Category Archives: netrunner

netrunner

Free League Have Been Busy On The Alien RPG

Last week Free League announced a partnership with Titan Books (an off shoot of Forbidden Planet if memory serves me correctly).

In the official announcement this partnership has been described as “a collaboration to publish a unified storyline set within the ALIEN Universe. For 2022 and into 2023, the editorial and writing teams will share assets and coordinate plotlines to form a cohesive narrative across three original novels and the multiple award-winning ALIEN RPG.”

In the next year Titan Books will be publishing three new Alien novels.

  • Alien: Colony War by David Barnett (April 2022)
  • Alien: Inferno’s Fall by Phillipa Ballantine and Clara Carija (July 2022)
  • Alien: Enemy of My Enemy by Mary SanGiovanni (February 2023)

The first two can be pre-ordered on Amazon already. Which funnily enough but hardly a surprise I have pre-ordered.

If unsure which version of the books to pre-order, as there are three versions, audible, kindle and good old physical?

You first need to be aware of the following snippet of information about these novels. “ALIEN RPG lead setting writer Andrew E.C. Gaska will develop three unique RPG scenarios which will appear as bonus features in the books, one per novel.”

I seriously doubt these scenarios will be in the audible version (which I did spend a credit on to pre-order). But I’m not sure that the kindle version will have them either. The only edition I would bet money on that definitely will have them is the physical (hence why I pre-ordered it).

However Titan Books aren’t the first to do this sort of thing.

Back in 2017/8 FFG did something similar when they released four novellas set in the Android universe that had in the physical versions exclusive content for the Genesys RPG Shadow of the Beanstalk source book. Such as “a 16-page color insert detailing the treacherous Los Scorpiones gang …”

That exclusive bit was annoying as it was very challenging to get the actual physical edition, especially here in the UK. I did manage to get them all. But I don’t think the print run was very big.

This shouldn’t be an issue with the much more popular Alien franchise.

In other Free League Alien RPG news (yes they have been very busy it seems) a new cinematic adventure called Heart of Darkness has just gone on pre-order.

Heart of Darkness is “written by sci-fi novelist Andrew E.C. Gaska. It is a stand-alone adventure, but also serves as a conclusion to the Draconis Strain Saga begun in the cinematic scenario Chariot of the Gods and continued in Destroyer of Worlds. The scenario is designed for 3–5 players plus the Game Mother, and is a spiraling descent into soul-crushing madness.”

What does your money get you?

Basically the following:

  • The main Heart of Darkness scenario book.
  • A huge double-sided map (format 864x558mm) of the Erebos plasma trawling space station.
  • Seven pre-generated characters to choose from.
  • Custom cards for secret messages and personal agendas.
  • Player maps and handouts.

Plus when you pre-order you get early access to the PDF’s. The actual physical version will not be out until sometime in the Summer I believe.

There is a VTT bundle for this as well.

I do like that buying from Free League also gets you the PDF version. Other publishers do this as well, such as EN Publishing. It’s a nice incentive to buy direct from them. But I am a bit conflicted on this. Pre-ordering and early access I’m happy with. But for those that can wait, and want to support and buy from their FLGS, surely Free League and other publishers can come up with a way for those to get the PDF as well as part of their purchase.

Anyway I’m an impatient so and so, so come payday Heart of Darkness will be added to a virtual shopping cart.

Dragons and Androids

From time to time instead of writing a new post about something I’ve already written about I have been known to actually update the original post instead.

My post that shares some recent videos from Arcane Library and Sly Flourish about generating ideas for adventures using random tables is one such post. So if you want to see the update just click here.

As the above image demonstrates I did in fact cave and get Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons. I can’t wait to use it within my campaign. But first we need to get our sessions started again. No new date has been set yet!

In other news FFG in partnership with Dark Horse Comics are releasing a third art book in their series based on FFG intellectual property called The Art Of The Android Universe.

The Art of the Android Universe will be “showcasing the design and art from the hit table top games set within the Android Universe!”

