ally of the previous day can be the enemy on the next day.

Truth Fighters

The world is corrupt, corporations and govenrments lie to us. The only way to general public to see the light is to dig the truth out and tell it to everyone. Characters are mainly media reporters, but can also be rock stars or agents of some companies trying to defame other corporations.

Eco-Guerillas

Characters are fighting against global companies, nature exploitation and pollution. Their main weapon is the truth, using real-time sattellite links and pirate channels to send real information what is happening in 3rd world or in corporate mine. Sabotage, attentions and assasinations are also their ways to slow down the globalization.

Professional Agents

The characters are working for some corporation, police, government or other organization, which pays their fees, provides equipment and expects the job to get done. The characters should not have any motivation problems, and depending on the campaign. they could travel all around the world, or just sit in the same city for the entire campaign.

For a campaign like this, all player characters usually have agent background option, to reflect the backup from the organization they work for.

Corporate Pacific

Pacific Ocean is the major area for corporate seaweed production and reserach, and especially for deep sea exploration. There are hundreds of small islands, and some of them are owned or rented by bigger corporations, creating their own little nations therein. The characters are corporate agents either hired by the other companies, doing espionage and sabotage, or hired by the local company, hunting opposing agents.

Special Forces

Characters are SWAT forces of the near-future. Their job is as assigned by their headquarters, like freeing hostages, stopping terrorists and guarding important persons.

Covert Forces

Characters are secret agents of some intelligence agency like European security forces. Their job is to do unauthorized illegal actions in own or other countries, mainly assasinations, sabotage and sabotage. They have hidden support amoing officials and unknown resources behind them.

Corporate Puppets

All, or at least most, player characters are corporate creations, made in laboratories to act as special agents. They may not be happy or they could discover special secrets of the corporation and want to get out. The problem is that they most probably have all kind of built-in systems to prevent that.

For apparent reasons, most characters should have corporate project disadvantage. Most of the campaign detailed previously can include corporate projects, but their motivation is a bit different.

Street People

Living in the gangland, suburbs or in the shadows of the gigantic corporate skyscrapers is the everyday of the character. They life is a daily struggle with street gangs, and they are just making their living in the midst of low-life, or maybe they are trying to get away, to find a better place in the world. They are now and then hired by corporate agents to do shitwork, like sabotage or brutal attacks, but nothing too fancy.

When playing a campaign like this, 20cp maybe a bit too much, and GM should check out a bit what he is giving to players. On the other hand, most of the characters should have Local Knowledge background. Extra limitations can be given to choice of initial equipment and any augmentations and corporate influence must be double-checked with gamemaster.

Street Kings

Characters are leading their own gang, trying to make it bigger and more powerful, controlling the city portion they are interested in. They live for thrills and most important things in the life are action, joy and style.

Rural Wanderers

The characters are brigands, mercenaries or other weirdos moving across the barred landscape of the devastated third nations or other parts of the world in the state of anarchy. Quite probably they have never seen any cyberware, nor functional caseless automatic rifle.

This is not an ideal campaign for Syndicate. I recommend using some external guide for rural adventures, like Taiga.

Campaign Flavors

Quite Realistic

This is the classic Syndicate style, where things are quite realistic. Normal physical laws are honoured, and things are not exaggerated too much. Enemies act quite reasonably, and the world is logical.

Hong Kong

As Quite Realistic, but ammunition is quite limitless. Clips have to be changed very rarely, unless the character is Ammo Hog (see 3.6.2), and most people can do Kung Fu, doing back flips while shooting (and still hit something)

Very Cinematic

Can be as Hong Kong, but the main points are, that every place has extra gasoline, bullet hits make the target fly, and the enemies have stupid, enormous plans to destroy the entire world or at least one significant country.

Opposition

The characters are not the center of the world, and even when they are strong, there are always stronger ones: do not mess with the Big Ones. Most organizations should have dozens of armed guards, and bigger ones can have attack helicopters, armed hitmen and cyber killers at their disposal. Make scenarios dangerous, tasking but still possible. And success does not always mean blowing up the entire opposition.

When arming up the opposition, it is a good idea to think for a moment, how would a certified law agency set up things. They would most probably have a PGS and a homer (tracking bug) in each of their guns, so characters must do some engineering before using those guns. And gun ballistics firing patters are stored into their data banks, so if you ever use that gun, it can be tracked down.

