Verge Overview

From Verge

Verge is a post-cyberpunk role-playing game with a conspiracy-story edge.

Players invent the setting during play by drawing a network of strangely interconnected technologies, philosophies, organizations, and people on a big piece of paper. Then they take the role of a sort of "free agent" character in that setting and struggle for control of the setting elements to accomplish their goals. This process tends to create stories about the smashing together of human frailties with ideology and technology.

This chapter discusses some of the core game elements. Make sure you understand these concepts before playing. Sometimes this chapter refers to rules that are explained in detail in later parts of the book. These rules will make more sense later.

Creating Setting through Play

Verge doesn't come with a setting but trusts that you are an ingenious and creative person who can come up with something more vibrant and exciting for you than anything I could supply. The rules do supply a list of ideas to bootstrap you if you need a little inspiration.

This text walks you through creating your world. The idea is that you only create the stuff you want to focus on. The rest can be added during play or glossed over. The setting creation step takes about an hour if you have four players.

You record the setting as a web of ideas and relationships on a big drawing called the network.

Cyberpunk

Ostensibly, Verge is a cyberpunk game. I treat post-cyberpunk and transhumanism as sub-genres. The term "cyberpunk" means different things to different people. Here's what I think.

Cyberpunk is a kind of science fiction, usually set in the near future. The genre grew out of the Eighties, when corporations and government were taking over the world, but at the same time there was this huge technology boom. Perhaps most importantly, personal computers were showing up in people's houses. So cyberpunk literature was dark -- in fact it was noir -- and its pessimism stared into the future and saw all kinds of huge organizations taking over the world, fracturing the vast government control we grew up in, and suppressing human rights. I suspect this paranoia was inherited from the influence of Philip K. Dick, largely considered to be the father of cyberpunk, though he died in 1982 and most of his writing didn't really become famous until they started turning his stories into movies.

Of course, cyberpunk authors also saw people fighting back. These rebels weren't well organized. In fact, they didn't like working with other people at all. These were free agents who were experts in narrow fields, often technological fields. These were independent-thinking anti-heroes like Case and Molly in Neuromancer and Hiro Protagonist and Y.T. in Snowcrash. These people fought The Man for their own selfish reasons but often they seemed to fight because no one else could.

Common Cyberpunk Themes

The genre seems to have collected a number of ideas, or tropes.

Some kind of virtual reality is one of the most common. Whether the setting's "otherworld" is a realistic place that you can step into (even masquerading as your real life, as in The Matrix) or just a huge construct of line graphics or data, cyberpunk stories usually have some kind of "world of information" that characters explore or travel to learn and hide.

Really, the idea of virtual reality grows out of the genre's deeper treatment of reality-as-illusion, in general. Look at movies like Bladerunner and The Matrix and you'll see themes about the sketchy and untrustworthy nature of reality. Pretty much any movie adapted from a Philip K. Dick story will play with this theme: Bladerunner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Imposter, Next, A Scanner Darkly.

Hidden in a lot of cyberpunk stories is the idea of divine ascension, that man can rise to the level of godhood through technology. This theme borrows from transhumanist goals, which see mankind's potential as limitless. Within this theme are the subthemes of cybernetics (technological body modification), human-computer interfaces (often direct-to-brain), advanced mind- and body-enhancing pharmaceuticals, and vastly increased lifespans (near immortality).

On the flip side, cyberpunk also envisions computers becoming gods. Real artificial intelligence (AI) technology may be a long way off, but it appears frequently in the genre. These software beings often have goals that are alien and hard for people to understand. Sometimes, they just want to eradicate the world of human life (see Terminator). Some AIs are friendly and helpful, though.

One last trope worth exploring is corporate control. Cyberpunk seems to think that national governments are losing power to the corporations. These mega-companies span the globe, perhaps even star systems. They don't really answer to any government. If they do, the government is just an inconvenient obstacle. They have their own security, their own sovereign lands, and citizens. They often have "black ops" who do dirty work for them. They have become governments in their own right.

