What do you do if players make characters that don't really fit the tone of your game? Say you're running Berserk and they're trying to play Kazuma.I recently started a group with some people I found online + 1 IRL friend, and all but one person has pretty good characters for what it is. Initially, he wanted to play a living doll that had a magical connection to some kind of magic storybook he kept with him. A lighthearted, borderline silly character by comparison to the others. Initially I approved it but I realized it wouldn't really work and asked him to change it.His next (and current; we've only played one session and our next game is Friday) character was a dwarf wizard who had a small construction company. His ultimate goal is to build something grand like a cathedral or bridge that will last for millennia after he passes. I approved it, but it's only recently as I've started fleshing things out I'm starting to realize he doesn't really fit in either with the kind of games I run.For reference, the other characters:>Noble daughter seeking revenge on those who murdered her entire family (classic, but works)>Orphan who became a street thug after being taken in by a demon mafia boss. In his later years, said demon raped his crush, but the baby will only burst if he disobeys the demon, forcing him to serve the bastard>A veteran of the war against the elven kingdom who turned to the goddess of redemption hoping to find forgiveness, and ultimately hoping to put an end to the entire warSince they spent basically all of last session as elven prisoners, I think I'm gonna let this game play out to see what they do in the open world, and I'm worried I might have to either ask him to change characters again or just say this isn't the game for him.In My initial looking for players post I explicitly compared the tone to stuff like Goblin Slayer and Berserk, so I'm not sure if either he missed that or just doesn't really know what that would look like.
>>97719717Talk with them. How the fuck is this not obvious?
>>97719717There’s nothing inherently wrong with playing a character that goes against the general grain, but it’s best to touch base with what the player is trying to get out of this. Like if they’re intentionally playing someone cynical and dour in a magical girl game for humor, or playing someone jolly and naive in a dark and gritty game to enhance the drama and traumas they’ll incur. But if what they’re planning is either going to not be fun for the table or is just infeasible, it’s best to make sure to come up with a plan B for them.
>stuff like Goblin Slayer and BerserkThat's a huge range, with the former being an edgy video game parody and the latter being a dark fantasy epic.>a dwarf wizard who had a small construction companyOne of the best Berserk characters was just a blacksmith.
This whole story is fake and gayPCs are outsiders by nature. They're travellers in the region and dont have the game/setting knowlege the GM does by default. being more distant gives you the opportunity to develop more perspective when something happens, and an out of place character has more potential to change and to be changed by the world they're in
>>97719763Yeah that's what I'm thinking. I'd just feel bad if I gotta ask him to make a 3rd character, but I guess it'd be worse if he ends up playing in a game that just isn't for him y'know?>>97719765>>97719815Good points.>>97719822>an out of place character has more potential to change and to be changed by the world they're inI know it's on the table to slaughter everyone - or at least just 1 - in his construction company, but that feels a little cheap. I'll figure something out.
>anime premiseYour game's "tone" was shit to begin with.
>>97719717This is plenty salvageable, anon. You have enough tragedy baked into the rest of the party with their backstories, the 4th player offering more of the same wouldn't actually add anything.You were right to veto the living doll idea. That was too wacky for the tone of the game unless they went in a darker direction with it, something like the Revenant from Nightreign. But this dwarf is perfect for the game, because all of the other three characters have something in common that he does not have: all of them have already lost everything or otherwise fallen on hard times. The dwarf, meanwhile, bring something to the table that the others don't: he still has a lot left to lose. Things HAVEN'T gotten shit for him yet. To be clear, I am not saying you should burn down his construction company and murder all of his friends and family to make him have a despair arc. Thats the wrong move. But you can threaten his construction company, or bait him with opportunities to indulge his pride (because really, thats what his desire to make something grand that will outlive him is). Maybe this means that the demon mafia boss wants control over this construction company for his own ends, maybe it means that a corrupt noble is willing to offer the dwarf an opportunity at a contract way out of his league in return for an illicit favor like giving up a valuable treasure the party recovered, shit like that. This is a character who is starting in a good place, but has a lot of room to be baited by temptation or put in a bad spot where they have to make choices between the good of the party or his own personal benefit.
>>97719717Your issue seems to be one more of writing a book/comic/show than of running a game.See, a game should have its options all suit a theme addressing the challenges the players are expected to face; in a game that's put together right, and not just another D&D-like crossfic clone posing as a game, it's impossible for characters to not fit the tone.All the options are there.Details of the setting and relevant history will be ingrained in the character options.The darkness of tone will emerge through facing the game's challenges through the player characters, whose abilities and attributes were culminated through the chosen options.Focus less on running stories, and more on running games.
