The crew

The PCs are Glitches — people who have hacked the Sentinel nanites every Beltway resident is born with, and who now live off-grid in the lower Beltway. Being a Glitch is illegal. Being a Glitch is what makes the crew dangerous and what makes the crew possible. The crew works the lower Beltway and the bay communities. They are the resistance network's hammer — the people who act when the mutual aid orgs need direct action.

The crew type — Sappers

Revolutionaries and wreckers.

The Sappers crew type from Hack the Planet is locked for this campaign. Sappers's identity:

"In the desperate underbelly of Shelter 1, people talk about a storm that's going to change everything — throwing the rich and powerful off their gilded perches and giving a future to the oppressed. With guerrilla tactics, propaganda, and a cause worth fighting for, you are that storm."
— Melody Watson, Hack the Planet — Sappers playbook

In the Chesapeake setting: the crew is a cell of Glitches working with — but not for — the mutual aid network. They are the network's escalation. The orgs distribute food and medicine and software and bodies. The crew commits crime.

Hunting grounds

Sappers operate in four:

Propaganda — Make a public statement or embarrass an enemy.
Sabotage — Hurt an opponent by destroying something.
Tactical Strike — Kidnap or kill an important individual.
Agitation — Encourage dissent or empower a marginalized community.

The crew picks one as their preferred at crew creation. Free Signal took Agitation — organizers and broadcasters rather than demolitionists.

What the crew earns XP for

Sappers earn XP when they advance their cause or intervene to stop oppression. The campaign's cause is the shining star — Free the Code, free the Bay, free the City. Any score that materially advances any of the three, or that intervenes to stop a specific corp oppression, earns the trigger.

The seven playbooks

Players choose from seven base Hack the Planet playbooks. Pick a soft preference before session zero; you can change at the table.

Edge — the fighter. Cybered melee specialist who ends fights before they start.
Faint — the operator. Voice, presence, and read-the-room manipulation; smiles their way past Sentinels.
Fuse — the infiltrator. Stealth, locks, and getting in where there shouldn't be a way in.
Haunt — the hacker. Lives in the mesh; speaks to systems like they're people.
Lens — the sniper-tracker. Distance work, observation, and the patience to wait three hours for one shot.
Quirk — the Act of God scholar. Reads storms, climate, salt patterns; the crew's weather-sense and weird-knowledge specialist.
Torque — the inventor-doctor. Tinkers physical hardware, modifies sleeves off-EULA, patches you up.

(The two extra Hack the Planet playbooks — Perfect and Gone — are not in play in this campaign.)

The Root system

Every PC picks a Root at character creation — what part of the world they came from. Roots in the Chesapeake adaptation:

Tipper — descendants of those blamed for the Drowning: bankers who underwrote the Aegis, engineers who signed off, executives whose names ended up on the leak lists. Currently in or recently out of Reform. Visible shame.
Grasshopper — climate refugees who came by land. Inland US — climate-collapsed Midwest, fire-ravaged West, Appalachia ghost towns. Walked here. Carries a different American story.
Dragonfly — climate refugees who came by water. Coastal cities — Mekong Delta, Hampton Roads, Norfolk, Annapolis. Arrived by boat. Vịnh Mới and Drownline overlap heavily with this Root.
Foundation — descendants of those who built the Aegis or the post-Drowning seawalls. Engineers, ironworkers, longshoremen, construction labor. The aristocracy of the Roots.
Forged — bay-rooted. Old Bay Council watermen, Vịnh Mới mariculture families, Skipjack heritage. Carries bay knowledge into the Beltway.
Unknown — second-gen Shelter-born with no traceable lineage. Born in the Beltway with no family story; common among orphans, Hopkins-issued sleeve survivors, AGI-touched kids. A blank to fill at character creation.

Bonds and shared past

The crew arrives at session zero with at least one shared past. Bond options:

Recruited together
Burned together
Shared a sleeve once
Ran from the corps together
Met in the mesh
Saved by
Indebted to
Vowed revenge alongside

Each character connects to at least one of the five mutual aid orgs. At least one character has access to dubious resleeving channels — part of what makes the crew dangerous.

How to play this kind of game

For tables coming from D&D or other dice-pool games, a few Hack the Planet sensibilities to bring to the table:

Embrace risk. You're already off the grid. Being a Glitch is an act of rebellion. Act like it. Seize the most daring, interesting choices.
Tell people what you want. Advocate for the fiction you want to see. Don't deprive the game of your voice.
Use your stress. Stress is how you say no, that doesn't happen because… Don't hoard it.
Make meta decisions. You're co-authors. Step back from your character and ask what would be cool to watch next? Then pick the action that lands there.
Discover your character. Don't decide who they are upfront. Find out by playing.
Don't forget culture. Every opinion your PC expresses makes the world more real. Build dialects, food, music, sayings. The PCs are climate refugees second- or third-generation; they have culture.

Safety at the table

Lines and Veils set collaboratively at session zero.
Pause for a Minute — anyone at the table can say it. All in-game conversation stops, the table addresses whatever needs addressing, the GM says game on. Used freely in low-stakes moments so it's normalized when needed for real.
Cybernetics and disability — cyberware is not a "fix" and doesn't make characters "normal." It's a return of autonomy. Disabled characters welcome; the table follows the lead of anyone with lived experience.