How to Play

Beginner's Guide

NERVEJACK is a text-based RPG where you type what your character does and a game master responds. There are no menus, no buttons to click, no dialogue options to select. You describe your actions in plain language — search the body for credits, ask the bartender about the Iron Lotus, draw my katana and charge — and the game master narrates what happens next.

The game master tracks everything: your HP, your credits, your inventory, your reputation with every faction in the city. Actions have consequences. NPCs remember what you've done. And when your HP hits zero, your character dies permanently.

Getting Started

When you start a new game, you pick an archetype and walk through a short lifepath. There are no levels, no skill trees, and no experience points — everything about your character is set before you take your first turn, and it stays that way for the life of the run.

Archetypes

Street Samurai are the most forgiving for new players — high HP and violence chops mean they can fight their way through most problems. Fixers lean on influence to talk their way in and out of trouble, and they start with the most credits. Netrunners dominate tech, hacking, and cyberdeck work, but their low HP means one bad fight can end the run. Chrome Rats excel at sneaking, lockpicking, and moving unseen — slip in, grab what you came for, slip out. Each archetype has real weaknesses too: a Netrunner trying to brawl is going to have a worse time than a Street Samurai swinging a katana.

Lifepath

After you pick an archetype, you'll walk through four lifepath steps that shape your backstory:

• Upbringing — where you grew up. A direct choice, no dice.
• What happened — the event that changed everything (a betrayal, a brush with violence, an ambition that went wrong, a dangerous discovery). Rolled on a die — bad, mixed, or good outcome.
• Who you ran with — your past crew (a fixer, a street gang, a corp handler, or nobody). Also rolled.
• The last job — what you were doing before the game starts (a heist, a protection job, a betrayal, or an escape). Rolled.

Each step shifts your stats a little, and dice-rolled steps can also grant items, contacts, credits, or mark enemies. A "good" outcome boosts you; a "bad" outcome leaves a scar. Lifepath choices lock in when you JACK IN and do not change during the run.

The Status Bar

During gameplay, a status bar at the top of the screen shows your current state at a glance:

• HP — Your hit points. Take damage in combat, from traps, or from bad decisions. When it hits 0, you're dead. There's no respawn.
• Credits (CR) — The city's currency. Earn them from jobs, loot, or trade. Spend them on gear, bribes, medical treatment, or information.
• Time — The in-game clock. Some NPCs are only available at certain times. Some areas are more dangerous at night.
• Location — Where you are in Neo-Kowloon. Tap it to see the sector and area.
• HEAT — Your wanted level. Cause trouble and heat goes up. High heat means patrols, bounty hunters, and faction enforcers coming for you.

The Inventory Drawer

Tap the INV button to open the drawer. It shows everything the game is tracking about your character:

Status

Your HP bar, current credits, and location. The HP bar changes color as you take damage — green is healthy, yellow is wounded, red means you're close to death.

Inventory

Every item you're carrying. Weapons, armor, tools, consumables, quest items. You pick things up by interacting with the world — take the pistol, buy a medkit from the vendor, loot the body. Items matter: a lockpick lets you open doors a samurai would have to break down. A cyberdeck lets you hack systems others can't touch.

Quests

Active objectives. These aren't handed to you from a quest board — they emerge from conversations and events. A fixer asks you to recover stolen cargo. A stranger offers credits to find a missing person. Accept or ignore them; either way, the city keeps moving.

Known NPCs

Characters you've met. The game tracks every NPC interaction. Help someone and they'll remember. Betray them and they'll remember that too. Some NPCs are connected to factions — your relationship with one person can shift how an entire organization treats you.

Factions

Your standing with the five major power groups the game tracks by name:

• Syn-Tech — the ruling mega-corp. Owns the arcologies, runs the city.
• Chrome-Heads — cyber-augmented street gang, strongest in Sector 4.
• Null-Set — anarchist hackers, hostile to Syn-Tech and anyone on their payroll.
• Iron Lotus — mercenaries with a grip on the Drowned Quarter.
• The Cleaners — corporate black-ops. Nobody wants to be on their list.

Reputation with a faction goes up when you help its members and down when you harm them. Your standing tiers from Hostile through Unfriendly, Unknown, Known, Trusted, and finally Inner Circle — and it shapes how every member of that faction treats you. High standing with Iron Lotus gets you into the Drowned Quarter without a fight. Low standing means every visit is a risk. Neo-Kowloon has other gangs, cults, and crews in lore too — those come and go as the story demands.

Stats

Every risky action in NERVEJACK falls into one of six categories. Your archetype is strong at some and weak at others, and lifepath choices shift things further. When you act in a category you're strong at, things tend to go your way. When you act in a category you're weak at, they don't.

• Violence — dealing or taking damage in a fight. Shooting, brawling, stabbing, throwing a weapon.
• Tech — hacking, decrypting, bypassing electronics, operating cyberdecks, rewiring, jacking into systems.
• Influence — persuading, intimidating, deceiving, bluffing, haggling. Any social action against someone who could refuse.
• Infiltration — stealth, hiding, lockpicking, pickpocketing, tailing, slipping past guards or cameras.
• Movement — athletic feats under pressure: running, climbing, jumping gaps, dodging, parkour, balancing.
• Grit — enduring pain, resisting toxins or interrogation, holding the line through willpower, shrugging off a stun.

