NOTES FOR THE IDIOT IN CHARGE
For the Person Holding the City Together.
Tone
Pitch-black satire with genuine teeth. The violence is grotesque and specific and also, in the right register, funny — the way that things that are genuinely too much are funny, because the alternative is something you don't want to sit with at the table. The sexuality is uncomfortable not because it is explicit but because it is honest. It makes the reader aware of what they are looking at and what the looking says about them. This is not an accident. Run it that way.
The comedy is recognition comedy: this city is ours, three decades further down the same road, with the polite fictions stripped. The control apparatus is pharmaceutical and algorithmic and theological because ours already is, just with better branding and worse honesty. Run the satire like you mean it. The punchline is that the world is already like this. Everyone already knows. Everyone keeps acting like it's fine. That's the joke. That's always been the joke.
The drug economy is not background flavor. It is the engine. Hunger drives the city the way current drives the grid — invisibly, structurally, and the moment it stops, everything stops with it. When a character is hungry for something, that hunger is the story. Not a complication in the story. The story.
Love is the most dangerous force in the setting. Not sentimentally dangerous — mechanically dangerous. The most catastrophic acts in this city stem from something that functions like devotion, and the question the game keeps asking is: does that change what the act is? There is no answer in the rules. The rules are not where that answer lives.
There are no heroes. There are people making terrible choices in terrible circumstances, some of whom are more interesting than others, and at least one of whom is made of washing machine parts and something that might be love and is almost certainly going to get someone killed.
What to Prep
One faction wants something — what, who's in the way, why now.
One NPC has a face — name, look, one desire, one secret. Let them surprise you.
One location is alive — describe the smell first. Then the sound. Then what you can see.
One thing will go wrong — not the thing you planned. The other thing.
Money
Currency is lire. The economy is hostile to everyone below Verified bracket, which is most people, most of the time.
Reference Costs
Daily survival: Meal 50 · Safe bed 150 · Air subscription (lapsed) 100 to restore
Equipment: Basic weapon 200–400 · Good gun 500+ · Cybermod 500–2,500 · Drugs (street) 50–200
Services: Bribe a patrol officer 400 minimum · Unlicensed surgeon 300–600 · Machine Priest repair 100–500
Jobs: Starting work 200–600 · Serious job 600–1,000 · Anything over 1,000 lire: someone will try to kill you before it pays out.
Addiction in Play
Hunger is the fourth meter. Credit, heat, influence, hunger — the city tracks all four, and the fourth is the one it exploits most reliably. Track it 0–6 on the sheet. At Hunger 3+ all tests are at a cumulative penalty and every scene containing the substance requires a TOU roll or the character prioritizes acquisition. At Hunger 6 the substance is baseline — going without costs HP. When they're dosed, choose one positive effect from the drug table and one thing that goes slightly, persistently wrong. The city provides both endlessly.
Certain substances unlock access that nothing else does — Chrome for reading people, Static for dropping off the algorithm, Cardinal for passing in Parioli Superiore. These aren't bonuses. They're keys. The city built the locks. The city also sells the keys. This is not a coincidence.
Sex and Violence
Both are real in this game. Violence has weight. Sex has context. Neither is free.
When someone is hurt, describe it. When someone is intimate, describe what it means, not just what it is. The city makes objects of people constantly. The game can choose whether to replicate that or examine it.
NPC Reaction Table (Quick)
| 1 | Hostile. They have a reason. It involves you whether or not you know it. |
| 2 | Suspicious. Will transact but watching everything. One wrong move. |
| 3 | Indifferent. The city has made them this way. Not rude; absent. |
| 4 | Indifferent. The city has made them this way. Not rude; absent. |
| 5 | Cautiously open. Unusual enough to be notable. |
| 6 | Genuinely warm. Very unusual. They want something. It might be worth giving. |
The Session Loop
A session has a shape. Use it.
Session Start
Roll City Mood — d6 on the City Mood table (Roma Morente). The city is different today. Run it that way.
Roll Decay — d6. On a 1, advance the Decay counter. The GM may also advance it when the players make things significantly, historically worse. On any other result: the end is still coming, just not today.
Review the meters — for each character, note current Hunger, Heat with each faction, and outstanding Debt. Any Debt that has been unresolved for two or more sessions collects this session. No roll. It walks through the door.
During Play
One faction wants something. One NPC has a face. One location is alive. One thing will go wrong — not the thing you planned. Pick these before the session. Hold them loosely. The jobs, encounters, and random tables exist so you can drop any of them mid-session and the city fills the gap.
The city is not a story you are telling. It is a pressure system you are maintaining. Your job is not to move the players toward an ending — it is to make the meters move and see what the characters do about it.
Session End
For each character, note privately: did Heat go up? Is any Hunger unresolved? Did anything happen that warrants a Scar & Change roll?
Call for advancement when something was lost or broken, not just when a job succeeded. Success without cost doesn't change people. The city knows this. Run it like you do too.
Running the Pressure Systems Together
Heat, Hunger, Debt, Decay, and Influence are not five separate systems. They are the same system expressed in five currencies. When you need something to happen and don't know what: look at whichever meter is highest. That's today's problem.
The Meter Guide
Hunger 4+: The session starts with an acquisition problem. The character is already making decisions the city is counting on.
Heat 4+ with any faction: They send someone. Not necessarily to fight — to watch, to collect, to deliver a message that is also a threat. The someone has a name.
Debt unresolved two sessions: It walks through the door. You decide how. The debt table entry is the shape of it — the timing is yours.
Decay stage 3+: The mechanical effects are in the Decay table. The tonal effect is simpler: the city's patience is running out and the characters can feel it.
Influence Verified+: The city starts using the character instead of just processing them. This is not better. It is more interesting.
The Economy as Pressure
A safe bed costs 150 lire per night. A basic job pays 200–600. This means characters are always one bad session from sleeping in the Sump, which is where things get worse faster. Don't let the economy be abstract — name what they can't afford.
"You could treat the injury. The Surgeon costs 400. You have 180." That sentence is more interesting than a HP total.
Certain substances gate access that nothing else provides — Chrome for reading people, Static for dropping off the algorithm, Cardinal for passing in Parioli Superiore. When a character needs access and is out of product, that is not a drug problem. It is a structural problem the city built deliberately. The city also sells the solution. Run it like the joke it is.
NPCs as Ongoing Pressure
Every NPC who survives a session is a potential story engine. After each session, look at the named NPCs who appeared. Pick one. Give them one thing they want that intersects with the characters' situation. They pursue it whether or not the characters are thinking about them.
The most useful recurring NPCs are not antagonists. They are people with their own agendas who happen to need the same things the players need — the same information, the same access, the same person alive or dead. Zanardi's name appears in the salvage table before the characters know each other. That is not an accident. Use it. Every character who rolled that result has a prior relationship with Zanardi before the campaign starts. Let that mean something.
Give your NPCs one desire and one secret. The desire is what they'll do. The secret is what they'll do when the desire stops working.
Advancement
There is no experience. There are no levels. Advancement happens when the city does something to a character that leaves a mark — and the GM decides when that threshold is crossed.
Call for a Scar & Change roll after: a significant job completed (success and catastrophic failure both count), surviving something that should have killed them, losing something or someone they cared about, or a faction relationship changing permanently. Each trigger: one roll on the Scar & Change table. See Your Character for the full table.
The rule of thumb: if nothing was lost or broken, it wasn't significant enough. The city does not reward competence. It records consequences.