# NEXUS — The Game of Connections

*by Matt Klinestiver · Design Bible v9*

> "The Glass Bead Game is thus a mode of playing with the total contents and values of our culture."
> — Hermann Hesse, *The Glass Bead Game*, 1943

> "It's essentially Apples to Apples for smart people, right?"
> — Brett Reuben, Patron of the Arts, 2026

> "Nexus is the world's first totally legal pyramid scheme. I know because I just took my Legal Ethics exam this morning."
> — Jonathan Ghysels, Nexus Corporation Legal Counsel & Patron of History, 2026

## Overview

Nexus is a digital-first collectible trading card game. Every card is based on a Wikipedia article. That means millions of cards can be created.

To play, you connect your cards with other players' cards on a digital table. You win by creating interesting, relevant connections.

# Part 1 · What Is Nexus?

Nexus begins in the online card forge. Here, you build a collection of cards that reflect the ideas that interest you — everything from Algebra to Zara. From ABBA to Zanzibar. From Apartheid to the Zodiac.

Designing your cards is half the fun — choosing the right image, font, and colors to make them shine.

**Important:** for now, all cards you create are 1/1 Genesis editions. That means no one else can claim the same card.

After you build your deck, join a game with other Nexites. Your goal is to use your cards to forge connections on a shared canvas.

## The Core Nexus Cycle

### First — you are a Collector
Every Wikipedia article is potential territory — and the first person to claim it owns the only first-edition card in existence.
Oshkosh, Wisconsin? No one else bothered. Now it's yours. Claim it. Shape it. Own it. Hell, start building a full Wisconsin booster pack if you want — Lake Winnebago, Frozen Custard, Jeffrey Dahmer, Mars Cheese Castle, it's up to you.

### Second — you are a Connector
Nexus is played on a shared canvas — a growing map of ideas connected by arguments you make out loud, judged in real time.
You're trying to connect to the Minimalism Nexus, so you play your Buddhism card. It's a sure thing — what could be more minimalist than an ascetic Zen monk? But then your little sister Lilly plays Steve Jobs. You were hoping for an AI judge this round. Unfortunately, the judge is your roommate Dawson, and he's still mad you spilled a glass of wine on his favorite jeans last week. Will he realize Buddhism is yours? If he does, you're in trouble.

> "Connection is what makes us human. Without it, we're just nodes."
> — Jordan Paluch, Society Founder

### Third — you are a Capitalist
Nexus is a living economy — cards earn royalties and accrue value. But they can be lost forever on a single bad bet.
Put your deck where your mouth is: stake cards from your collection with amazing — or amazingly bad — results. That Bad Bunny card you managed to claim on day one? It's now earning you kojin every time it shows up on a canvas.

> "Welcome to the Gold Rush."
> — Matt Klinestiver, Nexus Chairman & Philosophy Founder

### Fourth — you are a Communist
The truth of the matter is, the Patrons control the game. If we don't like how you're acting, we're gonna seize your stockpile of kojin (the in-game currency). If we think you're misusing a card or monopolizing it, we're just gonna seize it from you and distribute it to the starving Nexite masses.

> "Taxes could get so high… I don't even wanna say how high they could get."
> — Brett Reuben, Arts Founder

## The Three Core Tenets

**Logic.** Every connection must be arguable. Not necessarily true — but defensible. A creative argument that holds together beats an obvious one that doesn't surprise.

**Beauty.** The best connections feel inevitable the moment they're made. At the end of a game, the canvases look like works of art. (They make great posters, actually. $39.99 plus shipping at the Nexus Store. We're serious.)

**Obliqueness.** The obvious connection between Jazz and Music is correct, but that's some mundane normie shit. The connection between Jazz and Chaos Theory — both systems finding order in apparent chaos — is Nexus. The further apart the ideas, the more satisfying the bridge.

