World Tone / Feeling
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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.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
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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.
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@sao For me it’s not just grounding for my sake, but it gives me confidence that the people running the show have an idea how their world is supposed to work and how to tell stories in that world.
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I too am on the Grimbright or Nobledark train – if the world is dark, I want to be able to make positive change (even if it’s small); if the world is bright, I want there to be a little grittiness to it as well.
I want my characters to succeed somewhere between 51% and 70% of the time – if they succeed all the time, it doesn’t feel like the stakes are really there, and if they fail more than half the time, it gets frustrating.
In the last decade or so, the world has been grimdark enough, if the setting is going to be either grim or dark, I want to be able to punch it in the face.
