How okay is it to do a bait and switch for an entire campaign?

I had a game of GURPS that started as a detective noir story, then they followed the conspiracy to nazi occult remnant, which led to a zombie apocalypse campaign, then when all the zombies starved it turned into a mad max post apoc campaign, then the party was frozen in cryo-stasis and then there was a cyberpunk campaign, then they left earth and it turned into a space-faring horror game, where the party was finally wiped on the surface of an abandoned colony by alien skinwalkers. All over the course of a year of sessions every other friday night.

It might not work, considering that the players will be in the wrong mindset.

>Is it fine to advertise a cute and comfy game with adorable animal-eared/tailed people in a quaint town, run cute little adventures for a session or two, and then turn it all to body horror and psychological horror?

NOOOOO

This is one of those ideas that sounds great in theory but DOES NOT WORK in practice. You can sometimes maybe pull it off with friends, but if you try this with roll20 randoms your game will fall apart like a house of cards.

What you do is you advertise the twist, straight up.

Players won't know when, or the exact details, they'll just know it's coming. They might have some plans, but no plans survive contact with the enemy. They'll feel the tension of waiting for the horror to hit. You have to make the cutesy bit compelling too, or they won't care much about the change.

Seriously, listen to me. You have this great idea for your epic twist but the fact of the matter is, 'twists' only add interest to stories THAT ARE ALREADY INTERESTING. You need your group to be invested in both cute and horror from the start, and you do that by telling them about the twist in character creation, so they can already start thinking of how their characters will react and get in the mood and invested from the very start.

For something as extreme as you're suggesting I'd say no. If I sign up for Catgirl: The Comfying I'd be pretty pissed off if the GM suddenly turned it into Call of Cathulhu. If you advertise a cute game that has creepiness seeping through the cracks then that sounds fine, but make it so the characters get bait and switched, not the players who are investing their time.

That being said I've always wanted to run a fantasy game that leads the players to discovering high tech artifacts and have the game become more sci-fi so I totally understand the draw to shake things up and shock your players with a twist in genre.

Now I want to run a comfy Nechronica campaign, user.

The most important thing you need to know is: Are your players going to be ok with the bait and switch ?

If they are, then it's ok.
If they aren't, then it's a problem.
If you don't know, you need to find out before the switch happens.

How would you feel if you went into Catgirl: The Comfying knowing that it was a transhumanist setting. Then body horror creeps in, but in ways that sane NPCs see as harmless fun.

As other anons have said, this concept is usually way better in theory in our own imaginations than it is in execution with our players.

Part of the problem is also the sheer magnitude of the twist you want to pull, because if you're selling your players on the game being cute and comfy, they may genuinely want to play that cute, comfy game and will not appreciate having something they were looking forward to turned into a disappointing and horrific "GOTCHA!" moment.

>expect cute abimu weeb torney of martial arts
>end up playing silent hills with all kinds of supernatural fuckery slowly giving up into inhumanity to a survive
Moth is a special kind of hell.

>>Previous threads on Veeky Forums have either collectively cheered on GMs for doing this, or booed and jeered for GMs doing the exact same thing
It really depends ENTIRELY on your relationship with your players.
For an example, I play almost exclusively with a bunch of friends I've known 5+ years as my best friends, in many ways closer to me than my own family. They trust me and they are in on it because they like to spend time together. I could (and actually had) easily get away with this kind of stuff, because people don't come to the sessions having super strong expectations from the game: they come to have a good time with friends.

If you have much more formal relationship with your players, it could be a problem. If they come primarily because they want to play a comfy game (rather than because they just want to hang out with the rest of you guys), they might find themselves cheated and dissapointed: things have not been done as they were agreed upon to be done.
I would not try pulling this in a campaign with bunch of strangers or even semi-strangers, is what I'm saying.

Second thing is, of course, how well it's done. But really, even more than that, it's a matter of the amount of trust you have with your group.

>advertise
NO.

This word indicates you are not running this for an established group.

Listen to this user.
It'd be like the beginning of Fear the Walking Dead.
You know what's coming, but not when or how.

I feel like its much easier to do GENRE shifts in a game than it is to do a TONAL shift.

Your hardboiled detectives discover that the murders are being committed by a monster instead of a man?

The tone doesn't change much and the players might roll with it and enjoy the surprise.

Your happy, carefree animal folk learn that their whole existence is a horrific lie and a perversion of nature?

The tone of the game drastically changes, leaving the players upset and unsettled.

That kind of bait-and-switch is something you should never do, unless you know your players well and know they are the kind of people who would enjoy something like that.

It's important to be careful about the expectations you set and how dedicated the players are to the initial concept though. I once had a GM who pulled a big premise-twist in the middle of the second session, and it lead to several players feeling upset and tricked. In the end the GM had to make several concessions and ended up with a watered down version of his intended premise. Not saying the same would happen in your case, but it's something to be aware of.

I'm curious, what happened?

If you know the group well and think they'd take well to it, sure. But since you are asking, that probably means that is not the case.

