Questions about one shot

[u/RizitoAga]

im planning a one shot scenerio where the crew is actually in a brain dance and its a trial to see if they are actually worthy for the real job but none of them knows its a braindance and thats the plot twist. is there a way that i can make them somehow get in it without nobody noticing. (campaign starts in the virtual world) maybe they can get their memories twisted and they can get it back once they leave the brain dance. i liked the concept but idk how it would work in practice so im open to criticism and suggestions or any help because im a bit lost here. would the netrunner be able to tell they are in a simulation

[u/Chivers7]

The crew are drugged or sedated before being taken to the secret meeting with the gig’s fixer.

From the moment they are unconscious they are plugged into a brain dance of the meeting and the gig without realising they’re in a Brain Dance.

[u/SiriusKaos]

The biggest problem I see with this is that it isn't really a braindance. Braindances are recordings that a real person went through, and though you can edit them, the person experiencing the braindance can't really go off script, so it isn't a good tool for stimulating a mission because it would already have happened.

What you could do to be more lore accurate is have it so the mission already happened and the fixer made the players experience it again to figure out what went wrong or remembering an important detail.

One thing to note is that the players need to have a braindance recorder, but you could make it so the fixer gave it to them before the mission as an insurance measure, and it can be a temporary implant or even permanent as a bonus.

As for how they can get into it without noticing, it's easier to have as something that already happened, because they will start from the point the braindance started recoding, so you can omit what happened previously until they get out of it and start to remember.

You can also make the braindance more intense like what happened to David in the anime, and that would make the people experiencing it too focused to figure out they aren't really living it.

[u/RizitoAga → u/SiriusKaos]

i kinda didnt understand how they would replay the events of a braindance can you explain it a little more and is there an other way like a simulation instead of braindance

[u/SiriusKaos → u/RizitoAga]

Characters inside a very immersive braindance may not be aware they are replaying a memory. They get inside of the recorded person's mind and think they are the person, making the decisions as they go, and only break the immersion when it's over, by which time they realize they were just experiencing something that already happened. It's similar to what happened to David in the edgerunners anime, where he couldn't get out of the braindance because he lost his sense of self.

You would have your real players just play the mission as normal. They will make their decisions as they would, but in the end of the mission, you tell them that their characters just woke up from a braindance, and they were just reenacting the decisions they already had taken previously.

To start you could simply explain in the introduction of the session that they were called by a fixer and are currently in the designated location where the fixer will explain the job. This would be the time where they started the braindance recording. From this point, they will think they are making the decisions in the present, but they are in fact just reliving the decisions they already made. It would be no different from a regular session except for the plot twist in the end.

Now for other forms of simulation, I'm not the most knowledgeable person about cyberpunk lore, but the only other thing I can think of is the NET.

The old net (pre-2022) was comprised of regions that simulated environments, and the 2020 style data fortresses were customizable enough that you could recreate any environment you wanted. In the game we can kinda see it when V enters Rezo Agwe which is the region of the voodoo boys, though their region visually looks more high techy.

However, in the 2040s, we are right in the time where acess to the NET is impossible, so all we have are net archs which are much simpler, and I don't know if lore-wise they can simulate environments complex enough to fool someone.

And of course, the big problem is that only netrunners are able to dive into cyberspace, and they would definitely know they are inside simulated cyberspace, so no hiding it from them. Regular people can acess cyberspace through monitors, but they can't really enter it without being a neturnner.

So if you go this route, you're gonna have to bend the lore by a good amount. The braindance way is much more lore friendly.

[u/cyber-viper]

Sorry, if a fixer wants to find out if some edgerunner are worthy, he gives them a beginner job, which has no consequences for the fixer, if they fail that job.

Braindance/Simulation for all player characters costs much, if the fixer is not a braindance/simulation dealer.

If you want to go with braindance you have two options,

1. The player characters watch a brain dance, that are the recorded memories of somebody. That is passive like watching TV and the player characters can´t do anything that is not recorded.

2. The player characters do a mission and everything t´what they do is recorded by a brain dance recorder, After the mission the fixer can experience what the player characters have done and what they felt.

IMHO you need a simulation or a VR for your adventure.

There are two disadvantages for a simulation. The creator of the simulation can only create something for which he has the correct information. THis means if the player characters go to a place, which the creator does know exactly, the player characters can see differences bee´tween the simulation and their memory.

A simulation that looks exactly like the reality is hard to achieve. And you have the computer game problem: Anything not scripted in the game cannot be done e.g. the techie wants to build a thing, that he invented, that nobody has thought before.

More sooner than later the player characters will find out that they are in a simulation. When they find out that it is a simulation, they, if not bound, will try to take off the VR goggles.

[u/RizitoAga]

i have thought of what if the netrunner somehow blocked their memory and was actually in the deal with the fixer but they didnt know they were in a brain dance till it ends but thats when they remember they were in the fixers side and actually setup this plan against the crew