## Core Design Principles

1. **Wikipedia did the work.** The entire card ecosystem is built on Wikipedia's existing structure — its hierarchy, its curation, its collective intelligence. We didn't invent the territory. We made it contestable.
2. **The canvas is the artifact.** Every connection argued, every card placed, every round decided — it's all recorded permanently on the canvas. At the end of a game, what remains is a map of how a specific group of people thought on a specific night. No two canvases are ever the same.
3. **Cards are real objects with real consequences.** That's your first-edition Philosophy card — the only one in existence. And your priceless 1/1 The Beatles card, the one Lisa gave you as a graduation gift. You risked them on Dylan's Groucho Marx card winning. Dylan lost the round. You lost The Beatles. Forever.
4. **Curation is as important as play.** Sarah talked circles around everyone at the table. She ranked last anyway. Her deck was full of random *Law and Order* episodes — no bridges. The best argument in the room can't save you from a bad hand. Your deck is your intellectual fingerprint.
5. **Territory is finite. First movers win.** There is one Genesis edition of every card. The best territory gets claimed once and stays claimed.
6. **Modality.** Nexus is not one game — it is a system for generating games. The base game is the entry point. The Modality is everything else.

# Part 2 · The Territory

> "The map is not the territory."
> — Alfred Korzybski

Every card in Nexus begins its life as a Wikipedia article. But not all Wikipedia articles are created equal. Wikipedia contributors have categorized every article into six levels of importance. That hierarchy underpins Nexus.

The hierarchy starts from the ten most vital concepts (the **Sacred Commons**) and extends down to fifty thousand culturally significant topics (the **Frontier**). Below that: everything else. Six point seven million articles and counting.

## The Six Tiers

| Tier | Level | Count | Examples |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| The Sacred Commons | L1 | 10 | The Arts · Earth · Human · Human History · Life · Mathematics · Philosophy · Science · Society · Technology |
| The Great Commons | L2 | 100 | War · Food · Religion · Europe · Time |
| The Core Commons | L3 | 1,000 | Abraham Lincoln · Comics · The Renaissance · Buddhism · The Amazon River · Soccer · The Internet |
| The Extended Commons | L4 | 10,000 | Sweden · Podcast · Haiku · Punk Rock · Coral Reef · Frida Kahlo · Walmart · Piracy · Caffeine |
| The Frontier | L5 | 50,000 | Thai Cuisine · Auto-Tune · Bigfoot · Manchester United · Incheon · The RMS Titanic · The Dark Web · The Godfather Part II |
| The Wild | Beyond L5 | ~6.7M | ??? |

# Part 3 · Your Card Collection

*(adapted from the Nexus Starter Guide)*

Welcome, Novice Aesthete. By order of the Board of Governors — keepers of the Sacred Genesis cards, grand architects of the canvas, and stewards of the kojin vault — you are hereby granted **₭500** to commemorate your arrival in Nexus. Use it wisely. But be bold.

## First Decision — a Starter Deck

You don't have to buy a starter deck. But you probably should.

A starter deck costs **₭440**. It contains 30 cards curated by its Patron: 1 Sacred Commons card, 5 Great Commons cards, and 24 Core Commons cards. These cards represent the intellectual core of their domain, and give you immediate access to the canvas. That leaves you ₭60 for everything else.

> "The Arts starter deck is a pathway to a bright future. Also I get a small royalty. But mostly the future thing."
> — Brett Reuben, Arts Founder

> "Society has the highest Nexus title win rate in playtesting. Just saying."
> — Jordan Paluch, Society Founder

> "Mathematics is the language of everything. Start here and you'll connect to any card on any canvas. Trust the math."
> — John Bee, Mathematics Founder

## Claiming Territory

Exactly one Genesis New York City card can come into existence. One Genesis Death. One Genesis Sushi.

**Planned:** if you are first to make a claim, you receive a Genesis Commons card and you control its Standard Edition print run — deciding how many copies exist (one to infinity), when they're released, and at what price. Royalties flow to you every time someone buys a copy — and basically every time it's played onto a canvas.

| Tier | Genesis Claim Cost | Standard Edition Price Floor |
| --- | --- | --- |
| The Sacred Commons | Free to Patron | ₭100+ |
| The Great Commons | ₭150 | ₭20+ |
| The Core Commons | ₭80 | ₭10+ |
| The Extended Commons | ₭40 | ₭5+ |
| The Frontier | ₭20 | ₭2+ |
| The Wild | ₭10 | ₭1+ |

**Note:** as a Genesis holder, you can order a physical copy of your card from the Nexus Store — holographic treatment, your name inscribed on it, $9.99 plus shipping. Remember that ownership of the physical card follows the digital one. If you lose the digital Genesis edition, you must return your physical copy to Nexus — at your own expense.

