Building your game

You can use the following as a template for your own VRBS game or you can simply use it for inspiration. It contains the full text needed to run a game written in a genre-neutral style along with placeholders for you to fill in your own content.

To play this game, you’ll need the following in either analogue or digital form:

An active imagination, a desire to be creative, and a place where you can focus.
Some scratch paper and copies of the character sheet at the end of this book.
One six-sided die (abbreviated D6).

Your character

Each person in your group should do the following to create their character:

Pick your name, pronouns, and physical description.
Pick three verbs from the suggested list and add them to your character sheet with one tally mark per verb. These are the things that you’re good at doing.

Suggested verbs

Supply two to three dozen verbs that represent the sorts of things that heroes in your game normally do.

Your mission

Feel free to change the keyword “mission” to “quest,” “adventure,” “episode,” or whatever fits the genre and style of your game.

Each day, you and your fellow team members embark on a heroic mission. Choose or roll 1d6 four times to determine your mission.

Now create a mission prompt that fits your game. A sample prompt is below. Try to answer the questions WHO, WHAT, and WHY.

A villain, THE ANTAGONIST, hatches a plan to ACTION the OBJECT in order to MOTIVE.

For each placeholder in the preceding prompt, supply a table for the players to roll on. Since VRBS only requires a single d6, give six options for each.

Your story

Your team starts each mission with a pool of energy that contains as many points as you collectively have verbs on your character sheets. Choose or roll 1d6 three times to set the scene.

As with the mission, each scene is generated by filling in placeholder words in a prompt. Here, you’ll need to answer WHAT the characters are trying to accomplish, WHERE they are trying to accomplish it, and HOW they are constrained in their efforts.

Your character has to WHAT in a WHERE, but you have to make sure you do it HOW.

As with the mission prompt, you’ll need to supply six options for each of the placeholders in the scene prompt.

Take turns describing your actions. Each time you try something interesting, roll 1d6. You can try any action, but if you have the verb for your action on your character sheet, add its tally marks to your roll.

Roll	Result	Consequence
1-4	Failure	You get what you want, but something unexpected happens and you lose one energy.
5-6	Success	You get what you want.
7+	Big success	You get what you want and add one energy.

If you fail, add a tally next to the verb that you used, to a maximum of 3. If you try something that’s not on your character sheet, don’t add anything to your roll, but if you fail, add the verb to your list with one tally.

The result of your die roll determines what happens. Narrate your suave success or your disastrous failure. If you fail, your team loses one point of energy, but if you get a big success, then you add one point. You can have more energy than you started with.

Once you feel that your team has made satisfying progress and each member of your team has had a chance to roll the dice at least once, you may draw the scene to a close. Choose or roll your next scene. You can even create your own scene if you have a good feel for where the story is headed next.

Repeat this process until you’ve played through three scenes, plus one scene for each member of your group. The final scene will always be the climax of your story. If you make it through the end of the final scene before your team runs out of energy, then you win!

If your team runs out of energy before reaching the end, though, then your mission is over. You return home to get ready for your next mission, tomorrow.