>>97719717I don't think that character concept is inherently a problem but how he plays it may be. A simple would-be architect, caught up in dramatic events against his will is fine whereas "Arrr, me dwarf, enough about this world-ending threat, my character walks off to haggle over the price of granite" might not be. In any case, the anon's who said talk to him have it right.
>>97719881I'm gonna write this down, these are pretty good. Thanks Anon.Could lead to some nice roleplay too - the others lamenting their tragedies and the dwarf saying "damn life sucks for you guys what the fuck">>97719910>not just another D&D-like crossfic clone posing as a gamePlaying PF2e so it's a little late for that. Even I find Golarion's inconsistencies jarring though, so I use My own world instead.>>97719913Exactly what I'm thinking. It *can* work depending on how he goes about it. I think I'm just gonna have to see how it goes on Friday before I can draw any conclusions.
>>97719717Not entirely sure why the dwarf with a dream doesn't fit in. They're prisoners together, he has things to do and aspirations to live for, a home base and probably a decent work ethic and connection to other people. Task oriented but can zoom out a bit. Its good to have a more grounded character like that in a group so they can have some focus beyond crawling in their skin. What's the outline of the next session?
>>97720113>What's the outline of the next session?At the end of the last one, they made it to a camp of human soldiers (they were in a warzone; contested territory). They explained what happened, and were invited to stay the night, and directed to go South back towards human-controlled territory the next day.The city they'll go to has a couple things/side quests going on, and 3/4 of them connect to their backstories in some way. I don't expect them to hit every one, but I wanna present the options at the buffet and have them dig in to whatever they think looks tastiest. I'd probably take up 2 posts trying to highlight what's coming, but there's a little something for everyone except the dwarf because I've struggled to come up with anything.
>>97719717Well, I usually prefer more fun and light-hearted stories. So for a character to be tonally out of place would mean that they are a very grim and serious character. Now I’d probably try to warn them that this isn’t a super gritty setting and maybe make a more lighthearted character. But if they don’t want to take the hint, well… then their character is probably going to end up the butt of more jokes than the rest of the party and a lightning rod for embarrassing shit because, that kind of super-serious character practically had a bullseye on their back for slapstick humor and schadenfreude.
>>97719717>ultimate goal is to build something grand like a cathedral or bridge that will last for millennia after he passes>dwarf's face when.jpgEverything goes right for him because the construction is secretly perverted into something like Spook Central in Ghostbusters and he's facilitating the entry of hosts of evil entities into the world. His lasting legacy is being remembered by history as the guy who sold out the world into untold suffering.
>>97719717>A Vet, a rich girl, a reluctant mob tough and an ambitious construction company ownerI swear. This is the cast of a classic crime drama.
>>97719717>Say you're running Berserk and they're trying to play Kazuma.Half of Guts' party doesn't fit the tone of Berserk.
>>97720386The dwarf has a small construction company. Its a city. There can easily be connections there. Old client for a job that didn't go well that can tie into a different character's backstory.
>>97719717>His ultimate goal is to build something grand like a cathedral or bridge that will last for millennia after he passes.He's the only one that wants to leave the world a better place than it was before him.
>>97719717Goblin Slayer is the stupidest pandering shit I've ever seen.>hurrrr we gonna make goblins RAPE little anime girls isn't that FUCKED UP!?>now our super BADASS hard as fuck guy in armor is gonna go JOHN WICK on their asses XXDDDD epic right!? you HAVE to think that's badass right!?!?!?
>>97719717I have to admit that whenever possible, I would like all the PCs in a party to fit the general 'tone' of the campaign.For some reason, I've noted that some players just want to be inherently unique or contrarian and deliberately make a character that doesn't fit in well with the rest of the group. Sometimes it can work, but I'm getting older and I have less patience. So usually I have to ask the guy to find another group, because it's far easier to run a game if everyone is on the same wavelength, if that makes sense.
>>97721992If anything there isn't enough rape. The rape basically no longer happens after a certain point, I would have appreciated a more consistent tone. Also goblin rape is fucking hot.
>>97719717session zero exists to fix exactly this problem.
>>97719815i think it just means he has a rape fetish he wants to magical realm about.
>>97721992you must not be familiar with 40K. the pander stupidity meter goes way higher.
>>97721863Yeah, it seems like a gimme. The dwarf doesn't necessarily need a ton of melodrama is what OP's posts are illustrating to me. Even in a dark world, there's still dreams. I'm not sure why this doesn't work.
>>97719717I don't see why the dwarf is a problem, is it just because he isn't wangsty teenager shit like everyone else?
>>97722096You don't need an entire session to decide on what game you'll be running for/playing with your group.
>>97719717I grind them down until they end up miserable, burnt out, and hate me because I took them seriously when I warned them I was too hardcore.