Routine actions — walking through a calm space, looking around, buying at listed prices, talking to a friendly NPC — just happen. Stats only come into play when something could go wrong.

Combat

Combat isn't scripted. You don't pick from a list of attacks — you describe what you do in your own words: slash at his legs to slow him down, duck behind the counter and fire blind, try to disarm her. The game master interprets your action and narrates the result. Creative tactics can shift the odds — flanking, using the environment, catching someone off guard all matter.

Combat is dangerous. Even a strong character can die in a bad fight. Running is always an option and often the smart one. Most NPCs have breaking points — a lone mugger flees after a solid hit, a gang retreats when their leader falls. Only fanatics fight to the last.

Armor

Armor softens incoming damage. Sometimes it deflects a hit entirely — a round sparks off your chest plate, a blade catches in the weave and never touches skin. Other times it absorbs some of the blow and the hit still lands through it. Good armor keeps you alive longer, but it doesn't make you invincible.

HP and Healing

You heal through in-fiction actions, not through waiting or menus. Using medical items in the story (stim-packs, medkits, trauma-fixes, bandages) restores HP. Resting in-character — sleeping somewhere safe, taking a quiet meal — can patch up minor wounds. There is no auto-heal between turns and no way to refill HP from a menu.

Medical items are consumable — once you use one, it's gone. Stock up when you can afford it.

Heat

Heat is your wanted level — a number from zero to one hundred that tracks how actively the city is hunting you. It goes up when you cause visible trouble: combat, theft, hacking, brandishing weapons in public. Killing someone in the open spikes it hard.

Heat decays on peaceful turns. Resting, eating, shopping, traveling, or just talking to friendly NPCs bleeds it back down. Fleeing from combat does not count as peaceful — you have to actually stop being hunted.

Heat shapes how the city reacts to you:

• Rising (25+) — street NPCs recognize you. Whispers follow. Someone will occasionally warn you to lay low.
• High (50+) — bounty hunters start looking for you. Some vendors refuse to deal. Street NPCs are wary.
• Extreme (75+) — a named rival antagonist is hunting you personally. Bounty hunters show up regularly. Corporate security is on alert. Safe houses matter.

Heat does not tick up during an ongoing fight — the first turn of combat raises it and subsequent turns of the same brawl don't add more. It also doesn't decay mid-combat. You have to actually leave the encounter for it to start cooling off.

Items and Tags

Every item you carry has a tag that describes what it is:

• melee-weapon, ranged-weapon — blades, clubs, pistols, rifles. Reusable.
• armor — jackets, vests, plates. Reusable.
• hacking — cyberdecks, neural links, decrypt tools. Reusable.
• medical — stim-packs, medkits, bandages. Consumable — used up when used.
• utility — lockpicks, cred-sticks, burner phones, data chips, tools. Reusable.
• junk — one-off items that are used up once played.

Reusable items stay with you even when things go wrong. If the narrative says your lockpicks jammed, your pistol clattered away, or your katana got knocked from your hand, the item is still in your inventory — it's damaged or displaced but recoverable in the next scene. Only items you voluntarily drop, sell, give away, use up, or deliver to someone are actually removed.

Permadeath

When your HP hits zero, your character dies. There's no save scumming, no resurrection, no continue screen. Your story ends and you get a death card summarizing your run — how many turns you survived, how you died, and an epitaph written by the game master.

Then you start over with a new character. Different archetype, different choices, different story. The city stays the same but your path through it never will.

Asking the Game Master

Sometimes you need to ask a question instead of taking an action. Start your message with /gm (or /dm) and the game master will answer you directly, out of character.

Examples:

• /gm how does heat work?
• /gm what's in my inventory right now?
• /gm am I still wanted by the Cleaners?
• /gm what would happen if I tried to bribe this guard?

OOC questions do not advance the story, do not roll dice, and do not change your HP, credits, inventory, or location. They're just a conversation with the game master about your situation, the rules, or your options.

Answers are binding. Whatever the game master tells you in OOC mode is treated as canon by future turns. If the GM says "you're out of sight of the guard," that stays true when you act in-character next turn. This makes /gm useful for planning — confirm what you know before committing to a risky move.

What the GM can't do. The game master can answer questions, but it can't change your character sheet. It can't grant you credits, HP, items, or stat points. It can't change your archetype, reroll dice, or undo turns. If you want HP back, buy a stim-pack in the story. If you want different stats, start a new run. Everything that changes your state has to happen through in-fiction play.

If the GM doesn't know. The game master only answers from what's been established in your run, the world lore, and the documented rules of the game. If you ask about a rule it doesn't have documented, or a fact that hasn't been revealed in your playthrough yet, it'll say so plainly rather than guess. That's intentional — a wrong answer in OOC mode would poison your planning.

Tips for Staying Alive

• Talk before you fight. Most NPCs can be negotiated with. Combat costs HP, and HP is hard to recover.
• Watch your credits. Running out of money in Neo-Kowloon is almost as bad as running out of health. You can't buy medkits, can't bribe guards, can't pay for information.
• Read the room. The game master describes the environment for a reason. If a bar is full of Iron Lotus soldiers and you have bad faction standing, maybe don't start a fight there.
• Keep moving. Staying in one place too long with high heat is how you get cornered. Change sectors, lay low, let things cool down.
• Use your gear. If you have a cyberdeck, hack things. If you have lockpicks, look for locked doors. Your inventory is your toolkit — use it.

Last updated: April 2026