Verge Run

From Verge

In the Run phase, you get to pull the trigger and see the bullet of your character blast into the network, wreaking havoc with the world. You've built the world, populated it with fascinating people and ideas, and created characters you all care about. Now you get to make stuff happen.

Turns

Play proceeds in circles around the table, starting with the player who drew the last relationship in the Link phase. Each player gets one structured scene during his turn. That scene involves role-playing, focusing the camera, figuring out what the player wants and what is in the way, earning and spending tokens, rolling dice and moving dice around, and adding and changing nodes and edges.

When it is your turn, you are called the focus player. The spotlight is on your character. Other players might have characters who are involved in the scene, or they might be asked to play characters for the game master, but the action focuses on your character's story. Your turn is a "scene," like in a movie. You might cut away to another character's scene before resolving this one, or you might play it out to its conclusion. When to end a scene is up to the game master.

Turns are usually quick! A few minutes should be enough to role-play a bit, figure out what the scene is about, roll dice, and change the network. Everyone should keep play moving quickly and the game master should hurry people along when they're slow.

Each player's turn goes something like this:

1. The player Gets Paid (see below).
2. The player and game master, perhaps with input from other players, discuss where the character's scene will be.
3. The player and game master set the stage for the scene, using "camera" techniques to introduce sensory detail.
4. The player role-plays his character. The game master role-plays all the other characters in the setting, but might hand some off to other helper players.
5. If the scene leads to a conflict, the game master and player resolve the conflict with dice and tokens, then negotiate a resolution. The resolution is recorded on the network.
6. The game master ends the scene and moves on to the next player.

Get Paid

At the beginning of each player's turn, that player and the game master earn three tokens each. These tokens represent story power. They will buy dice and rerolls, and they will purchase consequences for nodes or edges that you control.

Set the Stage

The focus player and GM start by discussing where in the setting to stage the scene. You might say, "I'm going to go to the dojo and confront my sensei about his affair." That establishes a bit about what you want your character to do and where you want the action to occur (a dojo). The dojo is like a sound stage for a movie production.

Be creative when choosing a stage. Evoke the right mood for the scene. Think like a director here. Have your character encounter his nemesis in a dark, dirty alley. Have her learn that thugs are after her when three black sedans try to run her motorcycle off the road on the highway bypass that runs through the city.

The Camera

Do not get so focused on the dice and tokens that you forget the fiction and the role-playing. The game contains a simple gimmick to remind you: the camera. The camera is a metaphor for sensory detail in the fiction. Much of this detail will be visual or sound effects (stuff a real video camera would record), but it can really be anything: how your food tastes, the smell of the burning wires in the brainframe vault, or the soundtrack you imagine playing for your scene. Don't take the camera metaphor too literally.

At the start of every scene, the focus player and the GM need to establish where the character is and what he's doing. Imagine that you're shooting a movie and you're the director. What does the set look like? Where is the camera relative to the action?

Through play, use the techniques you've seen on tv and at the theater. When you want to draw attention to your character's reaction to something his enemy just said, say, "Close-up of my face" and glare at the GM or add, "I am glaring menacingly." Use camera angle, blocking direction, fades and cuts, zoom, and anything else you can think of to make your game more visual.

Getting visual means calling attention to details. More importantly, it forces you to get into the setting. If you are talking about what happens in the game but no one can picture it, you're probably just pushing dice and tokens around and not role-playing. That's like going to a movie where the director tells you about the movie he made, but you don't get to see it. Show me the film already.

Remember that the camera is more than just sight and sound. Be creative. You can talk about the sound effects, tastes or smells, the air temperature, the chill that crawls up a character's spine, and so on. You can get into character's heads and hear their thoughts. You can cut back and forth between two or more different "sets" or characters. Use anything you have at your disposal to describe what is going on in a way that excites you and your friends. You might want to describe the framing of a scene using descriptions of how it'd look in a graphic novel, for example.

Role-Play

This word is a catch-all for the real meat of play. This is why you're here: to get into the fiction, explore a cyberpunk setting and get into your character, and tell a story with some friends. Always role-play before reaching for the dice and before engaging the resolution mechanics.

The Fiction Always Wins

There is a guiding rule for all of play: The fiction always wins.

