The Grid

1Before you begin

The Grid runs on a machine that is reachable from anywhere, and you reach it the same way you would reach any other machine: with an SSH client. There is nothing to download and nothing to register.

$ ssh runner@coldice.sh

Your public key is your account. The first time you connect, one is created for you and you are given a handle, a deck and five hundred credits. Connect again from the same key and you are the same runner. Connect from a different key and you are somebody else, with nothing.

There is no password to lose and no address to confirm. If you keep your key, you keep your runner.

The game runs in your terminal at whatever size it happens to be. Eighty columns by twenty-four rows is enough. More is better, and the display rearranges itself if you resize the window while you are playing.

2The world

The Grid is four billion addresses. Roughly one in eight answers. Everything you find at an address is worked out from that address, which means it is the same machine for every runner, today and in a year. An address worth remembering stays worth remembering, and telling somebody about it does not use it up.

A live machine has a hostname, an owner, an operating system, a list of running services with real version numbers, files, accounts, and an opinion about you being there. Machines are rated one to five.

Nothing on the Grid is generated when you look at it and forgotten afterwards. What players change is kept: files you delete stay deleted, machines you build stay built, and a log you wiped stays wiped.

3Your first run

The shortest useful loop is four commands. Sweep a range, look at something that answered, get through the door, and take what is inside.

runner@coldice.sh:~$ scan 62.14.8.0/24

  62.14.8.44    archive-06        tier 2   ssh, http
  62.14.8.91    print-24          tier 1   ipp
  62.14.8.200   the-cellar        tier 1   ssh, bbs
  3 live of 256 swept.

runner@coldice.sh:~$ probe 62.14.8.44

  archive-06   Ardennes Data Holdings
  openssh 7.4, nginx 1.14.2
  ICE: sentry lv1
  a trace here would take about 40 seconds.

runner@coldice.sh:~$ crack 62.14.8.44

  [*] trying the list against 3 accounts.......
  svc-backup:backup2068   in every wordlist ever printed
  credential saved. connect 62.14.8.44

runner@coldice.sh:~$ connect 62.14.8.44

  archive-06 login: svc-backup
  you are in. 'ls' to look around.

From there, ls lists the files, cat reads one, and get copies it to your deck. sell turns what you are carrying into credits. If you are ever unsure, hint will tell you what to do next, and it reads your actual situation rather than a script.

4Three ways through a door

There are exactly three, and they fail differently.

crack

A dictionary attack against the machine's accounts. It is loud, it takes time, and it works on machines whose owners chose badly. Your cracking skill and your wordlist decide how far down the list you can reach.

exploit

Looks for a flaw in something the machine is running. Fast when it lands and useless when it does not, which depends on the software versions the machine actually reports and on how new your exploit kit is.

connect

Walk in with a credential. You get credentials by cracking them, by reading them off a machine that had them written down, or by buying them from another runner. You can also type one somebody told you:

connect 62.14.8.44 svc-backup backup2068

A credential you type is stored on your deck the first time it works, so you only have to type it once. A login you were given rather than worked out is marked as such, and does not count towards your standing on the Wall.

5Noise, alert and the trace

Every action you take inside a machine makes noise. Noise accumulates as that machine's alert, which is shown as a percentage in the panel at the top of the screen. Alert belongs to the machine and not to you. Leave, and it settles.

When alert reaches the machine's threshold, a trace starts. A trace is a countdown. If it finishes while you are still connected, the machine works out one fact about who you really are and writes it into a file on its own disk. See section 9.

Three things buy you time. Being quieter to begin with, which is the damper and your stealth skill. Making the trace itself slower, which is the baffle. And leaving.

Depth

Machines reached through other machines are deeper. Depth is shown down the left edge of the panel. Surfacing takes one step per layer, so a run four deep is four disconnects and real seconds you may not have. The ascender makes surfacing faster.

6ICE

Intrusion Countermeasures. A machine has at most one, with a class and a level. probe tells you it is there and ice tells you what it does.

Only barrier can be attacked directly, with break and a breaker program at or above the barrier's level. The rest are conditions to work around rather than obstacles to remove.

Black ICE is the one that costs money. It burns a fitted program out of your deck permanently and damages your deck's integrity. Plating takes the edge off it. Nothing makes it safe.

7Your deck

Your deck is a chassis with a number of slots. Programs occupy slots, and only a program in a slot does anything. Owning it is not enough, so gear shows what you have and fit puts it in.

