401.10 - Transmedia Production Bible

What is humanity after the end of the world? The Ecological Threshold (point of no return) was reached in 2050 and earth was no longer able to support life. Yet we found a way. That was nearly 300 years ago.

This epic RPG is a hybrid between Tabletop and Video game, the built in game companion app eliminates the need for complex maths and tracks character advancement directly on your phone or tablet and makes character and campaign management a breeze for DMs to let you become more immersed in the game and form lasting relationships with your group.

A campaign pack will be an adventure designed to be played over 12x 3 hour sessions.

Each campaign will address a different theme, area, faction or situation. While release periodically, they will be designed so that they can be played in any order, and while they have influence over the overarching faction alignments, they are more or less serialised.

For each campaign pack, a 3-6 hour intro module will be presented to the players, along with “secret” information for the GM, who has a holistic view of the universe, this will include information about the movements of each faction and what’s happening behind the scenes.

The player modules are designed to be multipath, webbed storylines, (approx. 1 web per hour, 10 paths per web which correlates to 1 story arc and 10 scenes in more traditional media) and replayable.

The campaign packs are also an opportunity to introduce new rules talents and abilities for the players.

The player module is designed to be played solo, to show how the rules work, without a boring tutorial. It will create or expand their character through decisions they make.

This will then flow into a more traditional table top game, and act as a character sheet and dice.

At the table top, the GM will control a digital table top, and the players can control their players within this. There will be an included character model designer so that players can style their PC model.

Each campaign will have 3 or more “webs” which are correlated to linear media as story arcs. I call them webs, because the flow chart looks like this.

This comprises of 5 acts. There are 4 randomised starting points, and each act only has 2 decision options. The assumption is to have 5 act arcs, however if different story telling options are created, this may only be 3, or up to 12, depending on the type of story. Upon completion, it may be more complex than this. Unpacking a Synopsis for each arc is hard to unpack

The intention for each branch of these webs is to explore a different facet of the world and give exposition about it, which will remain relatively constant per arc, and per campaign. However, the characters may receive a slightly different version of it depending on the disposition and ideology of the NPC giving them the exposition. (unreliable narrator/Rashomon effect). This gives the player something to discuss at the table, in the real, and serialises each campaign intro – the world should remain the same between campaigns.

For example, one story arc (web) could be about factions. And while the players start off in different locations, the acts will explore the same themes central to each faction, as noted in the example stories above.

This results in 128 different endings per story arc. With 3+ arcs per campaign, this ensures that each player has a unique experience, enhancing the feeling of freedom.