"The fiction" is short-hand for the story you're telling and all the details you've discussed. It includes the setting and the characters, and everything in the setting. It includes the events that have unfolded during play (and play includes the compile, load, link, and run phases). If, during the compile phase, you agreed that this would be a gritty, serious far-future world set on a starship, then that's part of the fiction.

This means that the elements of the fiction have to make sense. Verge has all these rules for rolling dice, changing the network, and negotiating outcomes, but all of that stuff must make sense in the fiction. It doesn't matter if you have enough tokens to destroy the Megasoft node if you can't explain how your character did it. Further, it has to make sense to everyone else, not just you.

Everything you do must have a corresponding part in the fiction. If you earn dice, explain how that happens in the fiction. When you roll dice, describe what your character is doing. When you earn a reroll by burning a friend, explain how this pisses them off. Even if you just want to give five of your tokens to another player, play out a short scene where you show how you're helping her character.

Further, everything you do has to consider the fiction you have created so far. Most of what you'll do when playing Verge won't be recorded on paper anywhere! You'll be adding all this colorful detail about people and places and it'll only be in your heads. That doesn't mean it isn't important. In fact, it's more important than the network. Yes, you want to reconcile the fiction and the network as much as possible, but when in doubt, the fiction wins.

Norms for Role-Playing

Role-playing doesn't necessarily mean character acting or talking in funny voices. Each play group should figure out what they expect, but it's generally something everyone can work out during play.

Some people like to get deep into their characters and do the my-character-says-what-I-say thing ("I talk to the drug dealer down the street. [In a nasal voice] 'Hola. My name is Knight. What can you tell me about that one?' I point to the girl in the nylon skirt.").

Some talk about their characters in the first person but describe what they're doing and saying without exactly acting it ("I talk to the drug dealer down the street, explaining how I need information on the girl in the nylon skirt.").

Other players prefer to treat characters like an author might, talking about them in the third person ("Knight goes to the drug dealer and gets him to tell her about the girl in the nylon skirt.").

As long as everyone is having fun, it shouldn't matter how each player role-plays, but some groups might want to set standards on how they approach role-playing.

Help for the Game Master

The game master should ask players (especially those who are not already involved in the scene) to play some of the extra characters in scenes. They get a lot of leeway about how to role-play these parts, but the game master should give them guidance -- and has the authority to restrict how the player plays the setting character, which is owned by the game master, after all. (The game master should never tell a player how to play her own character, though.)

Sometimes the game master might make up an "extra" that isn't even on the network. A bank teller or security guard or something. This character, while unimportant to the overall story, will make the scene flow better. The game master can dole out these roles to other players.

Declare a Scene Goal

During the role-playing on your turn, you will get to a point where you have a clear idea about how what you're role-playing affects the world. This is your scene goal. You don't have to declare your scene goal before you start your scene. You can, if you want, but it often evolves from your role-play.

You state your scene goal in terms of the setting, not the network and the rules. The GM translates that to changes to the network. If the GM cannot figure out how it affects the network, then your scene goal is too small or too big. For example, you might say, "Mara wants to run over the goon with her motorbike." The GM looks at the network and can't tell how that changes the network, so she asks you to make the goal bigger. "What do you really want?" she asks. You think. Really, you want to escape from the goons. "Bigger," the GM says. You think more. The goons are just a tool that the Puppet Master is using to capture you. You want to kill the Puppet Master. The game master shakes her head, "Too big right now." Hrm. "I want to hurt the goons so bad that they fear me." The game master likes that: "Now that's a great goal!" That sounds like weakening the Goons node.

The GM should keep an eye on game pace and watch the role-playing for signs of a scene goal. Once it becomes obvious that the role-play is about to step over something that needs to be resolved by the game system, the GM should suggest a scene goal (e.g., "Are you trying to weaken the Megasoft node then?" or "You'll need control over the Megasoft node to make them lose this public relations battle with your pirate VR news team"). Once the focus player and GM agree on the goal, role-play can proceed for a little longer, to establish how the player wants to achieve the scene goal. But the GM gets control over pacing here. The GM can say, "Okay, bring in some dice and let's see what happens" or whatever and force the system into play.

