Corporation

[Knight]

Website: http://www.corpgame.com/
Drivethru link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/55 ... Core-Rules

What Is Corporation?


Picture any cyberpunk media you've consumed. Usually they involve some sort of scrappy hero who might be doing the right thing, but for his own reasons. Usually, he's fighting against some sort of military authority or corporation. He's barely got anything aside from his pistol and maybe a few guns he stole. Meanwhile, those big baddies got all sorts of toys to play with.

Now, picture that you're playing those big baddies. You got cybernetics and training to kill a dozen men without trying and not feel a thing. Now, you don't have to be a bad guy. Maybe you're just trying to do something more for the world. Maybe the UIG wouldn't accept you. You could just spend your career cleaning up gangs and terrorists. Maybe they got mouths to feed and beliefs to uphold, too, but you got a job to do.

That's Corporation.

Mechanically speaking, it's a 2d10 system. Skill checks are attribute + skill. Combat is the same, except you got a modifier called Defense. Defense is just your close combat skill showing its defensive ability. Now, for ranged combat, there's no defending against that. Unless you got some cover or high enough stats to deflect bullets with your katana. Instead, make sure you have a shield on to take those bullets for you. Armor will also help.

Armor might not help against the two-ton genetically modified praying mantis coming at you, the rail gun that can tear through walls, or the superheated plasma rounds being fired at you. Still, better to have it instead of not.

Corporation is a bit of a kitchen sink setting. You can go to space, take to superintelligent AI, be a stealthy ninja, child assassin, mutated to hell and back thing.



You got a lot of options. There's a lot of books available with a lot of content inside of them. This ain't WFRP4e where a companion might include a dozen pages of new content at best. You have over 100 pages of new content! That's why I really recommend picking up the master index. It's a quick list of everything relating to mechanics and corporations that has come out so far, so you don't have to be flipping through a multitude of books for that one training or cybernetic you saw.

There's five main corporations who all have their preferences.

Western Federation is all about selling guns, using guns, and being celebrities. Your group is Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Reb Brown, Sigourney Weaver, except actual powerhouses with guns. You get discounts on gun, better guns, and some free licenses (it's as they sound, you need a license to do some things like carry a big gun) relating to firearms. Naturally, WF is the Americans. This includes all of North America and just the north part of South America.

Ai-Jinn, the Chinese (and middle east surprisingly) powerhouse in mining and large scaled construction. They also happen to control a lot of the organized crime world. While their bonuses are meager at first, only being the ability to assume a false identity on their ID chips whenever they want, they got really fleshed out in their books. Not only do they have power armor and mutant families to use, but also giant mechas called Cyberlin.

Comoros, an India and Africa alliance first started in desperation during the Corporation Wars. Their sector is education and culture so, naturally, they are the poorest Corporation out of the big five. They make up for this with cheap weaponry and a love of telepathics. Other corporations may have a few agents try to harness the power of telepathics, but Comoros mastered it.

Eurasian Incorporated, Health and Leisure. Europe (sans France since it's nothing more than a nuked hellhole) and Russia coming together for their love of money. Imagine Wolf on Wall Street combined with American Psycho. Everything at the end of the day is about earning money. You start out with the most money, earn the most money on missions, get bitchin' health care, and a bank account for any expanses.

Shi Yukiro, technology. Somehow, Japan has managed to keep itself free from Ai-Jinn or Eurasia Inc. control. While they do focus on making good technology, they also are close combat experts. All their citizens know some form of self defense and their agents armed with a katana are the best swordsmen the world knows. They get free training and licenses relating to power weapons and even get an ion katana-- it ignores some armor and can easily slice off limbs. They also have ninjas and samurais!

[Zon Bon]

So .. Corporation huh.

What's your favorite Corporation, and what character concept do you like the best?

Personally, I'm tied between Ai-Jinn/Western Feds. I'm heavily disappointed in the fact that we haven't gotten an expansion book for W.F. despite them being .. well, America the corp. The rank bonuses alone are pretty a good bit of funky stuff. But them aside, as mentioned in the starter here, Ai-Jinn are pretty nicely fleshed out and got a nice bunch of stuff to offer. Helps that I'm an absolute sucker for the *grabs crowbar* aesthetic for combatants.

Character concept wise, melee fighters are pretty fun and are more than viable in the system, but I can't deny the fact that telepaths getting love in this is a pleasant surprise equaled by little. More systems need to let espers get a chance in the spotlight, especially when the system at base is in no way pertaining to them.

Gantz has made me very biased to them in absolutely any medium.


Perhaps one day ..

[Knight]

You know me, I love my military gals. So, Western Federation is a go to for me. Even if, lorewise, America is a hyper-democracy that controls all media and fucks over anyone committing a crime super hard. But you get big guns and I like big guns. If I were to have a game with them, I'd probably want to give them actual rank bonuses...

