Police and the underworld
The underworld
Drug runs for the Plug. Crates of guns off the docks. Rivals who ram the goods off your car, and cops who'd love to seize them. Switch on your phone's Burner and you're in; switch it off and nobody can touch you.
- 3 drug runs and 2 gun runs a day
- Runs earn Rep and XP; the fixer pays chips
Opt in
Go dark
The underworld lives in the Burner app on your phone. Its one switch, "Go dark", puts you in it, on both sides: you can take runs and hunt other carriers, and while you carry, you're fair game.
- Never dark, never a target. A player who leaves the Burner off can't be rammed for goods, and their rams don't count.
- Ordinary jobs are never hot. Courier and supply runs can't be robbed. Only the Burner's drug and gun runs carry goods.
- Not mid-chase. The Burner won't switch off while the police are on you: lose them first.
- Higher stakes. With the Burner on the police go harder on you: ramming a cop adds a star at once, a day's fines and the lock-up can run higher, and the rest after a chase is shorter.
- A playerA wallet that holds the token. In town 7 days or more.
- A car of your ownThe goods ride by road. Your starter car will do.
- Drug runsCity Rank 5
- Gun runsCity Rank 10
Two runs
Drugs or guns
Pick one up in the Burner, anywhere in town. The GPS takes you to the pick-up.
| Question | Drug run | Gun run |
|---|---|---|
| The goods | 2 packages of today's product. Don't sample the product. | 3 crates stencilled STONK ARMS · DEFINITELY NOT GUNS |
| From, to | A stash house, to the Plug on his corner | A ship at the docks, to a buyer across town |
| The clock | 5 minutes | 8 minutes |
| A day | 3 pick-ups | 2 pick-ups |
| Your car | At its normal speed | Held to 54 km/h while loaded: a car full of guns is heavy |
| On the city map | Hidden, until you have two stars | A search circle, from 20 seconds after loading |
| The cops | Just a speeder, until they catch you with it | One star all the way, and never let off with a warning |
| Crew | Solo | Solo, or up to 3 friends riding escort |
- Hopiumbricks
- Copiumpills
- Blue Chipscrystal (everyone says it's 99% pure)
A run
Pick up, drive, drop
Every run is the same four beats. The stops are timed by the server, so a drive-through never counts.
01Take it
In the Burner. Tick Loud if you want the clip: a fixed circle on the map from the start, and double Rep.02Load
Stop in the pick-up's red circle on the ground for 2 seconds: it fills as you load. The goods ride on your car, where everyone can see them.03Drive
Follow the GPS across town, past hunters and cops, before the clock runs out.04Hand it over
Stop in the drop's circle for 3 seconds. A crate rammed off during the stop is still lost.
The dealer
Talk terms
After you take a run and before you load, you can say one line to the dealer. Optional, and saying nothing costs nothing.
His mood changes every day, and the Burner tells you what it is: paranoid, greedy, sentimental, bored, vain or wired. Whatever he loves today he shrugs at tomorrow.
Give him a reason that fits his mood and this load earns a little more XP and Rep. It's flavour, not a fortune: 6 lines a day, and the day's XP limit still applies.
I once outran four cop cars in a Penny Hatch. In reverse.
HAH. Okay, that one got me. Top rate for the comedian.
+10% XP and Rep on this load- Best rate+10% XP and Rep on this load: a solid reason of a kind he loves today.
- Good rate+5%: a solid reason, or a weaker one he loves today.
- Usual rateNothing he cares for today, a line he's heard before, or a line written at the game.
- Lower rate−10%: you insulted him.
- Cut offYou threatened him. The deal is off and he won't pick up for 5 minutes.
Rivals
Hunters, rams and crates
Every other dark player in town can come for your goods. Here's how a robbery works.
01The ram
A hunter hits a hot car hard: a T-bone or a cut-off at a junction, not a tap on the bumper. One crate falls off, at most one every second and a half.02The crate
It lies in the road for a minute. Anyone dark can have it, the carrier included.03The grab
Stop on it for 2 seconds and it's yours, to deliver to the same buyer. The van drives on with the rest.
Hunting
Hot cars show on the map as a circle, never the car itself: you find it with your eyes. Only the first 6 hunters on a carrier count, and near a gun run hunters are held to 65 km/h, so rams come from cut-offs, not from a hypercar on the bumper.
Crews
A gun run can take up to three friends as escort. They see the van on their map, block hunters, and a ram from an escort spins a hunter out: their rams don't count for 10 seconds.
Safe spots
No rams count near a pick-up, and every carrier gets a short head start after loading (a longer one if they were robbed or busted lately).
Off the radar
Once a gun run, the carrier can black out their circle on the map for half a minute. Not at four stars or more. While it's dark no rams count: no circle, no ram.
The law
The cops want it too
The police work the underworld as everywhere else (heat and stars), with a few extra rules.
Up to five stars
As for any driver, time in their sight climbs the stars: roadblocks at three, the helicopter at five. With the Burner on, ramming a cop adds a star too.
Hot cargo
Lose them with goods aboard and the chase ends, but you stay hot: any cop who sees you starts a new one.
Seized
Busted with goods and they go to the evidence locker: the run fails, the fine is bigger, and the lock-up can run longer.
What a run earns
Rep, XP and a name
A run earns Rep, the underworld's own score, and XP for your City Rank. No chips on a run: what you get is the name. Chips are the fixer's side of the Burner, below.
- Each crate's Rep and XP go to whoever carried it, by the distance they carried it. Lose one crate of three and the other two still count.
- Escorts who stayed close share half as much again. A delivery also counts toward your daily wages, within a daily limit.
- Steal a crate and deliver it for Rep from the victim's reputation: robbing a Connect is worth Rep, robbing a newcomer is worth none.
- Rep is a name, and nothing else: it sets your title and your place on Most Wanted, and it buys nothing.
- LookoutStart
- Corner Boy25 Rep
- Mule100 Rep
- Supplier300 Rep
- Plug1,000 Rep
- Connect3,000 Rep
- El Jefe10,000 Rep
The fixer
The jobs that pay chips
The Burner's other tab is the fixer: a stranger's number, and someone who wants something moved.
The fixer's jobs are the city's companies' work on the quiet (the casino, the club, Illegal Street Racing and the rest). They pay chips out of what the company took in, exactly as a contract on ContractX does, less the fixer's cut of 10%. They earn no Rep; like any contract, a win pays XP by its grade and a share of the daily wages. They ask for nothing but being a player: no City Rank, no wallet age, and you don't need to go dark to join one. On most of them the police want you from the pick-up, and a bust ends it. On a load of three stars or more the alarm goes out as you load: the strip says TRACKED, units are sent straight to you, and the chase begins when one finds you. What they pay in chips arrives as locked chips (50%): yours to play and spend, not to cash out until they have run through the city. They are races too, like every contract: join any time, the first to deliver is paid, and losing costs nothing. They also count towards the same day's limit as ContractX's contracts: one won here is one less there.
Good to know