World Tone / Feeling
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@Jenn said in World Tone / Feeling:
The Appalachian-set Curseborne game I’m bullying y’all into building.
Curseborne? Where?
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LOL. I’m being such a bully about it that they still haven’t told me the IP because then I’m unstoppable.
But the lore/setting/theme-y stuff we’re workshopping on Discord while our coders figure out how they wanna put together sheets and assign splats is at least danged entertaining.
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@Ashkuri said in World Tone / Feeling:
The intersection of sad and funny is where I thrive.
I’ve made a career of it.
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I’m less concerned about grid-level mood than with having the freedom and flexibility to run a scene that might fit whatever sort of tone I want to hit today. For example, on one grid on one character, I GMed:
- A tomb of zombies horror
- Mad Max desert rig chase
- High class well dressed casino heist
- Hacking a secure server (THAT was interesting to GM because you can’t write “and he typed on the keyboard” and be evocative)
- Run
- And a badly dubbed chop socky kung fu comedy
tl;dr I tend to chafe if the tone is too rigid, flexibility lets me be creative. If a grid is a canvas I prefer it unpainted.
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@Hobbie said in World Tone / Feeling:
I tend to chafe if the tone is too rigid, flexibility lets me be creative.
I agree with this. Rigid tone is stagnation. At the same time, too much flexibility and you lose the original intent of the game in the sauce. If I were to join a post apocalyptic game of community building and the struggle to survive, the sudden addition of a Dragonball Z style combat scene would be too jarring.
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Honestly the world is on fire so much lately that I want something not so depressing when I try to disconnect from the news so I stay away from grimdark and horror, but pretty much would be looking for a game where the PCs would get to be heroes. Which is not to say they win all the time hooray, but more like a place where the PCs could work towards the greater good without getting smacked down for trying.
I’d be down for a good supernatural cowboy game. Where you can shoot a werewolf or a ghost or something and then go to a rodeo or watch a bar fist fight. Something fun!
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The grim/noble dark/bright alignment system might be helpful: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/s/bB0gvqrwjL
I am firmly on the Noble side of settings. I am down for anything on the Bright-Dark setting with slight leaning towards Bright, but I don’t have Grim in me anymore. As @DrQuinn said, if I want Grim I’ll look at the damned window, and I’ve been in that state for about a decade now.
EDIT: After thinking about it more, I’m going to take it back. I’m down for anything but Grimdark. I’ll take Grimbright. Arx felt Grimbright to me.
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My white whale is and will probably always be an at least canon-adjacent superhero game that is relatively light and acknowledges the genre was built on sex
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@Ominous said in World Tone / Feeling:
The grim/noble dark/bright alignment system might be helpful: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/s/bB0gvqrwjL
I feel like Nobledark and Grimbright are my favorite sandboxes to play in.
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@Roz said in World Tone / Feeling:
@Ominous said in World Tone / Feeling:
The grim/noble dark/bright alignment system might be helpful: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/s/bB0gvqrwjL
I feel like Nobledark and Grimbright are my favorite sandboxes to play in.
I think Arx corrupted me.
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I need a mix. Depending on my mood and fatigue levels, I may want grimdark horror one day and vanilla slice of life the next day. My preference goes to settings that can accommodate most moods.
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@Ominous Ooo I like this chart, thanks!! I think I’m on the noble side of things but I also like grimbright.
I was mostly wondering if the general consensus was ‘the world right now is grim and so I want to stay away from that’ when I asked this question. I don’t think I’m capable of playing in a fully grim/grimdark setting myself, and there’s a big part of me that doesn’t even want to play in a modern setting anymore even if the “real” world politics are ignored. But I also don’t want to play in a modern setting where everything is happy/bright? Because it just doesn’t make sense for me lol
@DrQuinn I too wish for a good supernatural cowboy game. Give it to me.
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@Prototart said in World Tone / Feeling:
My white whale is and will probably always be an at least canon-adjacent superhero game that is relatively light and acknowledges the genre was built on sex
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Not to double post but this game exists and is listed here https://arescentral.aresmush.com/games bet you can’t figure out which one it is lol
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@Ominous Good chart.
I join the crowd on the nobledark > grimbright line. I don’t particularly enjoy anything that strays too far in either direction toward noblebright and grimdark. I don’t want to feel helpless and like I can’t change anything, but at the same time, I want to feel like the choices characters make matter. I think the nobledark / grimbright line best captures that.
ETA instead of a doublepost:
@bear_necessities said in World Tone / Feeling:
I was mostly wondering if the general consensus was ‘the world right now is grim and so I want to stay away from that’ when I asked this question. I don’t think I’m capable of playing in a fully grim/grimdark setting myself, and there’s a big part of me that doesn’t even want to play in a modern setting anymore even if the “real” world politics are ignored. But I also don’t want to play in a modern setting where everything is happy/bright? Because it just doesn’t make sense for me lol
This is basically where I fall. I’m not opposed to grim settings when the world is grim, but only so I can OVERTHROW THEM.
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@bear_necessities I am surprised you hadn’t encountered it before. It’s been a bit of meme in tabletop gaming since Brighthammer and Midhammer
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@Ominous I actually don’t play TT so that’s probably why lol
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I want a complex, consistent world with a lot of meaningful conflict that isn’t always Good vs Evil. I probably lean a bit towards the darker end of the setting, but I ultimately want the PCs to have a sense of humanity to them. PvE and PvP are both fine (although these days I lean away from PvP not because I don’t enjoy it when it works but because of player issues).
I want a setting with real problems that characters have to live with and carve out their own kinds of happiness within it. I like striving for something better, but I want it to be a long road with some wins along the way, but also some setbacks. Tragedy and joy in the right proportions.
And some room for fun, over-the-top coolness or big, splashy actions along the way, sure.
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An additional thought:
Verisimilitude. That’s what I really need to feel in the world. Bright, dark, whatever doesn’t matter so much as a level of truthiness – I can cope better with too much sugar or too much grit if the world feels grounded with some kind of internal logical consistency. I don’t need to be able to predict how things work, but I do kind of want them to be able to be predicted.
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@Pavel Yes, this. I like to feel grounded in my stories, even if the settings are fantastical or bizarre.