When you play Verge, keep these ideas in mind. Don't feel the need to incorporate all of them. Hell, if you have your own ideas, you're not required to use any of these.

The Network

The network is a drawing of the setting you make during play. It represents everything you think is important about the setting you're creating. The network is a web of things in the fictional world and the relationships that connect them.

Look, it's easier to show you than describe it in words. To the right is a sample network that a bunch of friends and I created at GenCon 2006.

A network consists of nodes (things) and edges (relationships). The edges are the lines between the nodes.

The nodes are the things (ideas, organizations, people, and items) in the setting, like Commercialism, Plasma Physics, Megasoft, or Edwin. The edges are the lines that connect the nodes. These are relationships between nodes, like the one labeled "Runs" on the arrow pointing from Edwin to Megasoft. Edges are always arrows so you know which way to read the relationship. Edwin runs Megasoft, not the other way around.

Nodes

Nodes are nouns. They can be qualified by adjectives and adjective phrases.

Nodes are the main components of the setting. As the network develops, you will get a picture of the world you are going to play in. It might have cyborgs, or artificial intelligence, or mind-raping viruses. Buddhism and Christianity could both be major components of the game world. The players can add concepts and ideas like "Hatred" to the map but they should also add specifically named people and organizations, too: "Megasoft," "The Demons, a street gang," "Knight Carson, hacker extraordinaire," "120 Park Street, NYC."

Nodes must be unique. You can't add a node that's already on there in any similar form. It's bad cricket to add "Cyborgs" when "Cyborgs???" is already on the network. Also, you aren't fooling anyone by adding "Humanlike Robots" when "Cyborgs???" is already there.

Don't build a relationship into a single node. For example, don't write "Bob, husband of Janet." Instead, create a "Bob" node and a "Janet" node and connect them with an edge like "is married to" or "loves."

The nodes should be evocative and sometimes mysterious. You don't have to know exactly how it's going to be used in play.

Example Nodes:

• people: William Michael All (Megasoft VP Finance), Knight Carson (hacker extraordinaire), T55 the AI
• organizations: Megasoft, FBI, U.S. Government, Meridian Police Department, The Nanite Freemasons
• places: Meridian City, 1400 Elm Street, Cyberspace, Low Orbit Station, Washington DC, Bill's house
• ideologies: Christianity, Ludology, Hatred of Technology, Democracy, Privacy, Torture
• technologies: Brainframe, Nanite Construction, Holographic Reality, Mind Control Lasers
• things: Kunda 4500 Motorcycle, GZK v19 Advanced Processor Cyberdeck, Loaded Dice, Mobile Phone

Edges

Edges are verbs or verb phrases. Verbs are action words like "loves" and "taunts." Verb phrases are a string of words that do the work of a verb, like "vehemently opposes" or "is married to."

Edges connect nodes together and give the network tension. As you develop the network, it starts to tell a story. Create edge relationships that create tension and conflict and tell a story. Sure, you could connect "The Demons, a street gang" to "Megasoft" with an edge like "hates." However, you'll have more fun with an edge like "employs" and the explanation that Megasoft hired the gang for their tv commercials or something equally whacky.

The direction of the arrow that you draw for an edge is a device to help people understand which way the relationship points. For example, if "Knight Carson" is connected to "Aliana Light" via a "loves" relationship, the arrow points out who loves whom. The direction of the arrow has some power, in game terms, though. An outgoing relationship points away from a node. These are closely tied to the node, since they "belong to" it.

When writing the verb for an edge, you should make sure that it "reads" properly. That is, you should be able to create a sentence starting with the arrowless node as the subject, the edge as the verb, and the other node as the object. For example, "Knight Carson"(arrowless node) "loves"(edge) "Aliana Light"(arrowed node). See how you could replace the edge with "married" or "owns" or "does not speak with"? An edge like "friend of" doesn't work because "Knight Carson friend of Aliana Light" is lousy grammar. Sure, you can make the edge "is the friend of," but that's pretty strained. A stronger, simpler verb is "adores" or perhaps "protects." It might help you sometimes to ask how the verb applies. How is Knight the friend of Aliana? Maybe he saved her from a gang: "saved." Maybe they used to date: "dated."

