May 29, 2024

Cult of the Old - Netrunner

1 hour 7 minutes

Welcome to the latest episode of Cult of the Old!

Each episode your hosts Iain McAllister, Matt Thrower, and Nate Owens are going to turn back the clock to look at games that are at least 10 years old. They’ll give their own critical impressions, tell you about the history of the game and its impact, and what relevance these games still have in the modern hobby landscape.

“The sky above the port was the color of television, turned to a dead channel”

The famous opening line of William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer, released in 1984. Only a couple of years before in his short story ‘Burning Chrome’ Gibson had defined the term “Cyberspace”. He used it to refer to a global network of interconnected computers. In publishing Neuromancer Gibson helped solidify the genre of Cyberpunk and the rest is history. Or the future. Depends on how you look at it.

Popular culture embraced Cyberpunk. We got films like Blade Runner and tabletop RPGs like Cyberpunk and Shadowrun. These games saw plucky teams of street rebels take on the shadowy corporations that ruled the future of those settings. The title we are covering tonight lets you step into the role of a megacorp, or the hackers that are taking them on. It came from the mind of Richard Garfield, who only 3 years earlier had defined a genre and upset an industry with a little game called Magic: The Gathering. Put on your mirrorshades and jack in as we take a dive into Netrunner.

Show Links

Below are links to the games and anything else that the team mention during the course of the cast. We will be linking to BGG for games, designers, artists, and publishers as that is a good place to start for raw information about the game in question.

Games Mentioned

Magic: The Gathering

Disney Lorcana

Star Wars Unlimited

Austin Powers CCG

Sim City CCG

V:TES

Android

Android: Infiltration

New Angeles

Call of Cthulhu LCG

Lord of the Rings LCG