An idea we’ve sort of been flirting with here is that node-based design is fundamentally fractal: You can “zoom in” on a node and break it apart into more nodes. Or, conversely, you can “zoom out” of the local collection of nodes you’ve been adventuring in and discover it’s all part of just ONE node in a much larger web.
For example, let’s consider the Lytekkas vampire hypercorp:
- At the highest level, we map their activity across seven cities: Chicago, the Old Angeles arcology, Shanghai, St. Petersburg, Reykjavik, Cheltenham, and the Lytekkas-Auberjonais L1 colony.
- Pick one of those and open it up: Now you’ve got nodes representing all of Lytekkas’ major projects in the Chicago metroplex. (These would also have connections to the other cities.)
- One of these involves the development of experimental blood-nannies (probably derived from the vampiric virus to mass-Renfield the population; or maybe an effort to control the negative side-effects of being a vampire).
- Look inside that node and you find the half dozen or so people and facilities involved in the program.
- The PCs identify and target a Lytekkas warehouse. This node is a heist scenario. There are elements of a heist scenario that are node-like, but it’s really a different structure, so this is the end of the road.
- … or is it? Part of the heist scenario is the opportunity to secure blueprints of the target. We could resolve that with a skill check, but we could also design it as a micro-node-based scenario.
But you can also flip this whole thing around and see that the Lytekkas hypercorp is just one of the immortal corporations which can track their secret history from the 22nd century back to the Dutch East India Company in the 17th century, with each one of those immortal corporations being a separate node.
This fractal quality can be seen not just in the nodes themselves, but in the connections between those nodes: There’s functionally no limit to how many leads can be placed in a single node, nor in how many leads can be created that point to a node. There is always an opportunity to increase the complexity and interconnectedness of your node map, particularly if we’re talking about an ongoing campaign which is developing over time (and, thus, features connections being formed and broken over time).
At this point the pedants may point out that this isn’t truly fractal because there is a limit to how far we can take this: At some point we’ll end up with a node which is a person; which is a sole entity that cannot be subdivided.
But it’s more true than you might think: Even individuals can be reconceptualized as a node-based scenario consisting of their job, connections, family, etc. The question is not whether you can do this, but whether it is interesting to do so.
MANIFESTING & MANAGING COMPLEXITY
This fractal nature of node-based scenario design, as we’ve seen, allows us to manifest an almost limitless amount of complexity. That can be quite daunting.
But it also allows us to manage this complexity. One of the functions of node-based design is specifically to chunk information into manageable nodes so that you don’t have to try to juggle or keep the whole thing in your head at once.
If you’re getting overwhelmed by trying to handle all seventy nodes of the Lytekkas hypercorp, figure out how to categorize those nodes into manageable groups: By city of operation. Or secret projects. Or corporate division.
The “right” division is going to depend on your own personal preferences and the details of the specific scenario. You’re looking for the clear conceptual chunks that will allow you to keep on top of incredibly complicated campaigns, while ideally only needing to think about one chunk of the scenario or campaign at a time. (I talk a bit more about what the manageable limits for this are in Advanced Node-Based Design – Part 4: The Second Track.)
For a rough-and-ready example of this, let’s consider the Bangkok node in the Eternal Lies Remix. In my prep notes, you can see that I identified five nodes:
- Lowman’s Townhouse
- Phikhat Hwan
- Ko Kruk Island
- Sirikhan Estate
- Savitree Hunts the Investigators
The first two nodes are pretty standard node-based design: They’re distinct locations with (at least) three clues pointing at each.
But Ko Kruk Island is then broken into three separate nodes: The island itself, the Sirikhan Estate (a mansion on the island), and Savitree hunting the investigators (on the island).
Why?
To manage the complexity.
While the Sirikhan Estate is located on Ko Kruk Island, if the PCs are exploring the island (Node 3) I don’t need to think about every individual room inside the Estate (Node 4). And vice versa: if they’re in the mansion, I generally don’t need to worry about the whole island. Just like separating the individual rooms of a dungeon into separate keyed entries, separating this information lets me clearly focus on (and find!) what’s important RIGHT NOW.
(Speaking of fractal prep, of course, the rooms of the Estate are prepped as a location-crawl. So it’s individual rooms within a node (the Estate) within another node (the Island) within another node (Bangkok). You can really see how the prep structure lets me precisely narrow my focus.)
Node 5 was actually a late addition to my prep notes. I was originally trying to include that material in Node 3 — it’s stuff that happens on the island, so logically it should be in the “Island” chunk of information.
But the complexity of that particular event sequence was bloating the material to a point where I was finding it difficult to organize and reference it. If this is happening to your prep, it’s usually a warning sign that you need to break the material apart into more discrete chunks!
On the flip side, if the players become particularly fascinated by some aspect of the scenario or game world, it becomes relatively trivial for you to zoom in on it and explore it in more detail. Keep this in mind even when running the game: Zoom in on the node and/or add connections to it in response to the PCs’ actions. Slap in a simple node-template like the 5-Node Mystery and you’re good to go following the players down their rabbit hole. Who knows where it will take you?