Scene goals break down to one or more of the network changes in the next section (Changing the Network). If you control all the nodes and edges that you want to change, then you can pay the price in tokens and role-play how you do it. If the controller of a node or edge that you want to change lends you permission, then you can do it, too: pay and role-play.

As soon as you want to change the network and you don't have permission or control to do it, it's a conflict and the dice get involved. If you win the conflict, then you steal temporary control over a single node or edge and then you can spend tokens to change it.

You can accomplish any number of those scene goals in a scene, if you have permission. You can make only one forced network change when you win. That is, in a single scene, you can steal control of only one node or edge and force only one consequence on that network element.

You activate nodes to get dice, buy dice, roll the dice, buy more dice, buy rerolls, and take turns narrating what is going on in the story. Role-play a little for each thing you do so everyone understands what that little use of game system represents. For example, when you spend a token to activate your character's souped-up cyberdeck, talk about how you use it to hack into your enemy's systems.

Finally, the dice will have spoken and you will know if you succeed or fail. The winners will force network changes on the losers, or negotiate alternative consequences. Play out enough of the scene to see how it resolves.

Changing the Network

Note: Need a detailed section that talks about translating the fiction to network changes with many examples.

The network consists of nodes and edges between them, plus control markers. Some nodes are controlled by you, some controlled by other sympathetic players, and some controlled by other antagonistic players. Note that the GM can be a sympathetic or antagonistic player, depending on what you're doing. Maybe she's on your character's side because it's a cool story. Maybe the story is cooler if she marshals her forces to oppose you.

There are only a few ways you can change the network in play.

Create a new node and link it with a new edge. The new node comes into play controlled by the game master. The power of the node and edge are both 1 (put a ! after the name of each). To link your new node to an existing node, you need permission from the existing node's controller. If you control it, hey, you're good to go. When you create a new node, this can mean different things. In the simplest case, it means that the thing you added was always there, but now it is important to the story. You can also play that someone created or invented it, too, if that makes sense. It's up to the node's creator. Cost: 2 tokens.

Add a new edge between two existing nodes. Draw and name a new edge. The edge has power 1. You need permission from the controllers of both nodes you are connecting. A new edge can imply a relationship that was just created, or the new revelation of a relationship that has existed for some time. This is up to the edge's creator. Cost: 1 token.

Strengthen a node or edge by X. You need permission for the node's or edge's controller. Add a number of surges to it equal to X. When a network elements gets stronger, this means that the element has grown stronger in the fiction, too. Explain how. This may be as a result of something your character did, or something that just happened. Cost: 1 token per point of power in the node or edge plus X tokens.

Example: You want to strengthen the node "Megasoft!!!?!" (power 3) by 2. That costs 5 tokens (power 3 + 2 surges). You change it to "Megasoft!!!?!!!" (power 5).

Weaken a node or edge by X. You need permission for the node's or edge's controller. Add a number of drains to it equal to X. This decreases its power and increases its value. Note that the cost makes it harder and harder to weaken nodes over time. Explain how the node or edge got weaker in the fiction. Cost: 1 token per point of value in the node or edge + X tokens.

Example: You want to weaken the node "Megasoft!!!?!" (value 5) by 2. That costs 7 tokens (value 5 + 2 drains). You change it to "Megasoft!!!?!??" (power 1).

Destroy a node. This is the ultimate punishment. Draw an X through the entire node and each of its outgoing relationships. They are "dead." Interpret this however you like, but the node has become an ineffective agent in the story. It doesn't erase it from the fiction like the veto did in the load phase; whatever the node represents is still in the story, but it changes in the story so that it can no longer affect the rest of the world. For example, if you destroy the node representing Megasoft, that doesn't erase Megasoft from the history of the world, but perhaps the company goes bankrupt and closes down. Cost: The value of the node plus the power of all of its edges.

Example: You want to destroy the node "Megasoft!!!?!" (value 5) that has two edges: "builds!!" (Megasoft builds Brainframes) and "leads!?!" (Suri Branst leads Megasoft). That costs 8 tokens (value 5 + power 2 + power 1). You cross out Megasoft with an X.

You cannot destroy a relationship, only weaken it to 0. Someone can still strengthen it after that.

