>>5873487>>5873488>>5873514On the nostalgic theme of 90s World Of Darkness masquerade vampires urban gothic etc, I read recently a very interesting ttrpg framework called Dread Pandemonium (NOT the jenga one, that Dread rpg I believe is a different game).
I mentioned how I am constantly looking for ttrpg techniques to modularise / randomly generate the narrative in a coherent manner whilst also incorporating a gameplay loop or mechanic. The author of this ttrpg was apparently a videogame designer and it shows in a very simple and powerful design presented in this game which is far superior to some other settings I read (for instance, Demon City by Zak Smith).
The premise is a sort of detective show demon hunting but it could be vampires or in fact anything (even say mundane human adversaries or antagonists).
The design is like a 3x3 grid, or more like a wheel, hub and spokes, like this:
B L B
L T L
B L B
B stands for Battlefield, L location, T is the target / Takedown. Battlefields are essentially locations with hostiles present.
All the other locations are linked to the central target lair
The flow is this
1 TRIGGER
2 INVESTIGATION... (start)
3 CONFLICT...
4 REVELATION... (goto start loop, repeat)
5 TAKEDOWN
The idea is that there is some initial clue, it could be an email, a voice message, a tearful victim survivor testimony, an envelope containing gruesome remains etc which is the tip of the mystery iceberg inciting incident demanding urgent life-or-death action.
This then encourages the Investigation-Conflict-Revelation loop, each "storylet" here occurs at either a location or battlefield above. The end result is the obtaining of a clue.
After a few iterations of conflict-investigate-reveal etc loops at various battles or detection scenes say 3-4, the lair of the Takedown target (in the game setting, a demon to be exorcised, but it could be any bossfight) is unlocked.
The Takedown is associated also with a number of secondary objectives generated from the preceding gameplay loops at the various locations etc, though the primary objective is always to takedown the demon / bossfight.
What I liked about this design is it can be entirely randomly generated and populated. You can create a random table of clues (the game uses 1d12) random locations, even random objectives (because the primary objective is always clear, to takedown the demon target). And then just slot this into the hub and spokes design above. The setting itself is fairly cliche, but I just thought I would share this design with anons, it might be useful for game ideas
Pic related is an example from the source rpg book
