Technoir
A hard-boiled cyberpunk TTRPG by Jeremy Keller where investigators, couriers, hackers, and other compromised professionals pull on contacts and clues until the whole conspiracy starts moving back.
Cyberpunk noir investigation • 2-5 players plus GM • tag-based skill play • strong one-shots and short arcs • low prep after onboarding
Technoir is one of the best cyberpunk TTRPGs for groups that want cases, leverage, and conspiracy pressure instead of mission-board firefights. It works best when the table wants noir momentum: every contact matters, every favor leaves a hook behind, and every clue makes the city feel more compromised.
It is a weaker fit if your group wants crunchy tactical combat, exhaustive gear catalogs, or a big metaplot setting to tour. Technoir is leaner and meaner than that. Its real trick is not lore volume but the way its Transmission structure lets a GM build a messy plot web that keeps mutating under player pressure.
What the game is
Technoir is Jeremy Keller's cyberpunk-noir TTRPG, currently sold through the official Technoir site and DriveThruRPG under the Dream Machine Productions stewardship announced in late 2018. The protagonists are not chosen heroes. They are couriers, investigators, hackers, fixers, and other skilled operators trying to survive in compromised cities where illicit technology, bad employers, favors, and personal damage are part of the everyday economy.
For site navigation, it belongs squarely in cyberpunk and investigation. The useful distinction is that it is not just "a cyberpunk game with mysteries." The noir case structure is the main event, and the speculative-tech setting exists to make that pressure nastier, more intimate, and more unstable.
Publication history and editions
According to Justin Alexander's Technoir Returns announcement, the game began with a successful 2011 Kickstarter, the core rulebook released in fall 2011, and Mechnoir followed in spring 2012. The same post also documents the later Dream Machine Productions acquisition and the January 2019 relaunch that brought overdue support material back into circulation.
There is no separate second edition presented on the current official site. In practical buying terms, today's line still centers on the original core game plus later support material rather than on a replacement rules overhaul. That matters for table fit: when you buy into Technoir, you are buying a distinctive 2010s indie design that still feels unusual, not a modernized trad reboot.
Product line and what you need to play
The paid starting point is the core Technoir PDF or the print-and-PDF bundle linked from the official Bytes & Ink buy page. The free support path is better than many older indie games: the official downloads page offers a protagonist sheet, a 16-page Player's Guide, and the free Twin Cities Metroplex Transmission.
That means a group can test the basic tone and procedures before deciding whether to buy the core book. If you like what the free materials are doing, the core book is the next real purchase. If you do not, Technoir is specific enough that the free path will usually tell you quickly.
Major supplements, Transmissions, and support
The most important official follow-up is Morenoir, the support book Justin Alexander and Jeremy Keller describe as the guide for running, hacking, and extending the game. It includes advanced options, run-time advice, a Transmission-creation guide, and guidance for writing your own player-facing material.
The official store page also foregrounds individual Transmissions such as Hong Kong: Special Administrative Region, Indianapolis Conplex, and Kepler Station, plus the Mars-focused Mechnoir bundle. The practical takeaway is that Technoir's product line is compact but useful: the game expects you to reuse the core engine across distinct cities and pressure webs instead of waiting for a giant adventure path line.
Core rules and play structure
Technoir runs on a lean skill-and-tag engine. Critical coverage consistently highlights three pieces: Verbs for what characters can do, Adjectives and tags for traits and conditions, and Push dice that let pressure move back and forth across a scene. That gives the game a very different feel from crunch-heavy cyberpunk systems where tactical subsystems dominate the session.
The GM-facing heart of the design is the Transmission. A Transmission is not a plotted scenario. It is a city packet full of connections, events, factions, locations, objects, and threats that can be rolled into an initial case web. As players chase leads, owe favors, and get hurt, that web expands. The result is that mysteries grow outward instead of being solved by walking a prewritten clue chain.
Characters, roles, and advancement
Characters are not classes in the usual fantasy sense. They are defined through competencies, descriptors, relationships, and the trouble that follows from them. That makes Technoir much more skill-based than build-based: the question is not which powers you unlocked, but how good you are at prying, coercing, hacking, surviving, and cashing in favors when the case turns ugly.
Advancement reinforces the hard-boiled genre rhythm rather than a clean level ladder. Reputable secondary coverage of the rules notes that growth comes out of the bruising parts of play, so characters feel more like damaged professionals learning from mistakes than like balanced combat pieces rising through tiers.
