Have I mentioned that I think the government/law enforcement might be a cool idea for a fourth runner faction someday yet? Because I think today, the day after it turned out that the NSA is all up in all our agendas after all, might be a good time to talk about that.

My guess is, in the Android universe, the corporations probably own most of the police/law enforcement.

Given that corporations seem to fight with each other constantly makes it a viable faction; a somewhat different flavor would be a hired net-hitman.

I'm actually hoping for some kind of magic/ tech mix for a faction. Call em Netromancers or something. All their cards can be fantasy influx themed. Zombie Horde as an icebreaker? Summoning Pentacle as a Console? I'd go for it.

I had an idea for a new runner class quite similar to the gov't idea.

Basically inspired by NSA/CIA information handlers, this new runner class would have the potential to access information much faster then other runners, but not steal/trash what is accessed.

The Runner:

Name: The Captain

Deck: 45

Influence: 15 (or 20, which depends on if they get there own cards printed or are primarily borrowing from other runners)

Ability: Once per turn, the runner may expose any one installed card unless the Corp pays 1 credit.

My idea behind the ability was the runner is always threatening to receive info from the corp unless the corp decides to pay the runner off.

To give the runner the ability to pay 1 to expose a card (even once per turn) is just too good.

So I felt if you gave the corp the possibility to deny the exposing of a card, the ability isn't as crazy.

Let me know what you guys think.

A politically motivated runner faction would be cool (Bioroid equality anyone?). Or perhaps some sort of cyberpunk religious faction.

Brigaldio said:

Borrow from Shadowrun and call them technomancers. Problem solved. In that tabletop RPG, the technomancers use the net (or "matrix" as it's called in SR) to basically do the same things as mages, but in net space.

I could see a Neutral runner faction with identities centered around the various political factions in the setting.

If they do decide to make a new Runner faction, it'll be in the fourth deluxe expansion set and that won't be for a couple years.

Isn't the Professor like a neutral faction?

He is a Shaper, but he can splash a lot of cards from the other identities…

richardtempura said:

Not yet he can't. There aren't enough OOF programs to outweigh the fact that there are a lot of cards he can never Influence at all.

I think a really cool idea would be to have "corporate" runners; runners that work for corporations to steal trade secrets from other corporations. That would allow some pretty cool new breakers that were offensive versions of the existing corp ice as well as some pretty cool support cards showing the runner's corporate affiliation (rather than the underworld flavor of many of the current runners).

Honestly, a fourth faction would throw off the game's balance. Rock/paper/scissors is very much what netrunner is about. There are 3 main ICE and each faction has cards that fall under barrier/code gate/sentry.7 is a great balance for that.

I don't see a fourth runner adding anything specific. When star wars, AGoT added new factions, the core set already had cards for those factions. There was a huge backlash over FFG adding the Silver Twilight to CoC due to how imbalanced and powerful they were made to make up for a lower card pool.

Netrunner has multiple IDs in each faction, that's plenty room for design space without resorting to a fourth runner faction.

I second that motion; I really don't see at this point what a fourth runner faction is going to add to the game.

Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Shaper?

I don't feel strongly one way or the other, personally. I do think that it is far more likely that the final "deluxe expansion" will likely include the last corp, and metric ton of neutral cards, rather then create a new faction.

The only faction I see as viable is, as some have mentioned either a current or splinter group of some government/military organization. This seems unlikely however, as our newest Red Queen would practically be the poster child for such a faction, and she is joining the anarchs.

It'd be fun to pick someones at FFGs brains at some point, and see the process by which they came up with and designed around the current faction system, which I feel like is quite elegant.

There was actually something about that somewhere. They apparently had a hard time coming up with runner factions until they decided to focus on motive rather than method. Wish I could remember where I read that.

Hah. That ties in with a conversation over on DB. That makes sense, though. The idea of cohesive criminal factions isn't... broad enough to support 3 runners. This works out well, though. Criminals can be anything from two bit conmen to mafioso, shapers are the idealists, and anarchs... are... well... by nature, anything.

I would be interested in seeing dual faction identities or agendas. GOT has alliances or something that lets you splash cards, this could be an agenda that could work for either of two corps, representing a merger or shared goal. Or an identity that let you splash from only two factions.

Or an identity that let you splash from only two factions.

You mean like Custom Biotics: Engineered for Success ?

No, no, no, no, NO MAGIC IN ANDROIDVERSE.

I love Shadowrun like whoah, but Android is a pure SF setting.

If we did get any additional faction, I would hope that they would go back to the original setting and give us the "Law Enforcement" faction. There is a wealth of material from the board game in that direction. Floyd 2X3A7C and Caprice Nisei (aka Nisei 1.0) would easily fit in as runner identities with a motive to investigate the megacorporations. Caprice's desire to liberate her sisters is almost canonical.

I believe he was referring to a stylistic choice of programs and rigs with magic, not literal spell slingers in the real world. I actually like this idea, but I feel like it would really just fit better in anarchs.

He was referencing Shadowrun, which does suggest actual magic. I don't know if you're familiar with the setting or not, but there are a group of people known as Technomancers who are able to magically jack in to the net without any hardware and compile programs on-the-fly to do whatever they need to do.

Mechanically it works just like a Mage in the setting, except their skills are only valid on the net.

Personally I think Netrunner doesn't need any more factions added; new IDs within the existing factions are fine. Consider that any new faction will also need the card-support to be competetive, which means a whole lot of catching up with the existing runners, and further diluting of the cards dedicatied to each faction in the new datapacks as they're released.

I agree on the factions, I think we have most of the bases covered.

I was just saying that he was referring to programs and hardware with fantasy themed names, not actual spell casting, referring to the first post which does not mention shadowrun. I am familiar with the overarching concepts, but his phrasing made me think he was simply aiming at flavor. With things like spinal modems and omindrives, easily hidden from view, you could very easily have an "illusionist" faction that behaved in such manners, without any actual mysticism or other such shenanigans. Again, I think there is already a home for this in the anarchs, and no need for another faction if FFG pursued a theme of such chicanery. Regardless, it is all a little academic anyway unless the poster confirms one way or another.

I'd agree that turning this in to shadowrun 1.2 would be a bad move, as it would dilute the setting for little gain. If they wanted to pursue this variety of storytelling, the psychic stuff discussed in the boardgame by one of the characters, and implied by the art on Nisei Mk. 2, also related to that character, is a far more fertile ground for a little bit of mystery.