What's the consensus on sudden tonal or genre shifts in

>>45238430
It's acceptable and fun as long as you don't do it in such a way that the players get gimped.

A bad way to do it is like that GURPS game an anon described where the GM said it was medieval fantasy, player took tons of Contacts, GM approved the sheet, then alien kidnapped the party in the first session and the player never got new contacts to replace his old ones.

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>>45238430
It's very annoying. I once played in a WoD game, one guy made a hacker/tech support another guy made a vampire with AIDS. An hour into the game "Okay now you're all being sent to ancient Rome in spooky time shenanigans!". Everyone quit there and then. Give warning and make people aware if they're making a character that will completely ruin the game after the twist.

>>45238430
I feel like having characters carry their genre with them lends an air of strange power to otherwise mundane activities and people.

>>45238430
>you're actually switching between realities involuntarily.
>try to kill the bbeg because he unknowingly pulls the party with him on his quest to save his waifu
>the party doesn't know that and they just want to get back home where it was a slice of life campaign.

>>45238430
My suggestion would be to not do it at all. Think of the entire affair as a story in which players decide the actions of the characters. When's the last time a story had a drastic tonal shift and the effect was actually good?

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>>45238606
>hacker goes to ancient rome

That is laughably dumb

>>45238808
Steven Universe
Hatoful Boyfriend
Mistborn
Code Geass
Problem Sleuth

Off the top of my head

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>>45238808
>When's the last time a story had a drastic tonal shift and the effect was actually good?

>>45238821
>not hacking your way through time

lrn2truesurvivor

>>45238430
Yes, but it needs to be handled with care. Like any good gm you shouldn't just drop the floor out from under people. There has to be a reason for things to happen, and that reason should not be "the gm is a dick".

Have the smugglers run into mangled corpses that aren't just hits. Wacked out friends and family succumbing to something odd. Dark creeping shadows that aren't cops on the chase. Bring things in by degrees.

By all means, a good reveal is dramatic, but not just "you open the door and there is a shoggoth. Roll will versus insanity". Do it with some consideration and effort. Some of the most fun games I've run relied on a good shift, but there was always a buildup

>>45238606
Ditto, was in a PDQ Godgame where we were in the middle of building a fantasy world when the game runner (who was probably 13-16 in retrospect) told us our gods got sucked 10,000 years into the future and had to explore our world as mortal adventurers. The other players replied with a collective "fuck that noise" and the game ended there.

>>45238430
It should come with prior warning and, if the party ain't into it, a compromise should be reached. Personally, I like it so long as it evolves. If it finishes after the tonal shift and only gets more difficult, its boring I feel.

Like, you start as pirates and then suddenly you have to deal with zombies. In the midst of the ordeal of surviving, you start to get clues to whats causing it and how you might stop it and you then need to go about gathering allies to deal with it. Sure, it adds another tonal shift but this one builds on the prior one as a slight extension to the natural evolution and offers interesting play opportunities.

>>45238430

It can be done right, but usually isn't. And unfortunately, 9 times out of 10, warning the players about it eliminates the point of such a shift, that of the rapid transition from one perspective of the game to another.

I've had GMs pull this on me a couple of times, and it's a tough sell. I've never once been happy at the table when it happened, but I'll admit I mellowed out about the better ones afterwards.

>>45238863

Not him, but

>Mistborn
>Good.

u serious m8?

>>45238430
>You're police detectives in prohibition Chicago, fighting the crooked system and busting rum runners, you stumble across a cult to The Elder Ones and your lives go down a completely different path.

Isn't that how Lovecraft stories go. Also Silent Hill, sorta.

>>45239864
It's fun.

I like the way it skips from pseudo-medieval to vaguely western, I think a lot of the setting is well thought out and neat, I like the way the evil villain's backstory could be a book by itself and the magic system is unique and well-explored.

However, it's pretty badly written and the author has clearly never seen a vagina. Nobody's perfect.

>>45239895
Dunno about Silent Hill but yes that is one of the Lovecraftian Archetypes.

Other options include ''Reporter following an odd lead'', ''explorer who found the wrong ancient temple'', ''random civilian who found the wrong temple'', ''random civilian that tempted fate'' and ''intellectual who received a strange letter from a peer''

>>45238863
Steven Universe changes setting?

>>45240099
It starts out as the slice-of-life adventures of a carefree kid and his magic mums.

