Glitch

Lore & Background

The Glitch mechanic embodies the core fiction of the Shadowrun universe: a world where magic, cyberware, and corporate conspiracy collide so violently that even a small mistake can cascade into disaster. A runner trying to pick a lock doesn't just fail; the lock jams, the alarm trips, the security drone's targeting laser finds them. A mage attempting a simple spell doesn't just miss; the bolt of fire curves into a bystander, or the ward inverts and locks them out of their own apartment. The system encodes the idea that in a world this hostile, the universe has a sense of humor about your incompetence.

Mechanically, the Glitch exists to prevent the dice pool from being a binary pass/fail gate. By carving out a distinct catastrophic-failure zone—zero hits plus at least one 1—the rules force both players and the GM to engage with failure as a narrative event rather than a dead end. The Critical Glitch, adding the requirement of at least one 6, escalates this further, reserving the worst outcomes for the most narratively dramatic moments. This three-tier outcome structure (success, plain miss, glitch, critical glitch) is what makes a Shadowrun session feel like a thriller rather than a checklist.

In the video-game adaptations, the spirit of the Glitch carries through as systems where failed actions carry extra penalties, environmental hazards trigger, or the narrative takes a dark turn. The underlying design philosophy—that the world actively punishes sloppy work with escalating consequences—remains a through-line across the franchise's various media.

In Their Own Story

The rain on the neon-slicked alley behind Kowloon's 40th-floor noodle shop tasted like copper and ozone. Vex pressed her thumb against the biometric panel, the micro-dice tumbling in her wrist's subdermal rig. Three dice. Target six. She needed one clean hit to ghost the lock open before the patrol drone's sweep-light crested the rooftop.

One. Four. One.

No hits. Two ones. Glitch.

The panel didn't just stay locked. It *spat*. A burst of static arced from the reader, singeing the synthetic sleeve of her jacket, and the building's internal PA crackled to life with a synthesized voice: "UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS ATTEMPT. GRID SECTOR 7-C. DISPATCHING RESPONSE UNIT."

Vex stared at the smoking panel. Somewhere above, the drone's spotlight swung toward the alley, painting the wet concrete in a slow, indifferent arc. She had nine seconds, maybe ten, before the first mag-lock round found her.

She ran.

Reader's Guide

Rolling a Glitch in Shadowrun follows a strict sequence. First, determine your dice pool and target number (commonly 5 or 6). Roll all d6s simultaneously. Count hits—any die meeting or exceeding the target. If you have at least one hit, the action succeeds (with edge points for excess hits) and no Glitch is possible. If you have zero hits, check the faces: if at least one die shows a 1, the action is a Glitch. If, in addition, at least one die shows a 6, it escalates to a Critical Glitch.

The key rule that makes this distinct: a Glitch is not merely a miss. The GM must describe a specific, adverse consequence drawn from the action's context. Picking a lock and glitching means the lock seizes and the alarm fires. Firing a gun and glitching means the round goes wide and hits a teammate, or the weapon jams mid-burst. The consequence is narrative, not a flat -2 modifier, and it often creates new problems the character must solve.

Strategically, players mitigate Glitch risk by keeping dice pools high (more dice dilute the probability that all dice are below target while a 1 appears), by using edge to buy extra dice, or by choosing actions where a Glitch consequence is less catastrophic. Some characters with high Willpower or specific cyberware can reduce or negate Glitch effects.

What makes this feel uniquely Shadowrun: other d6 systems (like many cyberpunk TTRPGs) treat a miss as a flat failure. Shadowrun's Glitch turns failure into a story beat. The three-tier outcome—success, plain miss, Glitch, Critical Glitch—means every roll has dramatic weight, and the player is always aware that the dice can betray them in a way that a simple pass/fail system never could.

Did You Know?

• A Glitch requires zero hits AND at least one 1, meaning a roll of all 2s, 3s, 4s, and 5s (below a target of 6) is a plain miss, not a Glitch—the 1 is the specific trigger for catastrophic failure.
• The Critical Glitch requires both a 1 and a 6 to appear among the zero-hit roll, making it a rarer and more narratively extreme event than a standard Glitch.
• The Glitch mechanic is a primary design differentiator: many other d6 or cyberpunk TTRPGs use a simple success/fail dice pool, whereas Shadowrun's three-tier failure structure (miss, Glitch, Critical Glitch) forces the G
• Because a Glitch is narratively open-ended, two players rolling identical dice in the same situation can receive entirely different consequences from their GM, making the mechanic as much about storytelling as probabilit