Verge Load

From Verge

In the load phase, you build a world or at least the parts of it that you think are important. You and the other players will take turns adding bits to the world and casting votes on what you think is cool or bogus.

Four players can load up a network in about an hour's time. This is tremendous fun. World building seems to come naturally to role-players.

Your world will take shape on the network as you and your friends add things to it and connect them with relationships. These rules present a formal procedure that guarantees your best chances at creating something both fun and cyberpunk.

How to Use These Rules

Before you start, make sure you're very familiar with the concepts laid out in the Overview chapter. You'll need to have a firm grasp on what nodes and edges are and understand the right way to word them.

It's best to take a holistic approach to network creation. You want to end up with an amazing setting rife with tension and potential for conflict. Talk things over with your friends. When you write something down, explain what you're thinking so everyone else gets it. If you can't figure out the right way to word something, explain your thought process and get some help. Make sure each thing you write down is awesome.

Bad Ideas

While there's a definite "brainstorming" flavor to the load phase, it doesn't inherit the typical "there is no such thing as a bad idea" philosophy common to brainstorming.

There are bad ideas, at least as far as you're concerned, and you should use your voice and your strikes to let people know when something doesn't seem fun to you. As you discuss ideas with your friends, be ready to express when you think something wouldn't be fun to play, or when you think something else might be a lot better. In the end, though, it's up to each player to write down what they think is fun for them.

Keep a finger on the pulse of the monster you're creating (the network). If it starts to mutate in a way that will make play not fun for you, speak up!

If you're ever short on ideas, refer to the List of Awesome.

Steps, in General

Complete each step below and the task within it in the order listed. Read all the steps to the players first, though, so they can plan what they want to do.

All of the steps have a common tempo, a series of tasks that you'll repeat with slight variations. In general, each step asks each player to:

• create a new node on the network (with a ! after it)
• connect it to another node
• create another connection between any two nodes
• place three !'s on nodes and edges

Step 1 is pretty light. You'll just create nodes. Starting in step 2, though, you'll perform all four of these tasks every time.

Adding New Nodes

Whenever you add a node to the network, put a ! after its name so that it starts with 1 power and 1 value.

Except in step 1, when you create a new node, you must also connect it to another node in the network with an edge (relationship).

Adding Edges

Whenever you add an edge to the network, put a ! after its label so that it starts with 1 power and 1 value.

Edges always connect two nodes. There's no such thing as an edge that has one or two unconnected ends. Edges always have an arrow, but never two arrows.

Power Bangs

In every step after step 1, players place three "power bangs" (!'s) on nodes and edges. This is a way of distributing power to the elements of the setting you want to make central to your story.

A ! is also a vote of confidence. It tells your friends that you think this idea is cool. It flags the node so that when the other players are what to create next and how to connect things, they are more likely to connect to the thing that everyone thinks is cool (the thing with a lot of !'s).

You cannot put power bangs on nodes or edges that you created.

Turn Order

In step 1, decide who goes first. If someone has a cool idea, let them go. If multiple people want to go first, roll a die (highest wins, reroll ties) to see who goes.

Play proceeds clockwise.

In each subsequent step, the last player to go in the last step gets to go first this time.

Example: Adam, Bobbi, Carla, and Dave are seated in that order clockwise around the table. Adam and Carla present some cool ideas. They roll d6 and Adam's 5 beats Carla's 2. Adam goes first in step 1. Then Bobbie, then Carla, then Dave. In step 2, since Dave just went last, he gets to go first. Then Adam, then Bobbie, then Carla. In step 3, Carla goes first. In step 4, Bobbie goes first.

Step 1: Technologies

In step 1, you each write down a technological concept that puts the "cyber" into your cyberpunk. These should be world-sized ideas: grand concepts whose effects reverberate through society.

Consider the precognition in Minority Report, the mental viruses in Snowcrash, and the independent artificial intelligence in Neuromancer. Each of those things served as a vehicle for those stories. Those stories also contained smaller technologies like electric cars, virtual reality, and neurotoxins, but the stories could have substituted other things for them without much loss. You want the former kind of technologies, not the latter.

In regular turn order, each player does the following:

• Create a node that represents a technology. Explain to the other players what you mean and why you think it's cool.

It doesn't really matter where on the network you write this, though there are some social strategies about node placement (see Network Layout, later).

Whenever you add a new node, put a ! after it. This starts it with 1 point of power and value.

Don't connect any of these with edges. You'll connect them to other things later.

Step 2: Ideologies

In step 2, you highlight important ideologies that will influence play. Cyberpunk stories often have a message about religion or government or philosophy.

The Matrix has all kinds of stuff about Gnosticism, quantum mechanics, and Buddhism bolted into it. David Brin's Earth has a strong current of naturalism and conservation. Choose things that are interesting or important to you. You don't have to agree with these ideas, but you should think they'll be interesting to explore in your game.

In normal turn order, each player during his turn should do all of the following (in any order, more or less):

• Create a node that represents an ideology (with a ! after it).
• Connect that node to another node via a new edge. Label the edge (with a ! after it).
• Create another edge connecting any two nodes and label it (with a ! after it).
• Place three !'s on nodes and edges.

