The players play a group of deckers in an over the top 80s style-over-substance cyberpunk setting. Hacking involves running literal dungeons full of literal ICE monsters.
How do you describe the dungeons so that they sound cool and surreal? In cyberspace visuals are just metaphors so things can look however I want them to but I'm kind of stumped. Tron is kind of passe by this point.
Base your dungeons off of the corporation or institution the PCs are infiltrating.
>Japanese biotech corp
It's a giant garden shrine defended by mythological beasts.
>Heavy industry and shipping
It's a giant intelligent machine with moving parts that the PCs must manipulate to gain access to different sections.
>Arms manufacturer
It's a 1940s military bunker with code phrases and stoic virtual security troopers.
Ask them what it is they see when they jack in, work with what they give you.
Personify the sort of programs that are in the system, into 'living' entities or scenery:
Daemons that are hard to see, cleaning up things\carrying stuff around.
Warehouses full of memory, or a library, or a messy office.
Hunter-killer robots that are anti-ICE security.
A bloated mass of fat and tentacles managing all the other programs.
Trains\railguns\satelites for network communications.
Super helpful and polite UI stewards.
>Enter a system
>It's literally 4chan
What now?
>>43821699
run and hide before /pol/ finds me
>>43822068
>/pol/ is comming!
>quick, hide in this sub system.
>Nooo! To late... /b/ will be our tomb
>>43820747
you might ask the Netrunner General for art and card-names.
or buy a copy of netrunner, or a few booster-packs.
the card names are fluffy, the card art may be useful to you, the flavor text is also nice.
things like YOG.0, neural katana, Hemidall2.0Sagittarius, wall of static, flare, shigaru, toll booth.
and these are just the ICE involved in the game. art isn't too bad neither.
go give it a look. it might be what you're looking for
>>43822229
sorry, correction, YOG.0 is an icebreaker...
>>43821008
>>43821120
>>43822229
OP here. All of this is useful. Thanks.
>>43822229
This. Android Netrunner has some amazing inspiration, both art and style, for this kind of thing.
>>43821120
you need above average players in order to invite them into the scene description. Otherwise they'll just abuse it.
>>43822942
perhaps he can start small by having them describe the interface for their decks and various familliars/programs/icons/macros they have as though they were physical things.
using that as a basis, he can amalgamate the descriptions for the world.
>>43820747
Pixel art.
>>43823034
fuck that.
let the rule of cool throw pixel art out the window in favor of TRON style. distinguishable pixels would mean that shit's breaking up/down/apart and that's no good at all.
