Netrunner Terminal Directive Rulebook

Terminal Directive

The Murder

She was glad that the corpses were gone, even though their stench was still in the air. Investigator Whitney Frank had already seen some scenes of brutal crimes, but those bodies, looking like ragged puppets with bashed in skulls, had shattered even her. Two technicians wrapped up the heavy sledgehammer, while a camera drone hovering just above the ground snapped some final pictures. The other policemen talked with each other, drank YucaBean or scrolled through virtual reports. Soon, this case too would just be another number in the huge NAPD database of unsolved crimes.

"Cleaned up the mess pretty quick", she heard a familiar voice. "I take it this really exhausts you, Whit." Investigator Inez Delgado stepped out of the shadows, her fingers dancing over her glowing PAD as always.

"Yeah, too quickly." Frank shook her head. "Somebody wants this matter to be forgotten as soon as possible. But what are you doing down here?" As a member of the cyber division, Delgado rarely left her desk - the city surveillance grid was her tool.

"I had a hunch", Delgado responded. "The local security camera malfunctioned. But I was able to grab some data from another source. Data of the kind that can make a journalist wet their pants for joy and give a corp nightmares."

Of course she had. Delgado had propably hacked the source herself. "The victims all belong to Human First", Frank explained. "Evidence suggests the culprit was very tall, extremely strong and propably massively outfitted with cybernetic enhancements. He killed them all with a sledgehammer, just like Human First does to the so-called golems."

Delgado crossed her arms and looked at the ground. "A bioroid did this."

Frank watched her carefully. "No way. Bioroids can't kill. They have those directives..."

"But the videos prove the opposite", Delgado said. "Maybe someone wrote a new directive."


Introduction

Terminal Directive is a story-based campaign for Android:Netrunner about a series of murders that were apparently committed by a bioroid. You and an opponent take on the roles of either the Corp or the Runner for the duration of the campaign.

The campaign is played over a series of games that are very similar to normal games of Netrunner, but are significantly different in some points.

Other than in normal games of Android: Netrunner, the decisions you make in a game of Terminal Directive have permanent repercussions for future games in the campaign. During the campaign, both of you are trying to find the murderer first.

To reach their Objectives, every player will open card sets with new effects that advance the campaign and create new abilities and Objectives.

//SECRET PACKS. DO NOT OPEN, unless you are instructed to.


Game materials

163 normal cards
All cards in the packs saying "open now" are Netrunner cards legal for both friendly and tournament matches.

4 secret packs of cards and stickers
These packs contain all cards and stickers needed to play this campaign. There are 1 pack of stickers and 1 pack of cards for each side, red for the Runner and blue for the Corp. It's important that the players only look at these cards and stickers when instructed to.

12 "Case closed" stickers
The players use these stickers to cover completed assignments once they're instructed to.

2 PADs (Personal Access Devices)
Each player receives 1 PAD which contains all of the campaign information. During the campaign, new stickers will be put on empty spots (or older stickers) on the PAD. Only the visible stickers on a PAD will affect the game.

//the PAD zones are: Ethos effects, Objective, Assignments, Warnings


Campaign preparation

At the beginning of a campaign you and your opponent each choose a side, the Runner (red) or the Corp (blue). You keep this side for the entirety of the campaign.
Then, each player follows these instructions:

1. Choose one of the Identity cards from Terminal Directive. Your deckk should contain cards from this box and a single copy of the core set of Android: Netrunner. You and your opponent can decide to play a variant with larger card pools, but make sure that both players have access to the same pool of cards.

During deckbuilding, the Corp must include three cards and six agenda points less than usual. At the beginning of the first game of Terminal Directive, that player receives three Agendas that are worth two agenda points each. To play a campaign game, these cards must be present in the Corp deck.

The Runner must also inclue three cards less than usual. At the beginning of the first game of Terminal Directive, that player receives three Resources. To play a campaign game, these cards must be present in the Runner deck.

2. Take the PAD for the side you created a deck for.

3. Open your secret card and secret sticker packs. Take the set of cards and stickers for set 1 and keep them nearby. Those cards and stickers are placed behind the divider card with the number 1 on it. Put all other cards and stickers back into the box.

4. Each player reveals the cards and stickers from set 1. Each type of card and sticker will be explained in detail. Be aware that whenever you must make a choice you will face permanent repercussions - all cards or effects you do not choose will be destroyed (tear the cards or make them unplayable in other ways).

Now you are ready to start playing the campaign.


Sets

A set refers to the cards and stickers behind a given number. Once you're instructed to reveal a set, take all cards and stickers behind the divider card with the relevant number until you reach the next divider. Not every set contains both cards and stickers.


