Check out the Arcverse's first novel
Faelvur, the dark elven god of fire
Check out the Arcverse's first novel
Role Play Games for Beginners
Discover Worlds. Tell Stories. Create Legends
Welcome to the Arcverse
Your gateway to tabletop roleplaying games — whether you’re starting with Dungeons & Dragons or exploring new systems and genres.
We offer expert RPG advice for beginners, Game Master tools, and worldbuilding guides to help you create and run unforgettable adventures. Whether you play fantasy, sci-fi, cyberpunk, horror, superheroes, or post-apocalyptic settings, the Arcverse is your home for creativity, storytelling, and game-ready inspiration.
Start your next campaign. Build your world. Shape your legend.
NCART: The decaying transport network
The Night City Area Rapid Transit system — or NCART — is the skeletal remains of a once-grand public infrastructure project meant to symbolize hope, unity, and mobility in the sprawl of Night City. Built before the Fourth Corporate War with massive corporate and government investment, NCART was envisioned as a clean, fast, and efficient alternative to traffic-clogged streets and nomad convoys.
Today, it’s a rusting, creaking, graffiti-covered relic, still partially operational but riddled with neglect. The NCART network snakes through major districts like Watson, City Center, and the Glen, though entire lines are abandoned, flooded, or collapsed. Some stations are active transit hubs, others are hangouts for boosters, squatters, or illegal vendors. No two are the same.
Still, for many Edgerunners, NCART is essential. It’s anonymous. It’s fast. And if you know the right entrances and exits, it can be the best way to escape a botched job. Of course, riding NCART comes with risks — from random fare checks to full-blown ambushes in dead tunnels.
Urban legends whisper of hidden stations, experimental trains, and unscheduled stops that go somewhere... else. But in Night City, even the public transport is a story waiting to be hacked, hijacked, or haunted.
The story of NCART is a microcosm of Night City itself — grand ambition, rapid decline, and a second life in the shadows. Initially funded during the tech and corp boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s, the NCART system was meant to rival the best metro systems in the world. Cutting-edge maglev tech, automated trains, and slick station hubs made early riders feel like they were stepping into the future.
But that future crashed hard.
As the Corporate Wars escalated and infrastructure funding was slashed, maintenance dropped. Entire branches were left to rot. Key stations — especially those near combat zones — were sealed off, repurposed, or simply abandoned. After the DataKrash, automated control systems failed, and trains had to be manually routed and staffed. Maglev systems were replaced with cheaper rail solutions. What once felt like the future became a dangerous, unpredictable ride through a fractured city.
Today, NCART is held together by a patchwork of public contractors, gang-tolerated engineers, and old-school techs who know the lines better than anyone alive. Some stations are clean and functional, others are warzones. The Glen’s station sees corporate commuters and street samurai alike. The one in Old Downtown? That’s rumored to be haunted by the digital echo of a train crash nobody can find in the records.
For netrunners, NCART is an interesting challenge — its control nodes are old, underdefended, and often ignored by corps. That makes them prime real estate for malware drops, covert surveillance taps, and backdoor data tunnels.
For fixers and smugglers, the understations and decommissioned maintenance lines are perfect for moving people and goods unseen. Some even rent out “phantom cars” — retired NCART trains still connected to the grid but never scheduled. These ghost rides run odd hours and serve odd clientele.
In your campaign, NCART can be more than transport — it can be the setting for tense encounters, underground meetings, or urban exploration missions. From assassins lying in wait on an empty platform to AI-generated station announcements that start to get personal, NCART is a perfect fusion of tech, decay, and mystery.
Adventure Hook
The Edgerunners are hired to tail a high-value corporate defector boarding an NCART train at Glen Station — but once aboard, the job takes a sharp detour.
The train, an old maglev relic previously decommissioned, doesn’t follow its listed route. The lights flicker. The AR signage malfunctions. The passengers begin to vanish. One by one.
Trapped in a dark, flickering carriage, the team must navigate what appears to be a corrupted or ghost-hacked train, spiraling into sections of the city no longer on the grid. They’re not alone — the defector is still aboard, terrified and carrying a briefcase full of sensitive Netwatch data.
To escape, the Edgerunners must make it to the conductor’s node deep in the control cabin — but the train's ICE systems, originally meant to deter hijackers, have become something else entirely. Trapped between digital phantoms and collapsing rails, will the crew save the asset, unlock the mystery, or vanish into a route that never existed?