The Chrome Market ยท Chapter 1
Introduction
In the last century a gun was a gun. It did not know who was holding it, it did not report where it was, and nobody three streets away could turn it off.
Everything here is connected, and everything connected can be reached.
That is the bargain of every item in this book. Linked gear is better than what came before, and it has a second owner: whoever can get into it. A crew in this period chooses, piece by piece, how much of that bargain to take.
What You Should Expect
Smart weapons. The Smart quality removes Bane Dice for a linked shooter. It also makes the weapon a target for a jammer, a pulse grenade, and a hacker.
Cyberware with a cost. Every implant has a Load, and Load comes off the character's Strain Points for good. A body takes only so much. Chapter 5 has the rule and Chapter 6 the catalogue.
Bioware. Grown augmentation: quieter, undetectable, immune to a pulse, slower to get, and three times the price.
Intrusion as a clock. Chapter 8 runs a hack in the same rounds as the fight around it: layers to get through, an Alert that climbs, and countermeasures that bite back.
Drones. Chapter 9 gives eleven, with three ways to run them.
A watched city. Chapter 10 rates places by Coverage and crews by Heat, and sells the false faces, false names, and jammers that keep one from becoming the other.
Prices for everything. Chapter 11: clinics, fixers, safehouses, and what a month of life costs.
Two Tiers
| Tier | Years | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Near | About 2030 to 2060 | Smart guns, exoskeletons, drones everywhere, the first implants worth having, cameras that know faces |
| Chrome | About 2060 to 2100 | Neural links, replaced limbs and nerves, monowire, powered armour, synthetic bodies |
A Chrome game has everything from the Near tier, cheaper and second-hand.
Using This Book in Your Universe
The names are generic. A Universe supplies its own makers, corporations, and slang.
A Universe's own rules come first. Where a Universe prints its own intrusion procedure, surveillance track, or implants, use them, and use this book for the gear.
The weapons of today still work. Everything in The Modern Armory is on sale in this period at half price. This book adds what is new.
The far future has its own book. Gauss rifles, flechette guns, and energy weapons are in The Stellar Armory. A Chrome game may take its early ones from there as prototypes.
What You Need
The Exodus NDS core rules.