Cool I’m a big fan of the Android universe. I have been ever since I first got into playing Android Netrunner. I just love this vision of a cyberpunk future that FFG have come up with.

This art book will be a great resource for GM’s wanting to run an adventure in the Android universe. I’m pretty sure it will compliment The Worlds of Android book very nicely as a source of inspiration.

The Art of the Android Universe is due out according to its Amazon UK page on the 16th December and will be £33.99.

Start of my horror notes

Today I decided to start making some notes about horror in relation to RPGs instead of just dumping clippings into a note app entry on my iPad.

I’m using the excellent iThoughts mind map app to organise them. It allows me to create something like below.

Basically I’ve captioned headings, sub headings, etc and turned them into mini mind maps on one big mind map.

The plan is to expand each of the mind maps with further notes. Which naturally will take sometime.

But thought I’d share this incase it’s of interest to anyone.

The Start Of My Android Handout


Being a wannabe noob GM as I’ve said in a previous post Matthew Colville has a lot of good advice.

One such nugget is the campaign handout. A short document for the players telling them about the world they will be adventuring in, and helping them decide what characters to create.

So I’ve made a stab at writing one for the Genesys Android campaign I want to run.

It needs a brief paragraph talking about how mega companies really run everything. Plus it also needs a brief description for each character type.

But here is what I’ve written so far (stuff in italics FFG words not mine).


It is the future. The world changed. People did not.

In the not so-distant future, humanity has spread across the solar system, unlocked the frontiers of cyberspace, and created millions of intelligent androids in its own image. At the heart of this progress stands a ladder leading to the riches of the stars—the massive space elevator called the Beanstalk. And at its base sprawls the biggest, meanest, and most exciting city on Earth: New Angeles.

12 hours ago your life turned upside down. 12 hours ago a tsunami hit “parts of six districts and caused massive damage to New Angeles’ coastal infrastructure.” Early estimates put the loss of life in the tens of thousands. It is thought at least a thousand androids also died rushing into the wall of water trying to save human lives.

NBN vidcasts are wall to wall floating bodies, and human suffering in the wake of the tsunami.

Somehow you survived the brutal force of nature as it lay waste to the feeble man made structures in its way. Battered and bruised, you have ended up at one of the many emergency relief centres. All you have left in the world are the possessions you managed to grab as the water crashed into your home. You are one of the lucky ones.

You are first level citizens of New Angeles. You do not know each other. But you are all in the same emergency relief centre.

Early Inspiration from Shadow of the Beanstalk

With the Android Shadow of the Beanstalk source book for the Genesys system dropping though people’s letterboxes in the UK (they landed on the door mat in the US a couple of weeks ago, and the pdf can be downloaded from the 5th March, no hint at the moment when the taster scenario will be released). I thought I’d write some initial thoughts from my twenty minute bath time soak this morning, where Shadow of the Beanstalk was my reading material.

I’ve only really looked at the GM section of the book which looks at creating an immersive world for the players and building adventures in the Android universe.

There is some great advice for GM’s in this section, especially for wannabe noob GM’s like me.

I particularly like the advice on creating a living world. Which bits of can be applied to other genres. They also map across to some of the stuff O’Neal talks about in his book The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics. Particularly about the npc’s lives not being a static thing.

It’s also this advice that can be used to seed future adventures, and also add colour and depth to the world.

Also part of the GM section is the adventure builder that uses a Three Act structure. Hmmm I wonder where we have come across that? They split it into Hooks (7 provided), Escalations (5 provided) and Climaxes (5 provided). And like an ala carte menu, you chose one from section A, one from section B, and one from section C and you have an adventure.

My planning…

For my own planned campaign I think I have now settled on a setting and a reason for the players to come together.

I’m going to set the campaign in the aftermath of the New Angeles Tsunami as detailed in the novella Monster Slayer by Daniel Lovat Clark. And hopefully explore the impact of such an event. Naturally there will be power vacuums and gang warfare going on as rival gangs try to exploit this opportunity to gain more power. At the corporate level there will also be fallout, as the other rival corporations take this opportunity to hit Weyland and GRNDL who were behind the tsunami. Much of this will play out in the newsfeeds during the adventures. However who knows they may get sucked into some of the power plays also.

