Netrunning seems like the worst job

[Netsa]

Throughout the story, netrunners are getting ended left and right by nothing, for nothing, as if they're pieces of paper on a desk waiting for an arm to sweep them off into a trash bin. This is presumably a job that requires a lot of knowledge and training, but as soon as that cord goes in your head, any program can just instantly kill you?

Let me get this straight, if the mission fails... someone I care about might take a bullet, but they also might get saved by Trauma Team and live. I, however, am guaranteed to die instantly in every case with no chance to save myself? This is the worst job ever. Why is anyone doing this? Why is anyone even still using these head-cords if all they do is turn you into an easy kill?

Even if you're as strong as V, popping System Collapses by simply looking at people, as soon as you get in that ice bath or put that cord in, you're done. It's basically a miracle any time these netrunners do their thing and actually live.

[Silverbane7]

Depends on which runners you are talking about.

If you mean the ones we find all over NightCity? Lady Space....Watcher and so on?
Some of them were unlucky, or not good enough. They tried their luck on a data fortress that was higher than their skills, or better than their hardware.

Some, like the girl near where we meet Dex, tried their luck with the wrong people.
She messed with the Voodoo's, and they cleaned her out as a matter of routine (she wanted to join, but since she wasn't Pacifica born n raised, she's toasted by them)

All netrunners eventually go one of two ways.
Ether they retire from ever running the Net again..... Or go out sparking, screaming leaving the meat behind.

The ones we find are the unlucky ones who couldn't beat the BlackIce and security deamons in the subnets they tried to hack. Were traced by Netwatch, Arasaka or MiliTech ect, and burned (or hunted by Soulkiller, in Arasaka's case) or hit by counter runners working security.

Lady Space (the one behind the Watson Med Centre) probably hit the Med Centre's Dweller, and found they were faster, had better hardware than her.
Sometimes they survive, tho their cyberdeck get smoked.

(why they use external decks. We use a simple internal cyberdeck chip with limited ram and slots just for wireless quickhacks. That's why you see the full Netrunner types have external cyberdecks strapped to their arms or thighs. T-Bug had one on her right leg. They are better than the ones V uses, they allow for true Netrunning rather than the quickhacks. That's why we can't actually do Netrunning in the game. Its a whole nother game inside the tabletop, so would have been like a game within the game, and hard to implement I think)

There are lots of netrunners we don't see dead tho. They are going about their jobs and gigs, and are fine.
What we see are the ones that 'fell off the edge' as the saying goes.

[Chief Spreading Bull]

Aside from what Silverbane said. Botching a mission for a Netrunner is not certain death, its just the way its portrayed in the game.

There are two card games out there called Netrunner and Android: Netrunner, the former set in Night City and the later set in a totally original universe that licensed the CCG system, and both go in depth to the operations of Netrunners. One thing you will notice is that the Corps in those games have numerous ways to kill you (from black ops teams kicking your door down to brain damage caused by black ice) but likewise netrunners in that game have an almost equal number of ways to avoid taking hits. The most infamous is the' armored fridge which let a runner survive a cruise missile strike to his apartment block after he got traced and there are stuff like sacrificial servers, which can soak damage dealt over the net to protect the runner's brain, or icebreakers that trick tracing ice to go after someone else. Heck some runners just chrome themselves to the max to survive and regenerate all types of damage (brain, net and meat).

Point is, 2077 is the exception, not the norm, given how peripheral netrunning is the whole game, so they couldn't give you the total Reboot style experience.

[Netsa]

Originally posted by ChiefSpreadingBull:

Aside from what Silverbane said. Botching a mission for a Netrunner is not certain death, its just the way its portrayed in the game.

There are two card games out there called Netrunner and Android: Netrunner, the former set in Night City and the later set in a totally original universe that licensed the CCG system, and both go in depth to the operations of Netrunners. One thing you will notice is that the Corps in those games have numerous ways to kill you (from black ops teams kicking your door down to brain damage caused by black ice) but likewise netrunners in that game have an almost equal number of ways to avoid taking hits. The most infamous is the' armored fridge which let a runner survive a cruise missile strike to his apartment block after he got traced and there are stuff like sacrificial servers, which can soak damage dealt over the net to protect the runner's brain, or icebreakers that trick tracing ice to go after someone else. Heck some runners just chrome themselves to the max to survive and regenerate all types of damage (brain, net and meat).

Point is, 2077 is the exception, not the norm, given how peripheral netrunning is the whole game, so they couldn't give you the total Reboot style experience.

Yeah, both of your comments really make me wish they made netrunning a serious part of the game. I'm not a big fan of CCGs, otherwise I would seek that out, it sounds pretty cool.

[Silverbane7]

That's why I like the 'missing persons: Fixer's hidden gems' mod.

It makes much more sense when you are sent by the various Fixers to check on these people.
Sure, it can feel (to some) like just filler
Go here, check on corpse, report back. Dead, dead, dead.
But the conversations in text form they have are the interesting bits (to me at least)

Take the Watson Fixer, Regina.
The first one she sends you to is the one near where you meet Dex. Over the road, in an alley with a garage guarded by two turrets.
(Its the first one in the game guide. The mod is structured the same way, follows the guide book. There is a Dogtown one too that's separate)

She tells V that she wants you to check on the Netrunner, that her father pays for her den, and that she's a little worried something has happened.
You get there, find her slumped in the empty freezer, her neuroport sparking. Dead.
(Read/loot shard, grab basic starter Netrunner suit)
But, go to the PC and read the messages and you find that she had contacted Regina about gear. Wanted to get in with the Voodoo Boys. Regina warned her off, tried to dissuade her.
She went in anyway.
Looks like the Voodoo's did her like they did Evelyn. Remote hack.

