#android universe

A fantastic article about the continuation of netrunner and a bit about the background work - the push to make the game as interesting and wide-ranging in all the different types of people it depicts as well as its overall theme and stand-out mechanics.

(2 of Netrunner’s lead designers for FFG, immortalised on cards by Matt Z)

The fact that it draws on interviews with NISEI members as well as ex-FFG staff is great, and it even delves a bit into the game’s lore -even if it does mess up one part of that thanks to an offhand Damon remark (he joked that Chaos Theory was Noise and Kate’s daughter - very not true, CT has 2 dads)

A few more pieces of the excellent Nasrul Hakim’s netrunner art have been uploaded to his gallery - Exploit, Breached Dome and False Flag.

He also has done this piece, for the Android Universe splatbook for FFG’s Genesys RPG (a pretty good and very interesting game)

To keep things short with this, I’ll stick to the basics: FFG in the last couple of years has made their own generic/toolbox RPG, Genesys - there’s a basic rules framework and you can do whatever you want with it, in practically any setting. I’ve played it, it’s pretty good. It’s based on their Star Wars RPG system. Not too long ago, they released Shadow of the Beanstalk, a setting book for the Android Universe (New Angeles specifically), with a load of lore, some NPC/Enemies, Android-Universe specific gear and so on. And then there was nothing, until FFG opened up the Genesys foundry, where users can post content they make (at the cost of FFG being able to use it if they like it), and to help content-producers along they dropped a free art pack. Many of these are Android Netrunner cards, and some I’ve already posted here before, but it’s all very cool - though unfortunately none of the pics come with names or artists credits, so I can only give the ones I know are Netrunner cards.

These can all be found here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/cc/27/genesys-foundry

My next post will have ones I’ve previously posted, and the 3rd will be ones I can’t attribute to anyone.

Okay, finally getting back to this! Reina, as a very direct, classical sort of badass (many runners are badasses in their own right, but Reina is a soldier antihero), has had a lot of both alt art, fan art, and fiction made up for her, which is great.

Reina has had a couple of official alt-arts, starting with this one. Then she got another look for core 2.0 - “set” 5 years after the original, and a second alt with her on Mars.

Reina’s notable for having one of the Android novellas written about her - by one of the setting’s original creators, even. Of the three Android novellas at the moment (Monitor, Exodus, and Monster Slayer) Reina’s Monster Slayer is the one closest to a game of Netrunner. While I don’t believe it’s based on a specific game, it very much could be - Reina vs the Weyland subsidiary GRNDL. One section in particular is specifically tied to the idea of a card - the Queen’s Gambit (seen in the first post), and one character from the novella got made into a card afterwards.

To do my first bit of Android fiction reviewing on this blog, I’ll first say that Monster Slayer is pretty much passable. The world building, as you might expect from the setting’s creator, is very solid and detailed, but the story and prose are nothing special. I once heard it described as “an action movie in writing”, and yeah, that’s exactly what it feels like - plenty of action, a fairly fun romp, but very little in the way in the way of plot (it’s a very linear story) or interesting prose. There’s also not much exploration of Reina’s character, which is a shame - but the tech stuff is very cool, so again I’d say that this is basically a novelisation of a netrunner game. Of the 3 novellas, it’s in my opinion the weakest - the action is good, but the story is simple and there’s not a lot to it. It asks practically no questions, and doesn’t really offer any new insights, despite the fairly unique hacking and other “run” sequences. Still a decent read though.

Next (last) comes Reina fanart - as one of the most action-y runners, she’s got a fair bit.