Originally published at: Running on Italics: Old Hollywood [Corp] - StimHack
Discuss the latest article here.
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Yay! Theyāre back! <3
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Hooray! A pleasure as always.
My take on Old Hollywood Grid is just that you need an āinā to get close enough to an agenda to steal it. A connection, perhaps. You need to already know a guy involved in a previous version of the project. Hollywood!
I donāt think the on-access situation with the sensies is all that problematic. Given that the corp wants this to happen, they could use any news of a data breach as an excuse to leak an announcement of whatever was in the server.
And Casting Call touches on a pet theory Iāve been thinking about for a while, with cards like Palana Foods and Psychographics. The question with those cards is: how the heck does one runner benefit the corp so much? But maybe itās not just one runner. What Chaos Theory herself does is just the tip of the iceberg; for every player character who accessed that honeypot, there were fifty weeflerunners who did the same, and the aggregate activity of these aspiring runnersāthis Casting Call, if you likeāpainted a detailed geolocatory picture of the state of cybercrime, including the runner that this division is currently most interested in.
And more generally, I find myself being more forgiving of certain kinds of overspecificity. Was it a literal Casting Call? Nah; as with Early Premiere, someone at Haarpsichord just got carried away with their corporate metaphors. This seems pretty common in totalizing corporate cultures, but especially in entertainment and tech.
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Iām so glad you guys got the Haarp reference. Iāve been telling people at every tournament Iāve been going to and nobody knew it!
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Maybe itās my skeptic bent, but I read the flavor of Haarpsichord in exactly the opposite direction: that, akin to their historical analogue, the division is so mired in conspiracy theories that the public wouldnāt believe too much at once with all the wild claims and misinformation flying around, regardless of how much information the runner accessed.
Of course, that relies on an understanding of āstealingā agendas as equivalent to publicizing them, which certainly isnāt always the case. (Faceup agendas, e.g., rely on the understanding that at least some portions of the project are already public, and the description probably doesnāt apply at all to criminals.)
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I think Casting Call is better than the article gives credit. Even though a Government Takeover isnāt a sensie, the corp would want to publicize it with actors explaining how awesome it is. This exposes what they are doing, but entices the runner who believes theyāll get insider access by being on-campus or be able to find connections to the actual agenda.
Iām so glad this is back.
As for the NBN/mind control agenda, thereās some very good support for that argument in the new Jackson Howard alt art. You have this kid, wearing this helmet thatās interfacing directly with his brain, and heās using his movements to control this robot toy in front of him. And Jackson Howard looks on, delighted. Itās so incredibly sinister.
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yeah, I think a key part of the card is that it can make any agenda be face up - what they would normally try to hide, theyāre publicizing. theyāre casting for ads and PSAs - everyone wants in on it, everyoneās excited about it. if you want to get dirt and turn the public against this project, you might have to get a lotā¦ closer than youād normally like to. And how convenient is that they just so happen to be looking for people who fit your exact description!
that said, I do think itās one of the weaker cards from this pack.
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Yeah! Theyāre back!
Casting call makes more sense as the response to the access, rather than the event that preceeded it. The corp puts an agenda gave up, making it attractive to the runner as voltorocks describes. But once the runner accesses the honeypot, THE CORP KNOWS WHERE YOU LIVE. Suddenly your face becomes public knowledge, movies with the runner are being cast. The runner is a celebrity! Needless to say, itās much easier to arrange a traffic accident if people are constantly posting your location on Twitterā¦
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I like that. But however one fleshes out the details, I think the upshot is that Casting Call is the same process as Midseasons, just slightly more proactive and arguably a step or two earlier. I also find it way thematic of NBN for them to put out a casting call that people donāt know theyāre participating in.
Reading this made me question something. What sorts of benefits does the corp get on its own turn when the runner runs as opposed to the runners turn? Because they make it seem like they can Rez more cards.
They get priority during Paid Ability Windows (canāt bypass on-encounter ice without eating the on-encounter effects).
In general, I think it had more to do with justifying why the Runner and Corp turns were separate and not simultaneous.
Weāre glad to be back, folks!
The discussion on Casting Call has been really interesting to us, especially this bit:
This is a, ah, technique Iāve had to go to in the past to read some cards. Think of Psychographics: really? Hyperspecifically knowing everything about this one runner lets you shave off dozens of clicks off the work you have to put into an agenda? It certainly does make more sense if the runner being infinitagged is some sort of a representation of a thousand other weefles being infinitagged as well.
Of course, this only raises further questions. (What the hell apparently every time I die a thousand other weeflebutts are dying as well? They all copy my decision to go tagme without knowing why? They get hit by the same ronins and neural emps? What the crap is this?)
But, yeah, itās certainly one side theory weāve been developing, over at ROI HQ 
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