World Tone / Feeling
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@STD said in World Tone / Feeling:
In my experience, most people don’t mind losing big – even going as far as character death – as long as it’s cool.
YMMV. Over the span of about 2 decades, I ran many different games with opt-in character death. You PC could be incapacitated, but would never(*) die without your consent. In that time, I can think of maybe two? three? players who chose to kill off their PCs voluntarily. These were high-stakes settings. Loads of gunfights, plenty of opportunities to write yourself out as a Big Darn Hero. The overwhelming majority of players I’ve encountered (both online and in offline TTRPGs) don’t want to lose their characters. Even if you ignore the XP loss, there’s an investment in relationships, story, development there that you can’t quantify.
(*) Barring extreme “you’ve painted us into a corner with your monumentally boneheaded actions” situations.
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Decades ago, Tenebrae put something in place where you would basically rate your plot before people signed up. I think it was like ‘Risk of Death’ ‘Risk of Maiming/Weapon Sundering’ and then just ‘No Risk.’
It worked for the most part. People who signed up for the risk of death scenes knew that it was possible their PCs could die and they were usually Big Plots where it was cool if they did. Did that stop some players from still being super mad about it when it happened? Nope. In a big Save the World scene I remember a staffer had a monster with an insta-death ray that would kill anyone with a bad fort save. So he made sure it targeted the PC in the scene with the best fort score and thus the best chance of nothing happening. Like I specifically remember the conversation on the staff channel where a bunch of us weighed in on who it should target because while it was high stakes we didn’t really want to kill anyone.
The PC then rolled a 1 and accused the staffer of doing it on purpose and declared the whole scene had been set up just so they would die and it was a whole thing.
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I certainly want a grounded game where there can be death and consequences.
On the topic of death and consequences. I feel like the best way to have non-consent death in a game is MUD style where there is cold hard code making that decision and not necessarily GMed rolls. Only MUSH game that I have seen do that was Firan.
You also have to have a game big enough to survive the inevitable blow ups that will happen with players quitting.
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Also I want a Grimbright/Nobledark sci-fi/fantasy with mechs and lords and ladies and dragons.
Because I am like 14 and hate having to work and laying taxes.
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@real_mirage said in World Tone / Feeling:
laying taxes
Taking the “fuck the state” idea in a whole new direction.
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I want so many hyper-specific games that I won’t actually get them barring starting games myself, and I can’t honestly be sure that they would even get enough players to be runnable.
Like my idea for a post-apocalyptic game where the remaining people on the world live in and around a huge metal tower. The people who have all the power live above the smog clouds choking the world below, and have access to the remaining places above the clouds, including the last bits of fertile land and potable water. The rest of the people live below, in claustrophobic spaces where their survival is only guaranteed by toiling to get access to resupply of the filters that keep the smog out of their cramped quarters. The lower class use power armor suits to try and clean the world, much like the Chernobyl liquidators, while the upper class vie for control of the remaining clean resources and do what they can to keep the lower class from climbing the tower and destroying everything.
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@MisterBoring said in World Tone / Feeling:
Like my idea for a post-apocalyptic game where the remaining people on the world live in and around a huge metal tower. The people who have all the power live above the smog clouds choking the world below, and have access to the remaining places above the clouds, including the last bits of fertile land and potable water. The rest of the people live below, in claustrophobic spaces where their survival is only guaranteed by toiling to get access to resupply of the filters that keep the smog out of their cramped quarters. The lower class use power armor suits to try and clean the world, much like the Chernobyl liquidators, while the upper class vie for control of the remaining clean resources and do what they can to keep the lower class from climbing the tower and destroying everything.
I had a similar idea for an anthology game I was thinking of creating. Basically you are in the tower and the only way to climb is to participate in virtual reality “simulations” where your goal was to amuse the people in the upper floors, kinda Hunger Game-y except you were a different character in each sim. The purpose was to die, repeatedly and violently and epically. I just couldn’t figure out what people would do when they were killed off and waiting for everyone else.
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@Pavel said in World Tone / Feeling:
@real_mirage said in World Tone / Feeling:
laying taxes
Taking the “fuck the state” idea in a whole new direction.
I never thought I’d see “sex worker” meaning “tax collector” in even a fictional government, but here we are.
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@dvoraen
Im being audited! -
@real_mirage said in World Tone / Feeling:
Also I want a Grimbright/Nobledark sci-fi/fantasy with mechs and lords and ladies and dragons.
Allow me to introduce you to Lancer. You’ll want the Dune-esque Karrakin Trade Baronies setting. Though, it’s mostly a D&D 4e style game, e.g. a miniatures wargame focused on tactics with very few mechanics for out of combat stuff.
@dvoraen said in World Tone / Feeling:
I never thought I’d see “sex worker” meaning “tax collector” in even a fictional government, but here we are.
Do…do I even want to know what it is they’re collecting as “taxes?” I suspect I would want to refuse any tax refunds.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
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@Ominous said in World Tone / Feeling:
@dvoraen said in World Tone / Feeling:
I never thought I’d see “sex worker” meaning “tax collector” in even a fictional government, but here we are.
Do…do I even want to know what it is they’re collecting as “taxes?” I suspect I would want to refuse any tax refunds.
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I am familiar with Lancer! I plan to run a TT game using it sometime in the future.
I think it be a fun setting for a MU*, although you would have to build out the mechanics for social and non-mech interactions.
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@real_mirage said in World Tone / Feeling:
Also I want a Grimbright/Nobledark sci-fi/fantasy with mechs and lords and ladies and dragons.
Because I am like 14 and hate having to work and laying taxes.
Funny enough I know someone working on a game that could fit that whole-ass description.
ETA: Not me. I’m not working on this. I’m not being coy about me working on this. IT’S NOT ME.
she/they
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@Tez said in World Tone / Feeling:
Not me. I’m not working on this. I’m not being coy about me working on this. IT’S NOT ME.
The they-dy doth protest too much.
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@Tez so it’s you eh???
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@bear_necessities said in World Tone / Feeling:
@Tez so it’s you eh???
If it weren’t for your busy schedule, based on premise, I would have been guessing YOU.
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I think a game can have genuine dangers and consequences for losses other than unceremonious death. You can get injured, cursed, trapped, etc. I think you can also sit players down and set expectations that they won’t endlessly throw themselves into unwinnable battles just because they aren’t deleted upon a loss.
I also don’t see it as an issue of conflicting playstyles between mechanically-focused minmaxing and collaborative storytelling. What I’d like is firmly collaborative storytelling. It’s just not collaborative storytelling about tea parties and everybody being friends.
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@Juniper I’ve always felt that while people say they want consequences in their RP, a vast majority of people don’t really want it. At least not permanent consequences. I think most people just want to be able to write a little angst/drama into their RP for a couple of scenes, get some attention, and then move on from it. There’s a very rare few that truly want their characters to die, or to suffer major long-lasting and/or permanent consequences as a result of their RP.
I do think that circles back to tone and what people are trying to play. I don’t think a grimdark game where consequences are char-death or extreme permanent damage would be very successful, because most people want to play consequences that they can overcome (if they want consequences at all).
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@bear_necessities said in World Tone / Feeling:
I’ve always felt that while people say they want consequences in their RP, a vast majority of people don’t really want it. At least not permanent consequences.
I always get weird reactions when I tell people that I’m totally okay with my characters losing limbs, being disfigured, having their livelihood ruined, or straight up dying as long as it’s entertaining.
