[Verge] Playtest at AdamCon
So, I had the opportunity to run Verge at AdamCon this Saturday. It went really well though the game isn't without its problems. I got some great advice from Fred Hicks (drivingblind). This is a quick update for now. I'll add a lot more once I have time to mull over my notes.
Players
I sat out this time so I could explain the rules and watch everyone else play. Fred, the Jons (jeisen and jon_ezra), Anik (nyqos), and Janet (janetraeness) played. Fred has read a bit about my trials and tribulations here but never played Verge before. The Jons both have played a few times; Jon "the Elder" Eisenstein was at the Dreamation session where we gutted Verge and redesigned it, so he was familiar with that train of thought, if not the specific changes I'd made as a result.
Setting Creation
These rules are working well. I've figured out how much to let players create without the network getting too busy, yet giving them enough to play with. We played out five phases:
During each phase, each player added the element, connected it to another element (except in the first phase), connected any two elements with another relationship, and spent 4 points on ratifying or vetoing things (1 point for a ! and 2 points for an X).
Fred started with a "Soul Splicing" node and others followed with things like "Monarchy" and "Altruism." Soul Splicing became the focus for the rest of the game. It's pretty clear from play and discussion afterwards that to ensure this is a cyberpunk game, I need to put a little more constraint (or incentive) into the first phase to make sure there is at least one, maybe two, technologies. I personally like the combination of a couple technologies and a couple ideologies. I'll either require players to create at least two of each, or incentivize them with free tokens or something.
The people the group created were fascinating. I think it was Fred who first wrote "King Arthur." "Jesus Christ," "Julius Caesar," and "George Washington"(murdered) followed. These were essentially the souls of the famous people, spliced into living people. So our King Arthur was the leader of some soul splicing cult but he was reincarnated into the body of some pot-smoking street guy (those last details emerged during play).
We finished up creating the network and everyone felt it was a lot of fun getting there and the network they created should be fun to play.
There was only one X (veto) thrown down, and that was by Anik in the first round. He seemed to be interpreting the X differently than I intended. He put an X on some node ("Republic"?) that he felt opposed a node he wrote ("Altruism"). Anik, I think, felt that he was trying to X out opposition to "his" creations to position himself. I explained that it could be fun to strengthen enemies so you'd have a good, strong enemy in the game, that X's are used to take things entirely out of the game, and he didn't use another veto after that.
The last step was to count up the !'s that each player earned on the things they created minus the number of X's on things they created, and take that many tokens. Fred raked in like 27 tokens, far more than anyone else. I think a few players got 10-20.
Playing It
Here's where things got sticky.
I explained the dice rules and the basics of my very "alpha" rules for taking control of nodes on the network. Essentially, players earn dice from the power of their characters (the character's !'s minus their X's, plus one), so "King Arthur!!!!" gets 5 dice a round but "Julius Caesar" (with no !'s) gets 1 die a round. The +1 was hard to remember. I will change the setting creation rules so that when you write down an element, you just put a ! after it, guaranteeing every element has at least one point to start without a special +1 rule.
Fred and Jon the Elder started a scene where their characters (Julius Caesar and Jesus Christ, respectively) were sitting on a beach with drinks talking when King Arthur calls Jesus' cell phone. Jesus asks for a status report on the organization that is doing all the soul splicing stuff, since Arthur is ostensibly in charge. It's pretty hilarious and surreal but totally the kind of thing I can imagine in a cyberpunk book. This is good.
There's some obvious confusion though, of the "now what do we do?" kind. I knew this would happen because I hadn't solved that problem despite mulling it over for a week. Basically, there's this huge graph of relationships with potential conflict in it, yet players don't know where to start. Partly, I think things are still too abstract. The character is just this node with some relationships to other nodes, not a person with goals and desires. The setup procedure needs to address that and make sure players define goals for themselves or for each other.
The new rules for controlling nodes worked well. You need to control a node before you can weaken or strengthen or connect to it. To control a node, you have to have as many matching dice on it as its power plus any other opposing player's dice there. You can attempt to control a node only if you control all the nodes in a path from it to your character. Each turn, you start with as many dice as your character's power. You get some additional dice equal to the power of the last relationship between your last controlled node and the node you're attacking. You roll the dice, choose some matching dice, and place them on the node.