Naturally the players will be survivors of this disaster and getting aid at an emergency relief camp. The starting equipment they have is all they were able to grab when the tsunami hit.

So what other stories will be running in the newsfeeds during ongoing adventures? The events of the novella Monitor by Leigh Alexander seem ideal material to play out in the background. Although the theme may not be explored.

Although Exodus by Lisa Farrell, will see parts play out in the feeds. I do want to explore the themes of this. Android/Clone rights are analogous to the battle for black rights, slavery and the underground railway (I’m sure the inspiration for Exodus or an influence at the least). I like that Android gives an opportunity to look at this difficult and emotive subject. So we will see protests and riots reported on the news. And players will get caught up in some of these as well I’m sure. I like the idea of having the players involved in the Android version of the underground railway.

Although the players won’t get involved the events detailed in the Mumbad cycle also make great material for background colour that highlight the Android/Clone rights.

The Flashpoint Cycle also is something I’d like to explore and have the players involved with. It’s something that can play out in newsfeeds and seed adventures for players as they get involved in the fallout from those infamous 23 seconds.

I’m going to avoid any cycles or events that are off planet for the time being. So I won’t have them in the newsfeeds for the players until I want to move the party off Earth. I need more information about the Kitara Cycle which is on Earth. Maybe the events could be mentioned. From an initial look they could tie in with the fallout of Exodus, and have the players getting revenge on Weyland.

So that’s my thoughts on direction, themes etc at the moment. What the first adventure will be I don’t know. I still would like to see what the two part taster scenario FFG was. It may be suitable as the starting point. Or something that can be used during the campaign. My early leanings are that I have the players do an intro one shot, maybe a rescue mission, then into the FFG scenario (if suitable).

Planning the Adventure

With the Android source book most likely dropping in the next week. I thought I better get a move on with this series.

Fundamentally, adventures are stories. An adventure shares many of the features of a novel, a movie, an issue of a comic, or an episode of a TV show. Comic series and serialized TV dramas are particularly good comparisons, because of the way individual adventures are limited in scope but blend together to create a larger narrative. If an adventure is a single issue or episode, a campaign is the series as a whole.” (The D&D Dungeon Masters Guide Chapter 3)

When I started this series of posts I hadn’t got to that part of the DMs Guide. But it confirms that I’m not completely crazy with my comparison and taking ideas from other forms of entertainment.

This post continues the high level approach to creating a campaign and the adventures that make it up. Future posts will look at the details. But for now we continue to steal, sorry stand on the shoulders of giants.

The basic elements of good storytelling should guide you throughout this process, so your players experience the adventure as a story and not a disjointed series of encounters.” (The D&D Dungeon Masters Guide Chapter 3)

The One-Damn-Thing-After-Another structure based on as previously mentioned 1930’s serials like Buck Rogers is discussed by O’Neil briefly. It’s a simple structure that is basically a series of encounters between your party and some big bad. They keep trading blows until finally one side is victorious. And potentially could be seen as “a disjointed series of encounters.

We have already seen in the Paranoia post on planning an adventure the use of The Three Act structure. In the Dungeon Masters Guide they use beginning,middle,end for telling a story. Which is basically the Three Act structure.

In the DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics we get presented with O’Neil’s Heavy-Duty, Industrial-Strength Structure for a Single-Issue Comic Book Story. Which happens to be the authors version of the Three Act structure that they developed over their many years in the comic book industry.

Act 1

  • The Hook
  • Inciting incident
  • Establish situation and conflict
  • Act 2
    • Develop and complicate situation
  • Act 3
    • Events leading to:
  • The climax
    • Denouement

    Act 1

    For my planning using the above structure the hook and inciting incident are combined into one. The inciting incident aka “the event that causes our party to react, that provides the danger or puzzle or task that galvanises our party into action.” (O’Neal) is how we get the story moving and entice our party.

