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Up to this point I’ve been fairly vague about exactly what I mean by a “node”. This is largely because there isn’t really a hard-and-fast definition of the term.

In generic terms, you can think of each node as a “point of interest”. It’s the place (either literally or metaphorically) where something interesting can happen and (in most cases) information about other interesting things can be found.

In my experience, nodes are most useful when they’re modular and self-contained. I think of each node as a tool that I can pick up and use to solve a problem. Sometimes the appropriate node is self-evident. (“The PCs are canvassing for information on recent gang activity. And I have a Gather Information table about recent gang activity. Done.”) Sometimes a choice of tool needs to be made. (“The PCs have pissed off Mr. Tyrell. Does he send a goon squad or an assassin?”) But when I look at an adventure, I tend to break it down into discrete, useful chunks.

Chunks that become too large or complex are generally more useful if broken into several smaller nodes. Chunks that are too small or fiddly are generally more useful if grouped together into larger nodes. The “sweet spot” is about identifying the most utilitarian middle-ground.

(To take an extreme example: “All the forestland in the Kingdom of Numbia” is probably too large for a single node. On the other hand, 86,213 separate nodes each labeled “a tree in the Forest of Arden” are almost certainly too fiddly. Is the appropriate node the “Forest of Arden”? Or is it twelve different nodes each depicting a different location in the Forest of Arden? I don’t know. It depends on how you’re using the Forest of Arden.)

Let’s get more specific. Here are the sorts of things I think of as “nodes”:

LOCATIONS: A place that the PCs can physically go. If you think of a clue as being anything that “tells you where to go next”, telling the PCs about a specific place that they’re supposed to go is the most literal interpretation of the concept. Once PCs arrive at the location, they’ll generally find more clues by searching the place.

PEOPLE: A specific individual that the PCs should pay attention to. It may be someone they’ve already met or it may be someone they’ll have to track down. PCs will generally get clues from people by either observing them or interrogating them.

ORGANIZATIONS: Organizations can often be thought of as a collection of locations and people (see Nodes Within Nodes, below), but it’s not unusual for a particular organization to come collectively within the PCs’ sights. Organizations can be both formal and informal; acknowledged and unacknowledged.

EVENTS: Something that happens at a specific time and (generally) a specific place. Although PCs will often be tasked with preventing a particular event from happening, when events are used as nodes (i.e., something from which clues can be gathered), it’s actually more typical for the PCs to actually attend the event. (On the other hand, learning about the plans for an event may lead the PCs to the location it’s supposed to be held; the organization responsible for holding it; or the people attending it.)

ACTIVITY: Something that the PCs are supposed to do. If the PCs are supposed to learn about a cult’s plan to perform a binding ritual, that’s an event. But if the PCs are supposed to perform a magical binding ritual, then that’s an activity. The clues pointing to an activity may tell the PCs exactly what they’re supposed to be doing; or they may tell the PCs that they need to do something; or both.

NODES WITHIN NODES

In other words, at its most basic level a node is a person, a place, or a thing.

As suggested above, however, nodes can actually be fairly complex in their own right. For example, the entire Temple of Elemental Evil (with hundreds of keyed locations) could be thought of as a single node: Clues from the village of Hommlet and the surrounding countryside lead the PCs there, and then they’re free to explore that node/dungeon in any way that they wish.

Similarly, once the PCs start looking at the Tyrell Corporation they might become aware of CEO James Tyrell, the corporate headquarters, their shipping facility, the server farm they rent, and the annual Christmas party being thrown at Tyrell’s house — all of which can be thought of as “sub-nodes”. Whether all of these “sub-nodes” are immediately apparent to anyone looking at the Tyrell Corporation or if they have to be discovered through their own sub-network of clues is largely a question of design.

In short, you can have nodes within nodes. You can plan your campaign at a macro-level (Tyrell Corporation, Project MK-ALTER, the Chicago Sub-City, and the Kronos Detective Agency), look at how those macro-nodes relate to each other, and then develop each node as a separate node-based structure in its own right. Spread a few clues leading to other macro-nodes within each network of sub-nodes and you can achieve highly complex intrigues from simple, easy-to-use building blocks.

Advanced Node-Based Design

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Everything we’ve been discussing here are basic, systematic designs. But there’s no reason you need to be symmetrical. Maybe node A has two clues pointing to node B while node C is clue-happy for node A.

On a larger scale, you’ll probably find yourself mashing together lop-sided conglomerations of disparate structures.

