For me this is sort of thing I just do. I don't know what plans CDPR has for the future content but I would be very surprised if they haven't worked on those even before CP 2077 was released so this and other story content ideas are more like me experimenting on ideas and themes I liked CDPR to explore.
I originally intended to post this months ago but there were other things and while I didn't forgot, there are times when I don't even play games. Unfortunately I forgot some of the background and details how I planned to connect certain pieces together. I'm not very well versed with Cyberpunk tabletop game lore and get ideas from other things, life in general, the news and like that. There was some Reddit post from Mike Pondsmith himself I read months ago where he told how some of the best scenarios are based on real life things. There are people playing CP 2020/Red and while elder people has their own responsibilities for younger people there's education and I was thinking that certain things could synergize with that, as setting up the game, learning rules and that itself may take quite a while. This particular idea hardly is best example of that, but synergy lie that might still be something worth thinking about.
Thanks for people helping me to picture if some parts of idea could work in topic: [LORE] QUESTION: CORPO EARNINGS IN CP RED/2020? and The MadQueen show regarding certain BioTechnica related content from the game files that isn't available for players via other means.
Back in February / March there were still a lot of discussion about in-game factions and scenarios that could work for me and I don't find gangs that interesting. For me CP 2077 is multilayered work of fiction and I came to think of corporations. I haven't played but Nomand and Streetkid playthroughs and I don't know if it's that common for people to do multiple playthroughs in story driven games. That I needed help to understand certain things speaks for itself that perhaps there's something that isn't explored that well but I had this feeling about it. I was thinking Austrian school of economics and Keynesians and argumentation if Keynesian school has absorbed relevant ideas from Austrian school rendering it obsolete. Perhaps CP 2077 can be seen as satirical take on that, perhaps not. The Cyberpunk genre has this thing, sometimes it may be hard to tell, feature not a bug. Haha
Settings has its limitations. I don't see it necessarily introducing ideas like new ways of thinking how to create money into system, but that could be also argued about genre if that would even be cyberpunk or rather post-cyberpunk thing. Sometimes limitations also make things possible, like limiting scenarios from snowballing to unimplementable avalanches.
Idea uses of other faction too, NCDP. I was unable to find references via wiki's and other web sources to repo service company mentioned in game, as it's AFAIK mentioned only once in email conversation or datashard and I didn't wrote that down. So instead of that CP2077 corporation Night City Towing and Storage [CP 2020] is used as placeholder.
There's action too, idea came to me when watching those superhero movies which titles I can't ever seem to remember but big events causing lot's of havoc and older movie the Matrix Reloaded highway battle sequence and turning the tables. What if you were just some ordinary person there and all that chaos starts to happen around you? And in this scenario V is for the most part just that, though there are options.
1. Repoman, corpo and the car
Repoman
V gets a gig as repoman. While this this sort of thing is usually handled by repo service, in this case Night City Towing and Storage (NCTS) there's need for outsider edgerunner skills, for some reason. V will get the gig via fixer and gets some insight to corpo life via that and attached details delivered by SMS. One important detail would be that property, car should not be damaged and every repair would be ended up being billed from V.
Corpo
Corpo is someone who isn't anywhere near the top ladder has his life owned by corporation he works for. V's first impression might be that he messed something up and got demoted, lost his car privilege but as in the Night City, mercenaries might and gang kingpins may have their customized weapons, as image is everything, in corpo world something like car might be very important as image is everything in that world too. So corpo wanted to keep that car and from all the places asked his corporation to help with his situation and perhaps unsurprisingly corporation had totally unfair remission or leasing program available for cases like him but he took it, as he thought if he can maintain the image, he can fix everything, except he didn't and NCTS enters in the picture and so V is there to retrieve the car because corpo couldn't keep up with the payments.
Later, at some point V may have access to some of corporations external and internal documents. External communication material being about great stock options, first opening after couple of years and then far better options after 3 years and how they like to keep their corpo's happy.
Internal material would be about employee review system that is skewed in a way that minimizes people's change ever achieving those options. Instead it covers multiple ways to knock employees down in the ladder and discuss about psychological tricks to get them to chase those options again and keep them working without really paying them anything and that could be background scenario for what happened to corpo related to gig. Scenario could be presented as someone from top addressing manager of our story's corpo, and berating him about his performance based on how many corpo's in unit are "over performing" meaning, that they are actually hitting the production targets and this presents a problem for couple of reasons, one explained above but second being that manager isn't giving them enough work so production isn't at peak performance unless people are falling down on ladder because they burn out.