And when talking about the computer systems, we do not recommend using Hollywood stylish 'a 5 year old kid can guess the password' system, but instead closed and sealed systems within corporate system, requiring a real expert to do the job, usually with some confidental data obtained via stealing or spying. And now, there is not usually a central computer which can be used to control everything from elevators to lightning and temperature.

Also remember that corporations might have access to local telephone systems and they can locate any GTS which is on-line. Or control some satellite and use it to take quite accurate pictures.

So, any un-noticed missions are a bit problematic. Uusually a man inside (a mole) is needed, power cut off or some other very drastic measures are needed to avoid security systems. Or perhaps the mission happens somewhere no normal technology networks are available.

If and when the characters assault a corporate station, remember that corporate stealth combat helicopters or vectored thrusters arrive in 5-15 minutes, depending on location. So, be quick or be dead. And you better have some ways to conceal your identity, beforehand or afterwards.

And if, or better yet, when the characters fail, do not let them get away too easily. They must have hidden their tracks very well, or must do much work afterwards. And if they do not, waste them. Otherwise our world isn't very logical if it is easy to get away with almost anything.

Sample People

Here is a selection of sample opposition of the dark future. Any secondary, free or professional non-fighting skills are left out, they can be invented when needed to.

Private Guard Strength +1 Gun-1 Melee-1 Combat-1 Car-1 Colt Viper H&K TN4 Kevlar Vest GTS This is a typical employee of a private security services. Standard police or mob member use similar statistics.

Street Biker Showoff, drug addiction and/or violent Melee-1 Combat-1 Bike-2 Ingram MAC-17 Synth-Leather clothing Knife Cheap or stolen street bike A young gangster from a street gang. Drives around with (stolen) bike and steals property, fights with other gangs and uses drugs.

Corporate Agent Strength +1 Health +1 Awareness +1 Gun-2 Melee-1 Combat-2 Computer-1 Headset phone Sectek Piranha Covert sm Hollow point 10mm ammo HUD Sunglasses Ultrafiber black suit Hi-tech electronics A professional corporate agent, never working alone. They usually use black armored cars, have shock-troop backup and license to carry guns and send ordinary polices away.

AL Prototype Strength +4 Health n/a Agility -1 Awareness +1 Social -2 Gun-2 Combat-3 Armor structure 4/4 All kind of light and sound filters Memory, cameras, transmitters etc. This is a sample prototype of an artificial creation. It has a synth-skin covering a durable metal skeleton with immense strength and durability. It is fitted with brains of an ex-corporate worker. It's worth millions of corporate credits and maintenance cost is astronomic.

Security Arnament

As violent conflicts are a common phenomenon of the modern world, a short glimpse to the equipment carried by the various security groups is in place. For typical police and guard work, a pistol (10mm for sufficient stopping power) and/or shotgun is in place. For special uses, SMGs or even assault rifles are used. Body armor is common but is often a question of funding, and thus standard kevlar is usually adequate. Other equipment usually consists of some kind of communication tool like headset radio and taser/stunner system. Guards usually also have some kind of locator system integrated to their clothing and PGS is standard issue.

However, when the troops are used for various more threatening conflict situations, they are usually equipped with backup weapons to handle possible renegade robots or heavily armored opposition (augmentations are still so rare that they are not taken into account in normal cases). Typical backup weapons are grenade guns or shotguns with sabot ammunition or possibly even 20mm cannons. Some well equipped units can have pulse grenades and usually at least one squad member is expert security systems hacker.

Robots

With advanced intelligent systems and new battery techologies, various robots are created for maintenance, construction and security uses. Robots are especially used where human body is unsuitable or requires a special life support system, or where remote control systems are unreliable or too small. Typical uses are cargo freighters, combat aircrafts, deep sea exploration systems and power plant maintenance systems.

Robots are also used in ground level security and military uses, and various combat robots with wheels, tracks or legs appear in combat or high security zones. These robots usually have very durable armor and heavy fire power. Some of them include remote control possibilities but some do not to prevent any hackers from controlling the robot force.

Syndicate Combat

1. Use some preferred combat system from other RPG, board game or use a computer game to simulate the combat
2. Try to cope with it, with all the information you know about combat and firefights

The problem with freeform combat systems is, according to most objections I have heard of, that it is not well defined, fair and equal, like same situation twice may result in different judgements. And it is completely under judgement of the GM, who decides everything, like there is no random factor in combat.

