World Tone / Feeling

bear_necessities

@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.

bear_necessities

@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

Reply

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

Tez

@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.

Ominous

@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

bear_necessities

@Ominous I actually don’t play TT so that’s probably why lol

Pyrephox

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.

Pavel

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.

sao

@Pavel Yes, this. I like to feel grounded in my stories, even if the settings are fantastical or bizarre.

Pavel

@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.

Roadspike

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.

Jenn

@Roadspike said in World Tone / Feeling:

I want to be I want to be able to punch it in the face.

I also would like to punch most of the universe in the face. When and where do we start swinging?

Pavel

@Jenn said in World Tone / Feeling:

When and where do we start swinging?

I mean. Technically you’re part of the universe. One of the few known intelligent bits who would understand the impact of being punched in the face.

So.

You could start there. Or your nearest enemy-shaped human.

mietze

As long as the ooc atmosphere is polite to cordial/friendly (prefer it closer to the friendly side), has some boundaries around public ooc/rl oversharing, and where staff helps people who are freaking out because they dont actually like the game leave, I am pretty genre flexible.

I like trying new things as far as theme/world/genre/ic feel!

KarmaBum

@Roadspike said in World Tone / Feeling:

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.

People seem to be saying this a lot, so I’m kinda curious what “touch the world” mean in terms of MUSH gameplay.

Can you share some concrete examples from a player perspective of what this looks like on a MUSH?

I know a lot of us have run games over the years and probably think we’ve done this from an admin perspective, but I’d love to hear some player-side examples of this in effect on a MUSH.

I’m much more of a storyTELLER than storyPLAYER, and I’d love to be better at making stories responsive.

Tez

@KarmaBum I have a few ideas and examples:

One the private games run by friends, they started with authoritarian governments / police states locking down planets / settlement. Much of the stories were about breaking that down and overthrowing things. Literally overthrowing things.

One of the things that was particularly fun about one of them is how as the story changed, the entire page theme would change. New colors, new images, new CSS: all of it to reflect different settings, different places in the story.

It’s PROBABLY not super common, though. These were small games with a close GMing.
Way back when, long ago in the misty days of @Roz, @sao, @Tat, and I running an X-Men game, players actually took part in shaping the world in terms of manipulating the outcomes of legislation. We (Sao) did a fair amount of announcements to reflect the IC news and updates as well.
Everyone loves to see their actions reflected in game-wide updates and announcements. Firan and Arx both featured that to greater or lesser degrees. It’s cooler still in my opinion to see an actual shift of culture or laws. I’ve been working on my long-dreamed generational game where the ability to shift an in-game culture is a mechanic, somewhat modeled off Crusader Kings.
I like temporary room descriptions that can be updated on public spaces to reflect events that have happened, but sometimes people forget and it loses its impact. Still, I like that as an idea: a grid that updates to reflect actions people have taken.