Many RPGs are noted for their unique, beautiful or inspirational aesthetics (pic not necessarily related, pick your favorite one). Numenara has been lauded for its weird and epic vistas, Degenesis is chokeful of gritty Primal Punk madness and Shadows of Esteren drips Gothica.
In a visual medium like video games, films or comic books, aesthetics are indeed crucially important and can completely shape and define the experience. However, roleplaying games are not a visual setting: the players only see what the GM describes, and you can only describe the surroundings and clothing styles and architecture and so on so far before it begins to get in the way of actually delivering information (a trait RPGs share, in that sense, with the similarly nonvisual medium of books). It brings to mind just how useful all this gorgeous art and unique aesthetics are when the only time the players would even be exposed to them is while idly flipping through the rulebook as they create their characters.
Art and setting/game aesthetics - your thoughts and explanations thereof.
The best you can do is provide some art and also occasionally play music. I get a very strong comfy feeling when I play Gmod apocalyptic RP maps alone, while listening to BvDub music or old folk music. Really feels like another world.
The best you can do, as a GM, is immerse yourself in that world as best you can, using music, imagery, whatever. Then you can enjoy it, and if you are half-way decent at description it will improve the experience for your players as well.
But I agree, aesthetics, the visuals, the style, the things that truly draw me into a setting, cannot be achieved through RPGs or even books. In fact, when I was younger I was indoctrinated with the librarian "books are the superior patrician form of media and everything else is wrong" mentality; yet as I get older I realize that books have as many flaws as strengths.
Carson Anderson
Yeah, who gives a fuck about descriptions? All settings should be defined as [town #] or [dungeon #], each room in the dungeon should be a list of [trap] and [monster] with a few attached statistics and gear should just add a bonus to [stat] for maximum efficiency.
Logan Murphy
Here, have a huge-ass music dump, I love using this for the lonely, comfy tone of an apocalyptic world.
Just good soulful music, some metal, some ambient, to evoke that feeling of hopelessness tempered by human spirit for a good apocalyptic world. I like "evolved" apoc settings the most, i.e. takes place 10 years later, 20 years later, 50 years later, whatever. Like the implied setting of Apocalypse World.
I have more but that should be enough for now.
Julian Hernandez
But not everyone plays OSR or 3.5, user.
Samuel Barnes
>Art and setting/game aesthetics - your thoughts and explanations thereof. That's a fucking tall order, OP. Do you want an essay on it, or what?
Nathaniel Brown
Could you actually provide one?
Jeremiah Hall
>Art and setting/game aesthetics - your thoughts and explanations thereof.
Explanation 1: It helps put the GM into the proper mood. Explanation 2: The mechanics (often/somtimes) reflect the feels of the aesthetics. Explanation 3: The GM can show the players the art, in certain cases.
While I don't find it necessary, because of a little thing called homebrew settings which are wonderful, I do like cool books. And sometimes the books mechanics do reflect their art.
Jonathan Jackson
>While I don't find it necessary, because of a little thing called homebrew settings which are wonderful, I do like cool books. And sometimes the books mechanics do reflect their art. Yeah but all the genius of the mechanics reflecting the art is basically lost on someone who can't enjoy the art, and in a nonvisual medium that's the case the vast majority of the time.
Evan Edwards
I'm even lower energy than Jeb Bush, so no. It's an extremely broad topic, in any case, that includes the whole mechanics - art dichotomy, for one. I can only point at Exalted and grunt. There is a ton of people who love it for its aesthetics, its setting, for the verbose and ornate style of its prose, and who, at the same time, loathe its crunch. I guess that an old adage that roleplaying games sell us our own imagination is true.
Nolan Clark
>Do you want an essay on it, or what
Sure. Just make sure to copy it to pastebin / notepad so you have it for later.
Joshua Morales
As in; the GM can figure out what kind of game the book offers based on the art.
Nathan Gray
So far, i've found that Symbaroum carried way more atmosphere than numenera or degenesis.
My own favourite game in that regard is Mantoïd, because the art really matches the balls-to-the-walls setting.
Christopher Turner
My setting is known for a complete lack of aesthetics because working with artists as a private commissioner is worse than having haemorrhoids which are permanently on fire. Get fucked artfags.
Robert Green
>complete lack of aesthetics What, do you describe it as if you wrote a form for bureaucrats?
Logan Watson
>I play Gmod apocalyptic RP maps alone Makes me wonder how viable it'd be to GM something on Gmod itself. I mean, I know there's stuff like DarkRP and HL2RP that exist already, but I'm curious if NPC combatants would pose enough of a threat to have players rely on actual gunplay to resolve combat.
The only issue I can foresee is multiple nonhostile NPCs. A single nonhostile NPC can simply be "played" by the GM popping out of Noclip with a particular character model, but more than that becomes problematic.
Plus, Source as an engine tends to be rather lethal.
I know this is a massive departure from the thread topic at hand, but now I'm wondering.
John Taylor
No, it's shit. Real-time GMing is very limited, no matter the vidya (I've been playing on a pirate WoW RP server for a time, the idea didn't pan out nearly as well as I thought it would be).
Eli Brooks
>Folders & Finances: A Rule Playing Game of Stagnant Hierarchies
Austin Moore
With names in the form of numbers or initials.
Aaron Price
>The company's been in a slump for three years now >The competitors are more innovative, attractive and luckier than us >The new market we've predicted in East Asia never developed >Now, a new management arrives... >Are you bad enough dudes to drag the PR department back from the mud and make a change to the bottom line?
Jaxson Price
I like reminding my players that the world as they go about it in their day to day lives is built on top of something much older, much more alien. That those folk tales of dying gods and wars with the alien fey and they eyes of dead demons are or were real. The world is built on top of the ruins of myth, and things still stirr in the ruins.
Big things that defy conventions like human morality. Big things that deal in ultimates and existential issues at all times.
Jackson Morris
I want that badly, but it will never happen. All the RP servers are obnoxious and remind me of 3rd grade kindergarten games. Sprinting would need to be removed for one, and I'd want a lot about the game changed to be honest.
Brody Green
Yeah.
I guess I just like the idea of "HL2RP or ApocRP but not filled with shitty people."
Blake Davis
It's what I would do. I made some "visual guides" for cyberpunk that I show to players to give them a feel about general aesthetic (fashion, architecture, industrial design...). To increase the mood I put some background music during play. Some years ago I made huge playlists. Nowadays I keep the soundtrack minimalistic, using mostly long ambient tracks and three rhythmic tracks for combat and action sequences. Example: Ambient track: m.youtube.com/watch?v=MSb_dkVZHcU Dark ambient track: m.youtube.com/watch?v=qL3osHj-Myc Action tracks: m.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ8lLz8B5wg m.youtube.com/watch?v=lZSojT3vLsg
Nathaniel Collins
I'll likely never get to run it, but I love the Tribal Used Future aesthetic Tribe 8 goes for. Particularly the emblems of the Fatimas visibly having been cobbled together with objects like scissors.
Easton Nelson
Isn't that a pretty common visual theme in post apocalyptic style games?
Ryder Stewart
So do I, man.
Jason Myers
Learning to program and making vidya is basically being the ultimate Dungeon Master.
Well, besides not being able to react to EVERY player choice.