    Establishing the situation, conflict, and the McGuffin should all fall naturally within that inciting incident, and the opening scene setting.

    But what is a McGuffin?

    A McGuffin is what the hero and villain are fighting over… The only thing that matters is that the plans, documents, secrets must seem to be of vital importance to the characters… it must be credible. If the conflict is over something inconsequential or silly, your hero is diminished…” (O’Neal)

    Act 2

    take the story in a new direction. Something unexpected happens…” So in terms of the scenario or campaign, we are adding plot twists, complications, new situation(s).

    Act 3

    This is it the climax of the adventure. The player characters have solved the biggest problems, maybe even all of them. Defeated the threat, and restored order to the world. To paraphrase O’Neil. If this is the end of the story arc it could be the big finale, the final confrontation between the players and the big bad.

    Denouement

    For our purposes this ties up loose ends, has the heroes returning/delivering items, returning to base, shopping. And set up the next or future adventure.

    So that’s a quick look at a basic structure to use for adventures.

    In the comic book world there are basically two schools of thought on script development, full scripts and plot first aka “The Marvel Way of Plotting”. This is relevant to us planning our adventures because we have a similar choice. Our equivalent of the full script is the full adventure with all the details. Or we can go with the Marvel Way.

    These posts I’m writing are starting at a macro level, and then zooming in to the micro. Which means because I am still at that macro level for this post I’m going to focus on the Marvel Way.

    Stan Lee “With the Marvel style, I would give the artists the broad outlines of the story, and fill in the dialogue after the penciling was completed.

    Once I’m happy with the campaign planning, and the plots I’ve created. I can zoom in and do the detail. For me that detail is the equivalent of the drawing of the comic book, and the subsequent dialogue.

    So what I’m proposing is that for each of the three acts a paragraph or two is written describing what is happening story wise.

    Which means I haven’t gone into lots of detail, but I have a good overview

    I do appreciate that so far that all this planning is for a linear medium. Where as the nature of an RPG is non-linear. Or it is if you don’t keep the players on the path and stop them wondering off. So I think that there is potential to learn from the video game industry on this front. I’ll have to look through my text books and hope that I can find stuff online.

    But that will be for a future post. For now I’ll leave this here and keep an eye out for the postman and hope they are carrying a parcel for me.

    Pick and Mix Your Adventure Comes To The Android Universe

    I think the arrival of the Android universe source book Shadow of the Beanstalk for the Genesys RPG system is imminent.

    I’ve read online that one or two people who pre-ordered directly from FFG have notification that their order is on the way.

    Which I’m hoping means that the copies stores will be sending out won’t be too far behind.

    In the last few days a post has dropped looking at the source book from the point of view of the GM.

    The original information announcing the Shadow of the Beanstalk only mentioned that there would be a chapter to help GM’s creature adventures.

    Finally in the last post we are given a bit more meat to chew over before getting our grubby mitts on the book.

    The final chapter in Shadow of the Beanstalk describes how to bring these characters and situations to life as the Game Master. Through unique social encounters and an adventure builder included in the sourcebook, you can bring the conspiracies and intrigue of the Android universe to your tabletop.”

    From the description below that FFG are giving us a system that works a bit like chose one from column a, one from column b, and one from column c, and that’s your unique adventure.

    Through selecting a variety of hooks, escalations, and climaxes provided in the book, Game Masters can create modular adventure frameworks, complete with twists, turns, and moral quandaries for the party to face. These modular adventure acts can be rejiggered and combined in new and interesting ways. A hook can be replayed several times with a completely different escalation and climax, resulting in a wildly different adventure. With enough change in set dressing, even the same old hook can feel completely different!

    From what I can tell we are still getting the three act structure (which will be covered in a bit more depth in an imminent post). Except they are calling them something different. The hook is Act 1, the escalation Act 2, and finally Act 3 is the climax.

    In the post FFG give us a bit more info about each of the acts.

