Corp Specific ICE
I’m currently MCing a game set in the Android: Netrunner universe. (We have four players including myself, all of whom play the LCG, and it seemed like a natural fit.) There haven’t been that many encounters between our Hacker and ICE, but I need to start using it way more, as the PC is wrecking shop in any server he gets into.
To add some Netrunner “flavor”, I’m thinking about making some Corp specific ICE. How ICE looks and behaves not only makes the game feel more Netrunner-y, it will also give the players clues about what Corp the characters are messing with. If they pay attention.
Haas-Bioroid ICE:
Whenever a piece of HB ICE executes a routine, the player loses 1 hold (if any) from either the Compromise Security or Manipulate Systems move.
Jinteki ICE:
Whenever a piece of Jinteki ICE executes a routine, damage an intruder’s cyberdeck (Lower one of the cyberdeck’s ratings by 1).
NBN ICE:
Whenever a piece of NBN ICE executes a routine, trace an intruder’s location (Trace +1).
Weyland ICE:
Whenever a piece of Weyland ICE executes a routine, corrupt an intruder’s program (Destroy an active program).
This means Crop specific ICE always gets an additional effect when it executes a routine. That might be too much. Maybe instead of the additional effect, the ICE should simply do an extra point of something when a specific routine is run. So Jinteki ICE would lower an intruder’s cyberdeck rating by an additional +1 if the MC chose that option.
Thoughts?
Maybe it should be “whenever this ICE executes a set of routines, also __“. Then the number of routines executed by blue/red/black would go from 1/2/3 to 2/3/4, rather than 2/4/6.
Oh yeah. I was intending it to go 2/3/4, so changing the trigger to “whenever this ICE executes a set of routines” is much better. Thanks. 😀
I think it’s something you’d make available to the hacker characters up-front… part of the professional knowledge you’d expect such a character to possess. I’d look to give them a briefing to the effect of:
“From experience and rumour, you know that NBN and Haas favour defensive ICE. NBN are reputed to be very good at tracing your physical location, while Haas are particularly efficient at shutting down your access before booting you out.
By contrast, Jinteki and Weyland tend to deal aggressively towards hackers… lots of Red ICE, stuff that’ll corrupt your programs and smoke your hardware.
Rumours of Black ICE remain just rumours… for now”.
Good point Simon Geard. My players probably subconsciously know this (as we’re all Netrunner LCG players), but it certainly wouldn’t hurt to remind them.
It’s flavour, as much as anything. I’m loosely familiar with the card game, but I’m not sure that’s something that would carry across – do you mentally associate the mechanics of (e.g.) the Haas deck in the LCG with the attitude of the Haas corporation in an RPG?
Personally, I wouldn’t make that association, so a bit of flavour text on how you see the corporations would be valuable. But that’s just me… possibly others, particularly those more experienced in the LCG would automatically think of Haas as having a notably defensive strategy, or Jinteki is more aggressive.