Organizing Notes with Mind Maps

I have been following a number of threads and people who have been talking about how mechanics in the game make it very easy to have a plot break down. While this is true I believe if you are going to have rigid plot lines the onus is on you, the DM, to make a plot more resilient to the game mechanics. The response to these has been that some tropes become impossible and preparation time becomes more time consuming.

Both are valid issues however I think the issue of preparation time can be resolved (or at least mitigated) by developing a processes to help speed up the time it takes to turn the idea bouncing around in your head into usable story material.

One of the biggest aids to me I just discovered recently. It is called a mind map. It basically diagram that starts with a word or phase with branches for major categories composed of words or phases related to the idea. These major categories are themselves branched out from by smaller sub categories.

Once you have these ideas you probably will move things around and better categorize them which will help you to better organize those thoughts. Hopefully in the end you have turned your collection of ideas into something more structured and useable.

Here is an example of an adventure I made using the idea of a story based around the song "I shot the sherif." I used coggle.it history feature to show the progression of the mind map.

progression 1
progression 2
progression 3

I have found this very useful in helping me put together adventures. By virtue of going through the process even my most mundane ideas have turned out to be more complex then they would otherwise.
Thanks for reading!

The Fate Toolkit - The Horror Paradox vs The Cthulhu Paradox

The Fate Toolkit

The Horror Paradox vs The Cthulhu Paradox

I was reading through the Fate System Toolkit on http://fate-srd.com/ when I came across the section The Horror Paradox in Subsystems chapter. I have many reservations about Fate being a good system for Cthulhu. The Game Creation section of Fate Core all but rules Cthulhu out as a good fit in the section “What Makes a Good Fate Game?” So I was happy to see and read the section on The Horror Paradox.The Horror subsystem breaks things down by working from this premise:

Horror is as a combination of oppressive atmosphere, impossible circumstances, and stark desperation.

With that as the philosophy, It attempts to focus on each of the three elements and how to add them into the game. There are a lot of good stuff and much of it is easy to implement without any huge rules changes.
After more thought, I start thinking that while Cthulhu Mythos is horror, it has an element of suspense that seemed to be missing. The Horror Paradox adds the feel of death, but it seemed to me to like death was a sudden. While this can be true with Cthulhu Mythos, I believe that with Lovecraftian Horror it is more generally a slow descent towards doom. So I think a different description:

Cthulhu horror is a combination of oppressive atmosphere, impossible circumstances, and creeping desperation.

The one thing I changed was “stark desperation” to “creeping desperation.” The difference being the stress tracks. With “stark desperation” it is suggested that the stress track be shortened. The reasons are because characters shouldn't have much of a buffer before they start to break, bleed or go mad.What I propose is that instead of shortening the stress track to instead extend it. With a longer stress track, there is room for additional tiers of consequences. These consequences will be longer lasting and more insidious by nature and by their potential to accumulate. These mechanism help portray that the path towards madness as a slow deliberate one.

Link to The Horror Paradox in Fate System Toolkit – Link