    No matter where your adventure is headed, it starts with the hook—a starting concept to get your players moving into a broader adventure. Each hook consists of three major parts; the primary goal, the challenges, and the twist. The primary goal is what your PCs are trying to accomplish, the challenges are what stand in the character’s way, the twist is an unexpected complication that take characters by surprise. These hooks can range from an airplane heist job to tracking down a rogue experimental clone, and they simply form the basis for an adventure.

    An escalation is a rise, either in the stakes or in the difficulty of the adventure, and it’s usually the point where the waters of morality beomce muddy. There is often a plot twist of some kind that shows the players that the milk run they signed up for isn’t as cut and dried as advertised. Perhaps a third party gets involved in the job—whether it’s a rival corporation or an orgcrime faction, this complicates things for your players and creates new challenges.

    Finally, the climax generally represents how the most powerful organization involved wants to attempt to resolve the issue. This organization is probably a powerful corporation or orgcrime faction, but it could also be a religious group or a government. It could be that a higher-up just discovered the actions of their underlings, and orders a radically different course of action. Perhaps the organization decides to cut their losses, silencing everyone involved in the operation, or maybe they decide to place their bets in court, calling in the NAPD to cause trouble for everyone involved. While the climax represents how the most powerful organization wants events to unfold, the players still have the agency to determine how their adventure will end.

    With a full data vault of hooks, escalations, and climaxes to choose from and improvise with, Shadow of the Beanstalk is the perfect starting point to your own cyberpunk adventure in the Android universe or beyond!”

    It’s interesting that there wasn’t this equivalent chapter in the Terrinoth source book. Maybe FFG assume that with the wealth of fantasy based content out there that there was less of a need.

    But this final chapter does sound like an interesting and welcome addition to the tools that a GM can use for creating their adventures in the Android universe. I particularly like the improvise they mention. Being able to quickly make up an adventure on the fly in response to players decisions will be a great tool to have if needed. I can see it being handy for generating one off adventures for the “gaps” between story arcs of an ongoing campaign.

    While I’ve been writing these posts on creating a campaign and adventures I’ve been giving more thought to my plans for my first time as a GM and my first steps in the Android universe.

    At about the same time as the source book drops, I’m expecting that the taster adventure will also go up on their website. My guess is that this will be the two part adventure they took to GenCon and Pax Unplugged.

    So before I go full knees deep in, I want to see what this taster adventure is like. The plan is to run this first.

    Where the taster adventure finishes, and the feelings of the group will dictate the further planning.

    For me there are some nice events and themes within the Android universe that I’d like to explore or act as a back drop to a campaign/adventure. I’ll probably talk about those in another post also. FFG have such a rich setting in the Android universe, I can’t wait to share it with others.

    Planning the Campaign


    Welcome to the next post in my series looking into planning campaigns and adventures for a role playing game. In particular I’m getting ready to start planning adventures for a party of adventurers in the Android universe for the FFG Genesys system.

    I briefly mentioned in a previous post that FFG don’t publish scenarios/campaigns for their Genesys system outside of the initial taster scenario they put up on their website for each source book.

    So if I want to run a one shot or campaign using the Genesys system then it’s all on me to come up with the everything (if I’m not using one of the available source books). This is a big thing for a noob GM like me, who has still to run a session.

    Luckily as I’ve already established a lot of the work for me will have been done by FFG when they publish the source book for the Android universe. What is left for me to do is to come up with the campaign.

    I keep bandying the term campaign around but what exactly is a campaign? The D&D Dungeon Masters Guide defines a campaign as:

    …When strung together, these adventures form an ongoing campaign. A D&D campaign can include dozens of adventures and last for months or years.”

    It also gives the following advice in the opening of the campaign chapter.

    The world you create is the stage for the adventures you set in it. You don’t have to give more thought to it than that. You can run adventures in an episodic format,with the characters as the only common element, and also weave themes throughout those adventures to build a greater saga of the characters’ achievements in the world.

    Planning an entire campaign might seem like a daunting task, but you don’t have to plot out every detail right from the start. You can start with the basics, running a few adventures, and think about larger plotlines you want to explore as the campaign progresses. You’re free to add as much or as little detail a you wish.