Always create one-sided relationships. That is, you can't write an edge with an arrow that points both directions and write something like "loves" on it, to suggest that they love each other. One-sided relationships create tension. Two-sided relationships are boring. For example, if Knight and Aliana both love each other, that's less interesting than if Knight loves Aliana and she doesn't care about him (or hates him!). Create a one-sided relationship and let other players develop the reverse relationship (or you can do it later), or don't create the reverse relationship at all. Even if Knight and Aliana love each other, create two separate edges that can be separately manipulated.

You may not use forms of the verb "to control" for an edge. Control is a special concept within the game with a specific meaning, and muddling up play with two kinds of control just confuses other players.

Surges and Drains

Surges and drains are little punctuation marks after the names of nodes and edges. They tell you how powerful or valuable that thing is in the story.

The !'s are called surges. They give strength to a node or edge. Think of a ! as a +1.

The ?'s are called drains. They sap strength from a node or edge. Think of a ? as a -1.

Say you have a node named "Mind Transfer." If you want it to be a powerful influence in the setting, you'll add surges to it. If you want to weaken it in the setting, you will add drains to it. You might end up with a string of !s and ?s after the name, like this: Mind Transfer!!?!!! That's five surges and one drain. It's pretty powerful in the setting. You and your friends probably think it's pretty important to the story. In any case, it will be an important source of dice in the game, so it's likely to come up a lot in play.

Power and Value

Each node and edge has a score called power. Calculate power by adding the surges and subtracting the drains. "Religion!!!" has power +3 (3 surges minus 0 drains) but "Religion!!!??" would have power +1 (3 surges minus 2 drains). Power represents a setting element's ability to change or control the rest of the setting. The power of a node (and sometimes an edge) will earn you dice to help you win conflicts.

There's only one other stat in the game, and that's value. Value is the number of surges and drains combined without regard to their sign (+1 or -1). So "Religion!!!" has value 3 and "Religion!!!??!??" has value 8. Value represents how important a setting element is to the players and quantifies its staying power.

As a node's or edge's power goes up, it becomes harder to strengthen. As a node or edge's value goes up, it becomes harder to weaken.

Consider "Religion!!!??!??" (power 0, value 8). While it has been weakened in power to an ineffective state, it is obviously highly contested among the players. That increased attention on the Religion node belies how valuable the node is to the players.

Characters

You'll have a character that (most of the time) you alone control. You'll choose one of the characters that you or someone else created on the network and make it yours by circling it with a colored pen. (Every player needs a pen of a different color, so they can tell whose writing is whose.) That circle means that you control what happens inside (mostly) and reminds you that you can't control what happens outside (mostly).

You always get to make decisions for your character. People can do awful things to your character outside the circle -- kill your friends and allies, get you fired, destroy your ideology, and so on -- but they can't tell you how to think. They can make certain behaviors difficult or impossible, but they can't affect your character's will.

There is no separate character sheet. You don't need one. The character is just a node on the network. You'll definitely be making up all kinds of details about that character, but you won't write them down anywhere unless they're relationships to other nodes on the network.

Game Master

You'll choose one of the players to be the game master. She's usually the player who knows the rules the best.

The game master doesn't get to circle a character as "hers." Instead, she plays all the uncircled characters and represents the interests of the organizations and adversity in the setting. She'll roll dice against the players when the player's characters struggle in conflicts against the unclaimed parts of the setting (that is, any time that there isn't a player to represent a node's interests).

The game master also serves as a sort of cinematic director. She keeps the game's pace interesting. She modifies the network when things get crazy so that the setting makes better sense. She prods the story with interesting conflict when the players don't seem to have a direction of their own.

