Something I touched on lightly when discussing the organization of your nodes was the difficulty of working with large networks of nodes.
This ties into Delta’s “Magic Number Seven”, which I’ve talked about before. To sum it up:
- Working memory capacity for most adults is in the range of 7 +/- 2 objects. Short-term memory capacity is also 7 +/- 2 when memorizing strings of random digits.
- Beyond these limits, mental functioning drops off rapidly.
In other words, we are generally pretty good at holding somewhere between 5 and 9 objects in our mind at a given time. Any more than that and it becomes increasingly difficult (or impossible).
So if you start trying to tackle large networks of nodes, you can quickly reach a point at which you can’t keep the whole network “in your head” at the same time. At this point, the network becomes difficult to design and manage (particularly in real-time at a game table).
Properly organizing your network can make it easier to manage, of course. (The Act I structure I posted, for example, took 15 difficult-to-manage nodes and broke them down into 6 major nodes with a varying number of sub-nodes. I could easily grasp the structure of the 6 major nodes and then “zoom in” to focus on the sub-nodes as necessary.)
But this principle also offers us an opportunity as designers: A quick and easy way to add complexity to a node-based scenario is to simply add a second set of nodes that are largely or entirely disconnected from the first set.
I call this technique the Second Track.
In my experience, it’s particularly easy to run a second track if the tracks use different methods of linking their nodes. For example, you might create a timeline of “backdrop events” combined with a primary network of clue-linked nodes. But this division of methods isn’t strictly necessary.
The reason this works well is that, from your perspective behind the screen, there are just two “chunks” of 4-6 nodes each: Easy to keep track of. Easy to understand. Easy to design. Easy to run.
But for the players – who aren’t privy to that structure – there are 10-12 nodes. This pushes it past the Magic Number Seven and presents them with enough complexity to become enigmatic.
(To put it a different way: The GM can easily handle the reactions of Conspiracy 1 independently from the reactions of Conspiracy 2. Until the players figure out that there are two different conspiracies, however, they can’t even start to unravel what’s happening to them.)
I very enjoy your Node-Based Design serie but what about “Mind Map” Desgin ? Do you have any knowledge about using mind mapping in order to design a scenario ? It can be a complementary approach.
Crabus, node based design is about the structure of the game world. Mind mapping is a system of recording the information. I find it very useful myself, although I don’t use strict mind mapping. I combine a network with mind maps flowering from various points.
Justin have you ever specifically looked at nodes that are especially intended for players to return to? For example they find the entrance to the secret lair and then decide to head off and follow up something else and come back here later to follow on with it.
I tend not to design nodes specifically to be returned to, because I don’t really know what the PCs will necessarily do or accomplish at any given node. (The exception would be, say, including a clue in a later node that reveals something previously unknown about a previous node — whether that’s the entrance to a secret lair or the fact that Monica was Raymond’s secret lover.)
This does come up organically through play all the time, though.
My primary method of handling this is the Campaign Status Sheet, which is something I’m probably going to write a lengthy essay about at some point in the future, but which I currently discuss briefly over here.
That link also briefly talks about designing from the status quo, which I discuss at greater length in Don’t Prep Plots: Prepping Scenario Timelines.
The key thing is that, if the PCs go to visit a node, that node will usually end up getting altered in some way — like a planet getting perturbed out of its orbit. So if the PCs go back to that node, they should see the consequences of their actions. Eventually the node, like a perturbed planet, will settle back into a new status quo (although probably one different from the previous status quo).
A few examples from my own campaigns:
– The PCs remove the evil idol that’s sustaining the living flesh which has grown over the walls of the dungeon. They return several weeks later to see if the bad guy (who has escaped) has returned to his former lair and discover that the living flesh is now dead, rotting, and being feasted upon by giant maggots.
– The PCs attack a slavers compound and return to discover that the slavers have hired mercenaries to beef up their security.
– The PCs unwittingly take an action which politically damages a minor lord they were previously on good terms with. When they go back to chat with him, they find him cold and distant.
And so forth.