Car
Car I was thinking could be Mizutani Shion Targa MZT, car that Goro drives after picking up V from the landfill. Player ownable cars are used and/or black market purchases, so it's not easy to estimate exact value, but targa model is something I guess brand new could have been easily worth something like €$ 125,000 in 2069. Car could also function as carrot for player as there might be possibility for outcome V could keep it, perhaps even just buy it, only that as used car that should go for €$ 90 k it would be used €$ 225 k car as everyone wants they cut. Corporation has no incentive to sell it under projected remission income and they can still use that car to bait someone else who wants to maintain certain image. Corporation has also contacted NCTS, which is added expense, NCTS want their own share, which would be hefty even if most they did was contacting the fixer, who also wants a cut and then there would also be NCPD wanting their cut.
Story and action
V arrives at corpos building or perhaps a house and has some dialogue with corpo. Things aren't necessarily easy at first but solved about dialogue. It ends up having V and corpo starting to drive car (gig isn't about killing corpo) to NCTS lot with corpo driving, maybe he has taken one of those Speed Loans advertised in game and thinks he can negotiate more time and it just puts money on table and drives car back home. I tried to think of other options but this is mainly because of players on keyboard might experience following sequence very frustrating if V would be one to drive and that scenario can't play out without using certain wide road/highway environmental elements.
So while V and corpo are going on faster and wider Night City highways route is very packed. Game can work out several vehicles in scripted sequences (as in Sinnerman) but this wouldn't at the beginning be nothing that fancy. Time could be used to some conversation options, at some point corpo notes that, ouch, throttle isn't responding very well and it turns out that corporation has some sort of override in vehicles. if payments aren't coming as scheduled some features stop working as intended. Losing throttle isn't that much of a big deal as they are in traffic jam but over time, some other system stops working and V has option to try fixing these systems via Intelligence, Tech or even Body related skills and motive to do so, as V don't want car to be damaged.
There might a hint earlier, a MaxTac AV flying past them at some point but then there's another MaxTac AV, this time flying past very close to highway and V and corpo start encountering cars that has stopped (some glancing collisions could be perhaps avoided by corpo if V managed to fix the brakes) and traffic on oncoming lane is driving like crazy, which makes it difficult for corpo as he has to sometimes take oncoming lane to avoid hitting cars on his lane. Reason for MaxTac presence comes clear, there is a cyberpsycho creating havoc with some sort of cyberlegs. MaxTac has to restrict their fire not to hit traffic, not that they necessarily care, but it would be bad for imago, so it's difficult for them to take psycho down as he's hopping from car to car via roofs and hoods.
Cyberpsycho would be resolved when he jumps on larger vehicle near where V and corpo are going. Larger vehicle could be Militech Behemoth, Kaukaz Bratsk U4020 or Mahir MT28 Coach, a bus though I don't know if Mahir has working animations and such required. V has option to climb from corpo's car on same vehicle where cyberpsycho has landed himself and try shooting him. Larger vehicle keeps going NPC motivation being "there's a cyberpsycho!" This part was something I hoped would solve itself if V knows how to duck. As cyberpsycho would come to scene from the opposite direction where V and corpo are travelling, he would be facing V from that direction and not seeing whats behind him. Unfortunately I didn't found suitable underpass that would just clip cyberpycho leaving some legendary boots after him, for V to loot as optional rewards, so let's just say that V manages to distract cyberspycho enough that MaxTac can use his higher position to land few good shots at him leaving boots to be looted.
If V doesn't climb on larger vehicle, cyberspycho jumps next on their car hood, damaging that and while V can shoot him, MaxTac takes him out and his body damages also windshied of corpo's car and there won't be any boots to be looted.
2. NCPD and their impound lot
Once cyberpsycho situation has been solved V and corpo keep going but after a while they are stopped by NCDP regardless if car has any damage or not. They notice that some features of car are functioning in limited mode and they impound it as not being in road legal condition. Nothing V or Corpo say makes any difference but there could be option to bribe them for some €$ 100,000, option wouldn't be available unless V has that money.
This turns V's simply repo job to something else, he calls for fixer who is miffed about the situation. He tells V to get car back no matter how, as nobody would be getting any money unless gig is completed, worse than that. Corporation would bill the price of missing car from NCTS, who would then bill it from fixer for botching that gig, who in turn would take additional cut from all the future gigs and jobs V would perform to cover that expense. Corpo's situation would be even worse and they have common interest to get car back.