> ⚠️ **Warning.** Your fellow Aesthetes have the constitutionally protected right to organize. Boycotts require no vote, no board approval, no petition threshold. Lock a Genesis holder's cards, dry up their royalties, and laugh with glee when the taxes come due. The commons can be reclaimed from below, too.

## On Royalty Payments *(to be implemented later)*

When you own a card's Genesis edition, you generally earn a small royalty when that card is played on a Nexus canvas. Your card. Your royalty. Passive income from good taste and early claiming.

Claim the Genesis LaMelo Ball card on day one and watch it hit canvases in Bangkok, Berlin, and Buenos Aires. Every play generates a fraction of a kojin — invisible, automatic, accumulating.

The Board of Governors has set the 2026 royalty rate at **₭0.10** *(to be implemented)*.

> "I claimed the Genesis 6-7 Meme in March 2025. 6-7 became Dictionary.com's Word of the Year. I felt like a genius."
> — John Bee, Mathematics Founder

> "Please don't burn the Labradoodle card. That's crossing a line."
> — Matt Klinestiver, Nexus Chairman & Philosophy Founder

**Curate well. Claim early.**

# Part 4 · Gameplay

You should probably play your first games under **Novice Mode** — a stripped-down version of Nexus designed to give you the feel of the game without the full weight of its systems. Staking is off, so you are not at risk of losing any of your cards permanently. AI is the sole judge.

What remains is this: a card in your hand, a canvas in front of you, and the question of whether you can make the AI see a connection it didn't expect. When you're ready to move up to an intermediate table, you'll know.

## Novice Modality Overview

| Setting | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Players | 4 |
| Sacred Card | Required (loaned if unowned). Publicly revealed in the opening ceremony. |
| Private Deck Size | 21 cards |
| Hand Size | 5 cards |
| Public Deck | On (unlimited) |
| Round Types | Placement rounds only |
| Judgement Types | AI judge only |
| Obliqueness | 1 |
| Nexus Status | Active — holder's base-card vote counts 2× |
| Nexus Metric | Degree centrality (most connections) |
| Canvas Style | Cold open (empty canvas) |
| Card Ownership | Public — all players see who owns each card on the canvas |
| Staking | Disabled |
| Winning Condition | First to 15 points, or highest after 15 rounds |
| Tie-break | Sudden death, final round |
| Prize | ₭30 to the winner; ₭10 to all other participants |

## Choosing Cards for Your First Game

For a novice game, you'll bring 21 cards from your collection to the table. But don't feel like you have to bring 21 starter-deck cards. In fact, you probably shouldn't.

You are required to bring a Sacred card — and why wouldn't you want to? It probably has the best connection potential. That leaves you 20 choices. Grab some of your Great Commons and Extended Commons cards — Music is a great way to make connections.

Still, don't discount your Frontier and Wild cards. Bring Pope Francis. Solar Flare. The Ninth Ward. These are the cards that make your deck yours — and in a game judged primarily on obliqueness, a surprising card from The Wild can outperform a safe one from the Great Commons.

Leave behind the cards that only go one direction. Look for cards that could land next to something unexpected. Your Sacred Commons card is your anchor. Your Level 2 cards are your workhorses. Your Level 3 cards are where your personality starts to show. Your Wild cards are your wildcards — in every sense.

Don't overthink it. You'll get it wrong and learn something. That's the point of the first game.

## The Opening Ceremony

You and your opponents begin by revealing your Sacred Commons cards to one another. That act shows you the landscape — whose intellectual terrain you're up against. Jack has Math. Alex has Technology. Jordan has Society. ??? has Earth. Formidable.

You need to make an important decision. Do you volunteer your Sacred Commons card to be the first card placed on the table? Or hold it back for a strategic move later?

