Quote:
Originally Posted by David Johnston2
Yeeeeah. Let me be frank. Netrunning is an idea that sounds neat in theory but doesn't work in actual games unless you are only running one player. Otherwise it forces you to send the game screeching to a halt while one character goes off on its own to do a whole game session covering something that could be handled with a couple of die rolls while the other players just spectate
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I've been cooking up, in the back of my head, an idea for netrunning and meatspace PC's to actually work together - inspired, in part, by the big mission near the beginning of
Cyberpunk 2077, as well as the quickhacks in that game. The basic idea would be that the netrunner(s) would infiltrate a location digitally while the rest of the party infiltrate physically. The netrunner can do limited surveillance oversight (taking over the cameras, possibly messing with the implants of OpFor through them like you can with the quickhacks in the game) and remotely activate some mechanisms (such as unlocking doors the rest of the party needs to go through), while the rest of the party can do physical bypasses to get the netrunner more access, shutdown digital defense mechanisms (like taking a wall of Black ICE offline), neutralize "dwellers" (on-site netrunners handling digital security), etc. I think where most netrunning systems fail to keep the party engaged is that it's all about the netrunner going up against the defenses (including hostile netrunners) of a location while the rest of the party is off doing something else (or - more likely, because the GM can only handle so much at a time - are sitting around twiddling their thumbs). If you have them basically all working toward the same goal, and perhaps more importantly have them interacting with each other's environment, you don't have to separate things out so much.