Verge Load

From Verge

In the load phase, you build a world or at least the parts of it that will be central to the story you're going to tell. You and the other players will take turns adding bits to the world and casting votes for what you think is cool and vetoing what you think is bogus. As you load up the network, you may have some story ideas in mind, but don't worry about that. The story will flow naturally out of the completed network.

Four players can load up a network in about an hour's time. This is tremendous fun. World building comes naturally to people, especially 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. That is, look at the big picture of what the network is becoming and don't get too focused on specific elements. As you build the network, make sure you end up with an amazing setting full of tension and potential for conflict. Talk things over with your friends.

Before 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. Really, talk shit out before you touch the damned permanent marker.

It's tempting to just grab your pen and write. Do that if discussion is getting annoying. But don't write until you talk about your idea, because it might suck. And then people aren't gonna vote it up, you aren't gonna earn tokens, and you will start the game at a disadvantage. Worse, your sucky idea might make the whole game suck a little, and then you'll have eaten those burritos for nothing.

Discussing your idea before you record it gives other players a chance to make it more awesome. It lets you refine the phrasing so that everyone understands it. It prevents you from creating something that you thought made sense, but actually doesn't. It helps ensure that the world you're creating is dynamic and rife with possibility, and not static and motionless as a wino on a park bench.

GM's Role

The game master has a different role than the other players. Yes, she will help create the setting like everyone else, but she also facilitates and guides play. The game master should keep the other players moving but at the same time, stop them from moving too quickly. If players are writing without talking, slow them down and get them to discuss their ideas. Make sure everyone understands what things mean. Ensure players write clearly. If people get stuck, help them out.

During the load phase, the game master creates nodes and edges, adds surges, and has a veto just like other players. However, while the players tend to to go a little gonzo-crazy while they create the setting, the game master's role is to rein it back by making sure things stick together.

Edges are the game master's main tool for making the setting coherent. Use edges to connect nodes that need conflict. If the network seems a little too static, shake it up with a surprising edge connector. Don't ruin the setting but make it a better setting for play.

The nodes the game master creates often make existing nodes more usable. Add people to flesh out organizations, especially.

The game master places surges (!s) the way other players do, too. Use these to tell everyone what you think is awesome, the same way they're doing.

Finally, the game master can help vote down an idea, as any other player can.

Bad Ideas

While there's a definite "brainstorming" flavor to the load phase, the game 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.

How do you recognize a bad idea? That can be hard. If in the compile phase, you said your game would be serious in tone, then any ideas that seem silly or comical probably don't belong on the network. Really, any idea that violates any of your group's rules for setting, tone, or limits should be vetoed unless the creator can justify an exception.

Every player can voice hard opposition to an idea before or after it gets written down on the network. This is a veto. If any idea or node or edge gets a veto from two different players, it is stricken from the game. If it's already written on the network, draw an X through it. If it's a node and has edges, X out the node and its edges. It doesn't exist, so things can't have relationships to it.

Remember what I said about talking out ideas before writing? Right.

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.

The steps are gonna guide you through creation of some named people, some ideologies and technologies, some organizations, and lots more people. In this Load phase, these characters are communal property. In the Link phase afterward, you'll get to make one of those people your character.

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 surges on nodes and edges

Step 1 is pretty light. You'll just create nodes (names of people, with a ! after each of them). You don't connect those nodes or place additional surges. 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 surge (!) 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).

When you create nodes, get specific! Instead of writing down "Los Angeles," write "LAPD" or "L.A. City Hall." The more specific you are, the better the other players will understand what you're doing, and the more likely they will add surges to your creation (and that earns you tokens when you Cash Out).

Adding Edges

Whenever you add an edge to the network, put a surge (!) 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.

Surges

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

A surge 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).

In the load phase, once you've created a node or edge (always starting with a single surge), you cannot put additional surges on anything you've created. You need to convince other people to do that, and you'll be rewarded with tokens for all of the surges your creations earn.

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: People

In step 1, you write down names of people. Who are these people? No one knows -- yet. You'll figure that out later. This just gets some nonplayer characters on the board pronto so you can start connecting them to the cool stuff later.

This is easy if you can make up names on the fly. It's hard if you can't. Get one of those books of names, or a phone book. This should be easy.