>>97719717>What do you do if players make characters that don't really fit the tone of your game?I've often found talking to them like an adult works.
>>97719717>What do you do if players make characters that don't really fit the tone of your game?I don't have this issue because I make a primer stating the tone and theme of the game, what options are and are not allowed, and give an opening plot hook. If someone makes a character that doesn't fit the setting, I tell them before the game starts.Seriously, you faggots whine about session zero but having one would legitimately fix all of these issues you're having.
>>97719822>PCs are outsiders by natureThis does not have to be the case.>They're travellers in the regionThere are plenty of people who travel for various reasons. This isn't exclusive to PCs.>dont have the game/setting knowlege the GM does by defaultAnd that's how I know you either don't run games, or you're really bad at it. The players should have a basic understanding of the setting the game is being run in and how each species/race/ancestry/whatever fits into that setting as well as what options are available and how THEY fit in the setting. They should be making characters who fit the world, who have lived in it, not some rando who spawned in magically from fucking nowhere.>being more distant gives you the opportunity to develop more perspective when something happensIt makes it so you're going to make a character that doesn't fit the setting of the game, which is bad.>an out of place character has more potential to change and to be changed by the world they're inRetarded take. A character that is completely contradictory to the world and knows nothing of what they should having lived in it for however many years old they are makes no fucking sense and is a terrible character.
>>97719717>Goblin slayer gif>Say you're running Berserk and they're trying to play KazumaFuck off secondary, didn't read the rest of your dogshit opinion.
The idea of even having a consistent tone is hilarious. In every game I played, even if we were trying to be serious, it was only a matter of time before someone started quoting Monty Python. You're not writing a novel, if the player is being disruptive it's one thing, you thinking you're some master story teller is another. I swear to fuck when did this become such an issue.
>>97719717Anime website, you silly pedophile
>>97730867???
>>97719815>edgy video game parodyneither Berserk or Goblin Slayer are parodies nor have video game elements on it
>>97731525>Goblin Slay>nor have video game elements on it>Except for the adventures guild.>And every character being named after a class.
>>97732196goblin slayer everyone does have actual names, but until you're actually super famous, no one's going to know it or use it, and you are known by your job / role / moniker. it also security. 'spear fighter' is not running around telling everyone he is Joe Rent from the village of Haraldsvale. because then the cursed ones and unpraying ones, who follow the evil gods, go to haraldsvale and kill everything.
>>97721992thanks for proving you neither read nor watched it, and you sure as shit haven't played it.
>>97732196>>And every character being named after a class.That's how human names originally started - people were called Smith, Baker, or Thatcher because they worked that profession.
>>97719717Tranime is for TROONFGTZ LMAOOOOOOO
>>97719717>Initially, he wanted to play a living doll that had a magical connection to some kind of magic storybook he kept with him. A lighthearted, borderline silly character by comparison to the others>for reference, the other characters: Murder, orphan NTR, warYou coulda just asked him to make the character a little more grim rather than make a whole new character. A living doll sounds silly but it could easily be made into something grimdark. Could be someone turned him into a doll against his will, maybe the book keeping him alive is evil, maybe the doll was made to be a freaky sex slave and he escaped
>>97724150No, which is why I also have a short Session 1 prepared for us immediately after.
>>97719846The Demon mafia boss bribes OSHA and gets the construction company shut down so he can aquire its assets for cheap
>>97732196Goblin Slayer is based on DnD and tabletop RPGs, not vidya.Been a while since I read it though, haven't kept up with it in years.
>>97736246Heck, even just the alienation from being an abandoned object trying to find its place in the world is great fodder for angst.Think Frankenstein but with a little less murder.
>>97719717>What do you do if players make characters that don't really fit the tone of your game?Get the character killed, preferably in the middle of a dungeon or out in the wild so that the player can't re-join with a new character right away.
>>97719815This. Not everyone needs to be Edgeworth Rapebaby, noble with a tragic backstory that makes Tyrion from GOT look like the Life of Ryan. Sometimes you can just be a tough nigga trying to hone his craft. That will also help your other players' stories stand out.Another good example from Berserk is Roderick, he's literally just a naval captain, but he becomes a likable and highly competent part of their ensemble.
>>97721664>Spook CentralHeh.
>>97719717>In My initial looking for players post I explicitly compared the tone to stuff like Goblin SlayerYou mean the series in which one of the main characters is a forest elf who thinks adventuring should be fun and only does the shitty goblin slaying jobs because her friend that she has a crush on (like almost ever other woman in the world) is an autist who just wants to kill goblins because of his childhood trauma... trauma that he's slowly overcoming thanks to the power of friendship?The same series that also features a lizard priest, who wants to do great deeds, so that he can become a dinosaur like his ancestors and who has an excessive love for dairy products?
