World Tone / Feeling
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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.
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@MisterBoring It might be a lack of trust thing? I can count on one hand the # of times I’ve been told that and didn’t have someone freak the fuck out when that exact same consequence became a Real Possibility. I actually don’t even need one hand, I could use one finger.
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@bear_necessities I promise I am that one finger. I enjoy stories where my character loses just as much as I enjoy wins.
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I think the issue is so often when the consequences come around those consequences are out of the player’s control. Which can be completely reasonable/logical! But they feel helpless and more easily feel slighted/pissed/unaccepting of the outcome. Especially if there is a hand behind the outcome such as a GM/Staff telling them what happened.
When bad results happen, I think you have to push it back on the player and let them make a choice. I was recently watching Critical Role’s new campaign and their use of their new system Daggerheart and I thought it was perfect for handling the scenario of a bad outcome/consequences in a MU*.
When a character loses all their HP in combat they are given three choices:
Blaze of Glory - They die, but they get to make an action that is an immediate critical success.
Struggle - They roll and have a 50/50 chance to either die or live.
Knocked Out - They live, are knocked out of the combat, but potentially suffer a permanent injury or setback.I think a pick your poison style of approach would reduce the negative feelings and encourage people to accept negative consequences. With some tweaking it could also be modified for non-combat bad outcomes.
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I think giving players mechanical agency over their potential bad stuff happening is a good thing. One of the GMs I have tabletop groups with has cribbed a Fate Point system out of… I think it was Zweihander, into every game he runs. Each player gets a pool of Fate points that replenish 1 point per session, up to a maximum of 3. You can spend one at any time to reroll a failure, or negate some minor negative thing, for example from our last session, our elemental summoning wizard suddenly found he had lost control of his fire elemental, and he spent a fate point to immediately retake control. On the other hand, if something majorly bad happens, such as a loss of a limb, or outright death, you have to burn a fate point to ignore those effects, and effectively remove yourself from the scene or combat in question. If you burn one, you effectively reduce your maximum by 1 for the life of the character, and if something majorly bad happens after you’ve run down to 0, then you just take whatever fate hands you.
In our tabletop group, having that mechanical agency over it has emboldened some of our usually more risk-adverse players into doing things that make the story more exciting and actually threaten their PCs well being.
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@bear_necessities said in World Tone / Feeling:
@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.
If I were doing this, I’d say once you die you get to take a character bit of one of the upper floor people and have decadent betting/backstabbing fellow richies/interfering with the poorer masses. Garbage fire on both ends.
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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.
You’re definitely right here and I think players could do more introspection about what they actually want before they commit to a less forgiving game.
I think I’m just scarred from previous experiences though because we’ve now said “consequences” so many times that it’s starting to lose its meaning to me.
I take “consequences” to mean “oh no I went adventuring without a light source and ran away from a bear and fell into a ravine and now I’m stuck until someone rescues me”.
But sometimes “consequences” means you pissed off someone with a lot of friends and they’re going to petition the admin to fire you from your IC job because you did not use the correct hand to wave to Ms Pennybottom at the annual fair. Sometimes “consequences” just translates to player infighting and yes people generally hate getting socially punished over made up minutae.
Breaking your ankle though, let’s do that more.
