Question for you @vader: Setting aside the existing case file for a moment, is there anything you've suggested above that you feel you can't do? I understand the rule book doesn't explicitly show you how to create non-Blade Runner character (journalist, PI, geneticist, bounty hunter, corporate fixer, etc.), but you could certainly create those on your own if you wanted to.
While I'm not Vader, one of the issues is that the listed equipment, costs, and availability are very much geared towards investigators, with very little info on just purchasing stuff for yourself for fun or profit. It's actually more than a little concerning since, unlike a system like in Vaesen, chinyen is finite and not 'renewable' each case or session. The game sort of uses chinyen for bribery ... either bribing other cops to get access to equipment you were originally denied, or bribing contacts to give you info or equipment you need. It's not even clear how 'permanent' anything you get outside of standard LAPD requisition really is.
So no, as written, it's not easily possible to play a non-Blade Runner civilian. Best you could do is maybe play an LAPD cop who's not a Blade Runner.
To add to @Kaybe’s already very to-the-point answer, @CitizenZero — it seems to me that by your line of reasoning, the book could justifiably be a whole lot thinner than it is. You can
always home-brew pretty much anything you like into
any game.
So, as long as the game provides some bare bones for you — why rely on the authors to provide any of the details for you, since you can do it yourself? Ever?
In that case, there are some details I could have hoped the authors had
not chosen to invest space on, since what they’ve come up with simply doesn’t cut the mustard for me (in particular Deckard’s Blaster, which I feel is, quite frankly,
[redacted]), and I’ll have to home-brew anyway!
As @Kaybe pointed out, while you could create a wider variety of character archetypes easily enough, the game doesn’t provide any structure to actually play them in. It seems it hardly even provides structure to play the Bladerunner characters, when they’re not actively Investigating Case Files.
Of course, all of that is always
possible to home-brew. But for my own part, I don’t buy game for what I can home-brew into them; I buy them for what I can play in them.
And thereby again going full circle back to one of my earlier posts: I look forward to those "future game expansions adding rules and guidelines for other types of characters". To me, it is these that hold the promise of unlocking the game’s full potential.
I might have wished Ligan had put some of it into the base game, but I am content with their commitment to release expansions on the subject.