Masks & Machines · Tabletop RPG

Aether Code

Wear the mask. Break the machine.
A short tour of the sprawl before your first session.

The game

What is Aether Code?

Aether Code is the living protocol that binds a runner's mask — identity, persona, power — to a machine: a combat suit, a grid, a city that never sleeps.

Masks & Machines is a cinematic cyberpunk tabletop RPG for one Game Master and two to five players. You play a runner who has already paid a price to become more than human.

The table starts with a job, a district, and a choice with consequences. You speak for your runner. Dice decide only the part that is genuinely uncertain.

A session in five beats

The GM frames the sprawl, the people, and a problem that will not wait.
You answer as your runner — values, debts, and the mask you wear tonight.
Your suit, your powers, and your signature ability change what is possible.
Dice settle only the part that is truly in doubt.
Stress rises, stamina falls, and the city remembers.

Tone

Chrome has a price

Danger is real

Corps do not miss. Street gods keep ledgers. Every upgrade has a cost, and some of it is you.

Identity is a weapon

A mask is not a costume. It is the persona the city will answer to — and the one it can take away.

The city never sleeps

Jobs stack. Favors compound. You start hungry. Rank is earned on wet streets, not on a character sheet.

A masked runner overlooking the neon sprawl

You do not need a cyberpunk encyclopedia. This world stands on its own.

Two halves of a runner

The Mask and the Machine

The Mask

Who you are tonight

A mask is a chosen identity: street name, origin, debts, and the way the sprawl sees you. Powers, talents, and weaknesses live here. Lose the mask and the city no longer knows your name.

The Machine

What you ride into the job

A combat suit, chrome, a signature ability. The hardware that lets a human keep up with corps, ghosts, and things that were never people. Machines break. That is why you have one.

Aether Code is the protocol that lets those two halves speak. Wear one without the other and you are just another body in the rain.

The setting

The Sprawl

One megacity, many stacked lives. Neon Harbor smuggles. Skyline Core extracts. The Undercity hides. Ashline Expanse burns what the towers throw away.

Geography

Districts at a glance

Neon Harbor

Commercial docks, black-market ports, and smuggling lanes. If it can be bought, it came through here first.

Skyline Core

Corporate towers, high-security zones, and data exchanges. The air is cleaner. The contracts are not.

The Undercity

Dense backstreets and underground markets hidden below the megacity. Names change. Favors do not.

Ashline Expanse

Industrial wastelands, scrapyards, and abandoned refineries. Failed prototypes walk here. Some of them still have names.

Your GM picks a district and mostly stays there. You only need to know the others exist, and that they dislike each other.

Origins

Who you play

Cyberspawn

Born in the grid, or close enough. Code in the blood. The city talks back.

Corporate Experiment

Someone paid for the person you became. The invoice is still open.

Metahuman

The change was not chrome. It was you. The sprawl has no category for that.

Failed Prototype

You were supposed to be a product. You walked off the line instead.

Mysterious Origins

No file. No sponsor. The mask is the first honest thing you own.

Legacy Hero

Someone wore this name before you. The city still expects the legend.

One sentence is enough: “a washed corp kid who still has the implant they were not supposed to keep.” The table fills in the rest.

What is on the sheet

Loadout

Combat suit

The machine you wear. Sensor arrays, shadow cloth, solar plate, kinetic ramps. It is a character as much as gear.

Signature ability

The one move the table will remember. Iron Rampart. Echo Override. Ghost in the Veil. Hope of the World.

Powers & talents

What you can do tonight. Powers spend. Talents color how you do it. Weaknesses are the price the city collects.

Stress tracks the mask cracking. Stamina tracks the machine giving out. You can lose either. You do not want to lose both.

A quick glossary

Words you will hear

The city

The Sprawl — the megacity; not the whole world
Skyline Core — the towers that own the weather
Undercity — everything the map pretends is not there

The runner

Mask — the identity the city answers to
Machine — the suit, chrome, and hardware
Aether Code — the protocol that binds them

The job

Signature — the move only you can make
Stress — the mask starting to slip
Stamina — the machine starting to fail

Nobody expects you to memorise these. Ask at the table — that is what session zero is for.

How play works

At the table

The Game Master

Presents the sprawl, plays everyone you meet, and referees the rules. They are not your opponent.

The players

Each of you plays one runner. Describe what they do and why. The mask talks. The machine follows.

A typical beat

“The dock lock is a corp seal. Two cameras. One bored guard.”

Hacker: I ghost the cameras and walk us through.

GM: Roll Tech plus Knowledge against twelve.

Hacker: *rolls* The seal thinks we belong here.

The GM frames a scene. You answer in character. When the outcome is in doubt, the dice decide.

The dice

How a roll feels

Attribute die + Skill die ≥ Difficulty

1

Two dice, your ratings

Each attribute and skill is rated 1–4. That rating is a die: d6, d8, d10, d12. Roll both and add them.

2

Beat the number

The GM sets how hard the thing is. Match it or beat it and you succeed. Miss it and the story still moves.

3

Max is a crit

A maximum on the attack die hits harder. Signature abilities rewrite a round. Weaknesses collect when you push.

That is the engine. Everything else is your sheet telling you which dice to pick up.

Ready-made files

Six runners

Byte

Sentient AI in dog form. Sensors, hacks, and a loyalty subroutine that will get them killed.

Echo Nova

Sound manipulator. Sonic rings, a glass-cannon heart, and a city that cannot look away.

Warp Shifter

A body that becomes the tool. Blades, forms, and a memory that drifts when it stays still.

Titan Vanguard

Failed prototype in a kinetic exoskeleton. A living tank. The core overheats if you let it.

Phantom Striker

Shadow assassin. Dual blades, a code of honor, and a city that never sees them coming.

Vera Lux

Solar descendant. Light as a weapon and a promise. The world still wants to believe.

The job is already running

Game on.

You know the sprawl. You know the price.
Now pick a mask, boot a machine, and walk out into the rain.

Masks & Machines. Aether Code primer for session zero.