Well, partially true. But first of all, if fear of unfairness is your major concern, you won't be using the RIP system at the first place, right? And in combat there are so many factories that result are never alike, plus combatants never know the exact values of their advisory. The problem may arise when two player characters are fighting each other, but that is not a very common situation and then you can just put players to roll dice etc. like usually.

But now that you have encouraged to give a try to freeform combat, how it is done? Here are some guidelines to do it:

• No combat rounds. Ask from player what does his character do when character's last action is finished, he notices something new or otherwise the world interacts with him.
• Likewise players should be allowed to interrupt any 'timeflow' with stating their action (warning: this can be a bit unfair to some slower players, so if you like them, you might want to ask now and then from all players, if they do anything about the situation. I do not.)
• To keep things a bit organized, you might want to handle things with sequent actions, like each player one by one and then handling any NPCs, and then starting all again, possibly skipping those who initiated a longer action
• One good way to handle firing (in a bit cinematic campaigns) from the opposition is that players are hit on d6 roll of 6 as long as they are moving or have something in between themselves and the shooters.

Combat is not fair. Nor should Syndicate combat be.

Computer Systems

Many people in 20th century thought that all serious computer work will be done in virtual reality in near future. They were wrong.

Virtual reality is used to make things easier for humans, to abstract data things and make it possible to do various basic tasks without knowing too much about computer systems. But for real hackers it is slow, restricted and does not show everything. Think it as an advanced WWW or file browser system.

This does not mean that heavy duty computer people do not use it - they do, but not for everything. In real work, they combine virtual reality file and thread handling with old fashioned visual output. This of course depends on project they are working at, as they usually need to work on one level lower than the targeted system.

Anyway, cybersurfing it is not an adventure moving in a speed of light and thought. When executing things, human brain always loses to computer speed. When selecting new things, it loses. But human brain can adapt, learn (well, intelligent systems can, too) and is better to think out new ways to handle the situation, to improvise. Thus, the computer skill reflects the character's general knowledge about computer systems, software, hardware, networking, intelligent systems etc. - with higher skill levels the character can think out more solutions and new ideas, or faster. Then it is only a matter of thought to execute these new ideas.

So, when things start to happen, they usually happen immediately, when compared to real world. What does take time and is noticed in real world are:

• Breaking into systems, when brute force processes try to break security codes and defense processes
• Lagged and slow connection. Yes, you still have line breaks, slow bandwidth and things like that in near-future. Do not even hope that your VirtuaScape is fast as a thought. And wireless systems have problems with radio frequences, jamming and range.
• When a new decision or plan must be made. Think think think and time goes by.

And now, computer hacking should not ever take major portion of game time. The hacker just states what he tries to do, possible some dice are rolled and GM should return to him when something happens, like the action is successful or something unexpected happens. And because more sensitive corporate systems are usually sealed off or have just too tight firewalls, the hacker must physically enter the area and tap to computer therein. Or send someone to do that for him and put up a wireless modem, which then broadcasts signal which can be tracked down. But wireless modem is much slower than hardlined terminal.

Seeking data: especially this should not take any game time, just determine some time and possibly roll the dice and give results. Remember that information overflow is the real problem, and the real expert is needed to find the exact and wanted information.

Tapping optical fibers: in theory, tapping an optical fiber is very simple: just cut a small slice into it and start to listen. The original net will not even notice that. However, things in practise are not that simple because of course the corporations know that it is so simple. So fibers are behind corporate walls, hidden in underground tubes or are made of some special expensive material. Or they are put into a sealed pipe with nerve gas. Or there is a small current in the pipe and if it is broken just for a millisecond, an alarm starts. So, certain precaution is needed when trying to tap into corporate system.

Brain frying: no, there exits no black ice to fry your brain. Of course a too strong current can fry your brain. And in theory it is possible to create programs that put brains into comatose or catanotic state. However, they only work if the subject is using wetware systems to get emotional feedback from system, and hackers would only do that to get some kickbacks, but that's quite rare when hacking really dangerous systems - but if you need the extra boost you might get...

However, if a character is running wetware recordings, he is just asking for trouble unless he checks out the recording beforehand. However, not all hidden traps are noticied by checking programs. Or the wetware might be run against character when he is held captive. Such devious programs include hidden triggers like character falling into comatose when he sees too much green color, or is forced to shoot someone when he sees him. Hopefully these programs are very hard to tailor and their working percentage is even less than change for the victim to get permanent brain damage.