    The start of a campaign resembles the start of an adventure. You want to jump quickly into the action,how the players that adventure awaits, and grab their attention right away. Give the players enough information to make them want to come back week after week to see how the story plays out.”

    A lot of the campaign chapter is about planning the details of the world that the adventurers will be spending their time in. Which is kind of not relevant to this discussion and my current planning. Although once the Android source book is out the majority if not all of that has been dealt with.

    With the definition that I have of a campaign what tools can I use from the comic book world to help with the planning of my campaign? I think that I can. If we treat adventures as an issue of a comic book. A campaign can be seen as similar to an ongoing series, miniseries, or maxiseries depending on how long you want the campaign to run for.

    The miniseries and maxiseries have a definite end, whilst naturally the ongoing series just keeps going.

    With a campaign length in mind I need to look at story arcs.

    O’Neil defines a story arc as “...a story that takes several issues to tell.” Which in our context could be rewritten as “a story that takes several adventures to tell.”

    How do story arcs map to the length of a campaign?

    If the campaign is one of the finite lengths (miniseries and maxiseries) then the story arc would cover the length of the campaign. For instance a miniseries length campaign being the shorter of the two would most likely have just the single story arc. Whilst the longer maxiseries may have multiple story arcs. Naturally the ongoing campaign will have multiple story arcs, potentially interspersed with single one off adventures. Which may or may not be set ups for future story arcs!

    When working with story arcs O’Neil gives the following bits of advice:

    • ‘…reintroduce characters and locales if they haven’t appeared for a few issues when doing an arc…” Pretty good advice. Players may have forgotten, not made notes, whatever the reason, if a character/locale hasn’t appeared for a session/adventure or two, a brief description or role play to remind them won’t hurt.
    • A rule from his miniseries section that is relevant to what I’m doing here (planning a story arc for a RPG) is “There must be a major change, development, or reverse in every issue. This is just another version of the ‘keep-the-story-moving’ dictum. Something important must happen in every issue of the series. Each must have at least one turning point or surprise. And in each, the hero must either accomplish or learn something.”
    • Each issue should end on a reason for the reader to continue buying the series” or in our terms, give your players a reason to keep coming back. O’Neil suggests good old fashioned cliff-hangers (those 1930’s serials were experts at this) or something a bit more subtle.
    • “…incorporate a brief summary of what’s gone before.” A good GM does this at the start of each session naturally. Edmund does it on the Facebook event and at the start of the each session.

    The first and least sophisticated is as O’Neil calls it the One-Damn-Thing-After-Another. It’s based on one of those 1930’s serials like Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers or King of the Rocketmen to name a handful.

    O’Neil actually looks at this in the story structure section, but I think it applies also to the more macro campaign level also. This is just a series of encounters with an antagonist (who will somehow evade capture, or get free for the next encounter). At the macro level we are currently looking at this structure is best suited to the shorter campaign length. As an ongoing campaign it would soon get boring and repetitive.

    Then O’Neil introduces The Levitz Paradigm. Which looks great for an ongoing campaign. In the words of the Paul Levitz himself this is…

    a plotting tool I used in the Legion’s heyday to keep track of the many fluid plots and subplots.  The physical ‘device’ is pretty simple, and the theory is one that was rapidly evolving in super hero comics in the ‘80s but which has deep roots in soap opera.”

    I’m just going to save my fingers and quote from the man himself off his post. It’s not the most detailed explanation but google and O’Neil can cover the details in more depth for us.

    If the ‘paradigm’ was anything beyond a charting tool, it was a few (sometimes ignored by me, sadly) guidelines:”

    start your secondary plots low and raise them slowly (maybe as a C or D plot before it gets to be a B, much less an A).
    every time you visit a plotline, it needs to progress in that visit (if it’s boy meets sheep, one of them should end the scene in an emotional moment, for example).
    vary the number of beats before you escalate to an A.

    And all of this is, of course, secondary to basic plotting rules like making stakes important to the characters, and flowing plots from the characters themselves.  Or one that I’ve grown fonder of in my recent years of teaching, that what reveals/defines character is choices, particularly choices with costs.”