>>97732848Perhaps but they weren't called HUMAN MALE CANDLEMAKER!
>>97719763This
>>97726432I think sometimes running things with a certain tone is good. If everything you play follows the general default mood of the group you're just doing the same thing over and over. If there's a clash that's a differet thing, but at least trying to run something with a particular tone that you're gonna keep just for that game can be cool if everyone is on board.
>>97741604The series' backstory is packed with Wizardry references - the King was originally a noble adventurer known as the Knight of Diamonds, and a party of six adventurers (led by a samurai capable of using both blade and magic) conquered a nightmarish, ten-floor dungeon in a prequel series. Which is funny, because the author is also making an actual Wizardry series called Blade and Bastard.
>>977219921. You haven't read or watched it. Maybe the first episode.2. Yes, he is pretty bad ass and cool.
>>97731525>Goblin Slayer doesn't have video game elements in itExcept picrel and spell slots>>97732196>every character being named after a class.This is due to the visual novel being a 1st person thing, and Goblin Slayer being the autist that he is never learns peoples' names. So he says "the dwarf shaman" and "the younger fighter'. That was kept up with anime and manga adaptations and they rolled with that since because it's in line with those arcade fantasy beat 'em ups. And other games derived from those like Dragon's Crown
>>97752006>picrelThat's a tabletop RPG element, not a video game element.
>>97719815Are you trying to imply Berserk is not intentionally edgy? The story about a guy literally born from a corpse is not in fact trying a little too hard for you?
>>97719763>>97719765This
>>97741604Dude, goblins spawn in mob caves.Just about every Japanese fantasy thing feels like it's happening in a video game, and I'm not talking about the ones that are explicitly set in a video game. Monsters dissolve upon death, everyone talks about levels and numbers, classes are rigid things with a guild that offers quests.In western fantasy RPG stuff, whenever people talk about levels and game mechanics, it's a 4th-wall-breaking joke, like Order of the Stick, or a tongue-in-cheek gag about wacky trade unions. In Anime, that's just how the world works.
>>97764055>Dude, goblins spawn in mob caves.>Just about every Japanese fantasy thing feels like it's happening in a video game, and I'm not talking about the ones that are explicitly set in a video game. Monsters dissolve upon death, everyone talks about levels and numbers, classes are rigid things with a guild that offers quests.AFAIK most of that stuff is from Sword World, a Japanese TTRPG published in 1989 as a lawyer-friendly version of D&D + Runequest when they couldn't get the license to it. The name comes from magic swords that appeared in the world one day and warped the locations around them into labyrinths that spawn monsters.When Buffy the Vampire Slayer was fighting monsters who dissolve on death every week, no one ever complained that it felt like a videogame. In stories where monsters dissolve it's because they're unnatural creatures - that's what makes them monsters.Taverns existing solely to give out quests and find party members is about an old-school a TTRPG cliche as it gets, meanwhile it almost never happens in videogames.>In western fantasy RPG stuff, whenever people talk about levels and game mechanics, it's a 4th-wall-breaking joke, like Order of the Stick, or a tongue-in-cheek gag about wacky trade unions. In Anime, that's just how the world works.And yet people take it entirely seriously when every town has an official branch of a group literally calling themselves "The Thieves Guild", complete with a formal system of apprentices and journeymen in stealing, when that too was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek gag.
>>97769212>When Buffy the Vampire Slayer was fighting monsters who dissolve on death every weekThat's there for plot convenience since a bunch of vampire corpses would break the masquerade and ruin the "High-schooler moonlighting as a vigilante" peter-parker thing. And it only happens to supernatural things, not every single slain hostile entity.In video games, monsters disappear upon death to save RAM.I'm thinking of Frieren here, btw.
>>97719875Fuck off, cuck.
>>97719717You run a shit game.
>>97783149>And it only happens to supernatural things, not every single slain hostile entity.Yes, monsters are supernatural things. Generally distinguished from other lifeforms by having a metabolism based around mana, sometimes having a specific organ for it. And literally having the word for magic/mana in their name, even if translations don't always reflect it.From what I know of Frieren, "demons dissolve on death" is not a videogame handwave but a major plot point - it's used to show that demons are from a completely different family of life and not actually related to humans at all.I've never seen an anime where monster is a defined term but killing a normal dog or a human bandit will also cause them to dissolve.Closest is Ascendance of a Bookworm (2019 adaptation of a 2013 novel), where nobles dissolve on death due to having mana but commoners don't. And Trudi Canavan was doing that back in 2001 (even having a similar overall story structure, albeit much shorter), again with no one complaining her books were "like a videogame".