Basically, the network drives play. Your first scenes necessarily will be taking control of at least one node adjacent to you, then you expand outward. "Control" means whatever the players agree it means for each node.
The problem is summed up as, "Why does this character want to control the adjacent nodes?" Sure, a player can make up a reason but it makes play more difficult. Here's what I'm thinking the fix is: During setup, move the "add another person" phase to the very end. The person you add is your character (circle it). Now create two relationships from your character to two other nodes that more or less define what your character is up to. I think one must be a relationship that represents an ally, and the other must represent an enemy. Fred suggested that the person on your left creates the friend and the person on your right creates the enemy. I think that has lots of possibility for surprise factor but might scuttle the "buy-in" factor that makes the game work. I may also have the player draw in a relationship describing his initial goal. That's sort of a kicker, most likely with all the same requirements.
There's a question about refreshing one's tokens. You can spend tokens 1:1 to get more dice. You also spend them to change the network. But how do you earn new ones? This smells suspiciously like a reward system and I don't really have one right now. One way to refresh tokens is just to let players pull dice off nodes and cash them in for tokens 1:1. It's boring but it might work. It just doesn't really reward anything interesting. Worse, it might be rewarding the wrong thing (pulling dice off the network or doing nothing for one turn) -- ack, that could slow down play. So I need to develop that more.
Other Ideas
I talked to Fred a bit after the game and he gave me some generally useful advice that I want to share. When you roll dice, you have two piles: dice you're matching and placing onto nodes to control them and dice you're holding back in your pool (not on any node). Fred said that he likes every bit of the system to do something interesting. He pointed out that the dice sitting in the pool weren't doing anything mechanically and that they could represent something, thus forcing the player to make some strategic decisions about their play. If the number of pool dice represented, say, one's initiative score, then holding a large pool would let you go first in a round (every player gets one scene per round). There'd be a trade-off between dedicating dice to the network and holding them back in your pool for initiative. It might not be initiative, but I want to do something interesting with those pool dice.
I'll post more once I read my notes again.
Players
I sat out this time so I could explain the rules and watch everyone else play. Fred, the Jons (jeisen and jon_ezra), Anik (nyqos), and Janet (janetraeness) played. Fred has read a bit about my trials and tribulations here but never played Verge before. The Jons both have played a few times; Jon "the Elder" Eisenstein was at the Dreamation session where we gutted Verge and redesigned it, so he was familiar with that train of thought, if not the specific changes I'd made as a result.
Setting Creation
These rules are working well. I've figured out how much to let players create without the network getting too busy, yet giving them enough to play with. We played out five phases:
- Add an idea or technology.
- Add an organization.
- Add a person.
- Add another person. Choose a person as your character.
- Add another node of any kind to tie things up.
During each phase, each player added the element, connected it to another element (except in the first phase), connected any two elements with another relationship, and spent 4 points on ratifying or vetoing things (1 point for a ! and 2 points for an X).
Fred started with a "Soul Splicing" node and others followed with things like "Monarchy" and "Altruism." Soul Splicing became the focus for the rest of the game. It's pretty clear from play and discussion afterwards that to ensure this is a cyberpunk game, I need to put a little more constraint (or incentive) into the first phase to make sure there is at least one, maybe two, technologies. I personally like the combination of a couple technologies and a couple ideologies. I'll either require players to create at least two of each, or incentivize them with free tokens or something.
The people the group created were fascinating. I think it was Fred who first wrote "King Arthur." "Jesus Christ," "Julius Caesar," and "George Washington"(murdered) followed. These were essentially the souls of the famous people, spliced into living people. So our King Arthur was the leader of some soul splicing cult but he was reincarnated into the body of some pot-smoking street guy (those last details emerged during play).
We finished up creating the network and everyone felt it was a lot of fun getting there and the network they created should be fun to play.
