Netrunner
Role Ability: Interface — Cyberpunk Red
Netrunner
Everyone else sees the net as a tool, a thing you shop on, scroll the socials, and watch funny cat videos. A Netrunner sees the net as an endless ocean of possibility, where you can dive in and make it big or die trying. Brain-burning computer hackers and the last electronic wraiths of the Post-NET cyberverse, Netrunners are the reason a locked door, a corporate vault, or a rival Fixer's secrets are only ever as safe as your firewalls can maintain.
History
Before the DataKrash, being a Netrunner meant something close to what Rache Bartmoss and Magnificent Curtis lived through: full sensory immersion, jacked straight into the Old NET through a Neural Link and a Cyberdeck, blind and deaf to the physical world the entire time. It was reckless by design. The Old NET rewarded Netrunners who went all in, because the alternative was a NET too slow and too shallow to be worth the risk.
The DataKrash ended that world and with it created a more simple net though questionably safer. When the R.A.B.I.D.S. turned cyberspace into a hunting ground and Netwatch finally cut the Old NET off for good in 2023, a generation of Netrunners grew up dreaming of running with Spiders found themselves locked out of the only NET they'd ever wanted to use. What replaced it, the CitiNet, running on META over Ziggurat's salvaged infrastructure, was smaller, plainer, and a great deal less forgiving of the old habit of leaving your body behind entirely.
Modern Netrunning grew up around that limitation instead of fighting it. Today's Netrunners mesh the NET with Meatspace using Virtuality Goggles and neuroports rather than going in blind, staying alert to the room around them while their mind runs the Architecture in parallel. The systems they crack are smaller than the legendary Old NET vaults of Bartmoss's era, but they're also, floor for floor, considerably deadlier, and a Netrunner without a team watching their unresponsive body doesn't usually get to regret that for long.
That isnt to say that network deep dives dont still exist. Going full dive with a deep dive socket and immersing yourself in the datastream still exists but its substantially more dangerous. Bartmoss never had to contend with swarms of Daemons or diving a citinet to take down the traffic grid while trying to keep his brain from boiling itself. The old legends were legends for a reason, But modern Netrunners have to be better.
How Netrunning Works
A Netrunner's Role Ability is Interface: the ability to jack a Cyberdeck into a NET Architecture and take NET Actions once inside. Without it, Netrunning isn't possible at all, no matter how good someone's Electronics/Security Tech Skill is.
On their Turn, a Netrunner chooses between one Meat Action (something done in the physical world) or a number of NET Actions set by their Interface Rank, in addition to their Move Action. A Rank 1 Netrunner gets 2 NET Actions per Turn; by Rank 10, that climbs to 5. This is the core tension of the Role at every table: watch your own back in Meatspace, or trust your team to do it while you go deeper into the Architecture.
Interface Rank also unlocks a suite of Interface Abilities, the actual verbs of Netrunning:
- Backdoor — break through a Password or other obstruction.
- Cloak — hide your actions in the Architecture before you leave.
- Control — operate something wired into the Architecture, like a camera or a turret.
- Eye-Dee — identify a found piece of data and its value.
- Pathfinder — learn the layout of the Architecture ahead of you.
- Scanner — locate NET-capable systems in the area.
- Slide — break away from a single Black ICE Program pursuing you.
- Virus — leave a lasting change in an Architecture once you've reached its lowest floor.
- Zap — a basic attack that works against both Programs and other Netrunners.
Full DVs, Check formulas, and Quickhack rules are covered on the Cheat Sheet.
The Cyberdeck
A Cyberdeck is a Netrunner's mind-modem, the piece of hardware that turns a Neural Link and a set of Interface Plugs into an actual door onto the NET. Cheap ones are boxy, utilitarian bricks a Netrunner clips to a belt or stows in a bag. Better ones get sleeker and stranger: SGI Technologies builds segmented, almost organic shells; Zetatech's MicroMate folds down to something a person could lose in a coat pocket; Raven Microcybernetics leans into sharp, aerodynamic angles that look fast even sitting still on a table. A Cyberdeck can also be installed directly into a Cyberarm or wired into a Neuroport Cyberdeck Port for a permanent, always-on connection, at the cost of never being able to hand the deck off or swap it out in a hurry.
Every Cyberdeck is built around a set number of Option Slots, divided between Programs and Hardware depending on the model. A basic Kirama Training Deck is what most Netrunners cut their teeth on, and what an unfortunate number of them die on. Better decks trade flexibility for specialization: some lock a Netrunner into an aggressive, Black-ICE-heavy loadout, others reward a purely evasive, Slide-and-run style, and the priciest custom builds let a Netrunner shape their entire deck around exactly the kind of fight they intend to have. Whatever the build, a Netrunner can only be plugged into one Cyberdeck at a time, and switching decks mid-run costs a Meat Action they may not have to spare.