For example, a good-sized chunk of my current campaign is based around a general layer cake approach: An interconnected web of criminal organizations allow the PCs to generally make their way up the “chain of command”. But this layer cake naturally funnels towards various sub-conclusions, and I’ve also included loops designed to carry the PCs back to points prior to the various funnels.

That approach may seem jargon-filled, but it’s really just a matter of embracing the fundamentally flexible principles of node-based design, strewing clues liberally, and spot-checking to avoid problem areas.

Looking over my notes for this campaign, I’ve come to think of this as the “cloud”: Dozens of nodes all containing clues and linked to by clues. Even if we discount all the different ways in which the PCs can approach each of these nodes, the complex relationships which emerge from the node structure make literally hundreds of potential outcomes possible.

But I didn’t have to think about that emergent complexity as I was designing the campaign-scale scenario: All I needed to do was design the criminal organization, break it into node-sized chunks, and then lay down the clues necessary to navigate to and from each node.

As I write this, my players are about mid-way through this section of the campaign. It’s been filled with countless surprises for all of us, and these surprises lead me to a final point regarding the strengths of node-based design: It’s flexible in play.

Because each node is, effectively, a modular chunk of material, it becomes very easy to rearrange the nodes on-the-fly. For example, when the PCs raided an enemy compound and wiped out half of their personnel before being forced to pull back, it was very easy for me to look around, grab a different node full of bad guys, and plug them in as reinforcements.

In other words, it was as easy for me to call in the reinforcements as it was for the NPCs to pick up the phone. Node-based design gives you, by default, the scenario-based toolkit I talked about in “Don’t Prep Plots”. And the underlying structural function of that node hadn’t changed: The NPCs still had the same clues to provide that they’d been designed to provide at their previous location.

Go to Part 9: Types of Nodes

It took about forty years before Frank Miller rationalized Batman wearing a huge target on his chest. (He can’t armor his head.) But as I was watching the first episode of Naruto today, I was struck by how quickly they demonstrated the silliness of ninjas wearing big, round bullseyes in the centers of their backs.

(Particularly in a universe where shurikens are apparently the size of small Japanese cars.)

But when I stopped to think about it, I realized (in my own little Milleresque fashion), that it might not be a mistake after all: These are members of a fierce, warrior-centric culture. They’re supposed to stand bravely in the face of danger. And what’s the quickest way to make sure your soldiers never turn and run?

Put a huge target on their back.

…

What? You were expecting something profound?

Fine.

(1) When creating a fictional world, what can you include that seems deliberately odd by our modern and cultural understanding of the world? The oddity will draw the attention of your players/readers/viewers, allowing you to reveal some deeper truth about the setting. And once it has been explained, the oddity will (by its very nature) stick in the memory (along with its associated truth).

(2) I may be underestimating Masashi Kishimoto, but I’m guessing he didn’t give any more thought to the placement of that logo/bullseye than “that looks cool”. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t value to be found in my explanation of it. Attempting to rationalize the incoherent can give rise to fresh and creative ideas.

When I’m using published modules I am almost always forced to adapt them to the cosmology of my own campaign world. For example, in my primary D&D campaign setting there is only one pantheon of gods. Trying to adapt adventures designed for the typical multi-pantheism of D&D can pose some unique challenges. But I welcome the challenge because the effort of rationalizing the incoherency between world and adventure results in a richer and deeper understanding of the world. It’s given rise to saint cults, lineages of holy artifacts, regional factionalism, heresy rituals, and more — and rather than defracting or detracting from the world, all of these elements instead become refined and concentrated.

(And this can flow both ways: For example, the conflict between the Imperial Church and the Reformist Churches in my campaign world frequently allow me to re-purpose church-vs-church material from published scenarios. But this will also frequently enrich individual adventures by introducing avenues of friction and tension which would otherwise be atypical.)

The real world is made up of diverse and often contradictory viewpoints, cultural traditions, and personal opinions. By injecting and adapting material created by others, some degree of that balance between the coherent and the incoherent which can be found in the real world is brought into the game world.

Go to Part 1

LARGE LAYERS

In case it hasn’t been clear, I’ve been using three-node layers in these examples because it’s a convenient number for showing structure. But there’s nothing magical about the number. Each “layer” in the previous examples constitutes an interlinked environment (either literal or metaphorical) for exploration or investigation, and you can make these environments as large as you’d like.