Information cards

Each set you open contains a double-sided information card that contains imporant information and instructions on what to do with the material. Read this card before you look at the rest of the set. The front of the card with italic text advances the story. Each player can choose to read this story secretly, which is recommended if you want to play this campaign with switched roles afterwards. The back of the card contains instructions and game information. This text should be read aloud.

/*Front side of the card (possibly a minor story spoiler?):
The images that appear in the air in front of you are horrible. Bodies torn apart, blood everywhere in a small alleyway in Laguna Velasco. Three dead. Then, more images follow. The last one is familiar, you saw it in the newsfeed some nights ago.
"This is Victor Gray", Sloane, your new security chief explains. "Bigwig in the UN committee for interplanetary affairs. Found dead in his hotel. Drowned, was declared an accident."
Sloane stopped for a second, regarded his notes again with his brain-machine-interface. "We know it was murder. Covered up for two reasons: Firstly, the situation on Mars is already tense enough. Secondly, the murderer is a bioroid. This should be impossible, because the First Directive prohibits them from killing a human or even letting something damage one."
Sloane made a gesture and the virtual display showed the bloody murder in the alleyway again. "Looks like the bioroid is still active. Or more than one murderbot is out and about." Sloane crossed his arms behind his back and waited, now that he got rid of all the information. "My team is ready to investigate at your command."
A rogue bioroid would be a catastrophe for many, a great opportunity for others. One thing's for sure: you must find him first.
*/

/*Back side of the card (no spoilers):
Before the first game, add all copies of Collect Evidence to your deck.
Then choose one of the two options:

a) "I want it to be found and neutralized, so we can plausibly deny being involved."
Read "Not today" and place the sticker on slot G of your PAD. Stick the ethos effect Protector on slot A.

b) "This gets the stamp: Only for cleared personnel. I want this rogue bioroid found, no matter the cost."
Read "Teach them a lesson" and place the sticker on slot G of your PAD. Stick the ethos effect Hunter on slot A.

Read "By the book" and place the sticker on the Objective slot of your PAD.
Read "Against all odds" and place the sticker on slot D.
Destroy all other cards and sticker in this set and discard this card.
*/


Objectives

Objectives are stickers with intermediate objectives that further the investigation and make finding the culprit more likely. Objective stickers are placed on the Objective field on your PAD.

Once you complete an Objective, reveal the set mentioned in the text. In that set you will find another Objective sticker, which should be placed directly above the previous sticker and overwrite the completed Objective. Whenever an Objective is overwritten by another, the old one has no further effect.


Assignments

Assignments are stickers that contain optional intermediate objectives that provide special advantages during the campaign. It's possible to play through the campaign without ever completing one of these Assignments, but you shouldn't discard them easily. Once you receive a new Assignment, place it on the designated slot on your PAD.

Every Assignment starts with information on what is needed to complete it. Once it is completed, it triggers an effect or asks you to reveal a new set.

Assignments with card counters: Some Assignments require you to add several campaign cards to your deck. The sticker indicates the required number of cards on its left side, through a row of numbered hex fields. If a copy of that card is destroyed for whatever reason, cross out the leftmost hex field to keep track of the number of cards you need.

Example: Between to games, Charlie adds three copies of Shadow Team to his deck. Later he is instructed to destroy a copy of Shadow Team, so he does it and crosses out the leftmost hex field. Now, the effect only requires him to add two copies to his deck.

Case closed: Whenever you complete an Assignment, you are instructed to "close this case". To do so, place one of the "Case closed" stickers over it. Whenever an assignment is covered by another sticker, it has no further effect.

Progress
Most Assignments and Objectives can only be completed over multiple turns or even games. Those stickers indicate what has to be done to make progrress and therefore have a row to track such progress. Whenever you add progress to an Assignment, cross out a hex field in the row; once it's full, you complete the Assignment. You can cross out more than a single field at once.
Example: If a Corp effect destroys 2 Runner cards, Joan crosses out two hex fields on the progress track. Once all four are crossed out, the Assignment is immediately complete.

Update text
Some information cards or Assignments ask you to update your PAD or a campaign card with a sticker that replaces the text box and unlocks new effects. Once you update your PAD or a campaign card, place the sticker as instructed on the relevant slot or card. The old text has no further effect. Since this changes the thickness of updated card you should sleeve your deck.

/*Investigator Inez Delgado text: Once you win a game with Inez Delgado in your score area, reveal set 2.
Add Inez Delgado to your score area as an agenda worth 0 agenda points: [Do something with cards in a remote server] */


Campaign cards

Campaign cards are special cards in some sets that are only legal in the campaign mode. All campaign cards are marked with a yellow version of the set symbol.

