[Verge] Reward System -- Dignities
The biggest problem Verge has is that it's a collection of tools for play without a reward system that drives its Creative Agenda. It's sorta treading water where it ought to be swimming powerfully up waterfalls to spawn. I first identified this during a discussion that I talked about here.
To get to the point where I could have a Creative Agenda, I needed to know what the game was about. I thought I knew, but I didn't. The problem was that I was saying Verge was about "role-playing on the edge" or "technology coming together in weird ways and affecting people," but none of that had the teeth that I needed to move on. drivingblind helped me find it in my Human without borders post. I asked, "How do I twist that essential moral question together with issues of human mortality and frailty in the face of technological divinity, human rights, and the threat of destruction at the hands of our own machines?" and Fred gave me a shove.
Verge is about human rights and dignity, about fidelity to the things that make us human. Verge is about all the technological advances and philosophical webs we create and how they affect people. Can humanity face technology and ideology and not be changed into some unrecognizeable a thing? Is it a bad thing if it does change?
I will wrap the idea of dignities into the rules. Dignities will be network nodes like anything else. They include things we traditionally consider human rights as well as less traditional and more speculative aspects of humanity: cybernetic or genetic alteration, drug enhancement, life after death, and so on. Each character will tie to one or more dignities.
Most important, the reward system will tie strongly to dignities. I don't know how to do this yet but I suspect the ability to spend tokens to strengthen or weaken dignities (and thus make them more or less important to the story) and to make dignities impact your story and other stories is the main reward.
To get to the point where I could have a Creative Agenda, I needed to know what the game was about. I thought I knew, but I didn't. The problem was that I was saying Verge was about "role-playing on the edge" or "technology coming together in weird ways and affecting people," but none of that had the teeth that I needed to move on. drivingblind helped me find it in my Human without borders post. I asked, "How do I twist that essential moral question together with issues of human mortality and frailty in the face of technological divinity, human rights, and the threat of destruction at the hands of our own machines?" and Fred gave me a shove.
Verge is about human rights and dignity, about fidelity to the things that make us human. Verge is about all the technological advances and philosophical webs we create and how they affect people. Can humanity face technology and ideology and not be changed into some unrecognizeable a thing? Is it a bad thing if it does change?
I will wrap the idea of dignities into the rules. Dignities will be network nodes like anything else. They include things we traditionally consider human rights as well as less traditional and more speculative aspects of humanity: cybernetic or genetic alteration, drug enhancement, life after death, and so on. Each character will tie to one or more dignities.
Most important, the reward system will tie strongly to dignities. I don't know how to do this yet but I suspect the ability to spend tokens to strengthen or weaken dignities (and thus make them more or less important to the story) and to make dignities impact your story and other stories is the main reward.