“He’s not a nice person.”
That’s the first thing that Ginevra, of NSG’s Narrative and Visual teams, tells me about the new Criminal runner Barry “Baz” Wong. Ginevra was closely involved with developing the characters of both Baz and the new Anarch runner Topan. I sat down with her to get the inside track on what it was like to create some of the central personalities in Elevation.
Going into the ideation process for Kota Kalimantan’s runners, Narrative knew that they wanted a 50/50 split of foreign and local characters. Kota Kalimantan is one of the fastest growing megacities in the world of Netrunner—it was important to represent both the kinds of people being drawn in by the economic gravity of the Mahkota Langit, and the local communities affected by that change.
Barry “Baz” Wong, Tri-Maf Veteran, is a hardened, brutal gangster inspired by Hong Kong action movies and modern triads. “I made him Australian nationality”, Ginevra tells me, “so that I’d know when I’d gone too far”. Writing bad people is a delicate balance—there’s a fine line between depicting cruel or downright evil people and straying into villainising stereotypes about certain demographics they belong to. As an Australian writer herself, Ginevra was keen to keep a bead on the tone of the character, and let Baz be bad without resorting to any harmful stereotypes.
Topan, on the other hand, is one of the runners local to Kota Kalimantan, and the idea for their character came out of research into current events in Indonesia. Ginevra got interested in the Ormas (short for Organisasi Kemasyarakatan), a form of civil society organisation unique to Indonesia. Modern Ormas act as part charitable NGO, part mutual aid organisation, part community enforcement. They are often set up to champion the rights of particular ethnic minorities, and use a wide variety of means to achieve their aims, in some cases including vigilantism—Topan’s playtest name was ‘the vigilante’.
Topan is a leader of a Dayak Ormas, and was inspired by Ginevra’s research into women in those organisations and why they’re attracted to them. Where Baz makes no bones about being a bad guy, Topan certainly believes they’re doing good—“some things they do are actually probably negative for their community”, Ginevra says, “but they don’t realise it”.
Like some of the present-day Ormas members Ginevra researched, Topan has some history of domestic violence in their backstory. Since escaping that situation, Ginevra explains, “Topan has really worked to make sure they’re powerful—that was a crisis in their life that they’ve then come back from.” They’ve changed how they see themselves; now they have a very militant side while also being comfortable using their looks to get ahead where they can. Ginevra describes how, on an as-yet-unrevealed Anarch card, we see Topan being “quite cynical [about] switching gender presentation to suit the situation”. Deep down though, they have a lot of more complex feelings about their non-binary identity that they don’t always show when they’re in leadership mode.
Finding opportunities like that to portray an aspect of a runner’s character on another card was an important part of the Narrative and Visual teams’ work on Elevation. With two identities per faction in the set, each character only gets a brief time in the sun, so they were keen to make those opportunities count. In our conversation, Ginevra highlights two particular Runner cards that feature Baz. One shows his brutality, depicting a scene that is “maybe the aftermath of a turf war”; another shows him “starting to prepare the Tri-Maf for when he’s not in power any more”. These cards were an opportunity to go into more detail about Baz’s shifting priorities as he gets older: “He’s had time to reach the top of the organisation, but then what do you do? He’s still got to maintain his power”. He also appears on a Corp card, showing his mercenary side; “He’ll work with anyone if they’re paying”.
As there are no Indonesian people in the current staff of the Narrative and Visual team, they were keen to bring in people from the region to provide their perspective on the setting and characters of Elevation. In addition to their work on the setting as a whole, cultural consultant Rin Draim looked over the concepts for the identities and made some crucial additions. It was Rin who suggested Topan’s name—meaning ‘hurricane’ or ‘cyclone’, they noted that it was just the kind of mononym that a modern street artist might choose. They also made recommendations about what kind of clothing Topan might wear as a person of Dayak origin, and about what kind of tattoos Baz might have.
Zefanya Langkan Maega, who did the art for both Baz and Topan as well as one of the Shaper runners, is also Indonesian, and did a fantastic job folding these suggestions into the characters when bringing them to life. Ginevra is very happy with how the art for Baz came out—“it’s exactly him”, she tells me, exactly as charismatic and dangerous as she had imagined him:
Barry “Baz” Wong: Tri-Maf Veteran
Criminal Identity: Cyborg
Pronouns: He/Him
Minimum Deck Size: 45 – Influence: 15 – limit: 4 – Base : 0
Whenever the Corp rezzes a piece of ice, you may install 1 resource or piece of hardware from your grip.
Try me.
Illustrated by Zefanya Langkan Maega
Barry “Baz” Wong: Tri-Maf Veteran
Pronouns: He/Him
The Tri-Maf has been in Kota Kali from the beginning, and Baz right along with it. In a megacity on the rise, no one noticed his own brutal, bloody elevation until he’d entrenched himself at the top. Now, he does business with the wealthy and powerful, as likely to shake hands with an exec as he is to get his hands dirty on the streets.
Yeah, sometimes that business means turning on the corp he did a favor for last week. So what? They’ll need him again, eventually, and all will be forgiven. Things move fast in Kota Kali.
Illustrated by Zefanya Langkan Maega
As well as the art and concepting of the cards, the narrative of the characters of Kota Kalimantan is conveyed directly in text—both flavour text and the new narrative excerpts on the back of the identity cards. In Baz’s case, Ginevra made sure to include some Australian phrasing in his flavour text to communicate that side of his character.
The plan for the new identity card backs was both an opportunity and a challenge for the Narrative team. Working collaboratively, the team had a lot of fun experimenting with the tone and style of each excerpt, trying to convey as much as possible about each runner and corp within a tight wordcount. Ginevra tells me she’s really excited about this addition to the narrative repertoire of Netrunner, and the potential to experiment with it more in the future.
Just as Elevation represents a new foundation for Netrunner play, it establishes a core approach to the narrative and theming of the game. Some of the cards in Elevation are among the most iconic in the history of Netrunner. I can’t wait to see what stories unfold as we play with Baz, Topan and Kota Kalimantan’s many other colourful characters over the coming weeks and months!
Join us in Kota Kalimantan when Elevation releases on April 24th 2025!
