Our brainstorming group met up last night and we roughed out a setting for a TV show. I was recording all the ideas down onto a huge sheet of paper in mind-map form

In a mind-map, each concept or character is drawn as a bubble with lines leading off to further facts about that character - and if one of those facts became important enough, it got turned into a bubble of its own, with facts leading off it.

Hope that's clear.

Anyway, at the end the session was starting to feel a lot like a game of Universalis where you didn't have a plot, just fleshed out the setting.

THE POINT: It struck me that this could be a really good way to record components and traits. It's visual & it's accessible to everybody.

I haven't tried it yet, but I think I will next time I play.

Hmm. How huge a sheet do you need? I'm thinking pretty huge. How big do you use?

Mike

We were using an A1 sheet (approximately 80 cm x 60 cm). It was about half full after a 2 hour session. Of course in Uni terms, that was focused entirely on adding traits to components, rather than moving any plot along.