    Within the context of planning a campaign subplots are our means to “set up or introduce the main plot.” So during an adventure an npc may give a bit of information that is relevant later to a future adventure.

    I do like the idea of nicking the subplot use from comic books of using them also to expand the world the characters are in, and make the npc’s more three dimensional by showing snippets of their lives. Which could at a later point turn into a story arc that the players get involved in.

    O’Neil asks us to remember “Subplots are plots. They must advance toward a resolution, or at least the illusion of a resolution.”

    So now I have some tools for planning a campaign from the comic book world. But could I also learn from the video game industry and how they create games like Skyrim or Zelda Breathe of the Wild? Is there cross over with what I have talked about here? This is an area I need to research. In the meantime the next part in this series will be at the adventure level, and planning an adventure.

    Getting in the mood for the Android Universe

    By now I think I’ve established that I’m a fan of the Android universe, and cyberpunk in general.

    This post is nothing but notes for myself to remind me of films and tv shows that are in the cyberpunk genre, or touch relevant themes, that I want to rewatch.

    One or two of the movies will have been I’m sure a major influence on the Android Universe.

    I’m not claiming these are the best examples of the genre, they are ones I’ve seen (apart from Alita Battle Angel – which isn’t out yet, but I love the manga and really looking forward to this) and enjoyed.

    There is even a troll poster amongst them, because I meant to put the original in not the remake.

    Which movies would you recommend to add to this list?

    Up the beanstalk!

    I have a soft spot for the now deceased Android Netrunner lcg, despite having sold out of it at what retrospectively looks like the right time.

    I loved the game play, it was so thematic. The whole runner aka hacker vs the big mega corporation. Trying to infiltrate their way into the corporate servers and steal their agendas. And it really felt as the runner that was what you were doing. Whilst as the corporation you were trying to stop the runner and protect your agendas.

    The whole Android universe that it was set in was so rich, and dystopian. It had the whole Bladerunner aesthetic to it. Classic cyberpunk. Which I’ve been a big fan of since the mid eighties.

    At some point in the near future (hopefully) FFG will be releasing their Genesys RPG source book for the Android universe, Shadow of the Beanstalk. I’m rather excited about having the opportunity to visit the Android universe again. Especially if I can convince some-one else to GM. But in reality it will most likely be myself being the GM. So I thought I would do a post about sources of background information (or should that be inspiration?) for the world of Android that GM’s and players a like can use.

    We’ll start with the published fiction. I think all these are available digitally. FFG have been producing these rather nice novellas (read short stories). The physical versions of you can find them are hardback, and nicely produced. The stories are around 90-100 pages in length, with a short author bio. Then a few pages of background info about the Android universe relevant to the setting of the story. Which is rather nice for what we want. I’ve got Monitor and Exodus and they are quiet enjoyable stories. Oh and it should be noted Undercity isn’t out yet, but available to pre-order.

    The novels are much older, I’ve not got hold of physical versions (which I’d love to do at some point). Plus I’ve only read Strange Flesh and Free Fall. Which I found very enjoyable.

    But the one book you do want is The Worlds of Android. FFG describe it as the

    “…definitive guide to the Android setting and its unique vision of the future. A beautiful, 272-page hardbound setting guide and art book, The Worlds of Android features full-color art, stunning gatefolds, and a polyphony of narrative voices that convey the immense diversity of human experience in the rich, fictional universe made famous by Android: Netrunner and the Android board game.


    I totally agree with that description. Naturally I haven’t seen the Shadow of the Beanstalk. But I’m assuming this will be the perfect companion to it.

    With the data packs and deluxe expansions (iirc) there were flavour inserts. Which might be useful. One or two were extracts from the novels. They might be worth trying to track copies down. I do regret not keeping the ones I had.

    Plus there was some great flavour text on the cards. It would be worth googling for card images and making notes of ones you like. Especially for npc’s that your players might come across.

    So there you have it some sources for extra background information for an amazing universe. I hope that helped.