Cyberpunk 2020 - How to build a Corporation

[Scottlang]

Hello all,

I have given my players the task of creating a Corporation - This is the idea:

Bobbie the Corp and Gadget the Techie, are from a Pirate Fleet family background, so I thought I would start with them getting a foot into Night City. The Corporation is called Corsair Syndicate Incorporated, and they have just arrived in the Eastern Marina district area. The Corporation reached out to the fixer who they have had dealings with, Huya who has called in the rest of the crew to assist with this Task. They are 2 x Media, 2 x Solo's and one Med Tech.

Now I have to Bobbies PC, that he is to build this Corporation (as this is the side task for the group) and I honestly have no clue what one would do for this. Could anyone offer some suggestions to assist this. I maybe able to incorporate this into the game missions to aid or assist them to get to this.

I thought it was a fun idea but, no clue. I mean I have a few ideas of adventures, I am not sure if they would use this. I am thinking of doing some smuggling jobs...🤷

Thank you for any suggestions and ideas!

[Lacco]

Hey there!

Not familiar with Cyberpunk 2020 (read through original Cyberpunk rulebook at one point in my life), but with some experience as Shadowrun GM and being something of a corp rat myself, I thought I could bounce some ideas.

So... how do you build a corporation?

A: Agressive Asset Acquisition! (Warning: Abundant Alliterations and Abbreviations!)
...basically: you want a a corp headquarters (unless you have it on a ship). So you are in a market for some real estate.

A1: Real Estate Reality Check: find and explore a building
- the fixer chooses two or three corp buildings; the players choose one and go for a tour (by sneaking in, infiltrating, etc.)
- legwork regarding the current CEO, the board, the building itself

A2: Cold Call Sales Pitch
- the group is tasked to persuade the current building residents to evacuate and let the building go for relatively cheap
- setting up various accidents, incidents and issues all around the building
- visiting the CEO and board members to make sure they agree with letting go of the building to new tenants

A3: Preparing for Property Possession
- how about getting some funds? Ideally from the same corp that owns the building now! Heist! Hitting the office of the landlord and hacking his funds locally to transfer a lot of them and maybe even the ownership of the building? Ideally covering their actions by a big explosion!
- a normal run, but similarly to Die Hard movie you want to make it seem like it was something else than just getting the deeds to the building. Transferring the deeds via locally connected cyberspace and masking the path by blowing the building up should be a fun mission setup.

B: Banks & Banknotes
- getting the capital.
- a set of heists? Or setting up a drain account (see Office Space movie) in few corporations?
- you need a solid backing, so maybe getting few (in)voluntary investors would be nice.

C: C-suite Conversion Complications
...recruiting missions. Save for the functions that your group members will take, you need to cover some positions and the people you need to hire have problems to be solved. Fixer will point out the people and they will request assistance after which they join. The fixer may point even two or three candidates (the best one that may require a lot of work, the cheap one - that requires just money to join, the second best one that requires just one simpler mission)
- CEO - the fall gal in case stuff goes wrong (e.g. requires help getting rid of ex husband)
- CFO - finance guy (e.g. has a betting problem, you need to rescue them from mob hitmen)
- CIO - information officer (e.g. a former spymaster of another corp; requires an extraction job)
- COO - HR person (e.g. a fixer that they have to save from prison and a hacker team that will just reroute the CVs from other corps as per the fixer's command)
- CMO - marketing (e.g. a gang has moved into their area; make sure the gang leaves)
- CTO - a techie (e.g. get the newest hardware they want, an experimental stuff from other corp)
- CCO - compliance officer... who am I kidding, a compliance officer in cyberpunk corp? Get a sadistic butcher without conscience.
Staffing is not an issue with these guys anymore. You could even take over a smaller corp to get their folks.

D: Decisive Damage Control
...by this time you get a lot of parties irritated and trying to get back at you. So you will have to play some tower defense and remove few teams similar to the one you have from attacking you, your employees and your activities.
...deal with other corp hit teams, mob, angry ex-employees.

E: Executing Eventual Expansion
...so, you have the building, the money, the team. You need to expand. Grab the newest tech, scientists for your R&D, expand aggressively.

Once in a while, just throw some guy that wants to talk about not having a coffee machine on their building level.

I'll stop here, if you find something interesting and will wish to continue, I have other ideas.