Tone and Emotion in Tabletop

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Prak
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Tone and Emotion in Tabletop

Post by Prak »

The desire for a Horror and Comedy and such games is an old one. Hell, Ravenloft was all about gothic horror, there are two Discworld books for GURPs, 3.X had Heroes of Horror, and so on. And there's the perennial desire to evoke awe or wonder in players that some of the more pretentious/ambitious GMs hold. To say nothing of the fact that any attempt to do an erotic game is heavily dependent on tone to not be completely ridiculous parody.

But how much can you really enforce tone in a game? The thing most readily in mind is Dread, but it only could enforce the eponymous emotion through a ridiculously gimmicky resolution mechanic. Call of Cthulhu's star-numbered variations have sanity, but they fall far, far short of instilling despair or dread, and instead the game is commonly said to be about who can go crazy and die in the coolest way.

Is there really anyway that a game ruleset could construct an atmosphere of a desired tone such that a Horror or Comedy could actually succeed at its intended theme without resorting to gimmicks? Or can you only give GMs pointers about how to create a non-mechanical tone with gimmicks like lighting and sfx and shit?
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Post by hogarth »

The best way (in my experience) is to get a setting that the players love and then it's simple to get everyone to play along, no matter how crappy the rules are. For example, Call of Cthulhu and Toon.

EDIT: Actually, let me add one proviso: it's easy if you get a setting that the players love and that doesn't generally revolve around lots of combat. Once you start getting into a setting that's just one combat after another (e.g. superheroes or action movies), then sometimes it's hard to match the mood to the rules.
Last edited by hogarth on Sat Aug 29, 2015 1:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Sakuya Izayoi »

I played a bunch of the 40k FFG RPGs as my introduction to the hobby. They have all the same mechanical problems as CoC (to a lesser degree, but its still not a very good competency simulator), but we managed to do cooperative storytelling in the given universe anyway, likely because of the setting. Having a setting in which everything can be googled (aside from the crap FFG made up themselvs) is HUGE when it comes to having something evoke the same mental image in everyone.
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Post by Ancient History »

Investment is pretty critical. Stakes is critical. Players need to know their actions have consequences, and that they can have impact. Probably the best response I've ever got in a game is when the mindflayer in the gimp suit wasn't in his box in Crypts of Chaos - and that only worked because
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Post by Krusk »

3.5 gives a bunch of fighting powers. Ergo the solution to most cchallenges is "go beat it up". This doesnt usually make for a good horror game.

If instead of combat rules, a game had "slip away from being killed" rules it would presumably be more horror focused. You spend a resource to activate your "seems like he was just gravely wounded, not dead" power. Now its gone for future encounters. Hope you dont have anymore.... Now the game system backs up the horror concept.
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Post by hogarth »

Ancient History wrote:Players need to know their actions have consequences, and that they can have impact.
That's interesting to me, because the two examples I gave of having good tone (Call of Cthulhu and Toon) are pretty much the epitome of having zero impact on the setting.
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Post by Stinktopus »

hogarth wrote:
Ancient History wrote:Players need to know their actions have consequences, and that they can have impact.
That's interesting to me, because the two examples I gave of having good tone (Call of Cthulhu and Toon) are pretty much the epitome of having zero impact on the setting.
Then you are doing it wrong, or have a different notion of what constitutes "impact on the setting."

If you are playing Toon, and base your character off of Impotent Rage (from GTA V), then pulling a toilet-like lever on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico and flushing the southeastern quadrant of the United States should totally be a possible outcome. Hell, Tom & Jerry set off one nuclear weapon.

In Call of Cthulhu, you can influence whether the whole world goes mad/gets eaten. More "tone appropriately," you can influence whether the orphans escape before the orphanage gets sucked into an alternate dimension, or chase off a group of Nyarlathotep-inspired fundamentalists who want to burn down the party's beloved local occult bookstore.

When I think of tone-deaf adventures where you don't feel like you've impacted the environment, I think of plundering random dungeon X at the behest of the nebulous, static Kingdom of Kingliness that you know nothing about outside of the quest giver and magic item store.
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Post by Dogbert »

What you're looking for is Genre Emulation.

If you want horror, then you use a system that's all about player disempowerment.

If you want slapstick humor, then you use a system that prevents any kind of investment.

If you want players to be good-two-shoes, then you use a system where the mechanics punish players for not being so (see "dark side points/Star Wars").

