Paperwork With Friends

So I dreamed up a module and it’s going to maybe have some layers of… malcontent… but I want to focus specifically on one aspect.

The thing I want to focus on is a gameplay loop that has everyone playing solo journaling adventure, together. To fully understand it we need a bit of context.

So you are a locally hired community member in a feytouched neighbourhood in the 1990s working for your national census program. Don’t worry about all that.

The core game loop is to draw cards from a deck to enumerate the inhabitants of the neighborhood and fill out the necessary paperwork. Don’t worry about that.

Some of the denizens of the neighbourhood are muses or vampires or werewolves or whatever, you have to play through the dangerous encounters with these beings and try to survive complete the census. Each player does this as a solo journaling exercise on their own, but Don’t worry about that.

The situation that results is some people sitting around drawing cards and doing their paperwork, and then they must rapidly (and silently) scurry their little mini to the payphone to call the crew leader (GM) to report issues or get backup or take on the role of a doppleganger attempting to infiltrate the census bureau, etc. these payphone conversations with limited context are the extent of the interactions.

The question is, first of all, if not “solo journaling together” what is this format called, also, does it have any good other examples of similar loops? Lastly, any good solutions on what the GM should be doing during “downtime”? Ideally, the spread of emergency payphone calls keeps them busy, but inevitably the cards just so happen to land such that no one is calling for 5-10 mins