The Campaign Builder's Guild

QuoteWhether a setting is 'doom oriented' or not should really be up to the players.

This I agree with.
  A campaign world should be a world, full of options, not a place forcing a certain form on the players.  Themes laid down by a GM are limiting and have, in my experience, a short life span.  Horror, or gloom, or glitter, or anything else should be based on player desires/choices.

QuoteFinite games are serious and theatrical, infinite games are dramatic but filled with laughter. Finite players play for titles, infinite players have only their names. Finite games are played within boundaries, whereas infinite players play with boundaries.

In a word: crap.
 I play golf without a serious bone in my body.  
Many of my rpg sessions (what I assume you refer to as infinite games, though your definitions are lacking, as are decent examples) contain little drama, though it may not be infinite by your standard because I do not start it with the intention of never finishing it.


Back to the topic at hand, gloom settings, the get tedious after awhile.
[sarcasm]Ooh, another setting where everything defaults to death and drek!  
How delightful!  How one dimensional! [/sarcasm]

Overarching themes, whether gloomy or My Little Pony happy, are limiting and tend to be quickly abandoned in favor of wider themeless settings.  Greyhawk survived as long as it has because it can be anything the players and GM want.

Well, I for one don't tend to create dark, gloom and doom settings. I prefer settings where there are lots of possibilities. Ones where there's always a good guy around to right the latest wrong; and always a bad guy to wrong the rights.

I tend to take a rather dualistic view of human nature. We all have elements of good and bad built right in to us. Through culture, circumstance, and personality various different elements of this can be enhanced or snuffed out. I like my settings to reflect this.

That's not because I think they are better in any absolute sense, just that settings like that engage my imagination more.

Quote from: CYMRO ARBITER BRASSICI

QuoteFinite games are serious and theatrical, infinite games are dramatic but filled with laughter. Finite players play for titles, infinite players have only their names. Finite games are played within boundaries, whereas infinite players play with boundaries.

In a word: crap.
 I play golf without a serious bone in my body.  
Many of my rpg sessions (what I assume you refer to as infinite games, though your definitions are lacking, as are decent examples) contain little drama, though it may not be infinite by your standard because I do not start it with the intention of never finishing it.

Definitions and examples were intentionally omitted in the interests of not having to transcribe the entire book.  It is 149 pages long, and while it is a fairly easy read it also provides the depth that would clarify its pertinence to the topic at hand.  I hope you will excuse me for my own incoherence; I assure you that it made sense before I tried to set it down.  

Regarding golf, or other such game (including a role-playing game), it is possible to laugh while playing such a game precisely because you are simultaneously playing an infinite game.  Indeed, playing an infinite game inside another, finite, game is only possible by metaphor - as indeed, everything in an RPG is a metaphor.  My argument here is that 'horror-only' games (or 'drama-only', or 'romance-only', or 'comedy-only' games) are necessarily metaphors for one-dimensional life, and so represents an attempt to establish boundaries within the game that aren't necessary to play.

Does that at least make sense?

If you cannot concisely define infinite and finite games, with examples of each, then what we have here is just so much mental masturbation.
If this Carse guy is trying to say life is a game, then he needs to grow up.  Or put down the opium pipe.

What constitutes a difference?  Use of theatrics? Laughter?

I've had a bit of think about this, and perhaps one reason why a lot of settings seem to be quite dark, depressing and frightening is the fact that we live in quite an uncertain, quite dangerous world.  Roleplaying isnt simply escapism, but we as GMs reflect the world around us.  While my Eda setting isnt completely dark - I've tried to inject a lot of wonder into it, also - my 'Hollowrought' subsetting is pretty depressing, a world existed in the broken mind of a shattered god, where nothing makes any sense (my PCs visited it for the first time ever tonight  :D ).  Hollowrought perhaps more reflects the uncertain times we live in than Eda which is dark but positive also.  But its just a theory I suppose.


     

Cyrmo: "Overarching themes, whether gloomy or My Little Pony happy, are limiting and tend to be quickly abandoned in favor of wider themeless settings."
I agree.  A setting should be like life: something you bounce off of to define yourself, and occasionally poke holes in.  If a setting has an established theme then you are in some way telling the players not to poke holes in that part (like making jokes in a doom setting).
Cyrmo: "If this Carse guy is trying to say life is a game, then he needs to grow up."
Just so long as by "grow up" you don't mean "have to take life seriously all the time".  We'd all go crazy (more so than usual) if we did that.