Hi, I don’t expect you to answer after all this time, but I’d like to know more about the “second track” concept. I understand the logic behind it, but I can’t picture an example or wrap my head around how would I apply it in the game. Could you explai please like an rudimentary example or something? I see a lot of potential in the idea to add a feeling of complexity and realism to my games. Thank you in advance and also thank you very much for every post you write, they have really helped me design a couple of one-shot, singleplayer games I make for my little brother.
Imagine that you want to run a complicated political thriller in a city where the Grand Republic of Reptoids, the Guild of Necromancers, and House Terenzia are all struggling to claim the throne while the Orcish Horde of Ra’l Khurzan is threatening the city.
So you write up, say, 8 different nodes for each of these factions: Assassins and hideouts and political leaders and underground shrines and so forth. So then you look at your campaign notes and you see that you’ve got like 32 different pieces and… it’s just too much. You can’t really keep track of it in your head, right? There’s just too many moving pieces.
So what do you do? You conceptually take all of these pieces and break them apart into separate tracks. Nodes A1-A8 are all the reptoid stuff. Nodes B1-B8 are all the necromancer stuff. And so forth.
Now you can look at just the reptoids and really grok them: You can see how the various NPCs relate to each other. You can see (and also design) how their nodes all hook together.
In this particular instance, this seem super self-evident: The distinctions between these tracks is kind of built into the game world, right? Reptoids. Necromancers. Nobles. Orcs. But even so, I find that if you don’t consciously and deliberately separate them and organize them accordingly, you’ll end up making things harder.
And my wider point is that a second track isn’t necessarily self-evident like this.
For example, let’s eliminate the necromancers, nobles, and orcs and just focus our campaign on the Reptoids. But the Reptoids are a truly huge conspiracy; they shouldn’t just be like a couple of buildings and a half dozen agents, right? You want this super-tangled web with dozens and dozens of interwoven connections. What do you do?
Break the conspiracy into different tracks.
Track 1: Investigating the Reptoid hypno-drug trade.
Track 2: Tracking the flow of laundered Reptoid money.
Track 3: Investigating the murder of Suzy Lacrosse, an informant who had promised to give them a big information dump.
Track 4: Reports of overt reptoid activity on the Dark Web.
Track 1, 2, and 3 are all separate 6-8 node mysteries. (Some of the nodes in those mysteries might be elaborate heists or raid scenarios.) Track 4 is a linear series of events that the PCs can pick up on from their informants or by directly monitoring the Dark Web.
(And, in case this isn’t clear, all of these things are happening simultaneously.)
Each of these chunks is, for the GM, conceptually separate, right? In both designing and looking at his notes, he’s basically got the cheat sheet that says: “This weird reptoid thing or reptoid location or whatever is part of Track X.” So rather than one huge mess, he’s looking at four different things that each individually easy to come to grips with.
The players, however, don’t have the cheat sheet. They don’t inherently see the underlying structure. They just see a huge mass of reptoid activity and they have to figure out what the heck is going on.
And the GM can (and should) enhance this by selectively interlinking the tracks: Money is being laundered (Track 2) from the hypno-drug trade (Track 1), and they can discover that Suzy (Track 3) was working for one of the hypno-drug lords (Track 1). They’ve got some grainy surveillance footage of the person they think killed Suzy (Track 3), and they spot him in the background of a news report flagged by the Dark Web as containing reptoid activity (Track 4).
This interlinking doesn’t mess up the GM’s ability to still clearly see the overlying structure, but it’ll make it more difficult for the PCs to figure out that structure. What’s part of their Suzy investigation? What’s just background news reports? What’s part of the hypno-drug investigation? It all gets mucked up together.
I’m partial to big conspiracy campaigns, but this can also apply to the level of a single scenario.
Track 1: The investigatory nodes.
Track 2: A series of escalating, proactive encounters as the bad guys do various things to try to derail the PCs’ investigation (sending thugs, burning down their house, smearing them in the press, etc.).
A lot of published scenarios, for example, will kind of muck these events all together. But it becomes so much easier for the GM to run the scenario if they clearly separate these things into two tracks that they can handle independently of each other.