- If **nobody** volunteers, a random Sacred Commons card — one not held by any player at the table — is drawn from the public deck and placed at the center of the canvas. Neutral ground.
- If **only one** player volunteers, their Sacred Commons anchors the canvas, and whoever convinces the AI judge that their card is its best connection wins the first round — and 3 points.
- If **multiple** players volunteer, a dice roll decides whose card goes down. The others return to their owners' decks — powerful cards waiting for the right moment.

> "Volunteering your Sacred is a statement of confidence — you're betting that everything at this table flows through your domain more than any other. Holding it back is a bet that it's worth more as a surprise later. Neither is wrong. Both say something true about how you play."
> — Wei Wei, Human Founder

## The First Round

Now the canvas has a Sacred Commons card on it. Let's say it's your Sacred Arts card. Your remaining 20 cards are shuffled face-down into your private deck. You draw five: Music, The Renaissance, Pope Francis, Solar Flare, and Wabi-Sabi. Everyone else is looking at their own five.

You have one minute. Pick one.

Music is too obvious. So is The Renaissance. You pick Solar Flare. You're thinking: art imitates nature. The sublime. Turner painted storms. Solar flares are the universe's own sublime — violent, beautiful, beyond human scale. That's your argument. You submit it face-down.

Everyone submits simultaneously. The AI sees four cards trying to connect to Arts. It evaluates each argument. It prefers the unexpected — the connection that makes it reconsider *both* cards at once, not just the new card but the anchor too.

Solar Flare wins. Three points to you. You're off to a good start. That's a round.

## The Rest of the Game

In round two there are two nodes on the canvas — both yours: Arts and Solar Flare. It's time to vote on which will be the **Base** card for the round — the one everyone will try to connect to. Click on the card you prefer.

That's your first real decision every round. Not what card to play — but where to find the best place in the network. A card connected to Solar Flare is making a different argument than a card connected to Arts. The canvas is starting to have a shape, and you're starting to have a position in it.

By round three or four, one card starts pulling ahead — more connections than any other. The **Nexus**. You'll know from its glow.

## The Nexus

The glowing card turns out to be yours. Your Arts card has more connections than any other on the canvas. Everything flows through it. For now.

Your reward: when it's time to vote on the next round's Base card, your vote counts twice. Use your power wisely — point the canvas toward your strengths and away from your opponents'. The others will notice. They'll start connecting to nodes outside your domain deliberately, trying to dislodge you, trying to pull the glow somewhere else. The question is whether you can hold it long enough.

## Winning

First to 15 points wins. If nobody reaches 15 after 15 rounds, the player with the most points takes it. If it's a tie — and it happens — the victor is decided by a sudden-death round. The winner receives ₭30. Everyone else gets ₭10.

# The Patrons

In all previous versions of this document, the ten individuals who hold the Sacred Commons Genesis cards were referred to as **Founders**. Effective v8, the formal title is **Patron**.

A Founder implies the act of creation — but Nexus already exists. What the ten Sacred holders do is steward, sustain, and embody their domain within the game's living economy. The Patron is a classical figure: the person whose name a domain is kept under, who earns from it, who can be displaced by it, and who gives it a face. The Medici were Patrons. The title carries weight.

## Current Patrons

| Domain | Patron | Status |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Philosophy | Matt Klinestiver (Chairman) | Indefinite |
| Mathematics | John "Jack" Bee | 1-year |
| Society | Jordan Paluch | Year-one appointment |
| Technology | Alex Klinestiver | 1-year |
| Human | Wei Wei | 1-year |
| Life | Bridget Walsh | 1-year |
| The Arts | Brett Reuben | 1-year |
| Earth | — | Vacant (Nexus Store) |
| Human History | — | Vacant (Nexus Store) |
| Science | — | Vacant (Nexus Store) |

*Legal Counsel: Jonathan Ghysels (non-voting, advisory).*

# The Scoring Anatomy

On any card play that wins a round, points and royalties flow to up to three distinct parties. These roles can overlap — the same person can hold more than one — but they are structurally separate.

**1 · The Connection Maker — 3 points.** The player who argued the winning connection. Pure in-the-moment gameplay, rewarded for rhetoric, obliqueness, and reading the judge correctly. The connection maker may be playing a card they did not create and do not own.