Change your deck
If you receive one or more campaign cards during a game, usually put them away until the game is complete. You can add those cards to your deck between games. You can also change other cards in your deck, but this only works in between games as well. You can never change your identity.


Ethos effects

Ethos effects are stickers that provide special abilities to you for the rest of the campaign. Whenever you receive a new ethos effect, place it on the indicated slot of your PAD. There are two kinds of ethos effects [Protector and Hunter]. Whenever you receive one, you must choose between them.

These ethos types do not represent the moral concepts of good and evil. Instead, your ethos depends on whether your instincts make you dodge attacks and retaliate (Protector) or take the initiative and force your opponent to play on your terms (Hunter). You're not forced to follow just one path. Each choice is a new opportunity to think about your ethos.

Dominating Ethos: The symbol that appears on your PAD more often represents your dominating ethos, which provides you with different possibilities during the campaign. If both symbols appear equally often on your PAD, the symbol on slot A indicated your dominating ethos, since the first decision you made represents your instincts.

Warnings
Warnings are stickers that are similar to Assignments, but are more dangerous to you. Whenever you receive a Warning sticker, place it on the indicated slot on your PAD. Warnings can, if you are instructed to do so, be overwritten by new ethos effects.

Once an effect on a Warning is triggered, resolve it immediately. Each player must make their own choice if an action is worth triggering a Warning.


Rules clarification

Cards that are "added to the game" or "in play at the beginning of the game" do not count as played or installed. They become active once the effect that brought them to play has finished resolving.


Winning a campaign

The length of a campaign depends on how fast each player progresses with their side of the story. It's unlikely that a campaign will be completed in a single session of play.

You and your opponent should continue to play games of Terminal Directive until a player solves the mystery and receives the instruction "You have won the campaign".


//Credits


Ayla "Bios" Rahim

After her midday prayer, Ayla Rahim did not feel calmer than before. Her emotional state was, if she was being honest to herself, still chaotic. Like since weeks ago, since the arrest of Professor Atoc. She made her prayer mat furl itself, put it into her purse and at the same time blocked out the Professor and his problems with the law, his slashed funding and her unstable academical future. She breathed in deeply. "You're doing it right, and all will be well, Inschallah."

She climbed down the water tower. Strictly speaking, she did not have to be up there to make her prayers, but she felt closer to God if she was surrounded by a bit of empty space. Somehow she was glad about being forced to relocate her laboratory. The campus for agricultual genome research was one of the few places in the city that still had empty land, and in this phase of her project, her needs were rather modest. And she had always loved plants.

"Not that they're actually plants", she said, even though there was nobody to listen. She opened the door to the unneeded hut that had become her lab. Her "creations" (she presumed that was the most fitting term) sat on workbenches and dusty shelves and glowed while growing. "Quite exactly like plants, as it seems. After all, I talk to them as well."

They looked at least a bit like plants that were growing in their pots, growing new branches and leaves over time while they were evolving and drawing data from the network instead of sunlight. But they were fantastically complex constructs based on quantum computers, their intelligence growing through endless iterations and forming new processes and subroutines. Sometimes she had to remove a damaging offshoot. Sometimes she even had to break open the pot of network protocols and blockades that prevented her "plants" from learning.

Each of her constructs came from a different seed, a question or task, and grew according to a different pattern. This one analysed the NASX and grew sprawling, with thick, beautiful leaves. Another one calculated interplanetary travels and had long, swaying branches for each of the worlds. But the last one was her favourite. She had instructed it simply to learn how to think. She bowed down to it, cleaned the sensor field and invited it to bloom and show its innermost.

It bloomed and bloomed and filled the room with a cloud of data she had never seen before.
An endless grid of vines and leaves, growing to an impossible thicket. All from a single branch. "Well" she said. "This is interesting." Ayla opened a drawer and grabbed her console. Either her experiment failed or she had just discovered something very crucial. It was time to find out which of those had happened.


Steve Cambridge

"Alec! One more slip and your carreer at SYNC will be very short, understand?"

"Sorry, boss", said Cambridge. "I didn't notice it." He smiled broadly, like a dog wanting to please its mistress. It was a good smile. Soft-hearted incompetent losers like this Sheppard believed it. [TL note: Sheppard is female]

Cambridge shook his head, as he advanced to the innermost of SYNCs central network node of the Manta district. It was surprisingly difficult to play the role of a moderately competent technician, but it was worth it once you thought about the position it granted him in the heart of the network infrastructure of New Angeles. So far, it had turned out to be a great cover for his other enterprises.

