Strikeforce – Building Campaigns pt. 2

Comics are more than just people in funny outfits with power beams and catchy quips. Subplots have been hooking us for decades. It isn’t enough to read about your favourite spandex hero triumphing against the latest plot to rule the world (or even the Tri-State area) – you want to know if they can make it back in time for their long promised date or will they manage to win that lawsuit against their alter-ego or even what hijinks will break out when they go out on the town with their teammates. DC Heroes made a specific point of subplots as a mechanic in their game, largely drawing inspiration from the epic Tales of the Teen Titans #50 – The Wedding of Donna Troy. It had suspense, laughter, drama, and the 80s fashions as only George Perez could draw them! Such character stories are a common trope in comics, but sometimes it isn’t everybody’s jam.

And then there’s the bookkeeping of all those secret notes passed to the GM for those side stories. Was the bartender’s name Vivian or Wynian when last the rogue was setting up connections in the local thieves’ guild? How much coin was going to have to change hands? Some player types are all about those side quests and persona development. Nowadays, lots of it is handled through things like open online documents or emails but that’s not always helpful in the moment at the table. Back in the 80s, Aaron Allston solved it with the 8″x10″ examination books (dollar stores have the cheaper composition books but just as effective), leading to them being called “blue booking” when a player wanted to work on those side stories. Harder to lose than those private little post-it notes getting passed to the GM, more durable records for future reference that can be passed around the table between players at a game, and a greater freedom for shy players who can put things down on paper instead of speaking them out loud.

At my table, Blue Booking started with tiny notepads that got passed back and forth between GM and player. As we went into a game of Amber the Diceless RPG, we moved onto some sturdier materials split between a coiled notebook and three ring binders. It started including things like wish lists, networks of NPCs and their backgrounds, plots between players, brainstorming sessions, and doodles of maps and faces. Like most journaling activities, the product wasn’t pretty or neat, but it got the job done.

As journaling has gotten more attention over the years, there is a fair bit more inspiration for what one could do with Blue Booking, building not only records of a session and the off screen interaction but also better ways to organize such things. It was a blinding moment of the obvious for me when I was introduced to the concept of setting up an index that was a living document, updating the page numbers have notes connected to a specific quest or a recurring NPC in a section devoted to such things. I’ve been using the same technique for session notes and a journal of TTRPG notes.

Meanwhile tech has helped blue booking in other ways, like open docs that folks can add to between sessions, shared world building, and other forms of story creation away from the gaming table. Honestly, with the limited availability of folks to play in person, it’s great to have these options.

If you haven’t tried something like Blue Booking for building the world and the story of characters, I recommend checking out what Strikeforce has to say about it. A quick web search finds numerous articles about it and even a few videos.