Tabletop Atoms spotlight a single cool idea from a game or person in the tabletop space.
Today, we’re looking at Brindlewood Bay, a cosy-horror game about a group of elderly women solving murder mysteries in a sea-side town. As they connect cases together, they begin to discover supernatural secrets.
Mechanic: have the players feed into each other’s character creation.
During character creation, you create your mystery solving granny and describe your character to the table. Inspired by your description, the other players each create an item for your character. This item forms part of your character’s ‘cosy place’, somewhere special to them. The items can each be used once per game to gain an advantage.
This is such a great idea. It creates a sense of shared ownership between the players, immediately forming a bond between the party. It also leads to interesting roleplaying opportunities. Players are incentivised to improvise with that item and both players feel satisfied when it gets used!
We would love to hear of other games using a similar mechanic. Lots of games ask players to describe a bond or relationship to other party members (such as Thirsty Sword Lesbians’ relationship worksheets), but few (that we know of) actively have players give each other items.