Corpo may find location of NCPD impound lot for V and he gets there. V notices that all cars in there appear to be in very good shape and on pricier end of catalogue. There might be conversation options and/or email options (sneak approach) where it comes very clear that NCPD doesn't care about street legality, they just pick up cars that they can later sell them self and there's sort of huge auction business going on. There might be option for V to buy car bypassing an auction for some €$ 95k and car would be delivered to either corpo or corporation That could be a way to completing gig, but would leave V worse than V started as job would pay just for few thousand eddies at best. It was supposed to be just a simple repo gig.
3. BioTechnica research facility
Corporation in question would be BioTechnica. It would turn out that corpo knows that there's research facility that is quite secret, even though it should be just about restoration and such, but he head rumors that something might not be what it looks like in there and perhaps there could be something to blackmail corporation to forget the whole car and cover his remission contract and other expenses. Obviously corpo isn't too eager to get his own skin involved so he offers V a deal, where he appears as someone who has interest in car erasing corpo's debts regarding that would help to keep ownership of that car. There could be different dialogue options here and V could have option to make a deal where V would actually get to keep that car if V succeeds.
As this may sound something bit... extraordinary here is a short from Max Mike radio channel, extracted from the game files: BioTechnica mushroom AI - [The MadQueen show]
So V breaks in research facility to find if there's anything useful for blackmailing purposes and via emails finds out that they are working on some sort of super computer / AI. There's this big empty space in the basement and by reading about stuff V starts to get a picture what is going on. So their big project is a giant mushroom network. and that's what empty space in basement is for. It's just exposing a tiny piece of it. They have been working on that thing for a decade without any progress but can't let go because they also use that to leverage BioTechnica investors for it's future potential and project has expanded too big to fail. There might be even some encrypted shards that would contain dialogue between research team and mushroom AI and while mushroom might be self-aware, dialogue from it's side would for the most part be total gibberish. So those shards and data downloaded from facility's computers would be the material needed to blackmail upper brass, as they wouldn't want their investors or practically anybody to know that their billion eddies black project research hasn't achieved anything.
Mushroom is content on game discs but not available on
There could be multiple ways to close the gig. Ideal outcome might perhaps be where V keeps car and doesn't end up in paying for gig he should be paid for, corpo has to learn to live without car or perhaps V could sell his role and identity regarding to BioTechnica for some bonus eddies, depending if V shared information from BioTechnica mushroom AI lab with him or not.
I originally intended to post this months ago but there were other things and while I didn't forgot, there are times when I don't even play games. Unfortunately I forgot some of the background and details how I planned to connect certain pieces together. I'm not very well versed with Cyberpunk tabletop game lore and get ideas from other things, life in general, the news and like that. There was some Reddit post from Mike Pondsmith himself I read months ago where he told how some of the best scenarios are based on real life things. There are people playing CP 2020/Red and while elder people has their own responsibilities for younger people there's education and I was thinking that certain things could synergize with that, as setting up the game, learning rules and that itself may take quite a while. This particular idea hardly is best example of that, but synergy lie that might still be something worth thinking about.
Thanks for people helping me to picture if some parts of idea could work in topic: [LORE] QUESTION: CORPO EARNINGS IN CP RED/2020? and The MadQueen show regarding certain BioTechnica related content from the game files that isn't available for players via other means.
Back in February / March there were still a lot of discussion about in-game factions and scenarios that could work for me and I don't find gangs that interesting. For me CP 2077 is multilayered work of fiction and I came to think of corporations. I haven't played but Nomand and Streetkid playthroughs and I don't know if it's that common for people to do multiple playthroughs in story driven games. That I needed help to understand certain things speaks for itself that perhaps there's something that isn't explored that well but I had this feeling about it. I was thinking Austrian school of economics and Keynesians and argumentation if Keynesian school has absorbed relevant ideas from Austrian school rendering it obsolete. Perhaps CP 2077 can be seen as satirical take on that, perhaps not. The Cyberpunk genre has this thing, sometimes it may be hard to tell, feature not a bug. Haha
Settings has its limitations. I don't see it necessarily introducing ideas like new ways of thinking how to create money into system, but that could be also argued about genre if that would even be cyberpunk or rather post-cyberpunk thing. Sometimes limitations also make things possible, like limiting scenarios from snowballing to unimplementable avalanches.
Idea uses of other faction too, NCDP. I was unable to find references via wiki's and other web sources to repo service company mentioned in game, as it's AFAIK mentioned only once in email conversation or datashard and I didn't wrote that down. So instead of that CP2077 corporation Night City Towing and Storage [CP 2020] is used as placeholder.
