Interwoven Stories

By Shining Aquas, in Fan Creations

I'm here to showcase a new game mechanic idea I've been working on back and forth for the last couple weeks.

Generally speaking, I think most people like Personal Stories. They add a little extra plot development to your character and more importantly give you some additional personal goals to aim for every game.

The main issue with Personal Stories however is they can slightly encourage isolated play, which in a heavily cooperative game like Arkham is not really great. Now, obviously there are some personal stories that benefit the entire team upon passing them, as well as some that absolutely cannot be failed, which in turn create teamplay around propping an individual, but that's not always the case.

To expand the role and interaction of the Personal Story, I've created the Interwoven Story , a story setup that is actually shared between multiple players.

In order to use an Interwoven Story, it requires that you are playing with all the listed characters on the story setup. In most cases, this will probably be 2 characters, but you could totally create Interwoven Stories that specifically address 3, 4 or possibly more people (though at the higher numbers, maybe just create a Scenario instead?)

I also have the first working example of such a mechanic in use:

Here are the two investigators I paired:

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And here's the Interwoven Story I've created for them:

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Unfortunately I do not have a template in Strange Eons, I created this entirely in Photoshop. This is mostly here as a proof of concept on how this idea can be done. Similarly to Personal Stories, I believe these need to be tailored to the characters they are assigned to, and that will be especially true in the case of 3 and 4 person Interwoven Stories.

Anyways, let me know what you think, or if you have any thoughts about how to make this better.

These are fantastic! Absolutely love the concept. This could get really interesting if you've got three characters that share two Interwoven Stories (say, A and B have one story, while B and C have another); which would you choose?

Minor question (and this partially comes from me trying to clarify the formatting): In this example, is it possible for players to get both "Escape Route" and "Forcing the Hand"? I'm assuming that the column of images on the left represents the front and back of one card, while the column on the right is the front and back of another, making this an either-or situation, but I just want to be clear.

With this story, "Escape Route" and "Forcing the Hand" are both possible pass results, but that means only one or the other can happen.

First off, I love the conceit behind the integrated personal stories.

The name "Twisted Fate" sounds more like the name of a superhero, rather than a pulp hero. How about Maximilian Fortune instead? This still implies Money and Luck, but sounds more like a cheesy name that could occur in the pages of a 20s/30s pulp novel.

The characters need backstories. Ordinarily this is less important, but in this instance, you're trying to present a narrative, so you need to give the heroes greater context than they would ordinarily receive.

There's too much text on the character cards. I'd suggest that True Grit apply to Combat and Horror checks, instead of Fight and Will check. Quickdraw could be simplified by allowing the player to use their Speed instead of their Fight during the first round of any combat.

I'm not keen on the Twisted Fate (Max Fortune) abilities. Maybe simplify it to whenever you gain money, gain $1 extra. The loaded dice ability could be shunted to a Unique Item which can be sacrificed to choose the outcome of one dice roll (Ulthar Tarot Cards perhaps). Alternatively it could be an item that allows you to pay $X to reroll a skill check (where X is the number of dice to be rerolled). If you go down this route, you'll probably want to reference Mammon. This isn't technically a Lovecraft god, but if the master can reference Dagon (Joshua 19:27), we can reference Mammon (Matthew 6:24, KJV).

Edited by Jake yet again

The name "Twisted Fate" sounds more like the name of a superhero, rather than a pulp hero. How about Maximilian Fortune instead? This still implies Money and Luck, but sounds more like a cheesy name that could occur in the pages of a 20s/30s pulp novel.

Yeah, I'm not a super huge fan of the name either, but that decision was made by somebody else .

I guess the trickiest thing with providing backstories is just a lack of space. I suppose if I was really pushing a narrative front, I would just make a third card that handled the story setup since the original story is actually pretty good , but I almost feel like there's too much to cover with just Arkham supplies. I might think about rewriting the story side to better setup the scene rather than the feel of the scene.

I've made a lot of content that by all accounts doesn't really fit in the Lovecraft space, so that's usually not my primary concern. I use the game more as a way to explore different types of mechanics and different ways to execute them, while retaining a certain degree of composure and restraint at times (I've made a lot of the League of Legends cast into investigators, but I tend to ignore the ones that are too far from the Lovecraft feel).

Even Interwoven Stories were ultimately born out of a mechanical curiosity despite being fairly narrative focused.

Though I do really like that idea for an item that turns money into skill rerolls, so maybe there's room to experiment with that somewhere...

Edited by Shining Aquas