Setting F.A.Q and Q & A

Getting closer and closer to that NES great Cyber Stadium Series: Base Wars...

Here's another question, exactly how...desensitized are the masses by 2043? I mean, thinking about UFC happening back in the 50s would be seen as barbaric, but today? It's an accepted thing. Is brutality an accepted way of life? Or rather, do the corporations control exactly what kinds of brutality the masses actually get to see?

LowCashBro wrote:

I think a sports team could definitely be considered an asset! They have ups and downs in sales like any product, and are part of the entertainment industry. Of course they'd have to split up cyborg athletes and human athletes, and the resulting excitement of cyborg spots might make "pure baseball" much less exciting. Full body cybernetic replacements are rare, even extreme replacements like skull or spine are very, very rare but done to people like soldiers or wealthy executives. As the world of Net Gain matures these very rapidly become more common place, but in 2043 they're just now becoming more regular. During your daily life you might have heard of someone who had a full body transplant, but meeting one is very unlikely.

Imagine how most teams right now are sponsored by cities (at least in their names), in the future it will be the corporations names in front of the teams. The Colgate Cardinals, The Merril-Lynch Bankers, The McDonalds Clowns...etc.

I like the idea of that being included, somehow, in the game - perhaps getting hold of a sports team releases one of their tired veteran players who is about to retire? He'd then be available on your roster, though would be so famous that he'd be a poor use for certain mission types...

Xaeromancer wrote:

Here's another question, exactly how...desensitized are the masses by 2043? I mean, thinking about UFC happening back in the 50s would be seen as barbaric, but today? It's an accepted thing. Is brutality an accepted way of life? Or rather, do the corporations control exactly what kinds of brutality the masses actually get to see?

UFC barbaric in the 1950s?

You're talking about a decade where bare knuckle boxing was still considered acceptable!

I imagine there would be some level of desensitisation, but I'd also wager humanity would have tried to evolve a little emotionally, would be tired of wars etc. The devs could spin it either way, or both, and it would still be a superb setting!

Kaje wrote:

You're talking about a decade where bare knuckle boxing was still considered acceptable!

Well I guess I mean acceptable in terms of it being a big dollar maker and really popular. People flock to UFC fights these days and it's a big sporting event, not some...back alley underground pit fighting thing.

Xaeromancer wrote:

Kaje wrote:

You're talking about a decade where bare knuckle boxing was still considered acceptable!

Well I guess I mean acceptable in terms of it being a big dollar maker and really popular. People flock to UFC fights these days and it's a big sporting event, not some...back alley underground pit fighting thing.

I know what you mean, it was probably just a bad choice of decade! Remember, the people in the 1950s had lived through the horrors of World War Two, they were pretty desensitised to the horrors of the world.

It'll be interesting to see which direction they take it!

Spark so out of interest would you want us to make lore for this as well ?

[Admin]

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Scriptwolf wrote:

Spark so out of interest would you want us to make lore for this as well ?

Net Gain is still in its infancy as for being a public setting, and Joe and I have a pretty specific idea for what it should be like. As the setting becomes more established and people have a better idea what sort of tone we're going for, we definitely want more community involvement!

I want to build up Net Gain sort of like the Star Wars Expanded Universe, where the best of the community creations that fit the tone of Net Gain are made part of canon, and make the world a richer narrative space! Almost every aspect of Net Gain is designed with this in mind, the deluge of characters and corporations and assets... it's all so much so that there is no central "this is the main bad guy, and if you're fighting a bad guy it has to be this corporation". It's like how everyone and their mother has met Han Solo in Star Wars... the cast of Net Gain is tied to the stories that people want to tell! Maybe you want to tell a story that crosses paths with Luc from the trailer/Open Hand story, maybe you want your guys to make a run on Matsuda Macrotech to steal some bizarre gadget, or maybe you want to tell your own story with your own characters! The narrative space is open to all of that.

[quote=]bare knuckle boxing[/quote]

The world of Net Gain is packed full of people from every level of society! As for what's mainstream, the action has gotten more rough in some circles: cybernetic boxing, football.. and corps are always launching new shows/sports/franchises with original games that can have pretty hard hits. There's no mainstream "kill or be killed" gladiatorial business (except for the excellent staged performances), but the media is just as if not more saturated with violence and sex. Of course just like the real world, some parts of the world/corporations have different stances on how much is too much, though with access to everything so common place, the "family first" types are always fighting an uphill battle to keep their children safe from the horrors of the net.

However, once you get off the beaten path, you end up with all the things you'd expect from an elite class with too much money, and a wide swath of bitizens without much else to offer... cage matches, Russian roulette, "Manhunt" style arenas... they're all kept very hush hush, and anything that does involve people actually dying is a pretty significant risk and not exactly the kind of activity a corporation would directly get involved with.

Except war, of course. War is still a hugely popular activity, as long as it's kept out of the corporate cities and in third world countries. There are constant skirmishes all over the world, usually between the various PMCs hired on to fight for both sides, perpetuating an economic military machine on the premise of defending or reclaiming some sort of resource or restoring freedom or whatever other excuse keeps the factories running. It also helps reinforce that "corporate protection" mandate that keeps the bitizens happily within their walls.

But yes, sport teams would make great assets (and big corporations or absurdly rich individuals already do own most teams!) Well actually, great companies: the "company" being the sports team, and the assets being star players or merchandising agreements or championships...

drugs!

All the classics, fancy new designer drugs, and slips that give you almost any sensation you could imagine!
As joe mentioned therte are controls on slips so that you can "back out" of anything, but slip drugs can give you full sensory hallucinations, or trigger your body to start pumping Dopamine, Endorphin, Oxytocin, Serotonin, or whatever else in a dizzying cocktail of combinations!

Load up a good full-body drug slip and pair it with the TruView Wizard of Oz slip, and you're in for a helluva night.

Are operatives aware of broker person? Do they know what company a particular broker is working for?

Actually all operatives are well aware of the broker and corp they work for. Operatives in Net Gain are often "On Retainer", which means they work for the corp for a stable salary in exchange for being available for work for them (and usually only them, or allied partners). While there may be some mechanism for running operatives through a 'wall', right now ops are corp employees (and yes, you don't want them to get captured for that very reason)!

bitizens

Yeah, they're called such because form a broker's perspective, that's all they are. a binary bit on some spreadsheet. they're the "masses" that buy assets and hold the public opinion. bitizens are usually under the influence of one or more corporations, depending on the city-by-city basis.

Do the big criminal elements still exist? By that I mean, do the large corporations have to deal with the likes of the Russian mafia and the Yakuza?

[LowCashBro]

Xaeromancer wrote:

Do the big criminal elements still exist? By that I mean, do the large corporations have to deal with the likes of the Russian mafia and the Yakuza?

The good ole la cosa nostra still exists, but the power of the corporation usually means criminal organizations are just powerful circles that the brokers can tap. One circle could be the Pagliacci Family, the other the Black Dragon Ninkyo Dantai. So that's mainly how they're represented.

In the gameplay of Net Gain I'm going to preface by tagging John for the answer, but I don't think they have a lot of market impact. If they did, it may be some sort of randomly generated global event as their street wars and thievery mess with economics on an incident to incident scale.