Ravenloft? That one was never a horror game, horror is about RUNNING from the monsters, which is anathema in a system where one of the main classes is called FIGHTER and you get XP for KILLING STUFF.

Having said this, the best genre-emulating system in the world will still be crap in the hands of a GM who happens to be genre-deaf. A friend of mine has been familiar with M&M for years and yet he can't run a successful superhero campaign to save his life because he'll never understand the superhero genre.

Also, some genres are way more demanding than others (namely, horror and comedy) in which you need to instill those emotions in THE PLAYERS, not just the characters. It's like the age-old drama/comedy comparison: If you play a drama and no one cries things are still okay as long as they clap at the end. On the other hand, If you tell a joke, and no one laughs...
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Post by Ancient History »

"Impact" can also be, that the players feel that they have some interest in the game - "buy in," I suppose. Games like Shadowrun, D&D, and Call of Cthulhu have a lot of implicit buy-in: the PCs are investigators/shadowrunners/adventurers and they are here to investigate/shadowrun/adventure. Anything else requires more effort on the part of both the players and Mister Cavern. And a part of buy-in is not only accepting their character's backstory, but working it into the story, and in part that whole "cooperative storytelling" bit where you allow the character's vision of the setting to actively determine a part of the setting.

But what I really mean by impact is what Stinktopus was talking about with regards to Toon. It's okay to tell a player they've failed; that happens. What shouldn't be done is to tell a player "no" - to say that they can't even attempt anything. CoC fails a great deal, but it rarely limits player agency in that regard.
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Post by hogarth »

Stinktopus wrote:If you are playing Toon, and base your character off of Impotent Rage (from GTA V), then pulling a toilet-like lever on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico and flushing the southeastern quadrant of the United States should totally be a possible outcome. Hell, Tom & Jerry set off one nuclear weapon.
Sure, but in the next game you could just as easily ignore everything that happened in the previous game and that's no problem in Toon-land. I'm not sure how you'd describe that as "impact".
Stinktopus wrote:In Call of Cthulhu, you can influence whether the whole world goes mad/gets eaten.
Deciding whether the world gets eaten based on some PC actions and dice rolls sounds like a terrible game to me. Don't you think it would totally kill the tone for future games if you set the stakes super-high and then afterwards say "psych -- it was all a dream or a parallel universe or some dumb shit!"
Stinktopus wrote:When I think of tone-deaf adventures where you don't feel like you've impacted the environment, I think of plundering random dungeon X at the behest of the nebulous, static Kingdom of Kingliness that you know nothing about outside of the quest giver and magic item store.
I have no idea how "fantasy PCs cause mayhem in random dungeon X" is supposed to be qualitatively different from "cartoon PCs cause mayhem with a nuclear bomb".
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Post by Stinktopus »

hogarth wrote:
Deciding whether the world gets eaten based on some PC actions and dice rolls sounds like a terrible game to me.
You... possibly shouldn't be running RPGs.
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Post by Whipstitch »

hogarth wrote:The best way (in my experience) is to get a setting that the players love and then it's simple to get everyone to play along, no matter how crappy the rules are.
Yeah, people are often willing and able to mind caulk like crazy if the initial premise is distinct enough to get everyone on the same page. For example, Exalted is jam packed with stupid. Luckily, a lot of people don't seem to actually read the games they purchase, so it's super easy to claim that Exalted is basically Kung Fu Hustle and then magic tea party your way to a good time.
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Post by silva »

What Dogbert said: Genre emulation.

The first factor to make it work is the group being on the same boat and willing to invest in the genre. The second are mechanics that promote the genre. Again, if you want horror, don't throw a system like D&D at them. If you want harsh apocalyptica, don't throw Risus at them. And if you want superfriends united against baddies, don't throw Paranoia or Apocalypse World at them.
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Post by Occluded Sun »

You can't force people to maintain a mood, you can only encourage them to do so.

It's quite easy for rules to break a mood, though. So the goal is the get the rules to stay out of the way of the desired mood.
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Post by silva »

Occluded Sun, you seem to imply that the only relationship the rules can have regarding the mood is to get out of its way. Don't you think rules can also encourage or incentivate it ?

If you didn't imply that, sorry. My mistake. ;)
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Post by OgreBattle »

Comedy... that seems to happen organically with people who are more humorous than they are annoying with their wit.
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