Signature mechanics
- Transmissions: city-scale prep tools that turn case design into a reusable conspiracy engine.
- Connections: contacts are not flavor; they are mechanically and fictionally central to getting work, information, favors, and trouble.
- Verbs, Adjectives, and tags: competence, gear, wounds, leverage, and fictional positioning share the same broad language, which keeps the rules compact and the consequences visible.
- Push dice: scene pressure shifts back and forth, helping cases feel like noir spirals instead of clean tactical exercises.
What play feels like
A strong Technoir session feels like pulling on a thread you probably should have left alone. The crew starts with a person, a favor, or a small job; very quickly they are juggling compromised witnesses, dangerous employers, cyberware, threats, and a city full of people who know more than they should.
Compared with Blade Runner, Technoir is less tied to one branded setting and more interested in modular conspiracy generation. Compared with Neon City Overdrive, it is less freeform and more structurally committed to investigation pressure. Compared with Cyberpunk Red, it is much less about loadouts and tactical action and much more about leverage, fallout, and the case mutating around the protagonists.
Running the game
The prep load is low once the GM understands what the game wants. The hard part is not scenario writing; it is trusting the Transmission structure and learning how quickly the plot map should widen when players chase leads or call in favors. A GM who keeps trying to solve the mystery in advance can fight the design instead of benefiting from it.
That makes Technoir easier for a confident improviser than for a GM who wants all answers locked before play. The game rewards tables that are comfortable letting the city talk back.
Campaign fit
Technoir is genuinely good at one-shots and short arcs because the case structure creates momentum fast, so keeping the one-shot-friendly tag makes sense. It also supports linked campaigns if the table wants recurring cities, recurring contacts, and widening conspiracies, but its biggest strength is not endless campaign breadth. It is the way a short run can feel tangled, personal, and expensive very quickly.
If your group wants a long cyberpunk sandbox with a huge gear economy and broad faction simulation, a game like Cities Without Number may fit better. If it wants investigation-first cyberpunk that can go from briefing to moral compromise in a single session, Technoir is unusually strong.
Digital tools and online play
The current official support emphasizes PDFs, downloads, character sheets, and Transmissions rather than a first-party VTT module. That does not make the game hard to run online, but it does mean your table should expect a lighter digital-tool stack than it would get from some newer lines.
For remote play, the free sheets and the compact case structure do most of the work. Groups comfortable with shared notes, a simple map of the plot web, and voice or video should adapt easily.
Reception and awards
Technoir won a 2012 ENNIE Judges' Spotlight Award, which still matches how the game is usually discussed: as a specific, admired piece of design rather than a mass-market baseline. The official site still foregrounds that award in the product presentation.
Review coverage such as Cannibal Halfling Gaming's review praises the Transmission structure, the Connections rules, and the way Push dice keep the plot moving. The recurring caveat is equally consistent: the game's abstractions are clever, but they can take a few reads before the table fully understands how everything snaps together.
Where it is strongest
- Cyberpunk groups that want noir investigation, favors, compromised contacts, and conspiracies instead of loadout-heavy combat.
- GMs who want low-prep case scaffolding and a system that grows plots from interaction instead of from scripted scenes.
- One-shots and short campaigns where the city should become more dangerous every time the protagonists touch it.
- Tables that want a clearly dystopian future without making rebellion spectacle the only play mode.
Where it can frustrate groups
- You want crunchy firefights, detailed cyberware shopping, or tactical combat as the main event.
- You want a large official line with a current edition cycle, heavy online tooling, or a huge canon setting to explore.
- You dislike abstract tags, shared scene pressure, or learning a system that explains itself more through play rhythm than through familiar trad categories.
- You want a fixed-solution mystery where the GM already knows every answer before session one.
Content and safety notes
Expect corporate exploitation, coercion, criminal leverage, urban violence, drug use, surveillance, debt, body modification, and people being reduced to tools by employers or institutions. Even when the table plays the style with swagger, the setting logic stays harsh.
Before play, talk about lines around addiction, police violence, exploitation, body horror, coercive intimacy, and how grim the city should feel. Technoir works best when everyone agrees on how ugly the future is allowed to get.
Best starting path
Start with the free Player's Guide and Twin Cities Metroplex download set to see whether the tone and Transmission logic land for your group. If they do, move to the core book. After that, Morenoir is the most practical next buy for GMs, while Mechnoir only matters if your table specifically wants Mars mecha scenarios built on the same chassis.
Research notes
Last checked: July 4, 2026.