Netrunning and The Net as the second Open World for the game
I was looking for a generic topic for Netrunning that was all encompassing and I was surprised to find none of that. We have the "Computer Terminals and OS Mechanics", which is fairly recent but mostly deals with the idea of computer science being reflected in a more realistic and less romantizised way of Cyberpunk... and the older "Netrunning should be puzzle based". Now I don't know if my title is again too specific... but I think it's broader.
I'm starting this thread so that we can talk about the Net in general, both in how it could pertain to Netrunner specific gameplay (or hybrid classes or in a classless system but for people who build a character with the needed hacking skills) and for regular users.
One of the "selling points" that we have in the Known Features thread is that "the game will have two open world scenarios". I think it's pretty safe to assume that these are the physical world and the net. Also, this seems to point to the net being a scenario where we can roam pretty much as freely as the regular one but that would probably have its own rules. That doesn't leave out, in my opinion, a degree of puzzle solving or minigames or side mechanics for hacking that aren't just... I don't know, reskins of regular cover-based shooter mechanics or whatever the combat system ends up being... or superpowers.
So what are your ideas for the Net?
Let me start saying a bunch of mine:
- I personally oppose the idea of it being a reskin of the city where you just see the nodes (or whatever) for everything in their actual physical space. It would defeat completely the purpose of portraying a telecommunications network: users shouldn't be tied to the parallel of their current position of their physical world, nor should any kind of appliance. We should get the feelng that we can actually access different virtual enclaves based on different parts of the world at high speeds, that this Net is common with the rest of the world, "meet" users from all over it, etc. The game should also go all the way through to make us know that the other users are indeed in other parts of the world, and sometimes with things happening to them that, for example, cut them from the net. Through clever writing and world building we should also get the impression that maybe that avatar could be one of the people that we see in the streets, and even do things such as outright having actual main and minor characters have their own Avatars but us not knowing who they are, maybe because they act so differently in the net.
- Net users should be able to create their own avatars with an added character creation system when they use it for the first time... or when they are given the choice to alter them. NPCs should also have avatars "from all walks of second life": off the shelf Barbie doll avatars and black and white static avatars like in Snow Crash, and others as wild as what we ourselves can make. Animations should also be varied and customizable, and we could have things such as flight or a light cycle that stand for high speed connection.
- It should bridge the gap between the mystique created by works that represent their own version of Cyberspace in very different but yet influential and romanticised ways, even if it's cheesy. I'd like the net to be the same where avatars can get in gladiatorial, aerial or vehicular combat, RPGs, ARGS, adult entertainment, chatrooms, forums... with some shadier parts like a dark net and also corporate controlled areas.
- Non-netrunner characters could double as their own classes also in the Net... or even act exclusively as a role in the net: Medias that work on the net both hunting the news and presenting them, Rockerboys putting up a virtual show, etc.
I was looking for a generic topic for Netrunning that was all encompassing and I was surprised to find none of that. We have the "Computer Terminals and OS Mechanics", which is fairly recent but mostly deals with the idea of computer science being reflected in a more realistic and less romantizised way of Cyberpunk... and the older "Netrunning should be puzzle based". Now I don't know if my title is again too specific... but I think it's broader.
I'm starting this thread so that we can talk about the Net in general, both in how it could pertain to Netrunner specific gameplay (or hybrid classes or in a classless system but for people who build a character with the needed hacking skills) and for regular users.
One of the "selling points" that we have in the Known Features thread is that "the game will have two open world scenarios". I think it's pretty safe to assume that these are the physical world and the net. Also, this seems to point to the net being a scenario where we can roam pretty much as freely as the regular one but that would probably have its own rules. That doesn't leave out, in my opinion, a degree of puzzle solving or minigames or side mechanics for hacking that aren't just... I don't know, reskins of regular cover-based shooter mechanics or whatever the combat system ends up being... or superpowers.
So what are your ideas for the Net?
Let me start saying a bunch of mine:
- I personally oppose the idea of it being a reskin of the city where you just see the nodes (or whatever) for everything in their actual physical space. It would defeat completely the purpose of portraying a telecommunications network: users shouldn't be tied to the parallel of their current position of their physical world, nor should any kind of appliance. We should get the feelng that we can actually access different virtual enclaves based on different parts of the world at high speeds, that this Net is common with the rest of the world, "meet" users from all over it, etc. The game should also go all the way through to make us know that the other users are indeed in other parts of the world, and sometimes with things happening to them that, for example, cut them from the net. Through clever writing and world building we should also get the impression that maybe that avatar could be one of the people that we see in the streets, and even do things such as outright having actual main and minor characters have their own Avatars but us not knowing who they are, maybe because they act so differently in the net.
- Net users should be able to create their own avatars with an added character creation system when they use it for the first time... or when they are given the choice to alter them. NPCs should also have avatars "from all walks of second life": off the shelf Barbie doll avatars and black and white static avatars like in Snow Crash, and others as wild as what we ourselves can make. Animations should also be varied and customizable, and we could have things such as flight or a light cycle that stand for high speed connection.
- It should bridge the gap between the mystique created by works that represent their own version of Cyberspace in very different but yet influential and romanticised ways, even if it's cheesy. I'd like the net to be the same where avatars can get in gladiatorial, aerial or vehicular combat, RPGs, ARGS, adult entertainment, chatrooms, forums... with some shadier parts like a dark net and also corporate controlled areas.
- Non-netrunner characters could double as their own classes also in the Net... or even act exclusively as a role in the net: Medias that work on the net both hunting the news and presenting them, Rockerboys putting up a virtual show, etc.
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