Just minutes later Cambridge sat surrounded by many humming server lockers and saw his breath as small clouds in the machine-cooled air. Strictly speaking he was already done with work for the day. Or, more accurately, Alec already completed all of his assignments, thanks to some assistants he utilised for this cause.

What would Sheppard expect of him, how long should he pretend to need back here? Maybe hours. What should he do? He suspected he could just as well eavesdrop on the official channels, and he sent an AI to filter out interesting information. Or valuable information, Cambridge's favourite of all the interesting information.

Twenty minutes later he watched connections moving past him like colourful bubbles and grinned. SYNC would never learn of this eavesdropping, unless someone opened the panel and checked - and that was whose task? Alec's. He would just input and read the data secretly, but that was easy. Just another windfall in his lucrative...

His eye twitched, as he read the parameters of the current data traffic. There it as - a huge file, strongly encrypted. Impossible to decrypt in a short time, at least not with normal equipment.

"Damn, it's great that I'm the boss of the entire network from here", Cambridge mumbled.

"Mister Hardison!", Sheppard barked, and her steps were distinctly audible on the metal grating in the corridor. "Did you catch up on it by now?"

Cambridge pretended to be contrite again, it had worked perfectly before. "Sorry boss, not entirely. Something went wrong with the reboot of set C, and I'm just running a diagnosis."

Sheppard was already gone again, there was no indication that she knew what Cambridge was actually doing. But Cambrdige did not have time to boast about that. He was on something so interesting that he could retire off it.


Seidr Laboratories

"We're talking about the end of the bioroids", Feder said. "A bioroid cannot do what you're describing. Fundamentally impossible. If they could, they wouldn't be bioroids." Collective eye-rolling, especially from Moon. Feder had not given her that speech for the first time. Not even for the first time in this meeting.

"Let's ignore the technical issues for now", Nascez said.

"We cannot simply ignore the technical issues!", Feder protested again. "The directive is fundamental for..."

"For the public perception of bioroids, yes, I agree", said Nascez. Feder dropped back into his chair foaming. "The people are afraid of the boogeyman "killer robot", of the technology they can't control. The Directives are the only reason the public is accepting bioroids in the first place."

Feder saw his chance and jumped up again. "Without the Directives, a bioroid would be no more programmable than a human. The public knows that."

"But if we are successful, the public is wrong.", Moon said. "We're trying something completely new. This is our entire reason for existing. I thought we all understood this."

"We all do understand it", Amrit said. He stretched his hands out, as if he wanted to press the hostility back into the glowing glass table. "But we don't agree as much on whether this neuro-channeling initiative without a directive is possible."

"Sure it's possible", Strauss threw [his/her] hands up in despair. "Everyone in this room is using a brain without a directive to think."

"Copying a human brain has turned out to not be feasible", Feder said. At least about technical details he could stay calm and almost pleasant in tone. "And even if it was possible, it wouldn't be of use. Unregulated, uncontrolled intelligence is no tool which there's a market for. It would be..." he got muddled, then gestured dismissively. "Useless."

"It wouldn't be unregulated or uncontrolled", Moon said. "Bioroid brains can learn. We can teach our new models ethics; in short, teach them to control themselves. The new bioroid wouldn't need directives. It would have instincts."

A signal-red symbol appeared on the galass of the table in the meeting room. Moon stopped the protests with a handwave. "I thank you all for your suggestions, but we have no more time. Let me remind you that we've been given this project by Ms. McGuire herself, and if you don't want to work on it, you are invited to look for a new job. As always, this meeting was a complete waste of time. Goodbye." She asked herself whether her assistant would omit the last words from the protocol, as the other participants said their goodbyes and disappeared. She supposed she would find out once HR would send her further angry instructions.

"The director for you, Ms. Moon", her assistant said calmly, as if a call from the director was totally normal. Moon screamed inside, but stayed calm on the outside. A call from the director could have many reasons, and barely any of them would cause Moon to be fired. She stood up, smoothed her skirt and quickly checked her hair.

"I will take it here", Moon said.

Suddenly, the director appeared at the end of her table and leaned forward in her power pose that had become her trademark. "Estelle", she said. "Good. Something went wrong with Project Adrestia..."


Skorpios Defense Systems

"So, what is it then that makes your drones so special, Mr. Hayes?" The man from the upper levels snatched one out of the air, where it was humming though the test course.

"Of course, Mr...", Hayes panted. "I'm sorry, I believe I did not understand your name."

"I did not give it", said the man from the upper level. "The drones."