Snakefing, that's a pretty mature perspective.  I'm with you.

CYMRO, At the risk of completely derailing this thread, I'll try to respond -

A finite game is a game played in order to win.

An infinite game is a game played with the object of ensuring the continuance of play.

A finite game is played within spacial and temporal boundaries, by specifically delineated players, in accordance with rules that do not change in the course of play.  A finite player is serious to the extent that he must  veil from himself his own volition in entering play, otherwise he loses competitive effort. (Examples include football, golf, civil law and war.)

An infinite game is played in accordance with rules designed to take any spacial or temporal boundaries into play, as well as to extend the infinite game to as many players as wish to join.  The laughter of an infinite game arises from the understanding that the play of a finite game is part of a larger game, and that what happens in consequence may not be in accordance with any rules.  (In the course of the book, Carse identifies culture and life as examples of infinite games.  To quote the final chapter, in its entirety - "There is but one infinite game.")

Technically, role-playing games do not qualify as either type of game in Carse's definition.  An RPG can, however, function as a vehicle for the playing of a number of finite games, such as tactical exercise, puzzle solving or the game of earning prestige among friends.  As I mentioned in passing, however, well-designed RPG rules used in a well-written setting can stand in for an infinite game; the game continues even if players (the literal players, or the PCs as metaphorical players) depart from play.

Does any of this help?

Quote(In the course of the book, Carse identifies culture and life as examples of infinite games. To quote the final chapter, in its entirety - "There is but one infinite game.")

So if Carse identifies culture as an infinite game, and he says ther is only one game, which culture is the "one"?  Sounds like a copout, his final chapter.

QuoteA setting should be like life: something you bounce off of to define yourself, and occasionally poke holes in. If a setting has an established theme then you are in some way telling the players not to poke holes in that part (like making jokes in a doom setting).

Damn right.  Every "horror" themed game I have played in over the past 26 years has died of boredom.  Whereas the longest running games have been worlds with great diversity of possible experiences.

QuoteI've had a bit of think about this, and perhaps one reason why a lot of settings seem to be quite dark, depressing and frightening is the fact that we live in quite an uncertain, quite dangerous world.

Or, more likely, they are post-adolescent rebellions against lives that are otherwise normal, predictable, and positive.

Quote from: CYMRO ARBITER BRASSICI

Quote(In the course of the book, Carse identifies culture and life as examples of infinite games. To quote the final chapter, in its entirety - "There is but one infinite game.")

So if Carse identifies culture as an infinite game, and he says ther is only one game, which culture is the "one"?  Sounds like a copout, his final chapter.

This is why you should read the book; in context, culture can be defined as the single ongoing interaction of different societies.  In that sense, there is only one culture at work in the human race.

But that's the last attempt at an explanation of such a thing I'm going to make on this thread.  Feel free to PM me if you wish for more elaboration; I yet have hopes of more insights into the proliferation of Gloom as a recurring motif in the settings here.

Quote from: Luminous CrayonMy pet theory is that a lot of the darkness in contemporary fantasy is a backlash-- deliberate and conscious or otherwise-- against the "Happily Ever After" syndrome that so often seems to rear its ugly head in fantasy literature. Most of us were raised on some highly sanitized fairy tales which served as an introduction to this faux-medieval, swords-and-magic-and-chivalry genre. I suspect that in a way, myself and many others are subconsciously (or overtly!) rebelling against the simplistic and cheerful nature of that sort of story, with an implicit cry of "I can write something more thought provoking, something more mature!"

And I'm rebelling against anything that tries to slant my view toward a certain emotion.  Really, though, I don't see why "thought provoking and mature" has to mean "dark and depressing".  It seems like an overreaction to those fairy-tales of old.  Of course, it could just be I somehow missed that part of standard childhood development and thus am now counter-rebelling against the dim, depressing mood that everyone else seems to expect me to have.

Captain Obvious: "I'll think up a longer one later, but for mow, my short answer is that the settings are meant for a dark game. It involves mass-slaughter as the central motif, and so either has to be fairly dark, or else take on a bleakly humourous tone, or else be downright cheery (which i would find more disturbing). in fact the ease that PC's kill even other humanoids is kind of frightening. I would prefer a darker gme where the players actually roleplay how hard it would be to kill all their foes, or if they don't then role play the fact that their characters are either emotionless or psychotic."
That's just a flaw of D&D: too much directly about combat.

