Gameplay Loop
This game uses Cortex Prime — a dice pool system where your character's traits are rated as dice, and play is about assembling the right dice at the right moment. Every session follows the same basic structure, but what fills the middle changes every time.
Every trait your character has is rated as a die size — from d4 (weak or narrow) up to d12 (strong and broadly applicable). A d10 Buzz means you're deeply plugged in. A d4 Edge means you're no fighter.
When you act, you assemble a pool of dice from your relevant traits and roll them all. Pick the two highest results and add them together — that's your total. The die you didn't pick becomes your effect die, measuring how well you succeed.
The GM rolls their own dice pool — usually built from the Doom Pool and the opposition's traits. Highest total wins. Ties go to the GM.
Assets are extra dice you create through play — preparation and positioning made concrete. "Inside Man d8" means you add a d8 to your pool whenever that contact is relevant.
Session Structure
A job comes in from a client, or the group spots a window on their own. The nature of the opportunity is established — and the Doom Pool is set. The clock is running.
Gather information. Activate contacts. Move assets into position. Build leverage through successful actions — then commit when ready.
The opposition is also moving — creating hindrances, targeting your traits, working the same opportunity. Dismantling them clears the path. Ignoring them is faster but riskier.
These aren't sequential steps — they run in parallel. Opposition is always active. Engaging them is a choice, not a requirement.
The group commits to the core challenge. Success means the opportunity is realised. If the Doom Pool filled first, the window is gone — and there are consequences either way.
The Doom Pool
The Doom Pool is the GM's escalating threat — a set of dice that represents how much the situation is slipping out of control. It starts at the beginning of the session and grows throughout. When it reaches its threshold, the opportunity is gone.
In Cortex, the Doom Pool is rolled directly against the players in contested actions. As it grows — as dice step up from d6 to d8 to d10 — it becomes an increasingly dangerous opponent in its own right. It isn't just a countdown. It fights back.
What Fixers Actually Do
Fixers rarely handle things directly. The job is to make things happen — which usually means putting the right people in the right place, not doing it yourself. An edgerunner takes the job. A gang moves on a target. A contact inside the corp pulls the file. The fixer's role is to make that possible: building the leverage, securing the access, and creating the conditions for someone else to act.
In practice, Strings and Assets often represent exactly those people. A String might be an edgerunner crew you can call on. An Asset might be a guard who's been paid to look the other way. The characters are pulling those levers — not kicking down the door themselves, unless everything else has failed.
This game starts earlier than the usual fixer story and ends a little later. The session covers the work that happens before the edgerunner gets the call — and picks up again after they're paid. The execution in between is almost incidental. What matters is the positioning that made it possible.
Challenges and Constraints
Every opportunity comes with its own shape — and that shape determines which traits are useful and which are limited. The goal of a session informs what kind of leverage matters. The context constrains how you can apply it.
A String that's powerful in one district might carry no weight somewhere else. Buzz that covers corporate movements tells you nothing about a gang's internal politics. Chrome that's essential for a data extraction is irrelevant during a negotiation. The same character can be effective or nearly useless depending on where play takes them — and learning to work around those constraints, or to reposition into situations where your traits matter, is part of the game.
Opposition
Opposition isn't a health bar. They're a network of traits — Buzz, Strings, Resources — and they roll those traits against you the same way you roll yours. To defeat them, you target their traits directly.
When you create a complication against an opponent's Strings d10, you step it up. Step it far enough and that trait is taken out — they lose that capability entirely. Cut their edgerunner loose and they can't escalate physically anymore. Burn their corporate contact and their leverage in that sector disappears. You don't defeat people. You dismantle their ability to operate.
Direct violence is possible, but expensive. It requires access, it feeds the Doom Pool, and it rarely solves the actual problem. Positioning first makes it unnecessary most of the time.
Pressure
Heat, Strain, and Harm are stress tracks that grow as die ratings — starting at d4 and stepping up through d6, d8, d10, to d12. The bigger the die, the more it costs you.
- Heat — the world is watching. Heat dice are added to opposition rolls against everything you do in that environment. High Heat means you're operating in daylight with everyone's eyes on you.
- Strain — you're cracking. Too many moving parts, too many bad calls, too much pressure. Strain makes decisions harder and erodes your ability to function cleanly.
- Harm — something got physical. Injury bleeds into every action that requires focus or physical capability.
Crucially, pressure doesn't only target characters. Opposition can go after your contacts, compromise your Resources, or corrupt your Buzz. Your network is as vulnerable as you are.
Assets
Assets are temporary advantages you create through play. Every successful action during Probe and Position can become an asset — a die you carry into the Act phase and add to your pool when it's relevant.
Assets are spent when used or lost when the situation shifts. This is what preparation actually means mechanically: every asset you build before committing is an extra die in your pool when it matters most.
Character & Code
Challenges are also tests of who your character is. The question isn't just whether you succeed — it's how, and what that reveals.
Code should be written so it actually gets in the way. A principle that never creates friction isn't a Code, it's decoration. When your Code is relevant and it hinders you, you earn a Plot Point (PP) — the meta-currency you spend to do exceptional things: add extra dice, reroll, activate special abilities.
Code must cost you something to mean anything. If it never creates a problem, rewrite it.
This is how the Legend vs Code tension resolves mechanically. Honouring your Code earns PP and shapes who you become. Ignoring it might make a situation easier — but your Legend grows in a direction you didn't choose, and you forgo the PP. The system already forces the question. Your Code just has to be sharp enough to ask it.
Winning
A session ends when the opportunity is engaged — the group commits to the core challenge and rolls it out. Whether they succeed depends on what they built, what they dismantled, and how much the Doom Pool grew while they were doing it.
You don't win by overpowering the situation. You win by understanding it well enough to act at the right moment, with the right dice in your pool. In Night City, control is never permanent. You just stay ahead long enough to matter.