There's action too, idea came to me when watching those superhero movies which titles I can't ever seem to remember but big events causing lot's of havoc and older movie the Matrix Reloaded highway battle sequence and turning the tables. What if you were just some ordinary person there and all that chaos starts to happen around you? And in this scenario V is for the most part just that, though there are options.
1. Repoman, corpo and the car
Repoman
V gets a gig as repoman. While this this sort of thing is usually handled by repo service, in this case Night City Towing and Storage (NCTS) there's need for outsider edgerunner skills, for some reason. V will get the gig via fixer and gets some insight to corpo life via that and attached details delivered by SMS. One important detail would be that property, car should not be damaged and every repair would be ended up being billed from V.
Corpo
Corpo is someone who isn't anywhere near the top ladder has his life owned by corporation he works for. V's first impression might be that he messed something up and got demoted, lost his car privilege but as in the Night City, mercenaries might and gang kingpins may have their customized weapons, as image is everything, in corpo world something like car might be very important as image is everything in that world too. So corpo wanted to keep that car and from all the places asked his corporation to help with his situation and perhaps unsurprisingly corporation had totally unfair remission or leasing program available for cases like him but he took it, as he thought if he can maintain the image, he can fix everything, except he didn't and NCTS enters in the picture and so V is there to retrieve the car because corpo couldn't keep up with the payments.
Later, at some point V may have access to some of corporations external and internal documents. External communication material being about great stock options, first opening after couple of years and then far better options after 3 years and how they like to keep their corpo's happy.
Internal material would be about employee review system that is skewed in a way that minimizes people's change ever achieving those options. Instead it covers multiple ways to knock employees down in the ladder and discuss about psychological tricks to get them to chase those options again and keep them working without really paying them anything and that could be background scenario for what happened to corpo related to gig. Scenario could be presented as someone from top addressing manager of our story's corpo, and berating him about his performance based on how many corpo's in unit are "over performing" meaning, that they are actually hitting the production targets and this presents a problem for couple of reasons, one explained above but second being that manager isn't giving them enough work so production isn't at peak performance unless people are falling down on ladder because they burn out.
Car
Car I was thinking could be Mizutani Shion Targa MZT, car that Goro drives after picking up V from the landfill. Player ownable cars are used and/or black market purchases, so it's not easy to estimate exact value, but targa model is something I guess brand new could have been easily worth something like €$ 125,000 in 2069. Car could also function as carrot for player as there might be possibility for outcome V could keep it, perhaps even just buy it, only that as used car that should go for €$ 90 k it would be used €$ 225 k car as everyone wants they cut. Corporation has no incentive to sell it under projected remission income and they can still use that car to bait someone else who wants to maintain certain image. Corporation has also contacted NCTS, which is added expense, NCTS want their own share, which would be hefty even if most they did was contacting the fixer, who also wants a cut and then there would also be NCPD wanting their cut.
Story and action
V arrives at corpos building or perhaps a house and has some dialogue with corpo. Things aren't necessarily easy at first but solved about dialogue. It ends up having V and corpo starting to drive car (gig isn't about killing corpo) to NCTS lot with corpo driving, maybe he has taken one of those Speed Loans advertised in game and thinks he can negotiate more time and it just puts money on table and drives car back home. I tried to think of other options but this is mainly because of players on keyboard might experience following sequence very frustrating if V would be one to drive and that scenario can't play out without using certain wide road/highway environmental elements.
So while V and corpo are going on faster and wider Night City highways route is very packed. Game can work out several vehicles in scripted sequences (as in Sinnerman) but this wouldn't at the beginning be nothing that fancy. Time could be used to some conversation options, at some point corpo notes that, ouch, throttle isn't responding very well and it turns out that corporation has some sort of override in vehicles. if payments aren't coming as scheduled some features stop working as intended. Losing throttle isn't that much of a big deal as they are in traffic jam but over time, some other system stops working and V has option to try fixing these systems via Intelligence, Tech or even Body related skills and motive to do so, as V don't want car to be damaged.
There might a hint earlier, a MaxTac AV flying past them at some point but then there's another MaxTac AV, this time flying past very close to highway and V and corpo start encountering cars that has stopped (some glancing collisions could be perhaps avoided by corpo if V managed to fix the brakes) and traffic on oncoming lane is driving like crazy, which makes it difficult for corpo as he has to sometimes take oncoming lane to avoid hitting cars on his lane. Reason for MaxTac presence comes clear, there is a cyberpsycho creating havoc with some sort of cyberlegs. MaxTac has to restrict their fire not to hit traffic, not that they necessarily care, but it would be bad for imago, so it's difficult for them to take psycho down as he's hopping from car to car via roofs and hoods.
