Just bought the Corporation RPG core rules. What am I getting myself into? What do I need to know...

Aliens? I guess I haven't seen too much about them yet.

carlosss

Safe and sane 40k? So like no evil demons coming to eat your face with every spacetravel effort?

I just checked out the website link and I see no correlation. Corporation doesn't have any supernatural stuff, space colonization or long histories.
It's set in the nearby future where corporations have taken over the world and are totally evil. You work for one of them as men-in-black/007 types

>players take on the role of a Division of cybernetically augmented Agents; these are street level executives of the Corporation who take care of any affairs which cannot be handled behind a desk.

>This could involve spying, recovering technology, assassination, escorting a VIP, investigating a murder in a Corporate Spire city, stopping or starting a drug distribution network, etc.

This is all mafia stuff. If you're giving us a corporation, give us some corporation stuff to do. Set up a mining campus in hostile territory, justifying spending on headquarters for roads, weapons and walls and winning the trust and loyalty of locals that want to bind their life towards your corporation as employees and workers in this mining operation. Investigate internally for accountants that might have embezzled money or abused their position. That sort of stuff.

There is colonization, but it's limited to Solar system. IIRC they haven't even gone beyond the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

If I remember there's some stuff like finding alien AIs on Venus or such. And these AI now run most cities because they're too big to operate otherwise. Or I could be thinking of something else from when my friend was telling me about settings.

That's a thing, though not all of those AIs are equally friendly. Some work with humanity, others do their own thing.

The Euroasian Incorporated splat adds guidelines for exactly that kind of story. And while it's their splatbook, you can do that as an agent of any corporation.

Those are the Archons, and 9 of them support the UIG, which is the one-world-government. A lot of tech is derived from designs they disclosed. There are 3 other ones that went rogue.

Oh hey, one of the most recent splats, the Sword Reforged, just got an update for better editing. That's nice.

One of the things I love most about the books are the disclaimers at the start of each book. Things like:
If you can read and understand this book then you’re clever enough to use your own judgement and the idea that a paragraph of text could curb your irresponsible, murderous intent is a little optimistic.

Did I get that right that some of you read into the rules, but nobody played it?

>Set up a mining campus in hostile territory, justifying spending on headquarters for roads, weapons and walls
The what now? Your words make no sense. That's not what corporations do. They do not set up "mining campuses" in hostile territory. They set up mines in investment-friendly countries that provide security for them. Corporations are wimps.

The alien shit and the "united world government" turned me off Corporation. Those two things don't belong in any cyberpunk setting at all.

The Corporations here are basically nation states/empires with a veneer of corporatism to loophole the shit out of the official government. Some of them literally are only corporations because it provides them benefits.

...

Well those aren't megacorporations then, just mis-labelled countries. Kind of stupid, really and again it misses the point of cyberpunk megacorps entirely.

How much of that can be ignored? The UIG seems to be too deeply ingrained in the setting, but players don't really have to get in touch with alien tech, right?

Yeah, I guess aliens can be ignored, unless they're critical to the survival of certain corporations/factions in the game, in which case no.

United Earth Govt just basically contradicts the whole point of every cyberpunk story out there; that megacorporations take over because government become too weak and splintered to function. All government becomes reorganized according to business lines, or becomes subservient to megacorps.

Where to buy?

Nah. Alien stuff is still pretty rare and even the one Corp that does have a direct line to an archon keeps it a secret from the vast majority of their own people. The space stuff can be ignored as well, although I find vastaag to be a fun place to send people. Eurasia Inc owns it entirely, and most UIG on the planet are nearing retirement and tend to get a lot of conveniently untrackable gifts and vacation options, if you catch my drift.

Research the old game Syndicate. Look up reviews. Play it yourself. Will give you a lot of good ideas. Don't look at the FPS Syndicate that EA made.

Read some Judge Dredd, too. The game takes a lot of inspiration from that series, along with Deus Ex of course.

The setting is perfect if you like having a lot of leads you can pick up or ignore at a whim. Tons of avenues to make stories about, or just include to make the world feel larger.

The UIG is a reason for subtlety and conflict reduction. It's not a challenge to the megacorps outside the legal arena, and it's power there is derived from the AI. If it didn't exist, the megacorps would be forced to become governments, which would be unprofitable.

It's good to mix up heavy shield/no armor enemies and heavy armor/no shield enemies. Your melee PCs can focus down the shielded opponents while your ranged/artillery PCs can aim for the unshielded, armored guys.

Also, peppering in a lot of unshielded, unarmored mooks to be mowed down helps. Keep in mind that for non-agent characters (The majority of enemies), all damage is considered Mashing. Combat focused PCs will mow through most unaugmented foes pretty easily.

That did happen at first, and national governments technically do still exist to rubber stamp what the corps tell them to. The UIG are a complication to their plans and the reason they haven't MADded all over each other.