[Verge] From God Game to the Street

[adamdray]

So, I mentioned that Verge has this major problem concerning being too much like a god game, viewed from heaven looking down at people and corporations and nanotech laserbots and religions and other ideas. The players have this tendency to push them around like pawns. In a way, that's cool, because it gets people to treat major religions with the

Comments

[greyorm]

Honestly, Adam, that sounds totally cool.

I've liked the idea of using dice as play-aids -- beyond their obvious use as randomizers -- ever since Forge Midwest. There's just something about pushing one's dice around on the table as a signal to the other players about some play event, or as analogues to something else.

In fact, in my games with the kids recently, I've used dice as minis and for equipment (ie: they would get a d4 for their dagger, a d6 for their sword, etc). It added something visceral and tactile to the experience.

[adamdray]

Yeah, I avidly followed your Actual Play threads about those games. Very cool.

[pjack]

Brain strike! What you just wrote blends in fun ways with what I just read, over here. My good friend cmdr_zoom writes,

"In the future, all reality will be scripted, because we'll all be on camera all the time. Anyone, anywhere, if they care, will be able to find out where we live, what we eat, what we buy, what we have on our computers, and when was the last time we had sex - with ourselves or anyone else.

Welcome to the post-privacy, post-celebrity, post-post-post-modern world."

I love the third-person camera scene-framing idea. It's got "legs". The color-per-die idea seems unwieldy, to me. Perhaps there could be a single bonus die on the table, that anyone can use if they add some color to the SIS?

[adamdray]

I'm gonna have to playtest it to see what happens. I'm thinking, if you only come up with 8 pieces of color for your scene, you only get 8 of the 10 potential dice. Life goes on. ;)

If it doesn't work (too unwieldy or whatever), then I'll scrap it and look for some kind of bonus-die reward system.

[littlestkobold]

I love the idea of the cctv scene framing idea. It fits perfectly and will set the colour really well, as well as thematically connecting the top down and in character approaches.

Oh, and I'm totally "borrowing" it for Yesterday's Tomorrow, when I get round to writing it!

[adamdray]

Please do borrow! I love to see my ideas help other people. We want more awesome games!

[drivingblind]

I seem to recall some bit of a motif like this in the first Matrix film? Where you seemed to be seeing a video image of something, and then you moved into the image? I definitely think that video's how to *frame* it, but transitioning into actually *taking action* in the scene is when you step through the camera.

[adamdray]

If it's in The Matrix, then I'm sure it was bouncing around my subconscious waiting for a reason to come out. I like that the cctv gives players a very limited way to frame things, in that you must describe the present and the physical. It simplifies through constraint and forces the player into a detail-oriented mode that megafies the color.

[ex_gobi]

You're thinking of the sequence that frames the interrogation scene where Anderson first gets arrested by the agents. You see a wall of CCTV screens all showing him sitting at a non-descript desk in an anonymous white room. The camera zooms in one screen and then the scene proceeds from there.

There is also the bit in one of the sequels where Neo is talking to the Architect. A thoroughly crappy scene in a very crappy movie, but as Neo talks to the old guy, there is a wall of screens that reveal hidden facets of Neo's personality.

This is a very, very cool idea. I'm not certain it solves the god problem entirely, but it's colorful as all hell. It also brings to mind the first sentence from Neuromancer:

The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel.

To make it very punky, I could see some kind of mechanic where the players are trying to "cut the feed" on one screen at a time.

[bluekitsune]

I think I'm being dense -- I don't really understand how that helps get people out of a bird's-eye view?

[adamdray]

It takes the entirety of the network map and forces the player to narrate something concrete in the fiction: a place, with some characters, and they're doing something. The imaginary lens of the camera forces the player to limit the scope of the scene: it's some people, not a nation; it's an everyday place, not a concept