QuoteThat's just a flaw of D&D: too much directly about combat.

Not a flaw, just how the game is oriented.  It is a combat simulation at its heart.  And other means of gaining xp have always been given the shaft.  

Quote from: SilvercatMoonpawReally, though, I don't see why "thought provoking and mature" has to mean "dark and depressing". It seems like an overreaction to those fairy-tales of old.

Yes, absolutely. If your car is veering off the road to the right, and you turn the wheel to correct it and end up veering off the road to the left instead, you haven't fixed the problem. :)

Quote from: SilvercatMoonpawAnd I'm rebelling against anything that tries to slant my view toward a certain emotion.  Really, though, I don't see why "thought provoking and mature" has to mean "dark and depressing".  It seems like an overreaction to those fairy-tales of old.  Of course, it could just be I somehow missed that part of standard childhood development and thus am now counter-rebelling against the dim, depressing mood that everyone else seems to expect me to have.

Only fools would have such expectations for you, and the settings that appeal do so in part because of the way they approach themes sensitive to you.  Which is why when you say "I ignore it," I agree wholeheartedly with your reasoning.  By and large, we don't want to be reminded of our mortality, and many of us must push the thought from our minds, because we're otherwise not equipped to deal with it.

But I make campaigns for people who acknowledge the end and remain unperturbed, or somehow validated.  They, like me, have come to the conclusion that if it's all going to fizzle out regardless, it has only as much relevance to them as they allow it to, and they give it no relevance at all.

Antebellum, in my mind, is reminiscent of our struggles, and the preposterous expectations we have in our endeavours as human beings.  We want to travel faster than light.  We want to fly.  We want to swim like fish.  We want to teleport.  We want to go to parallel dimensions and copulate with our doppelgangers.  We want to live forever.  But we always seem to forget that the universe can only be so accommodating.  We had to build great machines in order to travel the realms of fish and birds, and never under our own power.  I do not think we will ever travel faster than light, or teleport, or go to parallel dimensions.  We will not live forever.  These things will not be, not because the universe is harsh, demeaning or callous, but because it is unthinking.  It did not ask us if we wanted to be born, because it cannot ask questions.  It does not know what we want, because it does not know.

That is the humbling thing, and were it not for the part that follows, I would indeed call it belittling.  But it is not, because:

In the absence of purpose, meaning or intent beyond ourselves, our intent becomes the highest intent.

God would not be God if there was a higher power beyond it, but it is the highest power because it has no superior (yes, a tautology).  Similarly, if we inhabit a universe without a point or meaning beyond us, it is not an ultimately pointless and meaningless universe, we simply give it its meaning. And the brevity of that meaning does not trivialise it, because it would only be trivial if there was some grander, endless meaning to compare it to.  There isn't. (It's actually a lot more complicated and existentialist than this, but this sums it up nicely enough)

It has always seemed to me a very arrogant notion that we must matter to the universe.  Is it not enough that we matter to each other?  We affect nature, for sure, but is there anything in our experience that would suggest nature cares about us?  It doesn't.  It can't.  Why should it?  What matters is that we may choose whether or not we care about nature.

In the context of doom settings, then, I do not laugh at the fears of those who do no wish to contemplate the end of things.  I simply state that if existence is emptiness, we must fill it with our own passions, and accept that those passions are not eternal.

Doom settings, then, are not really about doom at all.

At least, mine aren't.

EDIT: This brings to mind the gaming session of which my group has the fondest memories.  It was set in Dystopia, which, in some fashion, is a doom setting too.  The PCs had just fought a devastating battle against an expansionist warlord, and knew that his allies would launch a retributive crusade against them, and they would probably lose.  But after the fight, having travelled through the desert with dwindling provisions, they finally got back to civilisation and attended the wedding of one character's daughter.

That was the best session we ever had.

I'd like to see a thread about campaign setting philosophy.  That is, what meanings can be construed from a given setting.

Of course, I could be the ony one who really gets philosophical with their settings...

Quote from: NeverthelessI'd like to see a thread about campaign setting philosophy.  That is, what meanings can be construed from a given setting.

Then I have a suggestion...