I am assuming we will see more identities. This seams easy for runners… a new card, different ability possible different deck construction ratios…

What about corps though? I mean… corporations are so large we can have divisions.. like Wayland - Biotech or something. Or are we going to have complete new corporations each time.

Seams to me FFG missed the boat here… (granted I do not understand what they plan to do) but it seams to me that the corporation cards should have been different industry types.. say manufacturing, pharmaceutical, minging etc etc… then they could have added corp factions at will.. using teh same type of corp cards….

Any ideas how new corporations might be added to the game?

I imagine new Corp identities will be close to what you've mentioned - a face of the corp with a different effect. Could be a corporate division, holding, or just the same name.

It's entirely possible that they will be introduced as corporate characters such as CEO's or Public Relations. Kind of cool IMO, although I think that might violate the "faceless megacorp" theme common to distopian cyberpunk

I don't know that I agree with them missing the boat. Each corp does have its own feel and something they specialize in. For instance, when I was playing as Haas-Bioroid earlier today, they had that feeling of a corp that made some of the scary software. (wouldn't be surprised if they got something similar to Skalderviken from the old version eventually.) Whereas when my friend ran NBN, they were clearly a group that controlled a lot of information, and specialized in leveraging it.

One option i hope to see is a MIlitary type of corp. That would be a really good to add to the list. Stealing attack plans and new weapons blueprints. Stuff like that.

I had also mention (in an older post) a Runner that works for a corp. would be cool aswell. Runner for hire type.

The rulebook has quotes from employees in subsidiaries of the Corps that we currently have access to. I have a feeling subsequent Corp identities will be along those lines.

I thought it was pretty cool to have seen WEYLAND - a well known and well established name in the genre of science fiction (as we all know from the original Alien franchise and now Prometheus). So I sure hope that we will see some incarnation of Yutani, since technically we have seen Tyrell Corporation (Jinteki - More Human Than Human), Cyberdyne Systems (Haas Bioroid / cyborgs). Not sure who NBN is an amalgamation of - but I'm sure someone out there can help with that one

A government type would be cool but I think the more differant types of corps you have the harder distrabution will be.

Methos said:

Maybe OCP- OMNI CONSUMER PRODUCTS…….."I'd buy that for a dollar….I mean CREDIT!"

ALL you would need is one and it could be all of the branches combined. Armed forces for hire…. by corps (or others). like in Aliens.

LiveUnderBridge said:

True.. but what I mean in my post is that any Hass-Bioroid cards in future expantions are for the faction Hans-Bioroid. … so the only way you can have new corporation identities is to have divisions of HB.. like say HB-Bio-Tech Division or w/e.

So we are basically locked into these 4 corporations until new corp factions are introduced.

What I was trying to get at is that if teh corp faction were split not into corporate faction but into different types of corporate interest, say bio-tech, research, weapons manufacturing etc etc… then they could have released a infinite amount of corporation identities that could use this.. so we could say have a new identity called FAX News… that as it is a news service it could also use much of the same type of stuff that NBN uses… but be different.

As it is I can nto see how new corp identities can be added unless they are divisions of the current ones, or the release complete new factions.

riastradh said:

Exactly my thoughts as well. I think the idea of "faceless" corporations is part of the overall design, and the runners are personalities, individuals. I think this is how it will stay… though we may see employees as a new type of corp card.. like "CEO - Cohagen" that has a special ability and requires a "wage" each turn or something cleaver like that but in a way as it can be a data file on a server… .. but I wouldn't hold my breath… I hope to see more depth in the current maniacs b4 they try to monkey with the game by adding a load of new stuff.

crawdadr said:

Totally.. I think think a "government" archetype should have been in the base game… though maybe the idea is that there is no governments and only global corporations.

Methos said:

Yeah.. I can think og a few I would like to see…

OCP (Robocop)

REKAL (We can remember it for you wholesale)

They could add an entirely new Corp or runner type in the 60-card expansions.

I could easily see them doing mixed Corp/Runner expansions (3 each of 10 different cards for both), and then doing a Corporation-specific expansion (new Corporation + 32 cards, +3 each of 9 new cards) and a "Runner" expansion (same) in each cycle. Perhaps those 3x9 cards in the Corporation-specific set might be for the Runners, tailored to facing off with that new Corporation, making that single expansion pack a synergistic set.

