How to Use NetShop

So, you have come upon my website. Nice to meet you, I’m Cirrec. I like taking a lot of time to make dumb projects.

NetShop was created so I could share homebrew items with my players. I could’ve just done that with a PDF, of course, but I really liked the idea of showing these homebrew items in a plausible, in-universe way. I wanted players using it to feel as if they were peeking into the universe they were playing in.

My … uh creative choice makes this resource hard to utilize for other play groups. I understand that. This article is about how to best approach using this resource in your own games.

The Point of This Resource

Simply put, this resource works like an in-universe Amazon. My goal was to give players homebrew custom items, as well as provide player all over the world a bit of flavor and cool little drawings that they can use to get inspired for their cyberpunk games.

Most items in here are standalone homebrew creations. Cars with slightly different stats. New weapon attachments. Drones with new abilities. Everyday drugs to give your character a bit of an edge. All of that stuff is collected here, in the NetShop.

Each homebrew item in the NetShop has a retailer (an in-universe seller) and categories. Each item is presented with an in-universe marketing description, has a cost and comes with a rule description, which explains how the item works.

This resource, then, has two purposes: being a downtime in-universe flavorful shopping experience AND being a repository of all of my homebrew madness that I do for fun.

Players do be Shoppin’: Decide How Players can use NetShop

This decision is up to you.

I made this resource both with the goals of being an in-universe shop and also to be a resource of homebrew items. This means that you can both find very useless, flavorful items (cigarettes, clothes, food) as well as cars, military vehicles, and high-explosives on NetShop.

The in-universe gimmick kind of get stretched here. The highly illegal products probably aren't actually available in the in-universe shop.

But they can be, that's the beauty of it. If you want to use this resource, you should decide where you draw this line.

Can your players order armoured drones with rocket launchers online? You decide!

My ruling is this: players can shop on NetShop and look for items they might like, but they can only make purchases at the table. Most normal, non-illegal items are easily purchasable, but most expensive and/or illegal items need to be purchased in-game, through a Fixer and a social encounter.

I’m also partial to not letting players shop at the table. Screens are attention-sucking machines and, while I don’t mind my players looking at their phones, I certainly don’t want to be the one encouraging them to look at a screen.

That's how I rule this at my table, but how you do it at your table is up to you.

Can your players order items out of the game? Are certain item types unavailable to order? Is NetShop Global Services canon in your game? Do they have a delivery service that actually works?

Ordering a tank online is pretty cyberpunk, after all.

Generic Items in the NetShop

Not all items are meant to introduce new rules, however: many items, such as the Nu-Eyes 7 Cybereye or the Thorton Galena G240 are just named versions of items that already exist in the Core Rulebook. The Nu-Eyes 7 is just a basic cybereye and the Thorton Galena G240 is just a Compact Groundcar.

These items should be seen as pure flavor. If you like them, you can insert them to your world. It's a neat way to add a bit of flavour and depth to your world. The little drawings I did can also help your players visualize the aesthetic of the universe.

The ripperdoc can go:

"You lookin' for new hardware, choom?

Cybereye, eh? Well, I don't have Kiroshi in stock, but i got some Sungan eyes.

Choom, chill. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't have the fancy features, or the cute logos, but it works fine. Koreans make good chrome, too. It does everything Kiroshi Optics do, but cheaper.

So, we got a deal?"

So, not every item comes with unique rules, but they can still be included in your game.

Homebrew Systems in the NetShop

I try to write every item in the NetShop as a standalone item that can be understood and used on their own. However, I still took the liberty of creating some homebrew systems.

For example, I went into a trance at some point and created a whole new system for drones in Cyberpunk Red. From this, I created the category of “Station Drones” which are drones that can be deployed anywhere and must be controlled by characters using their Action and a "Station". The LittleBird 17GDD Drone is an example of this. It is a Level 1 Station Drone, that can only be controlled using a “Station” such as the Zetatech Cirrus.

When I introduce systems like these, I try to write the items in a way that always clarifies how the system works. I also link an article that provides more precise rulings.

You might not like these systems that I've created. You might think they are dumb, unbalanced, or simply irrelevant to your campaign. That's fine. However, if you use NetShop in your game, you will need to decide if you want to introduce these systems in your game.

Before letting your players assume they can buy anything from the NetShop, I recommend that you make a decision on which items or systems you accept in your game, and, if you want to modify them, tell your players how the items "actually" behave in your game.

The Cyberpunk 2020-Cyberpunk Red conversion problem

My games take place in the 2020s, even if I use the Cyberpunk Red system. This is a creative choice I chose to make that has impacted the “in-universe” part of this homebrew resource. When I made this website, I made it using the assumptions of the Cyberpunk 2020 universe: society might be collapsing but it has not collapsed.

In the 2020s, the worldwide NET can support an e-commerce platform. International shipping can move the items in the store to every corner of the globe in the world. As you might know, this isn’t the case in the 2040s, during the years when Cyberpunk Red takes place. It would be fair to assume that, after the collapse of international trade and shipping, NetShop probably died.

If you want an in-universe explanation for why the players can browse the NetShop, just say that the website they’re browsing is a local backup of the website. Ordering doesn’t work, of course, but they can still use the backup to compare prices, look up the specs of the products and discover what kind of product existed in the 2020s.