Something I Like From Contagion Chronicle (2020)

10 Nov, 2024

I want to share an exercise I read in White Wolf Entertainment and Onyx Path Publishing's Contagion Chronicle (2020), a gamebook for the Chronicles of Darkness setting. It's a procedure for use in crossover campaigns between the different Chronicles gamelines, crossover being something for which Contagion is inherently built. However, I think the procedure works for much more than that: specifically, it is a way of tying your players' disparate backstories into one starting premise. Most of us do that naturally enough, I think, but I find Contagion's approach appealingly comprehensive. You can find it on pages 118 and 119 in the "Theme and Mood" subsection of Chapter Four, "Storytelling."

In Contagion, player characters investigate a pervasive affliction that primarily, but far from exclusively, affects supernatural places, beings, and objects. The thing is, few denizens of the World of Darkness know the Contagion even exists. In order to bring the player characters together to investigate it, Contagion suggests a four-step process.

First, determine what specific manifestation of the Contagion should get your player characters' attention. This is the Core. From here, come up with two major symptoms of the Core, and one minor symptom.

Second, for each major symptom, write down two consequences of it; for the minor symptom, write down one. These consequences should be specific and concrete, and should foreshadow what might happen if the outbreak escalates.

Third, for each consequence, create one Storyteller character (that is, an NPC) who is affected by and reacts to the consequence. Each of these characters should be connected to one or more player characters.

Fourth, for each Storyteller character, come up with a complication that arises from their reaction. Importantly, this is a complication not (just) for the Storytelling character, but for the player character to whom they're connected.

Contagion doesn't state this explicitly, but I think it should be obvious: the goal is to have at least one Storyteller character attached to each of the player characters. By the end, you should have a web of connections that draw your player characters toward the same entry point in the investigation. And while Contagion says this process can be used repeatedly, I think it is especially useful for the beginning of a chronicle.

Of course, the language Contagion uses for the procedure is specific to the kind of game for which it was made, with its symptoms and outbreaks and so on. But I think it's easy enough to make a more situation-agnostic version:

1. If you already have a central problem you want to use as a through-line for your campaign, make a note of it now.
2. Establish a situation that is the entry point for the campaign. If you have a central problem, this situation should introduce it, but the entry point should still be complex and urgent enough to be compelling by itself.
3. For the entry point, determine three manifestations, two major and one minor. These are specific, concrete aspects of the situation.
4. For each major manifestation, decide on two further consequences; for the minor manifestation, decide on one consequence. These consequences are more local and specific. There should be five of them.
5. For each of the five consequences, come up with an NPC who is affected by it and reacts to it. These NPCs should each be connected to at least one player character, and each player character should have at least one of these NPCs connected to them.
6. For each of the five NPCs, figure out a complication their reaction to the consequence causes for the player characters. These act more or less as hooks, though could do double-duty as clues.

Here's an example:

Main Problem: The lizardfolk of Aldinwood seek a dragon egg to hatch and raise. If they succeed, they will aggressively build an empire around the dream of a dragon king.¹

Entry Point: The lizardfolk have raided the town of Gullwyck looking for information about dragons' eggs.

Major Manifestation 1: Gullwyck's gates and walls are ruined and many of its defenders dead or injured.

• Consequence 1a: Brigands have gathered in the woods, preparing to strike a weakened Gullwyck.
  • NPC 1a: A player character's brother-in-law is a village sentry, doing double shifts.
    • Complication 1a: The player character's sister, worried about her husband, is sending endless letters to their parents, who in turn demand the player character go deal with it.
• Consequence 1b: Boggles have slipped past Gullwyck's lax defenses and taken residence in the ruins of a house, from which they harass townsfolk.
  • NPC 1b: A player character's colleague is being harassed in the night by mischievous boggles.
    • Complication 1b: The colleague is not sending much-needed deliveries on time, or at all.

Major Manifestation 2: The librarians and archivists of the Gullwyck Library have been kidnapped by the lizardfolk, who want them to interpret the records they took.

• Consequence 2a: Without the archivists and the archives they keep, attempts to account for all the townsfolk after the attack are uncertain and incomplete.
  • NPC 2a: A player character's fiancé, an archivist, has been dispatched to Gullwyck to help manage records.
    • Complication 2a: Until the Gullwyck archivists return to work, the fiancé will be too busy to spend much time with the player character, let alone help them in an important task.
• Consequence 2b: The families of the captives are gathering a party to rescue them, but they are not warriors and most of them will likely die in the attempt.
  • NPC 2b: A player character's rival has been asked by her girlfriend, whose father is missing, to travel to Gullwyck to join the war party.
    • Complication 2b: When the rival leaves for Gullwyck, the neighbours won't stop talking about how great she is – and ignore the player character's accomplishments.

Minor Manifestation: Gullwyck's sacred well has been desecrated.

• Consequence 3: Until the sacred well has been cleansed, all Gullwyck's burial rites must be put on hold.
  • NPC 3: A player character's sister is the priestess unable to officiate the burial rites.
    • Complication 3: The sister knows something the player characters need to know, and she won't share it until the well is restored.

My complications seem a little thin, I think because I don't have real player characters whose specific ambitions (or grudges) I can complicate with the NPCs' reactions to the problem. And yet again, I need to add a disclaimer: I've never tried this myself. I only recently read Contagion and I haven't had an opportunity to test this method. I do wonder if it could be streamlined a little: you could perhaps make five consequences right off of the entry point, skipping the manifestations entirely. Still, it looks promising to me and, if I have success with it, I'll report back.

#Chronicles of Darkness #for GMs