Project Beale - Android Netrunner

Trivia time. Here's the card.

"Look at all the Android devices I can choose!"

Overall, the card is a simple agenda card that rewards you for advancing it past the requirement. Pretty straightforward. But what in heavens name is a "Beale". After an extensive internet search (aka. Wikipedia), I now know that Beale is a common last name in Britain, and that a lot of people have had the last name Beale. Given that this card belongs to NBN, the corporation in charge of the media in the Netrunner universe, I think the card is meant to be a reference to this guy.

"I'm as mad as hell..."

This is Howard Beale, a character played by Peter Finch in the movie Network. Even if you know nothing about the movie, odds are you have heard the above quote sometime in your life.

New Angeles City Hall - Android Netrunner

I chose today's card to address an issue I have with some futuristic sci-fi works. Here's the card:

Home of NCIS: New Angeles.

Some card stuff first. It seems alright, though I'm confused how city hall helps runners avoid getting tagged, and why city hall is helping runners in the first place. Maybe the building or the sheer number of people in it help mask the runner's signal, but it would be nice if the card explained that instead of giving a generic quote from the city mayor.

But onto my main issue. Why do science fiction works, in order to make a futuristic sounding city, simply take an existing city and add the word "new" to it? Are city namers so creatively bankrupt and lazy that they constantly use this formula. New Who gave us New New York. We have New Gotham, from the short lived Birds of Prey live action series and I think from Batman Beyond. Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds gave us New Domino City, and on and on. What is it about tacking the word "new" onto something that makes it more futuristic?

And, using this card as an example, what happened to the original city? What happened to Los Angeles? Was it destroyed? Was it rebuilt as New Angeles? Was New Angeles built over Los Angeles? If it was simply rebuilt, how much of Los Angeles was built over to justify the "new" status? People usually don't tack on a "New" every time their city suffers a major disaster and is rebuilt, else Nero would have dubbed Rome after the fire New Rome. Well, he still might have, but the name obviously didn't stick. Same thing with London and Chicago when they suffered disastrous fires. Why would it work in the future if it didn't work then?

My point goes to all sci-fi writers: Don't tack New onto a city for your futuristic city unless you have a really good reason or explanation for it. Otherwise it comes across as lazy, and I'm certain you can come up with better names for your cities.

Deep Thought - Android Netrunner

There is one reason I'm talking about this card today. If you happen to have read a series a science fiction books by a certain British author, you should understand why.

"The ultimate answer to the question, of life, the universe, and everything, is... 42."

 

 

 

Deep Thought is a super computer from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that was built to calculate the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. Above was his answer. I feel like/hope this was an intentional nod to the series, but other than the name there's little to support this hypothesis.

This program looks like a Buddhist monk, it even has the third eye highlighted. It's also a virus, giving you a back door into the company's R&D, aka. their deck. This seems less like the Deep Thought I think of when I see this card, but it's amusing to pretend. In the meantime, be careful what you download and what sites you visit, lest your personal information is stolen by a psychic computer monk.

Dedicated Response Team - Android Netrunner

Continuing with the new Future Proof cards, we have this:

Sir, is there any reason we're upside down?

Again, I like this if for the art alone. An elite commando squad almost straight out of Halo standing upside down on a building. Why, how, who cares if it looks cool.

We also hit on one of the sillier terms in the game, meat damage. Meat damage. Doing 2 meat damage means the player discards 2 cards from their hand. The confusion is there is also net damage, which does the exact same thing. In the game's universe, what does meat damage actually mean. Does it mean these guys show up and shoot at the hacker. If so, you'd think they'd be a bit more lethal. Maybe it breaks some universal multi-coorporation code, or the government actually has enough power to do something about corporate murder. Maybe these guys just break your thumbs for misbehaving, I don't know.

I would be find with body damage, but meat damage? What if the hacker is artificial, aka. no meat? This is a cyberpunk setting, so it's likely to come up. But yeah, in Android Netrunner, you can hire your own personal SWAT team.

Darwin - Android Netrunner

So, I've gotten tired with Yu-Gi-Oh! for the moment, so let's look at another game, Android Netrunner. The game is set in a typical cyberpunk universe, where hackers square off against corporations. It's also an LCG, a living card game, the term trademarked by Fantasy Flight. How is this different from a TCG or a CCG? Long story short, TCGs and CCGs distribute cards mostly through randomized expansions. You're not guaranteed to get certain cards. An LCG though takes out the randomized part, making it easier for players to get the cards they want. In both formats though, players can  still play with their own customized decks. While I ultimately prefer and am partial to TCGs and CCGs, I still love LCGs. Part of the reason is that they have helped keep alive certain old games, A Game of Thrones and Call of Cthulhu for example.

I partly chose to do Android Netrunner because the fine people at cardgamedb just released scans for the latest expansion, Future Proof. What goodies can we find in here? Today, we start with this.

The star of the next Syfy telemovie.

The image of this card is a freakin' orca with arms and legs (or legs and legs, I can't tell)! One thing that confuses me about Android Netrunner is the program and ICE designs. Do they actually materialize in cyberspace, like Digimon, or are these illustrations simply meant to convey an idea of what the program does, since real programs are honestly boring to look at. I feel like it's the latter, but that doesn't stop me from imagining the programs battling each other in these forms.

One minor slip up here is the name, Darwin. The whale has legs, similar to that Darwin fish logo. But orcas are not fish! They're mammals, just like all other whales. It's possible this is meant to be the reverse of the Darwin fish, land based mammals evolving into aquatic ones as opposed to aquatic animals evolving into land based ones, but it's still a bit vague. Again, this is a nitpick, the illustration is fine if a bit unclear, but then again it's meant to evoke a concept and less of a physical thing.