I would recommend against baiting a new group together under one premise then switching. Include a small clue as to what is really in store to help prep them and maybe start some meta tension.
"But is everything is as it seems?"
"Could it weather true darkness?"
"Everything is perfectly fine and happy.
Perfectly fine and happy.
Perfect and fine.
Perfect͈."

Shadowrun campaign. GM advertised it as a team of elite runners in LA working for the UCAS military. After we located and transmitted some important info, our employer called an airstrike on us. We survived, but were wanted fugitives and forced to run away and go into hiding. This naturally upset player who had invested a lot of time and points into backstories and NPCs who they could never contact, some even had families to provide for and refused to abandon them.

Eventually, the GM compromised and we sorta went into hiding, under the protection of a corp benefactor whom protected us in exchange for services, but stayed in the city and was still able to keep in touch with our contacts, which IMO sorta ruined the feeling of isolation and being cut off that I think the GM wanted.

You might be thinking that the players were overreacting, but I think it demonstrates the importance of expectations. I'm sure this group of players would have enjoyed the GM's premise if they knew about it from the start. It's natural to be angry at being betrayed, but since they were emotionally unprepared, they reacted out of character instead of in character.

I'm not saying a bait-and-switch like this couldn't work, just that you need to know your players well and think about how they'd react. You don't need to tell the true premise of your game, but if you think your players may react badly to having the tone and premise turned on its head, you should make sure that they aren't too invested in the initial premise, and hint that things will drastically change, (how subtly or overtly you should do this, again, you need to judge based on your players).

Advertise it as cute to body horror transformation, give clues, show some twist first. Or make sure you know your players well and they have nothing against horror and will like changing the tone.

I'm curious what ideas you've had about tech artifacts.

I'm about to run a post-apocalypse campaign where the characters are at a medieval tech level. While there's no overt magic I'd like for the players to be able to discover ancient tech that could pass for magic. So far I can only think of high powered weapons, but I was hoping for more mundane things that survived 400 years of disuse.

fpbp

>"Could it weather true darkness?"

What did he mean by this?

It's better to be up front about the bait and switch if it's going to be a core, fundamental flavor you're going to be feeding them on a week to week basis for a long time.

Otherwise, you're probably going to hear a lot of "THIS GAME WAS MORE FUN WHEN IT WAS CUTE AND FLUFFY"

>Is it fine to advertise a cute and comfy game with adorable animal-eared/tailed people in a quaint town, run cute little adventures for a session or two, and then turn it all to body horror and psychological horror?

No. It's stupid. You need to be honest with your players.

Give them the time to adapt their character to it.
Do not make them witness their cute character getting PTSD without any preparation.
Take care to not fap under the table as you watch their beloved cute characters becoming sour and depressed.
Because it is quite rude.

It's easier to describe the effect and technobable your way to how it's made.

Aka a "magic" amulet that purifies food and drink by its mere presence? A housing container for nanomachines which remove contaminants in the vicinity after the AI inside the amulet determines what is refreshment.

A tome that imbues one with knowledge when touched? A small database that monitors the neural activity of those who get near it, and uploads what relevant data it has according to what the user is thinking of.

etc etc etc

this happened in a game i joined and it was not very fun. hope this helps.

The players should know what they're getting into. Agreeing to play a game with you as GM is forging a social contract for you to try and provide solid rules judgement and campaign material, and for them to play in character as well, to have it be fun for all involved.
If you somehow know for a fact that all of the players would like to have their cute fun romp turn into dark shenanigans, it'd be fine- but really you have no way of certainly knowing without asking them.
So, ask them without revealing it all. "Are you guys down for a game that starts off cute and comfy and takes dark and dramatic turns?" This way they can still get into it, but nobody is upset when they find what they expected to be a lovely low-stress refuge for a character they want to be happy and live (and they absolutely will make characters that they don't want to see hurt if they expect no pain) turn into a meatgrinder. No, instead they'll be able to accept that from the start, and if you do things well it'll be just as fun as the successful ruse.

What was the game about?

A CUTE. CUUUUTTTTTTTTTEEEEE

>How okay is it to do a bait and switch for an entire campaign?

As long as you bait and switch into a paranoia game everything is okay

You have to make sure your players are ready for this. Bait and switching people can be either a great way to spice up a campaign they were enjoying or a frustrating left turn that they just want to end. As long as you have very open minded players I'd say you could try it, but you have to make sure it's executed almost perfectly so it doesn't feel like a cheap twist.

This is true.

Like others said, it depends.
I played this cute pokemon/PMD inspired game which turned pretty dark after we found out a friendly npc was mindbroken and turned into a murder machine, and later escaped the guy's control, got worse from there. One player wasnt very amused by this
Another case was a fantasy campain i ran, while it didnt have a big tweeest that shifted genres, it did shift the enemies from fey/elves to aberrations, some players found it to be interesting.

Let me guess.
She wants that ice cream but has no money to pay.
Typical human scum.

The key is to bait-and-switch up front; Tell the players it's going to be body horror and psychological problems, then have a few entire sessions of nothing but cute adventures, get them caught up in what their characters are doing. Then when you bait and switch them into what you want, they can't be butthurt, even though they will be.

Players, man.