Then it becomes madoka complete with grey as fuck moralities.

Then it becomes DBZ but with a looming sense of death.

And then it becomes slice-of-life with an autistic green thing.

>>45240099
Sorta? It changes tone more so.

Judging by the people that I know that like it, Episode 1 covers goofy hijinks and something about cat fingers while episode 90something covers themes such as abuse, the horrors of war, sexual assault and oppression in various forms.

Reminds me of a lot of the campaigns I run. They start out light before I have the plot in swing and then by the end you need to cut the key out of your friend to escape a trap and fight the BBEG

>>45239895
Well yeah, but most of the time they'd be obvious from the outset. Running something like CoC, for example.

>>45238863
>>45240150
>>45240163
>Steven Tumblrverse
>good

Fuck off back to /co/

>>45238430
>sailing the seven seas
>suddenly zombies
>desperate food runs

What, did we all forget how fishing works? And what's to stop us from just sailing somewhere that hasn't been zombie'd yet?

>>45240217
Surely 'fuck off back to /co/' would equally apply to you saying it's shit. Since it's all cartoon discussion.

Chill brah. We've all got our opinions. Yours isn't wrong, it's just a happy little accident.

>>45240217
Nah, Steven Universe is shit.

Doesn't mean I don't have family members that like it. You pick shit up hanging around with edgy teen cousins at family events.

You're not good at reading comprehension, are you? Bar the first guy, none of us said its good.

>>45240222
Zombie fish.

Also water.

>>45240318
This brings up a thought: Zombies are traditionally cannibalistic, to the best of my knowledge. Now, obviously, they try to destroy in general but would a zombie eat outside its ''species''? Would an elf zombie eat a human?

>>45240368
I prefer to have zombies just generally eat the living. So a human zombie would kill the shit out of a living dog, eat it until satiated, then leave it alone.

>>45240439
How do you play zombies, by the by? Im about to move into heavy zombie territory in my campaign and Im unsure should they just rush the PCs and facesmash until they win or die or should they be smarter about it?

Basically, swarming zombies or predator zombies: Which works better?

>>45240368
In tabletops, keeping zombies fresh is tough.

Infected dogs/birds/bears make for occasional breaks from the routine without going down the mutations route.

>>45238430

If you trounce the group's basic expectations then you can expect butthurt. Yes, sometimes you will get that easy-going guy who thinks it's awesome, but mostly people will be irritated at having put thought into characters based on a specific theme and setting only to have it all suddenly changed.

You can give some prior warning, that will help. On the downside it's a spoiler. Better, I think, is to make the sudden change only temporary, and to make sure the players know that. Try to limit how drastic the shift in tone/genre change is too, to eliminate any "cannot unsee" effect when you change back.

>>45240496

You can do it either way. I'd say go with whichever is least like the previous enemies the group fought.

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Consider the following:
>AD&D game
>DM tells you that your PCs will be amnesiac, the world suffered a near-apocalypse, that almost everyone the party meets will be hostile, and that clerics/paladins will face additional complications
>Session 1 it turns out you're all sapient zombies trying to survive in a world that hates and fears you

Would you be okay with that?

>>45240870
>amnesiac
>the world suffered a near-apocalypse
>almost everyone the party meets will be hostile
>clerics/paladins will face additional complications
>world that hates and fears you

So it's a traditional campaign, but we don't have to eat or sleep?

>>45240870
Thematically? If I have faith in the DM, yes. Sounds interesting but difficult to actually run well, unless we're supposed to just wait in a cave and murder adventurers.

Mechanically? I know next to nothing about AD&D so I don't know how well that works.

All in all, I'd need to ask the DM how they plan to run it but in theory Im down for it

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>>45240958
You forgot less healing. A lot less.

>>45241025
>unless we're supposed to just wait in a cave and murder adventurers.

It would basically be a sandbox. Track down a half-remembered kingdom, figure why you're undead, don't killed by terrified mob, discover your own history, etc.

>>45241201
>less healing. A lot less.

Do inflict spells heal zombies in AD&D?

>>45241201
Yeah, could be interesting. Can zombies choose from the full standard range of classes or do you have to be like a barbarian and just hit harder with your ''slam'' to do more damage?

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>>45241248
Zombies can be any race or class. I'm designing the Zombie rules to be like a 3.X monster template.

>>45241225
Pretty sure they do. But undead don't heal naturally.