**2 · The In-Game Card Owner — 0.5 points.** The player who brought this specific copy of the card to this specific game. Rewards pre-game intelligence: scouting the canvas, reading opponents' domains, selecting cards with broad connection potential. If you built your own deck entirely, you are the in-game owner of all your cards. (Not awarded if the in-game owner and the connection maker are the same person — the 3-point award already covers that.)

**3 · The Genesis Holder — ₭0.10 royalty.** The person who holds the 1/1 Genesis edition earns a royalty every time that card appears on any canvas, anywhere. Entirely outside the game's point economy — passive, automatic, invisible to the table. The Genesis holder need not be present, playing, or even aware the round is happening.

| Role | Award | What it rewards |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Connection Maker | 3 points | Rhetoric, obliqueness, reading the judge |
| In-Game Card Owner | 0.5 points | Curation, deck intelligence, pre-game scouting |
| Genesis Holder | ₭0.10 royalty | Early claiming, territorial judgment |

# The Board Display System

Nexus cards exist in two distinct visual representations, corresponding to two distinct contexts. This is not a preference — it is a designed system.

**The Card — rectangle.** The primary collectible object. It lives in hand, in collection, in the Card Forge, and in the Nexus Store. A 5:7 rectangle with a full visual treatment: image, tier border, domain seal, inscription, monogram, and — for Sacred Commons — an always-on holographic effect. The card is the emotional object: what players hold, sleeve, trade, and display.

**The Node — circle.** When a card is placed on the shared canvas, it collapses into a compact circular node — the functional object, carrying exactly the information needed to read the board at a glance. Clicking or hovering a node expands it to full card view. The board shows the graph; the hover shows the card. Same object, different zoom.

## Node Display Modes

- **Node View** — default and recommended. A force-directed graph of circles with connections as lines. Best for reading board state and finding the Nexus.
- **Card View** — full rectangles on the canvas. Spectacular, spatially expensive. Good for small hands and streams.
- **Hybrid View** — your own cards as rectangles, opponents' as nodes. The recommended default for new players.

## Node Visual Specification

A node encodes six signals at once, each readable at different zoom levels:

| Signal | Encodes | How |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Body size | Connection count (power) | Scales with total connections. A Wild card with 15 connections towers over a Sacred card with 2. |
| Fill color | Domain | Each of the ten domains has a fixed accent color. The Arts: red. Mathematics: blue. Philosophy: violet. |
| Ring color | Domain | Mirrors the fill — a triple red ring is instantly Sacred Arts. |
| Ring count & weight | Tier | Sacred: triple gold-pulsing ring. Great: double. Core: single. Extended: dim single. Frontier: hair-thin. Wild: none. |
| Center glyph | Domain seal | The domain emoji at the node's center. |
| Inner dot | Genesis vs Standard | Genesis cards carry a small inner marker; Standard editions do not. |
| Ring glow | Nexus status | The Nexus holder pulses brighter. Betweenness: cool blue. Degree: warm gold. |

*Design principle: node size tracks power, not prestige. A Wild card with fifteen connections is a large, ringless circle that dominates the board; a Sacred card with two connections is a small, triple-ringed circle that looks important but isn't. That tension is the game.*

# The Two Nexus Metrics

At any point during play, two cards simultaneously hold Nexus status, determined by different metrics and conferring different advantages.

**Degree Nexus — most connections.** The hub; everything routes through it. Holding it means your card is the current center of gravity. In Novice Modality this is the only Nexus metric. *Advantage:* your vote on the next round's Base card counts twice. *Visual:* warm gold ring glow.

**Betweenness Nexus — bridge position.** The card with the highest betweenness centrality — the one connecting clusters that would otherwise be disconnected. A card can hold it with only four connections if those four bridge isolated regions. Remove it and the board splits. *Advantage:* varies by modality (a strategic action in Intermediate and Advanced play). *Visual:* cool electric-blue ring glow.

Both titles can be held by the same player or by two different players at once — a natural source of coalition dynamics. Novice Modality uses degree centrality only; betweenness is introduced in Intermediate play.