All you're doing is writing down names. No roles or titles. Write "Bali Watanabe," not "Bali Watanabe, CEO of Megasoft." Since a "person" in your game might be a robot, AI, or space alien, these names might be pretty strange, and that's okay.

Oh, and try not to write down a half dozen old-white-guy names, okay? Cyberpunk characters in books and movies are male and female and other-gendered; Japanese, Indonesian, Russian, and ancient-Sumerian; adolescent, elderly, and unborn. Before you write down another English dude's name, like William or Bob, stop and think.

In later steps, you'll start connecting these people to ideas and each other. That's when they'll start to take form and be more than a name. 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. Keep these things in mind when you make up names.

After Load, in the Link phase, you'll bid to make one of the characters on the network your own. For now, no one owns them.

In regular turn order, each player does the following:

• Create a node representing a person with a name, and don't worry at all about who they are (no titles or roles).

That's it. 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 (including these names), put a ! after it. This starts it with 1 point of power and value.

Step 2: -ologies

In step 2, you each write down a concept that is either technological or ideological.

The technologies put the "cyber" into your cyberpunk. These should be world-sized ideas: grand concepts whose effects reverberate through society. You'll probably have to explain to the group what your shorthand words mean. You might write down "Brainframes" and explain that they're large networks of disembodied minds and repurposed for computation. You might be tempted to say that they're extracted from the skulls of prisoners, and that they run the virtual reality "matrix," and that the humans who use the matrix sometimes experience awful dreams from the prisoners residual minds... but don't. It's okay to talk about those things, but focus each node pretty tightly. Whenever you start talking about how your node relates to other things in the world, that's when you stop and get other people to create those other things as nodes of their own. If they think it's as cool as you think it is, they'll add them. Or you can add them on your next turn.

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.

Ideologies are belief systems shared by lots of people. These can create movements, inspire cults, and reign in governments. Cyberpunk stories are riddled with ideological messages about religion or government or philosophy. That's because good writing is about people and their beliefs. Good games are about these things, too. You'll want to include things that you and the other players think are important and cool.

The movie 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.

You'll get to create either a technology or an ideology. If the two players before you created a technology, you must create an ideology, and vice versa. You don't want all of one kind on the network.

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 or technology (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 surges on nodes and edges.

Remember, talk things out before you write them down. Figure out how to word the node properly before writing, too. It's fine to connect characters to one another at this stage, and this will start defining them.

Once every player has had a turn at -ologies, your network should be populated with some core ideas and the start of some strange characters.

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 L.A." 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 surges on nodes and edges.

Step 4: More People

In step 1, you created a bunch of named characters. In steps 2 and 3, they started getting connected to the network. Those characters probably also earned some surges and since they're well-connected, they will have lots of plot power (even if they're not seemingly powerful people in the setting). They'll generate more dice that will help win conflicts.

In step 4, you create some more characters.

Instead of writing down just a name, also decide who these people are and what they do. These characters will be weaker and less connected than the step-1 flock, but they also have the potential to cause trouble and shake up the establishment. Don't think that these are bit parts. These are likely going to provide useful connections between strange nodes on the map, and they'll be more easily controlled by the players' characters.

Like the people in Step 1, these people should have specific names. Avoid writing down nodes that are just a title like "The President." Give the President a name. Here, though, 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.

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.

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.

Also note that the name "Case" is a pun on the CASE statement in some programming languages. The street name of the main character in Snowcrash is "Hiro Protagonist."

Relationships between people should be strong, emotional links. If Bartleby Deathover is the CEO of Megasoft and Mandinka Ulsted is his secretary, link both Mandinka 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."

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 surges 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 (it probably is). People are what bring the world to life.

Step 5: Continuity Check

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. If you could, it wouldn't be tied very well into the setting and it likely would get short thrift during the game. You would have squandered your opportunity to fine-tune your setting before play. So you aren't allowed to do that.

In normal turn order, each player does four things:

• Create a node of any kind (with a ! after it). This node should enhance or clarify the network. No new ideas.
• 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 surges 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. How? Look around the network at all the things (nodes and edges) you personally wrote on the network (in your pen's color, right?). For each ! after those nodes, gain a token.

Yes, the game master gets tokens, too!