Global Nexus and the Beauty of the Unknown

There's a version of this game that lives somewhere out there - in theory, in possibility, in a world yet to be fully realised.

A complete, (mostly) balanced, playable version of Global Nexus, where every intricate system fits perfectly with the next, and a dozen or more players can organise to breathe life into a world shaped by diplomacy, war, economics, and culture.

I would love nothing more than to see that game played. To watch alliances form and shatter, policies rise and fall, crises unfold, and history written in real time.

But as the years have passed, the sheer scale and scope of Global Nexus made that dream feel evero so slightly out of reach.

From a rough concept scribbled years ago to the sprawling, layered system that it is today, Global Nexus, and previously Campaign for the Entire God Damn World, have always been about pushing boundaries - pushing complexity, storytelling, and possibility. Five test games taught us what the game could be and where it might break. We embraced the chaos and found beauty in the struggle.

And that struggle lies in the unknown: the parts of the game still unwritten, the full experience still intangible, the true potential still out there, waiting.

So I keep writing. Not because I believe the full game will ever be played exactly as it sits on the pages I've written so far, but because in the unknown, there is some level of freedom.

Because building the game is about more than gameplay: it's about exploration and imagining systems and interactions that don't yet exist, and about creating a platform where stories could unfold in infinite ways - even if those stories remain untold for now.

The beauty of Global Nexus is that it's not defined by what has happened, but by what might happen. It's a universe still in flux, a puzzle still being pieced together, a world waiting for players brave enough to step inside.

And though the full rules may never see the table in terms of being played, the act of building, dreaming, and designing, is the game I'm playing every day.

But the complexity of the dream comes at a cost.

The fuller the system becomes, the more it demands. Of players, of Moderators, of time and space. I've made peace with the idea that there may never be a group large (or perhaps foolish) enough to play the entire ruleset as it's currently being drafted in full.

And yet - I still write. Not because I think it needs to be played, but because it's worth building.

Because rules are world-shaping. And Global Nexus has always been, at its core, a question of how worlds work and who gets to shape them. 

So if you've ever wondered why I keep writing rules that will remain unplayed, it's because the unknown isn't a void, but rather a space of endless possibility.

And to me at least, that possibility is its own kind of victory.