Cyberpsycho would be resolved when he jumps on larger vehicle near where V and corpo are going. Larger vehicle could be Militech Behemoth, Kaukaz Bratsk U4020 or Mahir MT28 Coach, a bus though I don't know if Mahir has working animations and such required. V has option to climb from corpo's car on same vehicle where cyberpsycho has landed himself and try shooting him. Larger vehicle keeps going NPC motivation being "there's a cyberpsycho!" This part was something I hoped would solve itself if V knows how to duck. As cyberpsycho would come to scene from the opposite direction where V and corpo are travelling, he would be facing V from that direction and not seeing whats behind him. Unfortunately I didn't found suitable underpass that would just clip cyberpycho leaving some legendary boots after him, for V to loot as optional rewards, so let's just say that V manages to distract cyberspycho enough that MaxTac can use his higher position to land few good shots at him leaving boots to be looted.
If V doesn't climb on larger vehicle, cyberspycho jumps next on their car hood, damaging that and while V can shoot him, MaxTac takes him out and his body damages also windshied of corpo's car and there won't be any boots to be looted.
2. NCPD and their impound lot
Once cyberpsycho situation has been solved V and corpo keep going but after a while they are stopped by NCDP regardless if car has any damage or not. They notice that some features of car are functioning in limited mode and they impound it as not being in road legal condition. Nothing V or Corpo say makes any difference but there could be option to bribe them for some €$ 100,000, option wouldn't be available unless V has that money.
This turns V's simply repo job to something else, he calls for fixer who is miffed about the situation. He tells V to get car back no matter how, as nobody would be getting any money unless gig is completed, worse than that. Corporation would bill the price of missing car from NCTS, who would then bill it from fixer for botching that gig, who in turn would take additional cut from all the future gigs and jobs V would perform to cover that expense. Corpo's situation would be even worse and they have common interest to get car back.
Corpo may find location of NCPD impound lot for V and he gets there. V notices that all cars in there appear to be in very good shape and on pricier end of catalogue. There might be conversation options and/or email options (sneak approach) where it comes very clear that NCPD doesn't care about street legality, they just pick up cars that they can later sell them self and there's sort of huge auction business going on. There might be option for V to buy car bypassing an auction for some €$ 95k and car would be delivered to either corpo or corporation That could be a way to completing gig, but would leave V worse than V started as job would pay just for few thousand eddies at best. It was supposed to be just a simple repo gig.
3. BioTechnica research facility
Corporation in question would be BioTechnica. It would turn out that corpo knows that there's research facility that is quite secret, even though it should be just about restoration and such, but he head rumors that something might not be what it looks like in there and perhaps there could be something to blackmail corporation to forget the whole car and cover his remission contract and other expenses. Obviously corpo isn't too eager to get his own skin involved so he offers V a deal, where he appears as someone who has interest in car erasing corpo's debts regarding that would help to keep ownership of that car. There could be different dialogue options here and V could have option to make a deal where V would actually get to keep that car if V succeeds.
As this may sound something bit... extraordinary here is a short from Max Mike radio channel, extracted from the game files: BioTechnica mushroom AI - [The MadQueen show]
So V breaks in research facility to find if there's anything useful for blackmailing purposes and via emails finds out that they are working on some sort of super computer / AI. There's this big empty space in the basement and by reading about stuff V starts to get a picture what is going on. So their big project is a giant mushroom network. and that's what empty space in basement is for. It's just exposing a tiny piece of it. They have been working on that thing for a decade without any progress but can't let go because they also use that to leverage BioTechnica investors for it's future potential and project has expanded too big to fail. There might be even some encrypted shards that would contain dialogue between research team and mushroom AI and while mushroom might be self-aware, dialogue from it's side would for the most part be total gibberish. So those shards and data downloaded from facility's computers would be the material needed to blackmail upper brass, as they wouldn't want their investors or practically anybody to know that their billion eddies black project research hasn't achieved anything.
Mushroom is content on game discs but not available on
There could be multiple ways to close the gig. Ideal outcome might perhaps be where V keeps car and doesn't end up in paying for gig he should be paid for, corpo has to learn to live without car or perhaps V could sell his role and identity regarding to BioTechnica for some bonus eddies, depending if V shared information from BioTechnica mushroom AI lab with him or not.