Link here. Short version: easy to offer advice on how to set the mood in a game, but it’s harder than it looks. So don’t feel too bad if it doesn’t work perfectly.
One thought on “MY PJ Lifestyle piece on RPG Mood Enhancers/Breakers is up!”
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I love that type of player!
Of course, I’m aiming for catharsis much more than I’m aiming for a fantasy of power. Without facing down your fears, there’s no heroism.
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😉 I also love my feelies. If a corroded coin faintly stamped with an octopus is going to be a major plot token, you can bet I’m going to manufacture the sucker. And I’m not above printing up an evocative poem, tea staining it, crumpling it, ironing it back out, and carefully burning of most of the last two lines.
I’ve built a custom tarot deck the players could use to predict their doom. (When the major arcana is filled with cards like Cybele, Leviathan and Algol, you can be pretty sure the deck is stacked to make a positive reading impossible.)
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Agree about the music. As an intro to the campaign mood while doing character creation or as background white noise it’s great, beyond that, I’d say it’s generally too much bother. An exception, one time when I was running a cyberpunk campaign, I had a dead spot. The players were quite surprisingly not in any trouble, didn’t really have any enemies, and were in the good graces of the last few ‘corps that had hired them. They wanted to rest, recuperate, and assess what was going on in the world. It would have been unfair for me not to give it to them. But completely against genre to give it to them. So I gave it to them with a twist. About 20 minutes into the session I clicked “repeat” on Concrete Blonde’s “Tomorrow Wendy” and ran the R&R as straightforwardly as possible. About the third time through, one of the players started humming along (it’s kind of a catchy tune). When it hit the end and started again, his eyes started getting big. His voice literally quavered when he said “How long has this music been playing?” I ignored the question, and player paranoid pegged in the red. Despite nothing happening on my end, it was one of the more intense sessions I’ve ever run.
And hats off to the players, they came up with some truly ingenious precautions that served them well.