The Department of Fabricant Management - First Mission

The Department is a game that I like to describe as "Bladerunner: The Skirmish Game".  You play (alone or with friends) special detectives in the Department of Fabricant Management.  Your job is to hunt down renegade fabricants (ie "replicants" or "androids").  You can just play any random mission, but the fun is in the campaign rules.

...of Fabricant Management

In a campaign, you've got a "Prime Suspect", who is the boss monster of the game, and his goals and personality tweak the nature of the enemies you face.  In the campaign I'm starting, the Prime Suspect is "Nick", an anti-human terrorist cell leader.

Prime Suspect: Nick (Anti-Human Terrorist Cell Leader)
• +1D difficulty to determine Humanity
• When a fabricant or unknown suspect is killed, roll a d6.  On a 5+, he explodes!

And then there's the resource management.  You know the department doesn't have endless money to spend on your investigation.  You start out with 100 Budget, and you have to use that to fund missions.  My first mission cost 5 Budget.  I could have also spent some of my Budget on better weapons, or maybe Warrants or the like, but I didn't think I needed them and wanted to start simple.

You also have Internal Affairs Points.  When you abuse your power, endanger innocents, or just interrogate a suspect too vigorously, you can earn IA points.  At the end of the mission, you roll to see what happens, from a stern warning, to losing Budget, to getting fired!

Your goal is to collect evidence, which you will spend to "buy" the mission to take on the Prime Suspect.  However, there are several different types that you'll need, and you might have to spend some to buy other missions that offer different kinds of evidence.

You get to build your character, of course.  Mine, "Agent M", is a veteran of the DFM, trained as an investigator and working in the Enforcement Division.  He's a "By the Books" sort, and that trait lets him play down some of his IA points.

Bureaucracy for the win!

My first mission was "Grass the Neighborhood".  I'm not familiar with the phrase, but I imagine it's like "canvas the neighborhood", that is, go out and talk to people.

There are four suspects on the table, two of them are hidden in crowds.  There are probably other people milling about, too, but they're just passing through or something, and aren't represented on the table.  The models are all armed, but that's just what I had.  The suspects in the actual game are unarmed.  Also, despite the green skin and shambling gait, I can assure you that those are crowds of normal citizens and not zombies at all. :P

That's Agent M over on the left.

Round 1:

Agent M starts out "hidden", even though he's out in the open.  There are, after all, bits of imaginary terrain that we can't see, plus, the suspects don't know what he looks like or that he's even after them.
The rules say to make Notice checks for the Minor Suspects, but also says Minor Suspects can't test skills that they don't have (like Notice).  I have decided that they have 1 in the Notice skill, then.
There's a small table to roll on, a "subroutine", that decides how the NPCs react.  I need to roll for them, and they act first each round.

Two suspects "Scan for the Fuzz", but don't have line of sight.
One takes a "Quick Look Around", changing facing.
One moves d3 centimeters in a random direction.

Doop-de-doo... Just wandering around the neighborhood.

Agent M runs toward the nearest suspect, going around the crowd to avoid being slowed.  Since it's just Agent M by himself, he always goes first (after the NPCs) and thus always has "the Edge" (+2D to all of his actions that turn).  He tests Running, needing 4+, and gets 3, 4, 5, 5.  Three successes adds three cm to his move of 6.  Not far enough.

Round 2:

The suspects mill about.

Agent M runs again, scoring two successes.  This is enough to reach the first suspect, but at 3cm out, an Event is triggered (per the mission).
The suspect rabbits!  What are the odds? (1 in 6, actually.)  Luckily, he's not a gang member, and his friends don't come after M.  The suspect makes a Running test, and get 1, 2, and 6, but a six counts twice giving him (6cm + 2) 8cm of movement.

Agent M finishes his move and ends his turn.

Out of the way, people!

Round 3:

One of the suspects tries to Notice Agent M on the street, but fails the Notice vs. Reaction test.
The fleeing suspect keeps running for the table edge, getting another 8cm this time.

Agent M spends all of his Fate (+4D) to boost his Running roll, but only gets five successes, moving him 11cm.  Still not close enough.

The book says your Fate equals your Logic, but it also says it equals your Resolve.  I went with Resolve, because more Fate is more interesting.

Pant! Dont... make... gasp!  me... chase you!

Round 4:

Fate refreshes every turn, so that happens.

One of the suspects tries to Notice M running through the street, but fails to recognize him as a threat.
Another moves out of the crowd it had been hiding in.  That will makes things easier later.
The one Agent M has been chasing stops to look behind him, and totally spots M.  (He beat 7D with 3D!  Unlikely!)

