Hi there fellow roleplayers.
Recently I have gotten into the (living) card game: Android Netrunner. It is set in a dystopian, cyberpunk future where monolithic megacorps own and control the vast majority of human interests. I thought we might make a fun and engaging Roleplay out of such a cyberpunk setting.
The idea is just to loosely base it on the lore of Netrunner with as a core concept the fantasy that in this dystopian future certain individuals (you) are able to traverse the Net in a physical way. The interaction between their brains and the programs on the Net renders a world that is ‘imaginable’ (and therefore ‘roleplayable’ without having to roleplay the 1’s and 0’s of binary code). These individuals have a leg up opposed to the old fashioned hackers who have to see all through their interface, giving birth to the notion of ‘running the Net’.
A grand bounty has been issued by an unknown benefactor for breaking into the datafiles of the Weyland Consortium, owners of the ‘Beanstalk’, a massive space elevator in New Angeles and the economic hub between Earth and it’s colonies on the Moon and Mars. The specific file sought is something known as the Erya Protocol, though names might have changed already.
In roleplay this would give us the following concepts to work with:
You can either be runners seeking after this bounty or runners in the employ of the Weyland (known for being quite aggressive towards anyone that breaks in, employing ground teams to clean up and the like). You start together or individually and it is your own prerogative to seek each other out. Combining efforts to share the bounty, or trying to steal it out from the other runner’s noses.
The premise of the roleplay lets it play out in two main zones: The Net and the Real world.
Due to the nature of the runner you have 2 different ‘identities’ one on the Net and one in the real world. My take on things is that the runner uses real world resources that translate to digital manifestations. Say you have a program installed, it will appear to you as a weapon, pet or whatever you like on the Net. But again, since your characters imagination you have a free hand in describing the world of the Net.
I’ll try and streamline this brain fart a bit more in the coming days, this is just an interest check ^^.
Feel free to give your own imput!