Programs
Programs are a Netrunner's weapons and gear inside the NET, and every one of them renders as a custom Icon the Netrunner can style however they like, a glowing katana, a swarm of golden mechanical worms, a barrier of flickering silver light. Mechanically, they fall into a few families:
Boosters don't attack anything. They sharpen a Netrunner's other Abilities while Rezzed, quickening a Backdoor attempt, a Pathfinder scan, or a Netrunner's own reflexes in the Architecture.
Defenders keep a Netrunner alive. Armor blunts incoming brain damage, Flak strips the bite out of an enemy Attacker Program, and Shield eats a single hit before burning out. All three are built to be spent, not worn indefinitely.
Attackers come in two flavors. Anti-Program Attackers like Sword and Banhammer exist to tear apart an enemy's Programs and Black ICE. Anti-Personnel Attackers go straight for the Netrunner behind the deck: Hellbolt sets a target's brain and Cyberdeck on fire, Nervescrub scrambles their STATs for the next hour, and DeckKRASH forces an unsafe Jack Out that leaves every Black ICE they'd been dodging free to hit them on the way out.
Black ICE is the Architecture's own immune system: Programs that hunt down intruders once triggered, running on their own Perception and Speed rather than a Netrunner's Interface. Loading a deck with your own Black ICE is possible, but it's expensive real estate, each one eats two Option Slots instead of one.
Common Cyberware
Almost every Netrunner is built around the same foundational chrome, with a few common additions layered on top depending on how much of a fight they expect to be in:
- Neuroport / Neural Link — the base install every other piece of Neuralware depends on. Most people in Night City get one as children; a Netrunner without one can't Netrun at all.
- Interface Plugs — the wrist or head jacks that actually connect a Netrunner's Neural Link to a Cyberdeck, or to any other machine worth jacking into.
- Chipware Socket — lets a Netrunner slot in Chipware on the fly: Skill Chips, a Pain Editor to keep functioning while Seriously Wounded, or a Memory Chip to carry data too sensitive to leave on the CitiNet.
- Kerenzikov or Sandevistan — speedware that isn't strictly a Netrunning tool, but shows up constantly on Netrunners who expect trouble to catch up with their body while their mind is elsewhere.
- Virtuality Goggles — not cyberware, technically, but as essential as any of it. Without a pair, a Netrunner who jacks in the old-fashioned way goes fully unconscious to the physical world until they Jack Out.
Netrunners built for the field over the workshop often add a Bodyweight Suit on top of all of it, armor that can house Cyberdeck support hardware directly, on the theory that the body left behind while they're Netrunning deserves better protection than a chair and a locked door.
Famous Netrunners
- Rache Bartmoss is the name every Netrunner learns first, usually as a warning. The most gifted hacker the Old NET ever produced, and the man whose paranoia ended it. Every modern Netrunner works in the wreckage of his last prank, and every netrunner hates him just a little bit. Love him or Hate him Bartmoss was likely the best in the biz.
- Alt Cunningham built Soulkiller before Arasaka turned it into a weapon and used it on her. She was a working Netrunner first, a legend second, and whatever she is now behind the Blackwall, third. Alt was at one time considered the greatest Netrunner on earth, though debates about this rage to this day between her and Bartmoss.
- Spider Murphy ran with Bartmoss and Johnny Silverhand's crew during the Corporate War era and is still active in Night City decades later, one of the few Netrunners of her generation who survived both the DataKrash and everything that came after.
- Recluse The spider of Japantown, Recluse builds and sells some of the most sophisticated NET Architecture available on the street from a walled-off corner of Old Japantown, always remotely, always through an Icon shaped like an enormous brown recluse spider with an icey voice.
Common Ways Netrunners Die
A Netrunner rarely dies the way a Solo does. The list of what actually gets them looks more like this:
- Direct brain damage. Attacker Programs and Black ICE alike can bypass armor entirely and hit a Netrunner's mind straight on. Enough of it in one Netrun and there's nothing left to Jack Out.
- Catching fire, literally. Hellbolt and programs like it set both a Netrunner's Cyberdeck and their actual body burning. Without Insulated Wiring, that's a Netrunner on fire in the real world while their mind is still somewhere else entirely.
- An unsafe Jack Out. Leaving an Architecture without properly disconnecting means suffering every Black ICE a Netrunner encountered but didn't Derez, all at once, on the way out the door.
- A vulnerable body. While jacked in, a Netrunner is functionally unconscious and defenseless in Meatspace. This is why every competent crew brings a Solo to watch the door and a Medtech close enough to restart a heart if it stops. Netrunners who work without either tend not to work for long.
- Going too deep. A handful of Netrunners each year decide the rumors about the Old NET are worth the risk anyway. Very few of them are heard from again.
See Also
- The Net — the network, the Blackwall, and the history that shaped what Netrunning is today.
- Cheat Sheet — full Netrunning rules, DVs, and Quickhack tables.
"The Black ICE may still kill you in the end, but until the ride runs out, you'll be there, bare-brained and headfirst in the New NET." — Night City MUSH is a fan project. Cyberpunk Red is property of R. Talsorian Games. Cyberpunk 2077 is property of CD Projekt Red. Cyberpunk Edgerunners is property of Studio Trigger and Netflix.