She later asks you to check on Watcher and on Lady Space, and mentions one of the services she offers netrunners is a 'clean up' service.
If you get flatlined in the course of your work, she sends someone like V, to check on you. And if you left your meat and joined that great modem in the sky, she will send a team to clean up after you.
The mod maker has spent a LOT of time and effort, far as I can tell, to connect all the hidden gems to the game world.
Checked the messages, cross referenced missions ect.

One where you find an executed woman be!ow bridge between Northside and Japantown, the mod tells you to wait till after you did a specific gig for Wakako, so it makes sense.
(You sneak into a woman's apartment to steal valuables back after a messy divorce, for the husband)
Turns out he called her after you finished the gig, wanted to meet up. Then shot her and fled the city.
Wakako mentions he reminds her of one of her late husbands (lol) after you send her the info.

Little things like that are what make the mod so good, for me at least.
An immersive way to find all the hidden gems, even the edgerunners ones.

[Silverbane7]

Originally posted by Netsa:

Yeah, both of your comments really make me wish they made netrunning a serious part of the game. I'm not a big fan of CCGs, otherwise I would seek that out, it sounds pretty cool.

You don't have to use a card game to netrun tho.
Cyberpunk has two ways to do it in the tabletop. I'm not well versed in ether way, having never played a Netrunner character.
But the 2020 way was easy to set up. All you needed was an old crossword puzzle with white and black squares, and the rules.

You can try that if you want, won't cost you ether.
Just head to the downloads section of your steam, check the free extra stuff for the game.
Along with wallpapers, artwork and the ost, you get a PDF of the 'cyberpunk 2020 sourcebook'
Inside is a digital copy of the original tabletop game, which has the Netrunning rules.
They used to use the crossword puzzle style block for quick and easy fast map generation.
By the time 2045 ( the current version, Cyberpunk RED, set in the year 2045) arrived, they changed it.
If you visit the download page for R Talsorian games, creators of the tabletop, I think there is a free basic starter PDF for quick start of the newest version, should have a quick overview of the newer way to netrun.

Worth a look anyway, since there are lots of interesting freebee items there with lore to learn.
Did you know that father Christmas became a Netrunner in the cyberpunk universe?
Yep, he is called S.A.N.T.A. there. And the Corpo's are on his sh*t list XD
(The 12 days of Gunmass, Gearmass and Cybermass downloads)
You can find out how cyberpunk's dual class system works too. Johnny would be pleased to know that a Solo/Rockerboy is known as 'a Johnny Silverhand' lol.
(Way to stroke his ego XD)
(That is in the 'collecting the random' download)

[Chief Spreading Bull]

[/quote]
Yeah, both of your comments really make me wish they made netrunning a serious part of the game. I'm not a big fan of CCGs, otherwise I would seek that out, it sounds pretty cool. [/quote]

Honestly it would better off as a stand alone game since its radically different from the typical edgerunner experience. If you are the latter you are on site doing stuff, by contrast most hard core runners launch their attacks from fortified bunkers or armored campers. I'd reckon such a game would be similar to Darkest Dungeon or some other permutation of roguelite PRG in that you have a homebase (your deck) and you assemble a party of Daemons and Icebreakers to confront a data fort's Ice and SysOps to get at the precious data inside, then survive the counter attack.

[Silverbane7]

Since it popped up in my suggestions again, this might interest you, if you are still curious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLlLbQDfmeQ&t=1s
The newer version of tabletop Netrunning.

And yeah, actual Netrunning, opposed to Quickhacking which is what V does, would probably need to be a proper minigame.
(Not the numbers based thing)
So, the question is...will we get to do it in the next game?

Personally... I think not, unfortunately.
Companies these days are always chasing 'the bigger audience' and are not satisfied with a niche group (and the possibility of passers by playing due to YouTube plays)
Netrunning has a very small group of players who love it in the tabletop (compared to say, the number of people who go with Solo, for example)
Which probably translates out to the game equivalent of the difference between the niche group who love 'bullet hell shooters' to the massive amount who like 'first person shooters'
We know which group the company would prefer to sell to (lol)

Maybe some indie group will make a decent Netrunning game tho.

[EricHVela]

It is possible to squeeze TTRPG turn-based stuff into ARPG without going the turn-based route or with limiting/distilling the turn-based aspect. Purists of the TTRPG might hate it, but as a TTRPG purist, I know the difference between a TTRPG and a video game. Even a turn-based video game can't completely abide by tabletop rules.

Quickhacking a terminal with a sequence of repeating 8-bit digits is a loose variant of turn-based as one step at a time with a timer (or, optionally in 2.x, without a timer).

I think the RED version could exist in some form, but the trick is to keep the tedium down. If it's complicated, it needs to be limited. If it's short, it needs to be rewarding enough to keep doing it.

I wonder... given that RED preceded the REDengine version... I wonder if the next edition of tabletop Cyberpunk will be Cyberpunk Unreal. (Kidding. I highly doubt they'd call it that.)

[Silverbane7]

Course not.
CyberpunkRED came from 'time of the RED' which was the 10year period from 2023 to 2033 where the sunsets and sunrises were a wonderfully beautiful shade of red, due to the changes caused by the nuke. One of the only good things about that time.

REDEngine comes from CD Project RED
(Although, considering all the times Mike has been totally on the nose.... I spent the whole of the 20th of August last year on edge in case some Rockerboy decided to go boomBOOM someplace lol)