So when Edward Kim installs net ready eyes, titanium ribs, a brain cage, soups himself up with synthetic blood, enhanced vision, and whatever godawful 50’s memorabilia themed genetics Jinteki came up with, on top of making himself have a symmetrical visage, do you stop to think maybe there should be a card that let’s him have his other hand back?
What is Apex’s Day Job dammit? Should he be spending so much quality time with…whoever? Why would an AI be so helpful to it?
Can we create, in this thread, runners that are so ideologically dysfunctional, they just make your head spin? Stories of how MaxX gets along with her professional contacts encouraged.
First thing that came to my mind was the obsurdity of Adam playing Human First. I suppose he could have somehow infiltrated. Other things that have already been discussed, CT or the Professor having Student Loans is a bit silly.
Man, nevermind that. APEX with Titanium Ribs, Brain Cage, and Net-Ready Eyes, riding its Qianju PT! Remotely controled half-skeleton riding around town. Also you can have it do drugs.
Another favourite:
Drive by on a Psychic Field.
Runner “Alright my colleagues of questionable morals and considerable firepower, I need you to go shoot up this server farm.”
Gang Members “Right-eo boss!”
a few hours later
Runner “Wow! Where’d this wicked migraine come from?”
Drive By on Psychic Field makes perfect sense. Remember that the card does two things. First you expose the card and then you trash it. Or, in other words, you do your internet thing to know what and where it is and then you send thugs to kill the project.
You clever rascal. Thinking about Corp cards, how exactly does architect resurrect the dedicated response team, or any sysop? For that matter, what happens when sysops are “taken care of” with an unregistered s&w? It’s like, assumed you got a fatal shot in if you never use archives memories or interns or crick or architect. Let’s wrap our brains around that, shall we?
The first part seems pretty answerable: trashing the DRT doesn’t really kill them, it just severs the Corp’s link to the team in the field so they can’t be used. Architect is just re-establishing the connection.
The second part is something I hadn’t considered though. “Interns, bring The Twins back from the dead! Stat!”
I always thought it was just the interns doing the work of The Twins (though how mere interns could replicate Caprice’s psychic abilities is beyond me…)
Archived Memories presents a darker alternative. HB makes brain tapes of all its employees upon acquisition to keep as backups in case of accidents.
I feel like most of these “weird” interaction arrive from a too-literal interpretation of what cards represent. Very little in netrunner is “canon” and it’s generally easy to think of a way that something seemingly non-sequitur easily makes sense.
for example, Day Job needn’t imply that your runner has that specific day job- MaxX is depicted in a day job, but the card could just as easily represent Adromeda’s wedding planner career, or Noise working as a DJ, or the Professor, well, being a professor. There are plenty of “boring” jobs Apex could be doing remotely for needed creds.
Likewise, trashing a sysop in no way implies they are dead (even when using the S&W or a driveby, it could simply represent the target becoming too rattled to keep coming in to work). it could just be that when you access an Ash server and trash him you’re just installing a backdoor to his specific security protocols; but if the interns spend enough time digging through the logs, they might be able to find the weakness and get Mr. Ash’s defenses functional again.
TLDR is that pretty much every card only needs to represent a very loose idea of the kinds of things it might represent; Ken tenma might buy a motorcycle for himself, but Apex or the Professor might prefer to simply hire bike messengers to drop off personalized wireless routers all over the city to throw nosy corps off their trail. either way, credits and time are lost, and a motorcycle is involved in protecting you from tags.
It’s way more fun to think of non meat entities doing meat things though. And the professor is totally that gnarly dude that rides motorbikes, don’t ruin my dreams.
might I as well? I guess I missed the day in class when they talked about accepting all art as purely literal or discarding it completely, and the complete lack of gray area in between those two choices.
errrnyways
[quote=“cmcadvanced, post:14, topic:4943, full:true”]
It’s way more fun to think of non meat entities doing meat things though. And the professor is totally that gnarly dude that rides motorbikes, don’t ruin my dreams.
[/quote]This is another great way to approach it keep it literal if you want a laugh (my favorite is Adam with genetics; like he’s having meat parts installed! That shit makes me chuckle) or don’t and let the theming fit however you want. I just don’t think “sky is falling” concerns about the theming of cards that at best represent a vague idea have much heft to them.
I wouldn’t think so. The entire nature of credits, a foundation of the game, isn’t meant to be taken literally. VTES players will be familiar with the importance of interpretation thanks to the ideas of bleed and pool. Credits aren’t always literally money in ANR, and I think @voltorocks is spot-on to assert that not every card needs to be interpreted literally.
Yes, I also agree with @voltorocks. A non-literal interpretation is best; It’s why you can play any unique card again once the runner trashes it.
So I have shiny new Victoria Jenkins in a server sapping runner clicks, when Noise decides to be an asshole and come in and Imp her away. He’s not murdering her, nor is he kidnapping her or anything like that. Rather, he’s performed some great feat that damages the corp so badly that it’s enough to give the runner points. Maybe he leaks the contents of her personal drive, or posts an embarrassing vid of her online for everyone to see, or anything else you can think of that’s that level of damage/embarrassment for the CEO of a mega corp.
Even if a crim player used an S&W to get rid of Victoria, me bringing her back with Interns can mean that -
The Interns took the hit for Victoria, and she was under guard, unable to do her work until I played her again.
They forgot to double-tap to make sure she’s dead, and she finally recovered from her injury.
It’s simply the new CEO, who has the same style as Victoria, who’s just represented by the same card.
NBN stole some Jinteki cloning technology.
It’s zombie Victoria Jenkins - mmm…cliiiicks…
Ultimately, the point is that it won’t make sense if you take everything too literally.
Apex doing anything with genetics/cyberware does just fail, though.
EDIT: @endgame reminding us all of sub-types on cards.
Those aren’t virtual resources. How about this for head-exploding fun: Cerebral static makes Apex forget its purpose/mission/whatever and then you install a genetics resource. What now?
keep it literal if you want a laugh (my favorite is Adam with genetics; like he’s having meat parts installed! That shit makes me chuckle) or don’t and let the theming fit however you want. I just don’t think “sky is falling” concerns about the theming of cards that at best represent a vague idea have much heft to them.
