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.
Red Markets: Bazaars of the blacklisted
Red Markets are black markets evolved — decentralized, dangerous, and deeply embedded in the lifeblood of Night City’s underground economy. These markets deal in everything the corps and government pretend don’t exist: illegal cyberware, restricted weapons, stolen data, unregistered clones, harvested organs, and forbidden tech.
The term "Red" comes from the color of both blood and currency. These are places where lives are bartered, reputations are destroyed, and fortunes are made — all in the shadows.
Red Markets are more than simple bazaars. They’re ecosystems. Some are static, hidden beneath old subway lines or behind encrypted entrances in burnt-out buildings. Others are mobile, shifting locations weekly to evade Netwatch and corporate hit squads. Sellers use aliases, biometric tokens, and neural encryption to do business. Buyers need insider contacts just to get through the door.
These markets are run by cartels, gangs, rogue fixers, and even disenfranchised corp scientists. They're policed by their own code — break the rules, and you don’t get a warning.
Despite the risk, Red Markets are vital. Need untraceable cyberware? A hit erased from corp records? A brain dance scrubbed from the Net? There’s always someone selling — if you’re willing to pay the price.
In a world where corporate control is nearly absolute, Red Markets serve as the last refuge for the truly free — or truly desperate. They’re not just places to buy and sell illegal goods; they’re nodes of resistance, networks of necessity, and pressure valves that keep the underground from exploding.
Red Markets range from chaotic open-air zones under collapsed flyovers to clinically sterile auction houses run by AI fixers in decommissioned data centers. Their architecture varies by need and origin — some grew out of gang turf, others out of Nomad convoys, and some were once legit businesses until the corps branded them too dangerous to tolerate.
They typically fall into three categories:
Flea Markets – Chaotic, open, barter-heavy. You can find anything here — but you might also get shivved by a competitor. These are common in the Combat Zones or ruins of Old Downtown.
Secure Exchanges – Run by Fixer syndicates or corporate defectors, these are tightly monitored, invite-only affairs. Clean, quiet, and expensive. Reputation is everything.
Ghost Markets – Purely digital, existing in isolated pockets of the Net or via brief AR pop-ups. Netrunners trade encrypted data packets, soulkiller code fragments, or prototype malware here. Entry requires digital keys or access from an inside source.
Every Red Market has unspoken rules: no surveillance tech, no recordings, and no double-dealing. Enforcement is handled by neutral parties called Traders' Fangs — mercenaries hired to ensure market integrity. If someone violates the code, punishment is swift and public, often as a deterrent.
The goods on offer are as diverse as they are disturbing:
Blacklisted bioware
Crashed corp research
Ghosted identities
Kidnapped scientists
Cyberware harvested from fresh corpses
But Red Markets aren't just criminal hubs — they’re places where new alliances are formed, rumors surface, and jobs get brokered. Some Edgerunners owe their entire careers to a single deal made in a Red Market. Others never made it out alive.
For GMs, Red Markets are fertile ground for espionage, betrayal, deal-making, and high-stakes heists. A Red Market session can combine social intrigue, tactical danger, and moral ambiguity. Are your players there to buy? To spy? To sell something they shouldn't even possess?
The corps despise these places — and that makes them vital.
Adventure Hook: “The Prototype You Shouldn’t Touch”
A Fixer contacts the crew with a tense, time-sensitive job: infiltrate a Red Market auction and retrieve a mysterious cybernetic prototype — "Lot 74" — before it disappears into the underworld for good.
No one knows what it does. Some say it’s an AI-assisted implant with predictive combat capabilities. Others claim it’s linked to the remnants of the Soulkiller project. The bidding starts at half a million eddies.
The catch? The auction is invitation-only, held inside a derelict underground mall, and hosted by a rogue AI known only as Red Needle. Security is tight, identities are concealed, and violence is off-limits — until the gavel drops.
To win, the Edgerunners can outbid, outsmart, or outgun the competition. Rival bidders include a Reclaimer warlord, a Netwatch double-agent, and a mysterious Nomad courier with ties to the Biotechnica underground.
But the deeper the crew digs, the more they realize: the prototype may not be for sale at all. It may be choosing its owner.
When the auction turns deadly and the mall goes into lockdown, the crew will have to escape with more than tech — they’ll need to keep their memories, their identities, and their sanity intact.