Note that once you win a conflict, you gain temporary and limited control over a node you don't normally control. This lets you spend tokens to affect that node and its edges as described in the Effects section.

Resolution

This section covers the rules for using dice to resolve scene goals. This is the most complicated part of the rules and you might need to read it a few times and even play it a bit before it all sinks in.

Signal and Noise, Strength and Frequency (Dice)

The essence of the resolution rules are rolling giant handfuls of dice and looking for a number with the most matches. The more matches, the better. If you roll eight dice and get 11222346, you have three 2's, so that's the only part of your roll you care about. The part you care about (222) is called the signal. The part you don't care about (11346) is called the noise.

The number of dice in the signal is called the strength. Remember, higher signal strength means a better chance to succeed at scene goals. The face value of the matching dice in the signal is called the frequency. Frequency is used to determine who gets to describe what happens after a roll. If you rolled 11222346, then the signal has strength 3 and frequency 2.

Confused by all these weird terms? Think about having six radio transmitters. If you can get them all on the same frequency, the signal will be really strong.

You don't always have to choose the highest strength frequency for your signal. You might opt to choose a higher frequency with a lower strength so that you get to say what happens, even if it means you fail at your goal. In this case, you want the power to narrate how you fail.

Earning Dice

You get to roll giant handfuls of dice. How many dice?

Players and the game master earn dice by "activating" nodes. Each node activated by a player contributes its power in dice. Each node activated by the GM contributes its value in dice. That which does not kill a GM-controlled node only makes it stronger. Beware.

For free, each player gets to activate his character node. The GM designates a defender node that makes sense in the story as a defender against the player's action. It must be a node that is opposing the character's actions.

Activating additional nodes costs tokens. The first helper node costs 1 token. The second costs 2 more. The third, 3 more, and so on. A player or the game master can activate only nodes that are adjacent (connected) to the nodes they've already activated, or nodes over which they have control (and are marked as such). This goes in "turn order" starting with the current scene's player. Once a node is activated, no one else can activate it.

A "friendly" node is more useful than a "hostile" node. Activating a friendly node earns additional dice equal to the power of the edge between them, if there is one. A friendly edge is one that describes a relationship that benefits the node gaining the dice (the player's character node or the game master's defender node). So if your ex-wife hates you and has a relationship that says so, then you can't get her edge dice. If she still loves you, or if her edge implies she would help you out, then you do get edge dice for her, equal to the edge's power. You can generally tell how another person feels about your character by reading the relationship. If it's "hates" or "blackmails," they obviously won't be a willing ally. You'll have to force them somehow. If it's "loves" or "protects," they'll probably help you even if it means a great risk to themselves.

Every time you activate a node that isn't friendly, add a drain (?) to its edge that connects it to you (if there is one). This means it's getting even more unfriendly.

Additionally, the game master can gain dice by activating "attacker" nodes adjacent (connected) to a player's activated helper nodes, if those attacker nodes have unfriendly relationships to the activated node. For example, since you were such a dick to your ex-wife, she hates you. And now the GM gets dice for her edge to you (equal to the edge's power).

Sometimes an adjacent (connected) node has both a friendly edge and a hostile edge! Perhaps more than two edges with different qualities. In these cases, you can choose which edge want to use, as long as you can explain it in the fiction.

Roll the Dice!

Okay, everyone involved has dice. Make sure everyone has all the dice they deserve, then make a final call. This is the last chance to add dice, except by spending tokens. Then ask for a roll. Roll the handful of dice and determine your signal strength.

Compare your signal strength to the game master's. The highest strength (best match) is winning the conflict (in the story, too). Whoever has the highest frequency gets to narrate what is happening so far. Sometimes you care more about narrating than winning! That's fine.

When you narrate, you can't violate the rules of the world you've created. You can't describe things that don't make sense. You can, however, freely make up bit characters and situations and convenient buildings and other "color" to fill in the world for your scene. Of course, you can't narrate that you're winning if you're not, or vice versa. You have to obey the dice.

Amplification (Reroll)

By "burning" a relationship, a player can pick up all of his noise dice and reroll them. This process is called amplification, because it increases the strength of your signal. Amplification lets you add all the dice that match your signal's frequency to the signal, strengthening it.