"Yes, well", Hayes turned around as if he could find support or inspiration in the virtual diagrams above his shoulders. He found nothing, took a deep breath and turned back around to the nameless man with the hard face, who was wearing a ten thousand credits suit and completely unneccessary sunglasses. "It's not the drones themselves that are special. It's their AI. We use a divided layout for a modular neural network that uses Fuzzy Logic, to..."

"Let's skip the technical stuff." The man from the upper level wasn't really from there. He worked in a different corporation, one that was higher in the food chain of the Weyland Consortium. Hayes did not understand how all of this worked, just that he had to tell this nameless man from an unknown division everything he wanted to hear. And apparently he wasn't interested in technical details.

"Ah, okay. Well. Hmmm." He scratched his nose. Swallowed again. "They share the job of thinking. And together they are, well, something like a huge brain."

"So, the more there are of them, the smarter they become?" The man from the upper level did not wait for Hayes' answer. "And what if a drone that is thinking about something relevant to the mission is destroyed?"

"Well, there is a certain redundancy of course, but mainly the type of thinking is very flexible. If it forgets something relevant, it can remember it very quickly." This was fine. As long as he talked just about the project, it was all fine. "The advantage is that our drones can be much smarter than those of our competitors, which gives us supremacy on the market for combat application." The man from the upper level shifted around in his chair. Hayes lost his train of thought. "Hmmm... of course there are civil applications as well."

The man from the upper level leaned forward. "Tell me the truth. Is this shared drone brain something like a bioroid brain?"

Hayes could breathe again. "I am not sure if someone outside of Haas-Bioroid really knows how bioroid brains work. But as far as I understand, they are created with a brain mapping and strictly conditioned with the Directives. Our system is more fluid and customizable, not bound to the original programming." He allowed himself a short smile. "If we can bypass the technical difficulties, our swarm brain will be smarter than a bioroid."

"Smarter than a bioroid." The man from the upper level let go of the humming drone, which immediately joined the swarm again, slightly staggering. "Wouldn't that be something? Say, hypothetically speaking, somebody builds a bioroid that works exactly like you describe. No directives. Adaptable brain. Able to create new links and spontaneously evolve." The man from the upper level leaned back again and placed the tips of his fingers together. "Hypothetically speaking, how valuable would such a bioroid be to your research?"

"Uh... hypothetically?" Hayes swallowed. "Very useful."

The man from the upper level smiled with the charm of a razor blade.


Example decklists (thanks /u/SpaceHonk):

Ayla "Bios" Rahim
2x Careful Planning
2x Deep Data Mining
3x Diesel*
3x Modded*
3x Process Automation
3x Special Order*
1x Stimhack*
3x Sure Gamble*
2x Personal Touch*
2x Ubax
3x Datasucker*
3x Dhegdheer
3x Magnum Opus*
2x Adept
2x Gordian Blade
1x Mammon
2x Biometric Spoofing
2x Dean Lister

Steve Cambridge
2x Account Siphon*
1x Brute Force Hack
3x Easy Mark*
3x Forged Activation Orders*
3x Process Automation
2x Spear Phishing
1x Special Order*
3x Sure Gamble*
1x Akamatsu Memchip*
2x Polyhistor
2x Aurora*
2x Femme Fatale*
2x Gordian Blade*
2x Mammon
1x Sneakdoor Beta
3x Armitage Codebusting*
2x Bankjob*
2x Biometric Spoofing
2x Quack
2x Dean Lister
2x Laguna Velasco District

Seidr Laboratories
3x Accelerated Betatest*
3x Successful Field Test
1x Optional Upgrade
3x Adonis Campaign*
3x Marilyn Campaign
1x Aggresive Secretary
1x Snare!*
2x Mason Bellamy
1x Black Level Clearance
1x SanSan Citygrid
3x Hedge Funds
3x IPO
2x Archived Memories*
2x Biotic Labor*
1x Heimdall 1.0*
2x Viktor 1.0*
3x Ichi 1.0*
1x Enigma*
2x Tapestry
2x Eli 2.0
1x Rototurret*
2x Tollbooth*
2x Wall of Static*
1x Hortum

Skorpios Defense Systems
3x Hardened Servers
2x Bribe Money
2x Adonis Campaign*
3x Snare!*
2x Mr. Stone
1x Melange Mining Corp*
2x PAD Campaign*
1x Sansan City Grid*
2x K.P. Lynn
2x Beanstalk Royalties*
3x Hedge Funds*
2x Scorched Earth*
2x Hunter-Seeker
2x IPO
1x Ice Wall*
2x Colossus
1x Hailstorm
2x Hortum
1x Enigma*
1x Wall of Static*
1x Data Raven*
(* = Core Set card)