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So, my homebrew game is fairly roleplay-centric with lots of fluff and fairly frequent (read:rampant) pop-culture sci-fi references getting thrown around the table. One thing that lots of sci-fi settings are lacking in terms immersion, though, is minor brands.
Sure, there are usually a handful of big corporations and the occasional minor restaurant in the background, but what about a manufacturer for all that minor gear my players carry (aside from just AbadarCorp)? What company makes the most popular operating systems or programs run by their comm units or computers? What 24-hour crappy chain restaurant will they inevitably find themselves in after a night of bar fights and binge drinking? What soap operas will the emotional space-orc invest himself in this week?
The Starfinder team has been great thus far with providing fluff material (I have multiple pages of notes with every mention I could find of companies and brands in the CRB, Pact Worlds Guide, and Armory), but I find myself wanting more inconsequential things to really get my players invested in the setting. I have a few ideas I'll be peppering into my game already, but I'm always on the hunt for more.
Morley Cigarettes (the iconic tv/film prop cigarette brand)
Mokolo Plus (the drugged milk from Clockwork Orange)
Spacebucks Coffee (a shameless pun our envoy came up with)
Monocycle Playing Cards (Bicycle parody)
Spaceball's Meatball Emporium (again, thank the envoy)
Tyrell Mfg. (maker of android-esque pets, famous for their owls)
7^11 (a convenience store sometimes jokingly called "almost two billion")
[Several competing variations of "Tony's Pizza" on Absalom Station]
HAL Personal Assistant (a "mildly buggy" Alexa-like program for the "Artificial Personality" computer upgrade)
[Something along the lines of Weyland-Yutani that I can't think of a good name for]
Prime Detective (an android-run detective agency that prides itself on its ethical conduct and the occasional Holmes reference)
The Turing Agency: a synthetic-lifeform-advocacy group working mainly to register SROs as sentient Pact Worlds citizens instead of simply property, the agency is rumored to be a face group for the Android Abolitionist Front or even the Perceptionist movement, though no legal ties have been made thus far. The Agency's R&D division has made claims recently of having found a consistent means of creating sentient AI programs capable of attracting souls without a physical chassis. Most speculate that this is a marketing campaign for their next iteration of the Agency's HAL Personal Assistant program, which is currently in its 8000 series.
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Let's see how far down this rabbit hole we can go!
Edit: a link to the original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/starfinder_rpg/comments/98j645/outsourcing_ideas_f luff_companies_brand_names/