Burning a relationship requires that you say how you're using and abusing one of your friends and add a drain to the relationship connecting your character and that node. The friend must actually be a friendly node, as described above. You can't burn people who already hate you. The game master cannot burn relationships for rerolls, but may buy a reroll for 1 token.

The story about how you use the relationship for the reroll has to explain how you abuse the nature of that relationship. It's never a friendly thing. It always weakens that relationship. You're burning them to get ahead.

For example, say you originally rolled ten dice and got 6544433221. Looks like your signal is 444 (strength 3, frequency 4) and your noise is (6533221). You pick one of your friendly relationships -- say, your ex-husband, who has a "loves!" relationship to you -- and add a surge to it (it becomes "loves!?"). You explain how you're threatening his child visitation rights to get you a security card for the Megasoft office. Then you pick up the noise and reroll (you keep the 444 signal dice to the side). Let's say your new roll is 6554442. That's three more 4's for your signal, which is now 444444 (strength 6, frequency 4) and your noise dice are 6552. You could burn another relationship (but not the ex-husband again, because he's no longer friendly), explain how that node helps, and reroll those four noise dice again and see if they help.

Take turns amplifying. Don't do it twice in a row if someone else wants to do it. Give everyone else involved a chance to amplify before you do it again. This can lead to a dramatic back-and-forth trading of the winning position. However, there's no limit other than your tokens to how many times you can amplify your signal. If you have the tokens, go ahead and burn or spend, explain, and reroll.

Effects

When no one wants to amplify any more, the game master can call the dice rolling to a close. Then the players determine effects.

First, get the noise dice out of play. They'll just confuse things.

Second, who won the conflict? Whoever has the signal with the greatest strength wins. This person has a lot of control over what happens next. Often there are only two people (a player and the game master) involved in a conflict, but occasionally more than one player gets involved. In this case, they apply effects in order of signal strength (highest to lowest). Break ties using the signal's frequency. Break further ties with a die roll.

When it's your turn to negotiate effects, pick a target. That target must be owned by a player or game master with a lower signal strength than you.

Also, that target must make sense as something you attacked during your turn and something that could change in the story, based on what you just role-played. You can't team up with Joe's character, act all friendly, win the conflict with the best dice, then surprise Joe with a nasty effect. It doesn't work that way. Of course, if you role-play your obvious deception during the conflict (but before there is a clear winner), then you're free to treat Joe's character node or his helper nodes as your target.

The target node is under the winner's control until the turn ends. This is a limited kind of control and there are only a few effects the winner can inflict. You still have to pay the token cost for these effects. If the effect destroys a node or weakens a node or edge, the tokens get paid to the loser, not back to the bank. Intentionally losing conflicts is a great way to earn tokens for later scenes! Choose only one of the following:

• The winner can weaken the node with one drain for free. The node's owner earns a token from the bank, in this case.
• The winner can add connections to the node as if she controls it.
• The winner can further weaken or strengthen the node as if she controls it.
• The winner can weaken or strengthen the node's outbound edges (those with the arrow pointing away from the node) as if she controls them.
• The winner can destroy the node as if she controls it.

Often, the winner doesn't do any of those things. Instead, the winner can bargain with the loser. This is a player-to-player (or player-to-game-master) bargain about the story, not a character-to-character negotiation. It should be quick and snappy, and if the loser balks, the winner can always apply one of the mechanical punishments listed above. For example, the winner might say, "Okay, how about you agree that the Black Ops Team is so afraid of me that they stop attacking me, for the rest of the game; otherwise, I'm going to weaken the Black Ops Team node by 5, and I have the tokens to do it." The GM accepts the deal.

Bargains can include exchange of tokens as bribes, too. If you don't have enough tokens to buy one of the effects, you have very little negotiating power, but you can always choose the 'weaken with one surge for free' option (the first effect in the list, above).

Once the winner has negotiated effects, the next highest signal strength goes. They can target anyone with a lower signal strength than theirs, even if that player has already had a node targeted. Continue till everyone involved in the conflict takes a turn. Of course, the participant with the lowest strength won't get to control anyone.

At the very end, whoever has the highest frequency narrates all the outcomes of the scene.