Netrunners: What They Do in Each Cyberpunk Edition

The short version#

A netrunner jacks into the net with a cyberdeck, an interface plug and a head full of programs. They roam cyberspace looking for systems to break into and information to sell to fixers.

Many work for themselves, and the 2077 database says every corporation keeps an army of them on payroll. The freelancers are the ones with better stories and worse health plans.

Tabletop: 2020 and RED#

Netrunner is one of the ten roles in the tabletop game. Players use interface plugs, cyberdecks and the Interface special ability, with programs chosen ahead of time. Net combat runs second by second, faster than the three-second combat round used on the street.

RED changes the job. The old global net is gone (see the Blackwall), so netrunning is no longer a remote activity: the netrunner sits inside the team, with virtuality goggles, and can alternate between physical and virtual action. That was a design choice so every character has something to do during a hacking scene. Good call. Nobody likes waiting for the hacker to finish.

Cyberpunk 2077#

In the game, netrunner is one of the two primary playstyles, with the solo. Most of the work is quickhacking: uploading a program into an enemy or a local network, using a cyberdeck. Quickhacks are limited to local nets, which makes them a different thing from what a full netrunner does by jacking in.

Breach Protocol is the mini-game for hacking access points, and it needs a cyberdeck.

Netrunners in Edgerunners and Phantom Liberty#

Lucy is Edgerunners' netrunner. Phantom Liberty brings in Songbird and Slider, both netrunners.

If you want the Blackwall context before you play the expansion, read that page first.

Famous netrunners#

These are the names the games keep coming back to.

• Rache Bartmoss: The netrunner behind the DataKrash. He ran the Pacifica region of the net with Alt Cunningham, and in 2077 V can find his frozen body and his booby-trapped deck.
• Alt Cunningham: Creator of Soulkiller, the program that transfers a mind into cyberspace. Arasaka used it on her.
• Spider Murphy: In the 2023 Arasaka Tower raid she is the netrunner who pulls Alt out of the Arasaka network.
• T-Bug: V's netrunner partner in the game's opening.
• Lucy: Edgerunners. Brings David into Maine's crew and dreams of the Moon.
• Songbird: Phantom Liberty. A NUSA netrunner who has been probing past the Blackwall.

Fixer's notes#

Common mix-up: quickhacking is not the same as the netrunning in the tabletop books, and the lore text says as much. Our read: a 2077 netrunner build is closer to RED's embedded netrunner than to 2020's solo diver.

Opinion: Edgerunners is the better ad for the role. It shows Lucy's job as work done in the middle of other people's trouble. Also worth reading: cyberpsychosis and Arasaka.