Walking Dead Braunstein/Cataphract-Like

A cool idea I had: 

 

Rather important readings:

Sam Sorensen's Cataphract Design Diary

Mythic Mountain Musing's Traveller Braunstein 

This is just an idea that I need to exercise from my mind. In the future I might flesh it out and figure out how to make it work. Maybe someone else will even do it for me and then I can play in their game.

The Walking Dead, Lost, and other shows like them are all about this sort of interpersonal conflict. Outside dangers and pressures seem more like pressures to cause interpersonal conflict, rather than being themselves the focus. While the amount of lying, petty grievances, and vendettas occasionally has me ranting at the screen, it is also paramount to my enjoyment of those.

Reading about Cataphract and Traveller Braunsteins fascinates me. I have always been fascinated by “social politic” games: EVE Online, Town of Salem, Unfortunate Spacemen, you name it. (Not that I am good at them…especially if they are board or card games). The way they play with interpersonal interaction, trust, and hidden information is a form of gameplay that is incredibly unique. I find there to be an additional richness in knowing that the characters are all real people, in some sense. Braunstein’s and games like Cataphract, take that form of gameplay and apply the flexibility of a ttrpg on top of that complexity. Unfortunately, this seems to come at the cost of taking a lot of prep and work to run.

Maybe you can see where this is going. I’d hope so, considering it is the title of the post.

While I was still watching the Walking Dead (I only got to season 4 or so), I decided to get the Walking Dead TTRPG. While definitely not an OSR game or a dungeon-head game like I am used to, I was incredibly impressed with how playable it was. Some licensed tabletop games I have read have little to no advice on how to play the game, and even less actionable tools for the GM. The Walking Dead TTRPG includes tables of random locations to find, specific NPCs to meet, and random resources from scavenging. It very satisfyingly models the omnipresent undead threat to life and limb with its Threat and Swarm mechanics.

A large part of the game is supposed to be interpersonal conflict. Several of the example “crises” are things that occur completely within the players’ haven! I, as a DM, have a hard time running those sorts of scheming NPCs. Coming up with and keeping track of their plans and what they are doing off-screen is hard for me, in part because it feels so arbitrary. I’m a real procedure-head. The game’s advice seems to be “it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t have to be fair, the crisis happens because something needs to happen this session”. I think that is probably good advice, but I still don’t like it. Even if I run games that way, I don’t even have that good of a poker face. I just can’t convincingly lie to people’s face, so NPCs I portray just aren’t very good at lying. Despite that, the example one shot made it click more for me. The example one-shot gives each player their own little pieces of information and contradicting motives. That’s great! It is a very fruitful ground for good roleplay and good emergent stories. However, it seems like it would be incredibly hard to keep up in a traditional campaign.

That’s where Braustein’s and Cataphract-likes come in! From here on out I will just be outlining my brainstorming, mostly by highlighting problem areas where decisions would have to be made.

I think in this case, the semi-abstracted nature of skill rolls in the Walking Dead TTRPG will work to the game's advantage, as not everything needs to be exactly so nitty gritty (and, as a DM, the less nitty gritty, the easier to run). Excursions can almost feel a little more like sending your little Rimworld guys on an expedition or doing a quest in Fallout Shelter. 

I would definitely want to have real procedures for ammo, gas, and the like. The game as written takes a real “just make it a problem whenever you want it to be”. To be fair, that is very true to the show and genre as a whole. The solo-play section has some procedures for that, but it is in the form of tables of “mess-ups” for crit failures; it still doesn’t really reflect any actual measurement of resources and therefore can’t be planned around. I would probably just go with a usage die, as it keeps an element of randomness while also allowing planning by players.

I keep going back and forth on whether to start players with a haven, multiple havens, or all separate in a “day 0” sort of situation. I think any of those could be fun, though being all separate could be more work for the DM. My fear is that if all players start in a haven, I am not really sure how to run that. Things like sneaking around or overhearing people conspiring seems like the sort of thing I would want to happen, but I am just not sure how to do it. Definitely a good use for the perception check-analogue! Maybe if people make private threads to have private conversations, nearby people can make a roll to attempt to snoop in, with the people in the thread being alerted on a failure. I think things would work out as long as there were some clear, player-facing procedures.

The other thing that concerns me is character creation. I would need some sort of pre-made list of character connections and motivations that I can start applying to people. The character archetypes and feat-ures do have some good hooks for that sort of thing. It is something I would just really have to give some thought before starting. I am also undecided about whether to have only PCs or include some NPCs. I am leaning towards the former though.

Lastly, I will have to actually define the world/scenario. I could use the setting for Atlanta given in the rulebook, but that seems a little boring. I think it would be fun to make it set in the city and surrounding where I live, but that would take a decent amount of work. Could be fun though!

Hopefully this sparked some good ideas for someone reading this. It definitely pointed out some of the decision points I would have to make before running something like this. Even if I never end up pursuing it, the thought experiment was fun. Now I'm going to get back to writing a session report I am neglecting.