Verge Recharged

From Verge

Wanna see the real cover?

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

Players invent the setting during play by drawing a network of interconnected ideas, organizations, and people on a big piece of paper. Then they take the role of a 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 greed and other human frailties, ideology, and technology.

Status

As of January 28, 2009, this version of Verge is ready for an in-house playtest. The rules are basic but functionally complete. They still need examples. The game badly needs more play advice for players and especially the game master.

Download

The game is broken into sections (below) for easy online reading and editing. If you prefer a printed copy, go to the Complete Verge page and print it. The web page combines all the chapters into a unified whole and will magically print without all the extra wiki crap.

The old rules are still available, but are sadly out of date.

Playtesting

This is a playtest document. It is not ready for publication and likely contains things that don't work the way I'd like and thus expect the rules to change over time. Additionally, the final text will contain lots of examples and advice sections that don't appear in this, the bare-bones form of the rules.

Verge desperately needs enthusiastic playtesters. Please read the Playtesting page and run a game for your friends then let me know how it went -- either by private email or by posting an actual play report on The Forge or some other place (and email me to let me know you have posted). Your criticism and advice will make Verge better.

Versions

This marks the last major revision in a long line of rewrites. The first version was a more traditional game with a character sheet and a GM. Later versions removed the GM, put the GM back, rewrote the conflict rules, introduced the network (relationship map), got rid of character sheets, took the GM back out, put the GM back in again, and totally rewrote the conflict rules again.

All the versions of Verge share two characteristics:

• Verge is focused on creating post-cyberpunk stories, but can be used for all kinds of settings with a little tweaking.
• Verge uses piles of 6-sided dice in an uncommon way, rolling pools of them and grouping them into matching sets.

All but the oldest versions share these characteristics:

• Verge requires the players to design the setting as a sort of network or relationship map.
• Verge doesn't have character sheets, or even character stats, apart from the character node on the network.

Those four traits are the game's essence.

Read more about older versions.

Rules

Cover 

The cover is not completed but Jake Richmond's art is fantastic!

0 Credits 

Who did what?

1 Materials 

What do you need to play Verge?

2 Overview 

This explains the basic concepts of the game at a high level.

3 Compile 

Gather materials and players, and talk about what you want to do.

4 Load 

Start playing! Build a setting rife with opportunity for conflict.

5 Link 

Choose a character and make her more interesting.

6 Run 

Role-play your character in the setting you created.

7 Tune 

Learn advanced techniques to improve your game.

8 Glossary 

To remember the game's terminology, reference this list of important terms.

9 Ideas 

This List of Distilled Awesome contains ideas for bootstrapping your network.

Here are all the rules on one page.