Building Tone

In the past week or so, I've been giving a fair amount of thought to tone within role-playing games, mostly spurred on by the destruction of the horror tone in Roger's game, for which I must accept a large part of the blame (not all, certainly, but I did essentially crush the first session under a mass of humour).

It strikes me that the default tone of an RPG campaign is inevitably going to be fairly lightweight, free-wheeling, and with a fair dash of "comedy" in the mix. I say "comedy" since it seems to involve weekly repetitions of certain jokes, quotes and themes from selected sources, which tends not to be all that funny.

It is certainly possible for RPGs to have a different tone, it just takes a fair amount of work. So, in the hope of generating a bit of discussion, here are some thoughts on generating a different tone. I'm going to focus on horror and comedy, diametrically opposite tones, as these appear to be the hardest to achieve.

Rule 1: The Rules Will Not Help You

It's obvious what this means. However, I should clarify it a little. What I mean by this is that adding rules to simulate a horror/comedy feel won't help you generate that tone in itself. Ravenloft has rules for fear/horror checks, which are singularly useless in building the tone. Vampire has rules for Frenzy and Rotschreck, again useless (most players seem to welcome the chance to Frenzy, so they can ignore wound penalties). Rules for pratfalls, custard pies as weapons, and the like won't make a game funny. Sorry, but it's true.

This is not to say that the rules don't make any difference. A rules-light game is probably better for comedy, for instance, since it allows more focus to be placed on the doings of the game, rather than character management (which isn't funny at all). That said, you can probably run a decent comedy game with d20, if you set your mind to it - it's just more work.

Rule 2: Anything that Doesn't Build the Tone Detracts from It

If you're going for a horror (or really any serious) tone, ban alcohol from the game table. Strongly discourage off-topic conversations. Make sure the background music is either suitably dark, or switched off. No books should be present that are not directly relevant to the game (for this reason, reduce reliance on supplements to a minimum). Comedy, either on- or off-topic is the enemy of horror.

For comedy, alcohol probably helps. Background music should be suitably light, and would definately be helpful. Off-topic conversations aren't a big problem, as long as they are kept light.

Note that you can't build a tone without help from your players. It simply isn't possible to do horror if your players aren't going to go there. Similarly, comedy can't be pulled off if your players are going to laugh at you all the way - they need to be willing to laugh with you.

Rule 3: Character is Key

In both horror and comedy, characters are the key to a successful game. If I don't care about my character, there's no way you can make me afraid for him. In that case, you might as well not bother. Similarly, you'll never see a comedy with totally blank characters. Every character will have some sort of quirk or story to tell. Bad characters lead to a bad game.

To this end, if you're going for a specific tone, you really need to sit down with your players (literally or metaphorically), and build their characters with them. Okay, so a player wants a Dwarf Ranger. That's fine, but how exactly do you threaten that character? And I don't just mean, "use three orcs". That's not scary, it's pure mechanics.

Specific to horror, I should mention the nature of morality. In a horror game, there is very little moral ambiguity. Either a character is a hero, he is a villain, or he is an NPC. There is no middle ground. You can't effectively scare the standard bunch of self-absorbed morally-ambiguous "heroes". If they can't benefit from the situation, they'll try to leave, and if anyone or anything gets in the way, they'll happily throw it to one side.

Rule 4: Description Matters

"Up ahead, you see thirteen Balrogs in a row."

It should be hardly surprising that that isn't even remotely scary. Adding

"Make a fear check."

doesn't exactly help either. A well-described encounter with a single kobold can be rather more scary. The equivalent is true with comedy - a lot of comedy involves people hurting or embarrasing themselves in amusing ways, which really can only be conveyed with proper description. Get it right, or don't bother.

Rule 5: Make Sure the Pay-off is There

In a horror game, if the heroes go into the giant temple of ultime evil, they better damn well be hit with something truly nasty. If they meet your master villain, he should be every bit as scary as the setting deserves. As soon as the players are getting a bit blase about the dangers in your setting, you must kill off a PC. And you better damn well do it - if you wuss out on a kill, you can forget horror forever.

In a comedy game, you have to have a certain rate of laughs. Terry Pratchett's first Discworld novels are comedies. The latter ones aren't really, for this very reason. That's not to say they're not enjoyable, but they've changed from comedy to very light fantasy. If you can't pull off one good laugh every 20 minutes (on average), you're probably not doing comedy. At least, that's the measure that tells me that most of today's "sit-coms" aren't.

Rule 6: Once the Tone is Gone, it's Gone

There is exactly one horrific moment in the entirety of Star Trek that I can remember - Armus killed Tasha Yar in a totally arbitrary manner. Now, Star Trek isn't, and has never claimed to be, horror, so that's not a criticism. However, that's the sort of extreme you would need to go to to restore a horror tone ot a game, and even that might well not work.

Similarly, if a comedy game falls flat, any attempt you make to restore the tone will just come off as ever more tragic capering. Better simply to give it up.

So, if you go for a toe, and you lose it, there are two choices: accept the different tone that is generated, or fold the game.

Finis

That's all I have to say. Comments? Argument?