Being the game master is a lot like being a regular player, but she doesn't get to circle a character and so she doesn't take a personal interest in any specific outcome. Instead, the game master focuses on making the game more interesting for everyone by providing adversity and conflict with an author's or director's eye.

Ownership and Control

A lot of decisions in play will focus on who owns or controls a node.

The owner of a node or edge gets to make decisions about what that network element means and feels and thinks and does. At the start of the game, each player owns her own character and the game master owns everything else on the network. Ownership cannot be traded or given away.

Another important concept is control. The controller of a node or edge can change its power or value, link to it, or destroy it, provided she has enough tokens to pay for the action. If you do not control a node or edge, you cannot do anything to it, no matter how many tokens you have.

Every node and edge has a controller. Each player owns her own character node. The game master controls every other node and edge on the network. Other players can take temporary control over network elements.

Gaining Control

There are three different ways to gain control of a node or edge. See the Run chapter for more detailed rules. If you own a node, you have control until someone else takes control from you, or you give away control. You can borrow control from a friendly player, or you can steal control from an unwilling player. Both borrowing and stealing are temporary.

Ownership

If you own a node, you control it unless someone else takes control of it (see below).

Borrowing Control

You can "lend" control to another player. This is very limited, temporary control, and it can be revoked at any time. If you don't like how the other player is using your node or edge, you can revoke control retroactively. That is, another player can't borrow control from you with a promise of being nice, then do something nasty to that network element.

Players can borrow control to accomplish certain tasks. For example, I might lend you temporary control over my character node so you can add a relationship to it. If you suddenly decide to weaken my character node, I just retroactively revoke control before your weaken action can take place. Then I punch you in the mouth for being a dick.

Stealing Temporary Control

There is a sort of "hostile takeover" mechanism in the game, if you want to do something to a node or edge, and the controller will not allow that action. You must use the conflict resolution system (and dice) to overcome that network element, and then you earn control of the node until your scene ends. Because you have control, this gives you negotiating power to make the owner of the node do things.

For example, if you want to force the janitor at Megacorp to let you into the brainframe vault, you need the owner of the janitor node to role-play doing that. Even controlling the node won't let you make that decision for the janitor. However, controlling the janitor node will let you do all kinds of mean things to the node, like weakening it, ruining the janitor's relationships (like getting him fired, making his daughter hate him), and even killing him. You get to negotiate with the owner of the janitor (let's say it's the game master), and if you control the janitor node, you have a list of mean things you can do to it if the game master doesn't have the janitor do what you want. These agreements are binding.

Game Play

At the highest level, the game has four main phases: compile, load, link, and run. These are described briefly below and are explained in great detail in their own chapters.

The compile phase is about preparation. You call your friends together, ready a place to play, get a big piece of paper and some colored markers, set out a bunch of dice, heat up some burritos, and then discuss the parameters of the game you want to play. Hopefully, you can get through the compile phase in five or ten minutes.

The load phase is about building the setting. You follow a procedure designed to step you through the creation of a network. Players take turns adding setting elements (nodes) and relationships (edges) and their votes for things (with surges). You earn tokens for creating stuff that other people think is cool. It takes four players about an hour to build a network.

The link phase is about picking a character and customizing it a bit. You circle the character you want then add some new edges to make the character more interesting. Four players can choose their characters in about five or ten minutes.

The run phase is about role-playing in the setting you made. You interact with the other players, describing what your character is doing and explaining how you want to change the fictional world. When you describe something that requires a change to the network to make sense, you spend tokens to pay for those changes. Some important rules about control limit what you can change. Whenever you try to control a node or make a change that another player contests, you activate the conflict rules. Those rules use dice to determine who wins.

The game is replayable. You can create a setting and run it over and over if you want. The stories just keep piling up. You can keep your network but repeat the link and run phases, choosing new characters and telling new stories from their perspectives. You can create a new setting every time, if you want, repeating the last three phases or even all four phases.