>>45240870

I'd much rather be told ahead of time that it was a sapient zombie campaign.

>>45241312
Sounds a good plan. Might be good to tell the players in advance, as >>45241318 said, but that assumes you can trust them not to metagame hugely.

>>45239240

Sauce?

I had a campaign based on the party being mercenaries in an unstable African country. Gradually shit got weirder and weirder. The campaign fizzled out but the end game was that magic was making a comeback (thanks to quantum pseudoscience) and the party would be recruited by an international coalition of magehunters. The transition from tacticool to "that was pretty fuckin' weird" was going smoothly, and I'm pretty sure my group would be cool with the eventual transition into magehunting.

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>>45241376
Helck. Strongest man on earth befriends demons he was supposed to be fighting against, goes on an adventure with one of demons' greatest management staff member.

>>45241429
I was gonna do something similar in a 20 minutes in the future central Africa, but with an alien infested asteroid landing, covered in rare minerals, but also silicate infectious life

Hate them.

I have been a victim too many times of dms telling us that a game is going to be a certain way and then it changing. Also been on the end of the same with gms not telling us anything about the game before doing it.

If I spend time making a tech specialist or I.T guy for gurps space and 2 games in we are stuck on Rome Planet with a broken and un powered ship for the rest of the game and no tech connection, I will give up and leave if I can not reroll or respec.

We were playing typical D&D helping out a town, but the game turned into a town making game with a harem of orc women. A pretty big change in pace, but we're having more fun now that we were as typical adventuring, even if it is fairly magical realm now.

>>45240015
>However, it's pretty badly written and the author has clearly never seen a vagina.
Sounds like he'd fit in perfectly here.

>>45246902
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if he does. The setting is very /tg/.

>>45240870
Is it the third part of the Ravenloft campaign Grim Harvest?

>>45241312
>I'm designing the Zombie rules to be like a 3.X monster template.
GH actually has rules for undead-ing adventurers.

>>45238430
The Fluxx!

>>45238808
Big Trouble in Little China
From Dusk Till Dawn

>>45238808
>>45251566
The Big Lebowski
Aliens

>>45238808
Bojack Horseman?

>>45238430
Speaking only from games I've run/played:
>Tonal shifts
Good for plot hooks and the like
>genre shifts
Reserved for special events.

>>45240217
>adds "tumblr" to [thing he doesn't like]
opinion discarded

>>45239240
I don't personally care Helcks story that much.

But it's not because it's not good, it's just so fucking depressing and I don't have much interest in that kind stuff currently.

>>45238430
I had a DM who'd always, no matter the genre, find a way to include sexual violence or exploitation into his campaigns. Which work fine in a modern day crime campaign, less well in Star Wars and completely out of place in Lord of the Rings-esque fantasy. Got pretty fucking annoying towards the end.

>>45238430
I've been thinking about doing such things to give players a bit of a break, especially in really grimdark campaigns. Sort of like how most tragedies have a few comedic interludes.

If I was having a Dark Heresy campaign, after enough bloodshed and loss, I'd have them stumble across a Tzeentchian Chaos cult that was still so used to not having free will, the cult leader was still trying to teach them that.

>Okay, here are these two levers. Pull on the left one.
>*person gets zapped*
>Not very nice, right? Okay, which one do you want to pull now?
>...not the left one?
>Wow, you have made a lot of progress in the last few months!

Wouldn't pirates have to keep track of powder, shot, food, water, and grog anyway?

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>>45239292

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How come /tg/ is all "Oh you should totally give warning beforehand," but then when some guy posted about his GM advertising "low magic low fantasy world" and then going "you all get sucked into super-magical hell and now have to fight your way past tons of demons," everyone was all SO AWESOME xDDDDD?

>>45238808
Predator.

>>45251870
Because it makes for a cool story, but most people wouldn't want it to actually happen since it probably wouldn't go well at all?

>>45251870

Because it's the difference between 'A story' and 'Something you can interact/built a character for'.

In a story, you have no control of anything so it's not as much of a problem when things change. A hacker sent back to rome could make an interesting story because the difficulty is interesting. It would make a shitty GAME because the player would have spent a lot being good at things that no longer matter at all in the game.

>>45251851
As I recall, historically they'd just loot them from the ships they sacked so really you'd only need to start worrying about it if you went too long without sacking someone.