Not sure he can reach the suspect in time, Agent M keeps running... right into him!
This guy hasn't done anything wrong, and is probably human, so Agent M just tries to apprehend him with a grapple roll.
Prowess + Grapple + The Edge + Charging + All of his Fate gives M 10 dice, and he rolls a bunch of 6s, for 8 successes.
The suspect gets 3 successes on 4 dice, and is apprehended.
M cuffs him and leaves him for questioning back at the station.

You have the right to shut up!  Make me run, will you?

Round 5:

Fate refreshes, but you already knew that.

One suspect scans for trouble, but Agent M is good at keeping a low profile.
The guy in cuffs struggles (every round) to escape, but fails. (Target Number 5 on 4 dice.  Hard, but not impossible.)

Agent M runs up to a nearby suspect.  Dang!  Another runner!  And I'm not sure M can reach him before he gets to the table edge.

Maybe I can just shoot him a liiiitle bit?

Round 6:

The running suspect moves 10cm, right up to the edge of the table.

Agent M runs 10cm, too, but unless the suspect calms down, M's probably going to lose him.

Round 7:

The runner gets away. (Damn!)

*POOF*

The other suspect gets out of his cuffs! (Damn-damn!)

Well, SH*T!

And now that guy's PISSED!  Luckily, despite the model, he's not armed and can only charge toward Agent M with violent intent.

Agent M has every right to shoot this a$$hole, but the suspect is technically unarmed, and you can't interrogate a dead guy.  So, M charges instead.  But, despite rolling 10 dice, he still fails to subdue the suspect.

I punch you with my standard issue police pistol!  Ha!

Round 8:

The violent suspect attacks M with his fists, but M fends him off (8 successes!)
Unfortunately, he still can't seem to lay a hand on the guy.

Round 9:

The suspect manages to land a blow on Agent M, but he shrugs it off.
Agent M, however, wallops the suspect for 2 Vitality!

Round 10:

The suspect starts to have second thoughts, but the fight goes on.

Round 11, 12, 13:

Punch. Punch. Punch. Punch. Punch. Punch. Punch. Punch. Come on already!

Round 14:

Finally!  The suspect goes down!

It turns out I was cheating a bit on Agent M's defense rolls. He can't get the Edge bonus before initiative, which happens after the NPCs go.  Oops.

Let's hope the suspect stays down this time.

No time for teabagging!  Gotta go!

Round 15:

That one suspect's eyes flutter, but he remains unconscious.

As for the lady with the green mohawk, despite waving around twin pistols like some kind of maniac, she's just your average citizen out taking her guns for a walk, and doesn't have any useful information. #CyberpunkLife

"If I don't walk them regularly, the go in the apartment."

Round 16:

The last remaining suspect turns around toward Agent M.

Agent M rushes forward to engage him (but falls just a tad short).

Round 17:

The suspect sees Agent M (he's right there in front of him, after all) and tries to quietly slip away and hide behind a barricade.

Agent M approaches, and it turns out that the suspect is just another regular guy, hiding from the cops like regular guys do.  Nothing to be gained here.

I can see you!  You need to duck if you want to hide!

And that's the end of the mission!  Agent M scoops up his suspect and takes him into custody.  He also gets 2 experience points for surviving a mission and taking out a foe.

Back at the station...

The huge scanners at the station positively identify the suspect as a fabricant.  Unfortunately, Agent M's questioning of the fabricant doesn't turn up any useful evidence. :(

Is it... bigger than a bread box?

So, 5 Budget wasted, and all he has to show for it is 2XP.  Better luck next time!

Budget: 95/100
XP: 2
People Evidence: 0/2
Place Evidence: 0/4
Electronic Evidence: 0/1
Financial Evidence: 0/3
Physical Evidence: 0/1

And that was the first mission of a campaign game of "The Department".  I really like the structure of this game, and having actually played it now, it's pretty fun, too.  Maybe I just got good (or, well, "interesting") dice rolls, but this was pretty engaging for a "walk around and talk to people" mission.

Seventeen rounds might sound like a lot for a minis game, but keep in mind that it was just me playing solo, and there were only ever five active models on the table, so it went by very quickly.

Having actually played, there were a few bits of weirdness in the rules, contradictions (as mentioned above) and some vagueness.  For instance, there are tables for "more agents than suspects", and "more suspects than agents", but what if they're equal?  I just went with what made sense at the time.  For instance, if you're facing a cop, you probably don't want to attack him without some help from friends, so I went with "equal" being "less" in that instance.

As I suspected, this is a brilliant game for fans of... what?  Noir Investigative Skirmish campaigns, I guess.

(I forgot that other people might want to play this.  You can get the PDF from Drive-Thru RPG HERE.  Weird that it's not on WargameVault as of this time.  Also, good luck getting a physical copy.  There's no PoD at the moment.  I had to contact the author through Kickstarter and beg one of his leftover copies.  Still, though, worth it.)

- Jason "Ludanto" Smith C;E