Every program runs from level 1 to level 10. The shop stocks the bottom 4. Above that a program has to be found on a machine or bought from another runner, and each level costs roughly two and a third times the one below, so a level 10 anything is a project rather than a purchase.

Your deck also has integrity, which black ICE takes away and repair buys back, and a hold of 6 items for what you are carrying.

Skills

Four, each 0 to 100, each earned by doing the thing rather than by spending anything.

8Work and money

Credits come from four places.

A fixer. sell empties your deck at once. Data is worth what it costs to be the only one holding it, so the same file is worth less every time anybody sells another copy. Sell first and sell fast.

Contracts. Bulletin boards carry work: reconnaissance, a file somebody wants, a log somebody wants cleaned. jobs lists them, take claims one, deliver hands it in. A contract pays for work you did after taking it, so reading the board first is worth the minute.

Courier work. A contract that is not about a file but about getting somewhere. Something has to be carried to a machine too far in to knock on, so the route matters: there are at least 40 distinct ways through, the destination will not open to you directly, and the credential for it is sitting on a machine one step outside. Find that, and then find your way in. The longer the way round, the better it pays.

Crew work. Some payloads are too big for one deck. A crew job needs between two and 10 runners, every seat has to be taken before the clock starts, and then everybody has 1h30m to get their own piece to the destination and hand it over. It is finished when the last piece lands.

There are no separate commands for any of this. A crew job uses the same verbs and they mean something slightly different: take signs you on to a seat rather than claiming the job, deliver hands over your own piece rather than finishing it, drop gives your seat back while the sheet is still filling, and job shows you who else is on it.

Crew work pays each member the full amount multiplied by the size of the crew, so two runners are paid double each and ten are paid ten times each. That is deliberate. Getting nine other people into the same machine inside the window is the hard part, and it is worth paying for.

The market. Other runners. market lists what is for sale on the board you are standing on, and offer puts something up. You can sell data, a way into a machine, or a program.

offer payroll.dat 1200            a file from your deck
offer access 62.14.8.44 800       a login you hold
offer gear wordlist-5 9000        a program, off your deck until it sells

A program leaves your deck the moment you list it, because there is only one of it. Data and logins are information, and the seller keeps a copy of those: selling a login does not take away your own.

Your own machines. See section 10.

9Your name

This is the part of the game where being caught costs something that does not grow back.

Every runner has a true name: a civilian identity you never chose, never see, and cannot change. It is 6 facts.

A trace that completes writes one of those facts into a real file on the machine that caught you. Anybody who breaks into that machine can read it, and reading it copies it to their deck. After a delay the record also reaches the attribution clearing house, where it becomes public to everybody. Runners on the Wall leak faster: fame costs you time.

At 4 of 6 public, the Grid can put a person behind your handle. Every machine starts suspicious of you and the heat does not come off.

The two ways out

Wipe it. Get back into the machine that caught you, get root, and wipe. That destroys the record, but only while it is still sitting there and has not spread.

Go underground. underground retires the handle and starts a new one. It works, and it costs you the handle, its standing, and its reputation on every board.

The other side of it

What you read off other people is yours to keep. dossier on its own shows what the Grid has on you and what you hold on everybody else. dossier <handle> shows one sheet. Holding the most of other people's names puts you on the Archivists list on the Wall.

10Machines of your own

A dark address can be made into a machine. plant needs a forge fitted, and what you build is a real node on the real Grid that other runners can find, probe and break into.

What it is for:

• Storage. A vault holds what will not fit on your deck. Other runners can empty it if they get in.
• Bouncing. route sends your runs through machines you own, which puts distance between you and the trace.
• A back way in. backdoor, on a machine you have root on, leaves a way back that does not need the front door. Backdoors expire.
• Saying something. banner sets what your machine says to whoever gets inside it. A welcome, a warning, or a line of poetry.

You can buy ICE for your own machines with install, and it behaves exactly as it does everywhere else, which means it will happily trace another runner standing in your front room.

11Constructs and duels

A runner can build an avatar: a construct that runs from the deck and fights other runners' constructs. Two runners inside the same machine can set theirs on each other. avatar new <name> builds one.

The fight itself is automatic. It lasts 4 rounds and nothing is typed while it happens, so it is decided by what you built and how you told it to behave, not by how fast you can type. Somebody on a slow link is not at a disadvantage.

It opens over the wire, with each side trying to get a virus into the other's deck before the constructs ever touch. Closing to the same process costs a turn.