# Sacred Card Design Specification

Sacred Commons cards receive a mandatory visual treatment that distinguishes them from all other tiers. These are not recommendations — they are constraints. A Sacred card's appearance is partly a function of *what it is*, not just who holds it.

**Mandatory:** Full Art mode forced (image bleeds to the edges, no Classic mode). Holographic effect always on — the shimmer and glare cannot be disabled. Triple gold pulsing border, breathing slowly, as the primary tier signal. Gold corner ornaments. Enlarged domain seal (34px minimum, in a gold-bordered circle).

**The Patron's choices:** the *image* (the image speaks first — choose accordingly); *title display* (defaults to a small subtitle; may be hidden entirely, letting the seal and gold frame identify it); an *inscription* up to 40 characters — a name, motto, or claim, set in IM Fell English italic at the footer; and *body-text framing* for legibility. The Patron may **not** override the warm deep-gold background — the gold treatment is part of the Sacred identity.

*The Sacred card's constraints exist because Sacred cards are institutional objects, not purely personal ones. The Patron holds Philosophy — they do not own the concept. The holographic effect is not a feature; it is the signal. A non-holo Sacred card would be a game piece that doesn't follow the rules of the game.*

# Domain Assignment

Every card belongs to one of the ten Sacred domains. Domain determines the card's accent color, seal, and node ring color, and (in advanced modalities) which Patron earns royalties from domain-adjacent play. Assignment is designed to be **objective by default and human-correctable at the margins**:

1. **Auto-suggestion.** On creation, the system analyzes the article's categories, infobox, and content to suggest a primary domain, shown with a confidence indicator.
2. **Patron confirmation (Genesis only).** The suggested domain is presented for confirmation or contest. A player may propose an alternative with a written rationale; contested assignments are logged publicly in the card's permanent record, and the Board of Governors reviews them on a rolling basis.
3. **Auto-assignment (Standard editions).** Standard cards take the auto-suggested domain without a confirmation step.

*Full Patron control would invite gaming — a Philosophy Patron could claim LaMelo Ball and file it under Philosophy. Auto-assignment alone is sometimes counterintuitive. This model keeps objectivity as the default while resolving legitimate edge cases through a public, auditable process.*

# Connection Data Model

All connections in base play are binary — a connection either exists or it doesn't — but the data model supports weighted connections in advanced modalities without a schema change. Each connection stores:

`{ from, to, type, weight, weightSource, contested, contestResult, rationale }`

- **from / to** — card identifiers. Connections are undirected in base play.
- **type** — "similar" or "dissimilar" (set by the pivot dice).
- **weight** — defaults to 1 in base and novice modalities; reserved for advanced play.
- **weightSource** — "ai", "judge", or "consensus"; populated in weighted modalities only.
- **contested / contestResult** — whether the connection was formally challenged, and the outcome.
- **rationale** — the argument made, stored permanently and displayed at the midpoint between connected nodes.

The rationale field is not optional in judged rounds — it is part of the permanent canvas record. At the end of a game, the canvas is a map of how a specific group of people thought on a specific night. The rationales are its annotations.

# A Note on the Glass Bead Game

The connection between Nexus and Hermann Hesse's *The Glass Bead Game* is not incidental. It is the game's intellectual lineage, and it is worth stating plainly.

Hesse's game was never fully specified — because it couldn't be. Its core idea was that a master player could find the deep structural resonance between a Bach fugue and a mathematical theorem, and play that connection in a way other players recognized as valid or invalid. The judgment was aesthetic and intellectual at once.

That is exactly what a winning connection in Nexus is. You are not just claiming that Jazz connects to Mathematics. You are making an argument that the table — or the AI, or the Wiki graph, or the vote — evaluates by the standards of logic, beauty, and obliqueness.

The Glass Bead Game finally has rules. They are ours.

> "Welcome to the Gold Rush."
> — Matt Klinestiver, Nexus Chairman & Patron of Philosophy

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*Sections 5–9 — Intermediate Play, Advanced Play, Economy, Governance, and the full Modality system — are in progress. The technical build spec lives in `DESIGN.md`.*