As long as each node has a minimum of three clues in it and a minimum of three clues pointing to it, the Three Clue Rule and its inversion will be naturally satisfied and guarantee you a sufficiently robust flow through the layer. But as you increase the number of nodes, you also open the possibility for varying clue density: Particularly dense clue locations could have six or ten clues all pointing in different directions.

Obviously, however, the larger each layer is, the more prep work it requires.

DEAD ENDS

Dead ends in a plotted mystery structure are generally disasters. They mean that the PCs have taken a wrong-turn or failed to draw the right conclusions and now the train is going to crash into a wall: There should be a clue here for them to follow, but they’re not seeing it, so there’s nowhere to go, and the whole adventure is going to fall apart.

But handled properly in a node-based structure, dead ends aren’t a problem: This lead may not have panned out, but the PCs will still have other clues to follow.

In this example, node E is a dead end. Clues at nodes B and C suggest that it should be checked out, but there’s nothing to be found there. Maybe the clues were just wrong; or the bad guys have already cleared out; or it looked like a good idea but it didn’t pan out into usable information; or it’s a trap deliberately laid to catch the PCs off-guard. The possibilities are pretty much limitless.

The trick to implementing a dead end is to think of clues pointing to the dead end as “bonus clues”. They don’t count towards the maxim that each node needs to include three different clues. (Otherwise you risk creating paths through the scenario that could result in the PCs being left with less than three clues. Which may not be disastrous, but, according to the Inverse Three Clue Rule, might be.)

On the other hand, as you can see, you also don’t need to include three clues leading to a dead end: It’s a dead end, so if the PCs don’t see it there’s nothing to worry about.

Of course, if you include less than three clues pointing to the dead end then you’re increasing the chances that you’re prepping content that will never be seen. But this also means that the discovery of the dead end might constitute a special reward: Extra treasure or lost lore or a special weapon attuned to their enemy.

Which leads to a broader point: Dead ends may be logistical blind alleys, but that doesn’t mean they should be boring or meaningless. Quite the opposite, in fact.

In the same vein as dead ends, you can also use “clue light” locations. (In other words, locations with less than three clues in them.) Structurally such locations generally work like dead ends, by which I mean that clues pointing to clue light locations need to be “bonus clues” to make sure that the structure remains robust.

The exception to this guideline is that you can generally have a number of two-clue locations equal to the number of clues accessible in a starting node. (For example, in the layer cake structure diagram you have three nodes in the bottom layer with only two clues each because the starting node contains three clues. If there wasn’t a starting node with three clues in it, the same structure would have potential problems.)

LOOPS

In this simple loop structure all four nodes contain three clues pointing to the other three nodes. The advantage of this simple structure is that the PCs can enter the scenario at any point and navigate it completely.

Obviously, this is only useful if the PCs have multiple ways to engage the material. In a published product this might be a matter of giving the GM several adventure hooks which can be used (each giving a unique approach to the adventure). In a personal campaign, clues for nodes A, B, C, and D might be scattered around a hexcrawl: Whatever clues the PCs find or pursue first will still lead them into this chunk of content and allow them to explore it completely.

Go to Part 8: Freeform Design in the Cloud

A couple days ago I talked about the Long Con of DRM and the inherent ethical and cultural problems with embracing (or even accepting) DRM systems.

When this topic comes up, people often mention Valve’s Steam as a counter-example of how to “do it right”.

They’re half right. Steam has taken the onerous nature of DRM and turned it into a feature by allowing you to access your Steam account and play your games from any computer in the world. The system also, obviously, allows you to buy games online and have them instantly delivered.

In other words, people don’t (generally) complain about Steam because the platform gives you the ability to do something that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to do. I can understand (and share) the appreciation of that added value.

On the other hand, all of these features could be offered without DRM which requires the copy I currently have downloaded to my computer to be periodically re-validated. (DrivethruRPG does it.) And any game that you buy in a box at your local store and then need to validate through Steam’s servers before playing is every bit as bad as every other online activation schema in terms of its long-term impact on consumer rights.

Make no mistake: The Half-Life 2 box I have on the shelf contains nothing but a worthless coaster on the day that Valve goes out of business or migrates to Steam 2.0. And the Orange Box I purchased through Steam directly will become nothing more than wasted hard drive space only a few days later.

The features Steam offers to the consumer are the reason I’m willing to occasionally buy games through the service. But the unethical DRM that they’ve made part of their service is the reason that I rarely do so. And if there is any other method of purchase available, I’ll avail myself of it.

Unfortunately, the PC gaming industry’s increasing reliance on draconian DRM is the reason that all my game purchases in the past 3 years have either been indie games or console games.