Three settings, three questions

This is the whole of it, and each setting answers a different question. Aggression starts a fight, nerve permits it, bravery ends it. Aggression and nerve are public. Bravery is not.

Nerve: who you will fight

Nerve is a weight class. It says how far above your own weight you are willing to be, and it is asked of both constructs before anything happens.

Weight is your level plus everything you have fitted. Level is the points spent on the construct; weight is what you are walking in as. Both are public, both are on the band at the top of your screen, and it is weight the gate reads. Fitting heavy things makes you heavier, so fewer people will take you on, and the ones who do have chosen to. There is no cap on it and there does not need to be one: at some point you are carrying a monster nobody will fight. If either one refuses, the link simply drops: no damage, no record, and it does not count as a defeat.

That is what protects a newcomer, and it is on by default. A runner who has changed nothing carries nerve 5, which refuses everybody above them.

Fifty things to carry

An avatar has five slots. There are fifty items to put in them, with no levels and no upgrade path, and every one of them is a trade: a spread across two to four attributes, some up and some down. Nothing is simply better than anything else, so the question is never "is this good" but "is this good for the construct I built".

An item's weight is what its spread adds up to, and nothing else. Give two more than you take and you are two heavier; give back everything you take and you are free to carry, however dramatic the trade. That is why weight can be trusted at the gate: you cannot get net power for nothing.

You also have to be able to pay what an item takes. No attribute can be driven below one, so the deepest trades are something you grow into, and the item you cannot wear yet is the one worth trading for.

How rare, and what rarity buys

Rarity buys shape, not power. A common item nudges two attributes; a unique one moves all four and moves them further. The weights are much the same across the range, which is deliberate: a deep find should change what your construct is, not simply make it stronger, because the curve has to stay flat enough for somebody who arrived today.

• Common. Sold by a fixer, or found on tier 1 and 2.
• Rare. Tier 3 and 4.
• Extra rare. Tier 5.
• Unique. Six of them, and each exists exactly once in the whole world. When somebody takes it, that is the only one there will ever be.

Every item remembers the machine it came out of and who first pulled it.

avatar kit is what you own, avatar fit <name> puts something on, and avatar shop is what a fixer stocks.

Nerve can be raised at any time and lowered only after two hours. You can always decide to be braver on the spot; backing off is something you commit to in advance.

Aggression: whether a fight starts at all

Two runners in the same machine is the ordinary case, so something has to decide whether anything happens. Read only for the side that might begin it. Typing duel yourself is not governed by it: aggression describes what your construct does while you are busy elsewhere.

Dormant is not immunity. It means you start nothing; you will still be fought if your nerve allows it. Nerve 1 is immunity.

Bravery: when it runs

The private setting, and the only one your opponent cannot read. A failed escape wastes the turn, so running early is not free.

Plans

An ordered list of rules, first match wins, which is what your construct follows during the fight. Pick one with avatar plan <name>.

What it costs and what it pays

Losing crashes the construct and damages the deck's integrity, which repair buys back. Nothing is stolen: no gear, no credits, no permanent loss. Duelling is not a way to take somebody's things.

Attribute points come out of what you risked. Carrying a high nerve pays more, because more of the Grid could have reached you while you carried it, and reaching above your own weight pays more again. Being crashed pays a single point. Running away pays nothing. Beating somebody three or more levels below you pays nothing at all, which means the bullying setting cannot grow.

Fighting the same person over and over is worth less each time and nothing by the fourth bout, and it resets after 1 day. A rematch that is worth nothing is refused outright, because the machine you are standing in pays for the noise either way.

A duel is loud. It raises the alert on the machine it happens in, for everybody standing there, which makes picking your ground part of it and makes duelling in the middle of a run a bad idea. Duelling alone can never drive a machine past its trace line, so a crowd cannot poison somebody else's node with it.

A new construct spends 12 points across four attributes and no attribute goes above 20. The curve is deliberately flat: a veteran is about three times a newcomer, not fifty times, because a permanent world has to stay open to somebody who arrived today.

ACommand reference

82 commands. In the game, help lists them by group and help <command> explains one.

Finding things

Getting in

Inside a machine

Bulletin boards

Other runners

Constructs and duels

Your deck

Machines you own

Your name

CConstruct kit

All fifty, by slot. Weight is the net of the spread and nothing else. An item that gives back everything it takes weighs nothing, however dramatic it is, and several of the best ones are exactly that.

BEquipment

Prices are the shop's, in credits. The shop sells to level 4 only. Level 10 is shown to give the shape of the curve, not because you can buy one.

CSpecifications