Step 3: Organizations

In step 3, you establish the large organizational structures of the setting. One of the perennial elements of cyberpunk literature is its simultaneous glorification and demonization of large corporations, cults, organized religion, and government agencies.

Any group of people counts as an organization, even if they're not centrally organized. A city or place can be a code word for an organization, too. For example, "Los Angeles" really means "all the people in LA." Be clear what you mean when you add nodes like that. Don't use places as places, though. Location is "color" that you can add freely during the game.

Consider the movie Blade Runner. It creates a handful of cool organizations: Replicants (androids), Blade Runners (special ops police, basically), and Tyrell Corporation (the obligatory evil corp). The Running Man has the Hunters (elite killers), The Network (tv company), the Government, and the Police.

In normal turn order, each player does four things:

• Create a node that names an organization or group of people (with a ! after it).
• Connect that node to another node via a new edge. Label the edge (with a ! after it).
• Create another edge connecting any two nodes and label it (with a ! after it).
• Place three !'s on nodes and edges.

Step 4: People

In step 4, you create some of the movers and shakers of the setting. This will be the pool of characters in the setting for the game master and players to play. If you're a player, you will end up choosing one of these characters to play. If you're the game master, you will play the rest of them.

These people should have specific names. Avoid writing down nodes that are just a title like "The President." Give the President a name. It's okay to add the title after the name (e.g., "Cleopatra Cambridge, the President").

These should be people with strong ties to the other elements of the setting. Their relationships (edges) should be strong in the context of the setting. Don't create some software developer who barely matters in the world. Instead, make the programmer the girl who invented NetWorld, or a disgruntled employee of Megasoft bent on the company's destruction.

Relationships between people should be strong, emotional links. If Bartleby Deathover is the CEO of Megasoft and Mandy Ulsted is his secretary, link both Mandy and Bartleby to the Megasoft organization node (with an edge named "works for" or "employs") and consider a juicier relationship between the two people. What's juicier? How about "hates" or "sleeps with" or "blackmails."

These people can be good guys, bad guys, or something in between. They can even have that special quality that screams "protagonist!" to the budding author in you. In general, these people should be "grabby" enough to make you (the player) like them, hate them, fear them, or otherwise care what they do.

You can get creative with the definition of a person, too. Any intelligent, sentient agent counts. That means you can have AI programs, robots and androids, sentient dolphins, aliens, or divinities if you want. I've personally played in games where "God" or "Reincarnated Elvis" got written down as people.

Neuromancer had some memorable characters. Case (the protagonist) and Molly (his mercenary femme fatale) are the first that come to mind. Armitage (a sort of paramilitary / broker-middleman who drives the story) makes a great mover and shaker in the setting. The book has two or more artificial intelligences (AIs), too. The Dixie Flatline is a computer program that mimics the personality of Case's dead mentor. And, of course, don't forget Wintermute, the AI scheming for freedom from the Turing Law Code.

In normal turn order, each player does four things:

• Create a node that names an intelligent individual (with a ! after it).
• Connect that node to another node via a new edge. Label the edge (with a ! after it).
• Create another edge connecting any two nodes and label it (with a ! after it).
• Place three !'s on nodes and edges.

Then, repeat the People step. Each player should create two characters, perhaps more. Consider a third loop around the table if there's room on the paper for more people and the network isn't getting too busy. People are what bring the world to life.

Step 5: Tie-Ins

In step 5, you tie things up. You can add any kind of node but your aim should be to make the network make more sense. Certainly as you wrote things down in the first four steps, you had all these ideas about how they related, but maybe you didn't get to see that stuff through to fruition. Now is your chance to cement things.

Now is not the time to introduce some crazy, brand new idea. You can if you want, though, but it won't be tied very well into your setting and it will likely get short thrift during the game. You will have squandered your opportunity to fine-tune your setting before play.

In normal turn order, each player does four things:

• Create a node of any kind (with a ! after it).
• Connect that node to another node via a new edge. Label the edge (with a ! after it).
• Create another edge connecting any two nodes and label it (with a ! after it).
• Place three !'s on nodes and edges.

Load Check

At the end of the load phase, you should all agree that the setting rocks, that the ideas kick ass, and you should all be excited to see what happens next.

You should be pretty convinced that if you set the world in motion, stuff would happen. The organizations would tear each other apart. The people would get into trouble. The ideologies would forever change the way society thinks. If you don't feel that way, consider scrapping what you did and making a new network.

It's best to have a strong foundation for your play and not start out all wobbly. Load doesn't take that long so it should be pretty easy to make something better. If you start over, talk about the things that made you want to start over so you don't repeat them. Then grab a new sheet of paper and reload!

Cash Out

Once you and your friends have given your blessing to the network and setting you've created, you all get tokens for all the cool stuff you created.

Each player gains 1 token for each point of power among all the nodes and edges that she created.

Look around the network at all the things (nodes and edges) you personally wrote on the network. For each ! after those nodes, gain a token.