Aren't PACKS basically gear cards/sets? Haven't paid too much attention to them but that's what they struck me as.
Not exactly cards, no. They're sets of gear, yes, but it's more like a pre-packaged bundle of goodies to speed up character creation/gear selection.
I'd love to give a nice specific example for Shadowrun, but I don't know how specific Jason (and more importantly the NDA) would let me be. I'll switch genres and game systems completely to do it, and maybe that'll keep me in the clear.
Imagine if D&D had a "Sword and Board Fighter" gear set, it might list a single total GP cost, and in just buying that one PACK he'd get a nice longsword, a well-balanced shield, some chainmail, a helmet, a whetstone, first aid kit, and a dagger. He could then go pick out the "Basic Adventurer" PACK to get the rest of his work-a-day starting gear (backpack, three torches, 100 ft of rope, ten pitons, a week's worth of rations, flint and steel, two first aid kits, compass) and voila...he'd be pretty much done with buying all his gear, right? Maybe there's a little overlap (like the Basic Adventurer kit giving everyone some first aid, but also a front-line combat PACK like Sword and Board Fighter giving extra first aid kits), but for the most part it's greatly simplified the gear selection process.
And, meanwhile, the party's Ranger, Cleric, or
whoever, would also be speeding up their basic gear selection because they wouldn't mind the "Basic Adventurer" PACK, themselves. No one's got to flip through the equipment section of the book and scribble down every single copper piece they spend to make sure that they've got the basic covered. Instead of counting out how many sheets of parchment, reading candles, quills, and jars of ink he's buying, no doubt the party Wizard could pick up a "Scholastic Spellcaster" set, to give him a big sack full of spellbook junk and writing material and stuff.
That's more or less the basic principle we were working towards. Take a core character idea or background idea or some other three or four word descriptor of a character, and equip 'em. Bam, just like that, it makes it a two-or-three-step selection process to equip a character instead of a thirty-seven, 'cause you buy a couple big PACKs of gear and call it a day.