The bounty game map is the app the Off-Grid runs on. Every active fighter, every raider, every bounty hunter and gang lieutenant and freelance adventurer carries the same underlying platform. It paints the world as a live coloured map — hostile districts red, safe zones green, contested territory in amber shades. It lists active bounties with their prices. It lets a user post a custom combat request — fist-fight to first-blood, to-death duel, tower-top timed match — and hands the match to whoever accepts the terms. It keeps a leaderboard. It is the app that makes the Off-Grid feel, from the inside, like a game.
What it tracks ¶
Three layers stacked on the same map. The first is geographic state — which blocks of which megacity are safely traversable, which belong to a hostile faction, which are under active combat and should be avoided unless you intend to fight. The second is the bounty register — who has a price on their head, for what, from whom, how large. The third is the custom-match register — open challenges posted publicly, their rules, their location, their accepted opponents. Every Off-Grid citizen sees all three at once. A traveller reads the map the way a Grid citizen reads the Magway schedule.
What runs on it ¶
Most of the app's traffic is non-lethal. A fist-fight-to-exhaustion in a bar, a lower-penalty customisation, is the most popular match type — the stakes are real, the consequences are rarely permanent, and the entertainment value is high. Full duels-to-death exist and are paid at higher rates, but they are a minority of volume. Hunts and raids run on the map's hostile layer. Leaderboards are regional and factional. A top-100 finish in a megacity's combat leaderboard is a job qualification for half the Off-Grid's security work.
Why it matters ¶
The bounty game map is the cultural reason the Off-Grid feels coherent despite having no government. It is the medium through which a decentralised, gang-contested, capitalist dominion coordinates its violence and its trade in violence. The On-Grid watches it closely. Most of what the Grids know about Off-Grid faction strength comes from reading the leaderboards. Most of what the Off-Grid knows about where it is safe to walk tomorrow comes from reading the map tonight. The app is not the Off-Grid's government — the Off-Grid has no government — but it is the nearest thing any Off-Grid citizen has to a shared public record.