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