Also, just grog, not water. Water went stagnant too easily. Thats why they drank Grog, you could use seawater and it'd taste alright and still be somewhat hydratin. It wouldn't sustain you for very long, hence why the Doldrums were so dangerous, but it'd do ya for a while at a time. Generally pirates only set to sea for a month or so at a time before they'd put back in to port, if that.

>>45251870
Its almost as if the people present on /tg/ and in a particular thread at any one time is a highly variable thing.

How shocking.

>>45251870
In one situation there's a risk of unwittingly making a character who well be basically crippled after the switch. In the other the DM tells them to make a bunch of fighty killy guys and then lets them rip and tear as they were meant to.

>>45252287
>you could use seawater
Hell, no! Salt water and alcohol, sea winds and shadeless sun, you'll be dead in 3 days.

>>45252313
Ooop, yeah. Just looked that up, I fucked up.

So I guess the rum was as much to mask the nasty ass taste of the stagnating water as anything, huh? Suppose it might sterilise it as well, perhaps?

>>45238430
>or just prior warning that 'something major is going to change the tone at some point'?
This is the key here.
There has to be a narrative build up.
It's perfectly fine in my opinion (as long as the players aren't known to hate a setting type, or are locked down on one specific setting type) to do even shit as crazy as doing a GTA type campaign with bank robbers or gangsters or something, and then have some new client show up they can't really find anything on, who keeps hiring them to collect weird shit, that eventually leads to something that awakens the great lord Cthulhu.
As long as there was build up. As long as the players were there every step of the way, and weird shit slowly started happening as things got closer to when everything switches into a different gear.

Infact, most players will generally sense that something is coming up, if they're paying attention, and if the DM's running the game right, with the players having a say in things, they'll probably tell the DM if they really don't want this eldritch sort of game. And even if they don't spot it until it's too late, as the DM, the world is yours, so even if they tell you too late that this is not the game they want to play, you can pull any sort of bullshit out of your ass to let them fix it. Might take some work, but you are the master of the world, you have every key in your hands.

>>45252331
Yes, alcohol was primarily a preservative and disinfectant for fluids. It's not perfect, but a little helps a lot.

The problem with sailing in those days was that you were picking up new infections in every port and the leukocyte count of those sailors must have been phenomenal. So they need their fluids.

You fill fresh water in barrels and store them on board. If you have time and barley you brew ale, if not you rely on spirits to add to the water before imbibing. You could have boiled it as well, but fuel was scarce on a ship that could sell every nook and cranny at a premium. Meals were cold.

>>45238808
Bloodborne.

>>45252331
I think the rum & water mix also came from the fact that when the British Navy moved over from beer rations to rum rations, sailors were hoarding it for binge drinking later; so, they added water to make it go bad quicker, and to reduce the amount of alcohol in the drink.

>>45252467
True that.

Lime juice is a solid enough disinfectant, isn't it? Would adding lime to the water be a good solution to the problem of it going off as well as the issue of scurvy?

I think if it's a slow development it's more fun but in most cases you should only do it in groups of friends you know would appreciate it. For example, in a 2nd edition campaign I've been running the players started in low fantasy and slowly built up as they retrieved rare old artifacts and donated to the guild labratories. It's pretty standard stuff but sometimes they're given cool gimicky magic items and tools. In a few levels I'm hoping to have them investigate a strange meteor that turns out to be a UFO whose technologies will slowly plunge the world into the Spage Age - cue Spelljammer.
I know my friends would like that development, and I have a place in mind for each player. That said, I'd sure as hell warn an unfamiliar group before they make their characters.

>>45252505
Grog specifically came about because one navy captain put something with citrus in the watered down rum rations. Higher ups at some point realised that his crew didn't have issues with scurvy, and the entire navy eventually moved from watered rum to what was from that point on called grog.

>>45252575
Wait, grog is water+rum+lime? Shit, I've been making my grog wrong.

