Running on Italics: The Underway [Runner]

Originally published at: Running on Italics: The Underway [Runner] - StimHack

Discuss the latest article here.

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Nice article. Great detail on Faust.

I’m glad you mentioned the different art/looks on the card border with different factions and types of cards. I noticed this myself a few months back, and took the time to spot the main differences. Of course, by now, I’ve forgotten.

Nice work! Glad to see you’re keeping on.

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I think you guys missed some potential flavor on Geist. He’s basically IT for the Muertos and gangs today are known for using “disposable” tech like burner phones to avoid detection. I think that’s whats being represented by Geist’s draw ability, he’s intimately familiar with throwaway hardware (forger) and software (B&E) and using it opens up more options for him.

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Yeah, the card frames are super super neat, in how they’re the first level of differentiation you get between the factions. The Criminals’ sleek power cable to the Shaper’s rosary…

I’m really glad we’ve been getting such positive feedback on our Faust piece; we were concerned about the kind of reception we’d get to this sort of deeper, even quasi-literary analysis. It’s been great to see that there’s an audience for it!

I honestly think that Netrunner can be read as a case of a new kind of literature, and one that can sustain a lot more effective, detailed critique and analysis, in method and in goal, than anyone’s really been doing—so you can absolutely look forward to us trying to push that boundary more in the future.

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Yeah, we toootally whiffed on this one. Basically, both of us ended up missing the Viva Los Muertos article, and we didn’t think to go looking for it when we started working on The Underway. Geist as tech spider queen, handling the logistics and running of the Muertos, is actually a really neat concept and I wish we’d managed to properly talk about it.

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I’m not sure if it’s literature, but it’s along those lines. The interactions they’re able to make between art, theme/worldbuilding, and mechanics are extremely well thought out, and one of my favorite things about this game.

I was a little surprised that they didn’t chime in on the Geist-Black light thing (http://fetal.ai/post/128066779661/unbuiltbuilding-if-you-put-geist-under-a), but since they ended up giving him an A anyway, I suppose it wouldn’t have made much of a difference in their score.

Entertaining as always!

Well, I suppose it’s on us to justify the claim that it is literature :stuck_out_tongue:

The Geist black light thing is so weird, and we didn’t think we knew enough about it to comment on it at time of writing. If it’s a thing that’s real then that’s super cool!

Speak for yourself, I wanted to :stuck_out_tongue:

But really, we wanted to be able to witness it rather than rely on hearsay before we were going to say anything.