There was only one X (veto) thrown down, and that was by Anik in the first round. He seemed to be interpreting the X differently than I intended. He put an X on some node ("Republic"?) that he felt opposed a node he wrote ("Altruism"). Anik, I think, felt that he was trying to X out opposition to "his" creations to position himself. I explained that it could be fun to strengthen enemies so you'd have a good, strong enemy in the game, that X's are used to take things entirely out of the game, and he didn't use another veto after that.
The last step was to count up the !'s that each player earned on the things they created minus the number of X's on things they created, and take that many tokens. Fred raked in like 27 tokens, far more than anyone else. I think a few players got 10-20.
Playing It
Here's where things got sticky.
I explained the dice rules and the basics of my very "alpha" rules for taking control of nodes on the network. Essentially, players earn dice from the power of their characters (the character's !'s minus their X's, plus one), so "King Arthur!!!!" gets 5 dice a round but "Julius Caesar" (with no !'s) gets 1 die a round. The +1 was hard to remember. I will change the setting creation rules so that when you write down an element, you just put a ! after it, guaranteeing every element has at least one point to start without a special +1 rule.
Fred and Jon the Elder started a scene where their characters (Julius Caesar and Jesus Christ, respectively) were sitting on a beach with drinks talking when King Arthur calls Jesus' cell phone. Jesus asks for a status report on the organization that is doing all the soul splicing stuff, since Arthur is ostensibly in charge. It's pretty hilarious and surreal but totally the kind of thing I can imagine in a cyberpunk book. This is good.
There's some obvious confusion though, of the "now what do we do?" kind. I knew this would happen because I hadn't solved that problem despite mulling it over for a week. Basically, there's this huge graph of relationships with potential conflict in it, yet players don't know where to start. Partly, I think things are still too abstract. The character is just this node with some relationships to other nodes, not a person with goals and desires. The setup procedure needs to address that and make sure players define goals for themselves or for each other.
The new rules for controlling nodes worked well. You need to control a node before you can weaken or strengthen or connect to it. To control a node, you have to have as many matching dice on it as its power plus any other opposing player's dice there. You can attempt to control a node only if you control all the nodes in a path from it to your character. Each turn, you start with as many dice as your character's power. You get some additional dice equal to the power of the last relationship between your last controlled node and the node you're attacking. You roll the dice, choose some matching dice, and place them on the node.
Basically, the network drives play. Your first scenes necessarily will be taking control of at least one node adjacent to you, then you expand outward. "Control" means whatever the players agree it means for each node.
The problem is summed up as, "Why does this character want to control the adjacent nodes?" Sure, a player can make up a reason but it makes play more difficult. Here's what I'm thinking the fix is: During setup, move the "add another person" phase to the very end. The person you add is your character (circle it). Now create two relationships from your character to two other nodes that more or less define what your character is up to. I think one must be a relationship that represents an ally, and the other must represent an enemy. Fred suggested that the person on your left creates the friend and the person on your right creates the enemy. I think that has lots of possibility for surprise factor but might scuttle the "buy-in" factor that makes the game work. I may also have the player draw in a relationship describing his initial goal. That's sort of a kicker, most likely with all the same requirements.
There's a question about refreshing one's tokens. You can spend tokens 1:1 to get more dice. You also spend them to change the network. But how do you earn new ones? This smells suspiciously like a reward system and I don't really have one right now. One way to refresh tokens is just to let players pull dice off nodes and cash them in for tokens 1:1. It's boring but it might work. It just doesn't really reward anything interesting. Worse, it might be rewarding the wrong thing (pulling dice off the network or doing nothing for one turn) -- ack, that could slow down play. So I need to develop that more.
Other Ideas
I talked to Fred a bit after the game and he gave me some generally useful advice that I want to share. When you roll dice, you have two piles: dice you're matching and placing onto nodes to control them and dice you're holding back in your pool (not on any node). Fred said that he likes every bit of the system to do something interesting. He pointed out that the dice sitting in the pool weren't doing anything mechanically and that they could represent something, thus forcing the player to make some strategic decisions about their play. If the number of pool dice represented, say, one's initiative score, then holding a large pool would let you go first in a round (every player gets one scene per round). There'd be a trade-off between dedicating dice to the network and holding them back in your pool for initiative. It might not be initiative, but I want to do something interesting with those pool dice.
I'll post more once I read my notes again.