How Would Your Favorite Game System Handle This?

[Kannik]

Ah, that's too bad. Some of them were quite decent. I'd have thought bundling them and selling that as a PDF would have been worthwhile, but from what I gather, the general gist I'm getting is the current owners aren't really that interested in the property anyway.

I think it's unfortunate as well. I'm not privy to anything behind the scenes, so I don't know the finances it was/would've taken to at least bundle the existing PDFs and sell on itch or something, but supposedly there are new Cortex products in the works so time will tell.

Also, to veer myself back towards the topic:

One nice feature of this sort of system is that the GM can define the sort of obstacles in pretty lose terms (even in a highly gamist system like 4E) and the players can come up with creative ways to apply skills to use to overcome them. I might define an obstacle as "CCTV system" and expect some form of hacking to be used to overcome it, but a player might suggest:

• Preparedness + Flirting to have previously seduced a guard and extracted the security codes
• Photography to place a picture of the empty room in front of the camera
• Mechanics to switch a feed to one from a similar room
• Illusion spell to disguise the room

Always good to take some creative burden of the GM and encouyrage creativity in your players!

This kind of "how do you approach solving this challenge" flexibility is both good advice all around for every obstacle and key in these kind of multi-task and multi-track situations like heists. And thus where system ideas like Challenges (either from Cortex Prime or skill challenges or their ilk) can be great, as both it allows everyone to highlight their character (both abilities and personalities), aids when the party is split up and something unusual/new comes up for a character that might ordinarily be considered outside of their wheelhouse, and it also avoids needing the GM to come up with specific obstacles/items/etc and trying to distribute them across multiple locations and play that balancing role to ensure they're not accidentally shafting a character with something that they cannot succeed with (if it's intentional, then no problem). Creating consequences and complications can be more open, flexible, free, and even fun, as is the players coming up with creative ways of overcoming them that fit their schtick and personality and more.