I also really want someone to be a dark-skinned maid loli with knives hidden everywhere on her person cuz that sounds cute. Character concepts don't really matter too much to me as character inter-relationships do. Like, Texas and Lappland are a really good dynamic concept wise. Texas is a normal gal that everyone tends to fall for, but she's just trying to escape her no-doubt messed up past with the mafia. Lappland is almost a psychopath, but all she really wants is to make Texas embrace her true fang-bearing self. Normal character + Crazy Character is truly a dynamic.



Although most people would take the idea of a psychopath and make it all about just killing whoever you want and not caring about the group's wants at all. Mind games are much better, though.

I would like to play a Lappland-like character. A character that you look at and something seems off, but they retain enough sensibility to throw you off. Then they're painting the streets with the entrails of their enemies and rubbing her face against yours, asking what's wrong? Even though I prefer having a big gun as opposed to stabbing everything.

[Svona]

My favorite corporation is Shi Yukiro, being the thousand-folded nipponese steel appreciator I am, plus they have their focus on what is one of the cooler parts of cyberpunk, high tech, with all the fancy near-future sorts of gadgets.

► Show Spoiler

Even if they don't have much at all mechanical tie-in to that with their bonuses, like training in tech fields or hacking skills or general sneaky subterfuge w/e, instead they literally just get 100-200 credits a mission and a 10% discount on some stuff, and only at rank 2+ at that. Takata agents do get the neat projector implants that let them perfectly imitate anyone's appearance though, but it is a subcorp.

Not too related but sonic weaponry is also nice.

As for character concepts, I like cutesy 'my friends are my power!!!' characters like Sora and more traditional magical girls, so bubbly and friendly types I suppose, but that could go for any system really. I like thieves / hackers character-wise and skill-wise too, pragmatic/jaded rather than idealistic, having had to live for themselves just to get by, but going forward them potentially (re)discovering hope and attachment and a cause through what they got drawn into by the party/story actually helping people.

I also really want someone to be a dark-skinned maid loli with knives hidden everywhere

I was actually considering a knifey-yandere at one point, but she would've been taller and more imposing, the kind that once you upset her, you can run, but she'll never stop until she gets you, ala Mr. X or something. Yandere obsessiveness is also pretty cute character wise, how over-the-top they are in showing their affection to the person they're fixated on while being stab-happy to anyone who would get in the way, I love gap moe like that.

Off Topic

Also you should get that one in-line spoiler extension knight -w-

[Svona]

Off Topic

And also make these boxes a darker color so they're less blinding

[Zon Bon]

Everybody loves a big gun! Even if the game seems kind of weird, but still competent with how it handles it. Rate and Machine status and all of that junk.

I suppose I'm vaguely in the same boat of preferring dynamics/behaviors over just flat character concept and existence, and I am 100% on the same point of enjoying Cracked + Sane relation dynamics. I mean hell, most times I always try to have a character that isn't quite firing on all pistons upstairs, not because it's easier to do or anything like that for me, but it's more because it's just .. fun to do, since most times no one else is gonna bother doing it.

Murder boning types are painfully dreadful to do though, I spit in the general direction of those that associate crazy with "just wants kill", because there's SO much more that you can do with it. It doesn't even need to be overtly crazy or something like that. As you said, just something seems just the ever touch off in them, as they go throughout everything as if not a siiiiingle thing is up.

While I got no clue on what Lappland and Texas are from, their dynamic plus that little snippet of art there are a complete vibe. I've always enjoyed those small little ties of partners in crime with one just trying to be some kind of relatively same anchor, even if the circumstances they deal with are completely out of wack, be it by choice or otherwise.

... Your dark skinned maid loli thing is a meme, but it ain't completely out of pocket ... I see that gif you love to post everywhere. Corporation knife trainings seem pretty alright as well.

[Knight]

Off Topic

And also make these boxes a darker color so they're less blinding

Too much work!
I did add a new spoiler thing

Spoiler

that looks like this.

It's probably not better. I think I could add a new BBC code entirely to make it more |||||.

And play the greatest gacha known as Arknights. Tower defense and cute girls. And furries, if you're into that kinda thing. You guys should come up with character dynamics together! One of the reasons I don't really like the inter-relationship rolling table is because of how random it is and most of the time doesn't really fit in with the characters. Just choosing one and I can assign mechanical things to it is much better.

You already have a yandere stalker, Svona! Greedy.

[Zon Bon]

Wowza .. sitting down and coming up with character dynamics? EFFORT? Sounds kinda hard!

But jokes aside if Svona would wanna try and do something amusingly simple like that I'm down to give it a shot, though my head is doughy as hell when it comes to making characters just .. flat out. My usual process is actually taking a reference image for a character, and just basing everything around that. It always leads into something far more cohesive, and just lets me branch off of some kind of basis that's overall just a vastly more satisfying end product.

The relationship table is okay, but it is for sure far too big with all of the options it offers for relationships. Like come on ..