Methos said:

We don't have to look to sci-fi for the inspiration for NBN - we have News Corp in real life, who control vast quantities of information, influence government agendas, and are known to have engaged in hacking (or at least phone-hacking).

I mentioned in another thread that I would like a corp that focused more on Black Ops, but not necessarily in terms of dealing direct damage. Agenda's more based around politcal coups, corporate wars and the like. The defense industry seems an ideal candidate here as it can cover not only these shady global opportunities (and superglobal, read: Heinlein and Mars), but funky opportunties for Research agendas.

Some examples of the type of cards I'm looking for in a new Corporation:

Judging by other Living Card Games, it will probably go something like this :

First series of expansions fleshes out the main game, probably introduces some other Identities that are just variants on existing ones (perhaps a Shaper with higher influence, higher minimum deck size; perhaps the space construction division of Weyland), and doesn't do anything game changing. I think you only have to look back at the common and vital cards from the 1.0 release of the original Netrunner game that aren't in the new game (yet) for some ideas of what might come soon.

At some point there will be a Deluxe expansion that will introduce some game changers. Maybe it's new factions, maybe it's new victory conditions, maybe it's story-driven with some big event that is represented with cards for all the factions that add a new wrinkle.

I think Android probably compares best with the Call of Cthulhu lcg (there was already a pre-existing game to draw from, and there is a strong focus on factions), so I bet someone who's expert on that game could tell us best what to expect.

Methos said:

Could also be a reference to Maas-Biotech, from William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy. I have only just started the second book, so I don't know if there are thematic similarities with HB, but the name sure fits! Also, interestingly, they have another branch called Maas-Neotech, which seems to fit well with the whole notion of new corp identities being different sub-companies in some umbrella organization.

Maybe corp IDs are not divisions persay, but task groups. It doesn't have a personality, but a method. endless and faceless, but with a uniform of character and distinction. These groups have distinguished names but they, in a very literal sense, belong to one corp or another. Think something like Renraku's Red Samurai from shadowrun(already a nod to them on neural katana), being charged with of a set of agendas to oversee, as opposed to the agendas the main office task group is overseeing. I don't know enough about the Android world to give you a canon example, can someone help me out?

hollis said:

Maas-Biotech shares enough thematic similarities with Haas-Bioroid that it's the obvious source for the nod. You'll find as you get a few chapters into Count Zero that Maas-Biotech's big thing is their new organic neural interfaces and AI. Sound familiar, looking at the A:N Haas-Bioroid fluff? Yeah…

Weyland's an obvious reference, of course, and I'm leaning towards NBN referencing a mash-up of real-world entities like NewsCorp and Google rather than anything *specific* from classic Cyberpunk fiction springing to mind. (though you could certainly make some equally mediocre cases for a variety of specific examples -- Diversifications, Inc. from the novel I'm just finishing up, Synners by Pat Cadigan, being the example that comes to mind because it's fresh…) And Jinteki I'm completely stumped on. Maybe something more along the lines of Rudy Rucker, which I'm somewhat less well versed in.

As for the original topic -- I'd actually kind of like to see maybe one more faction for Runners, and then additional individuals for each faction. Because Anarchs, Criminals, and Shapers thematically cover most of the bases -- all we need to see now are maybe Industrial Saboteurs or something -- hackers-for-hire running against their employers' competitors. Once you get that last good archetype covered, then going for new individuals seems a good route, as it allows you to offer different special abilities and different constraints for minimum deck size and maximum influence to distinguish new Runners, all without having to focus a lot on meat and potatoes cards for the new Runner.

Conversely, I hope they don't do "new branches" of the existing Corps. It detracts from the singular identity of the Corps, and it misses the boat to go for new fun insider references like we've seen with Haas-Bioroid and Weyland. I'd love to see Cyberdyne (a military-industrial complex contractor with government and special ops pull), CosaNostra Pizza (Mafia-run high-speed pizza delivery), etc. inspired corps make it in.

These two strategies actually mesh well with each other, too. The Runner strategy doesn't require a lot of bulk -- some new additions for each of the 3-4 factions of Runners, plus one or two new Runners per faction, and you've got some nice additions for everybody. Then the Corps can be added one at a time, with enough of a full set to support them and then a few new cards for the other Corps, as well. So the Corps take up more space in each expansion, but the existing Corps get less dedicated to them than the existing Runners do, but you get an entire new Corp set in the bargain.