Polycentricity is a roleplaying game engine for exploring emergent cooperation where players build simple agreements with one another, building up a complex network of agreements over the duration of play. Any scenario can be applied to a game of polycentricity, and the scenario here was imagined for DWeb Camp Berlin 2026, based on the essay Toward a Nomad Web by Ven Gist.
Scenario: Nomad Infrastructure
Nomads live a life exterior to the State, holding territory through movement — a mode where settlement is subordinate to trajectory. They live in nomad space. The internet has become a platform-State which, like all states, is a mode that restricts all other modes, enclosing territories to ban movement. Nomads are not to be read as migratory by nature, but have been forced into that pattern by the platform-State's unceasing vectors of enclosure. What sort of collective assemblage can be brought together from disparate parts of the DWeb ecosystem toward a coherent and functional decentralized web that could compete as a durable alternative to the platform-State?
In this game, players assume a role within the dweb ecosystem and cooperate to answer this question. There is no set victory condition for individual players; there is only the collective goal to build as much infrastructure as possible within the duration of the game. The game can be replayed infinitely, to discover different and novel possible paths to counter the platform-State. Or even continued beyond its initial duration, to continue building on a network of agreements that shows potential.
How to play
- 1
Sign in
Enter your email for a magic link. No wallet required — your account is separate from any game or role.
- 2
Join a game
Create a session or join one from the games lobby. You can browse the 31-role deck before committing to a game.
- 3
Claim a role & negotiate
Choose a role from the deck, then propose and revise multi-party agreements with other players. Watch the network grow on the graph as deals are made.
About Polycentricity
Polycentricity is an open roleplaying game engine for exploring how simple agreements between players compose into complex, emergent cooperation. Any scenario can be loaded onto the engine — this site hosts one instantiation, built for DWeb Camp Berlin 2026.
For the full project — other scenarios, design notes, and ways to run your own game — visit polycentric.space.
Toward a Nomad Web
A Brief History of the Internet's Enclosure and the Conditions of Its Release
The history of the internet is a long oscillation between nomad space and settled space—the open, ownerless protocols of the early web progressively enclosed by the platform-State that captured each function of networked life and dominating the flows of relation. The essay traces the genesis and anatomy of the vectors of enclosure and argues for a nomad web, engineered so that exit is always cheaper than capture, and settlement is subordinate to the freedom of movement.
Read the essay →