This stuff is cool, but it hardly even close to good for a cohesive type of character. The option of picking and choosing something from this should just be the outright default.

Also haha, yandere wanter.

[Svona]

You already have a yandere stalker, Svona! Greedy.

That was meant to be a PC, not a side character -w-

[Zon Bon]

So ..

What builds have you chumps been theory crafting in your idle time, if at all?

Anything super situational/unique, anything batshit busted on paper, or anything that just seems like a slightly fun character concept to work off of once its got its foot somewhere?

I personally haven't really made anything solid beyond just a few Trainings + Weapons tied loosely together, as well as the obvious cybernetic or two. Its mostly been figuring out melee/grenadier stuff to get the absolute most mileage out of them.

[Svona]

I haven't looked too much into build builds, being effective at any sort of sphere in Corp seems straightforward enough. Just get/train up to a high skill, and pick up something relevant to it like a fancy robotics kit or lockpicks or a motorcycle, and you'll be pretty set. If you really want to maximize damage, you can pick up a rocket launcher or some explosives and instagib practically anything that moves (albeit pretty pricily)

[Svona]

Plus, if you don't want to be all railgun, plasma-cannon-y, weapon mastery seems to do a pretty good job at leveling the playing field between those and weaker, faster weapons. They're just a higher exp investment, vs the credits investment of heavy weapons.

[Knight]

Technically my EI Agent Quiet was supposed to boost the M50 as much as possible. Unfortunately, that's not much unless you're WF which means you get high grade AP rounds (ignores 3 AV). Basically, it's just boosting your aim with the M50 as much as possible. Max out heavy weapons and PER to get a 20 AT, get a +4 from M50 Mastery, get red scope for +4

You'd want to be in a static position (which is what I tried to do a few times) to get the most out of it.
HVY WEP 10 + PER 10 = 20 AT
Mastered Weapon, M50 - Add XS as damage on first roll
M50 Mastery - Gives you a +4 to hit without tripod, +2 when using it
Scope - +4 to AT and damage on first round of aiming, additional +2 on second round

So if you aim for 2 rounds on a tripod and roll and at one target (a +4 since it's a machine weapon), say, a 8, that's 28 XS + 6 damage from aiming. If you're using AP smart clips, ignore 2 armor. Roll the first dice of damage and probably get a 5 or somethin'. 39 damage in one hit! Then you got the other 5 dice, so if we have a target with, like, 3 armor that'd be....

58 damage in one attack. That'd be enough to kill Quiet, that's for sure. She's only got 37 HP.

[Zon Bon]

Jesus that's terrifying.

I hadn't even amused the idea of trying to maximize XS for boosting damage potential, completely out of my thought-range. Good food for thought in future reference now though ..

The only builds I really throw together are more clicking puzzle pieces together, trainings, gear, and cybernetics that heavily compliment one another. For a little sampler I'll take about the nigh-unstoppable grappler I was amusing.


It's pretty okay to take for really any Corporation, though it works better if you're Shi-Yukiro, for the simple fact of the rank bonuses you get that makes your life slightly easier to get the build underway. Just starting off with a fresh agent, you'll be able to take the big three trainings that help solidify the build.

Starting it off are the three big trainings that make it, Unarmed Combat Specialist, Restrain and Meat Shield.


Unarmed Combat for the simple fact of, y'know, if you're closing distance on people, you're gonna want some way to actually have Defense against attacks coming your way from melee fighters. Ranged attacks can be handled by your armor, or your ability to use Meat Shields.



Restrain is obviously there for the reason of .. you know, it's the bread and butter of being a grappler. Makes your job far easier to grab people and get what you need to get done, done.



Meat Shield becomes your safe approach tool, used via grabbing a dead body your teammates made, using someone you knocked out, or just plain out using someone alive and conscious if they were not built for melee confrontation at all. Even if it slows down your speed noticeably, it's still a genuinely solid method to get yourself where you need to be, or out of somewhere you shouldn't if you end up getting caught out in bad positioning.




Past that, the weapon of choice is actually a Personal Grapple (combined with the Grapple Hook Combat Training [Basic + Advanced]) for reasons that are pretty obvious. While it doesn't deal any true damage, its use shines in the fact it allows you to close any gap of distance your opponent may have between you and them at a rapid rate, which lets you start doing your main thing .. which is brutalizing people with your grubby mitts. It also serves purpose of allowing you to escape from pretty nasty situations you could end up in due to your existence as a melee, positioning becomes more a worry of the past when you can just up and swoop yourself out of any sort of mass flanking maneuver or whatever the hell else may arise.

I'll stop now since the whole thing would end up being even more of a wall than this, but that's the kind of stuff I lab together. Corporation is great.

[Zon Bon]

So Knight, when's that all child agent Corporation game gonna show up, huh?

The Metal Gear Fandom is disappointed that its taking this long.