Might as well pitch my campaign idea here. I'm planning a sci fi game where the party are hired as part of a crew that are meeting up with a team of scientists on a freshly discovered new planet, hoping to expand the space empire the setting takes place in. The important thing about the setting is that there's no aliens involved and no pew pew laser beams either, except for experimental weaponry used by the military. It's a lot like Firefly.
I'm planning on splitting this proposed game into two halves. The first half will be a fun romp with the party racing against other groups of adventurers to get to the planet and explore it. They'll be making stops along the way at some colonies, they'll get marooned on a different uninhabited planet for a bit, there'll be recurring antagonists that foil their progress, stuff like that. It'll generally be light hearted, but it'll get freaky in the second half when they actually get to the planet. I'm basically going to be adapting At The Mountains Of Madness, really playing up the horror element of it and having them find weird shit in general including ancient aliens.
The shift in tone is what worries me. Would something like this be too jarring for players to run into? How should I handle the sudden mood whiplash when they get to the planet? Do you guys think it'd work?

>>45239292
sounds like the name for a 90s show
TIME HACKER

>>45252623
Or one of those MST3K B-movies.

>>45252594
Yeah, here's how I understand it. Before the British Navy got to the Caribbean, they used to have beer rations, or wine rations for the officers. When they discovered rum, and how long it took for rum to go bad, they switched to rum rations. What they didn't expect was for the soldiers to stash their rations away for a mass boozer later, which resulting in a lot of health and disciplinary problems, so they watered down the rum to make it go bad quicker, and to effectively give them less alcohol. At some point, a captain nicknamed Old Grogam (because he wore grogam cloth coats) started added either lemon or lime juice to his crews rum rations. This practice eventually spread to the rest of the navy.

Also, possibly pirates took the idea for grog and turned it into bumbo instead, which is water, rum, sugar, nutmeg and possibly cinnamon.

>>45238430
Usually a duck move and often perpetrated by That DM so he can laugh it up.
It can be done well, possibly. However, every time I have experienced it, it's been clumsy, juvenile and broke the pace of the game, most often leading to abandonment of the game shortly there after. Funny that, not everyone who likes Pirates of the Caribbean is interested in Left for Dead.

>>45252670
Oh mighty sage of the rum, thank you.

No, but seriously. Sound the fuck out. Now I know what to serve at my next pirate session.

>>45252505
citrus juice is not only a decent source of vitamin C, but also acidic. That too lowers the bacteria count significantly, though not enough in those ph ranges. Strong vinegar is a good enough disinfectant, but not something you drink.

>>45252594
+ sugar, lots of it!

Sounds like fun, but as a player, I have found that having an expectation for the game built up well then flipping the game on its head was really frustrating. Mostly because the original premise for the game was more interesting to me.

>>45252617
I like it and if it will work depends on who you play with.

>>45252594
It's fucking delicious too.

>PC's are minions of a crippled mad scientist
>Modern-Day with some magic thrown in
>End up creating a VR system by mistake

>Kicks off with the players, now we spend half of our time in this fantasy game
>Mfw when I improvised and came up with all of the setting on the fly

>It can be fun if executed properly.

It seems obvious enough, but with TTRPGs almost anything can be fun if you actually take the time to execute it properly, and write the corresponding part of the adventure to be interesting/exciting.

Reasons to change the tone or genre of a setting

1. It's a natural progression of the story, maybe after the first few levels of chopping goblins and rats up, things get a little more serious, or grim-dark for the group.
2. To give the characters emotional motivation. Having a party member get killed by an assassin can send the group on a revenge quest, in my experience DMing, players are usually super motivated by vengeance. The key with this is killing off a lovable character. That being said I would suggest killing of your own character if your group rotates DMing, or ask someone in the group (privately) if it's okay to kill them off.
3. It's a natural response to the action of the PC's: Maybe the PC's REALLY fuck up a quest, or maybe they make a terrible choice and are now outlaws. Whatever the reason, players are sometimes retarded in their decision making, and while I don't believe in punishing players for not following your exact plans for them, I do believe in consequences. Sometimes consequences means being labeled outlaws, or accidentally destroying an entire town, or whatever.

Reasons not to change the tone or genre of a setting

1. Magical realm. I don't really need any explanation here, do I?
2. You wanted to play D&D but your friends wanted to play Shadowrun: Teleporting your PC's 3000 years into the past just to play the setting YOU want to play is horseshit. Don't fucking do it.
3. You saw a movie about zombies and you want to try that in your campaign. Listen, if it doesn't fit into the natural progression of the story, don't do it. It's going to seem weird and hamfisted to everyone.

>>45253024
I agree.

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>>45251435
The Grim Harvest/Requiem rules are pretty bad though.

Better to homebrew from scratch than try to fix it.

>>45238808
Samurai Flamenco

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>>45238808
>When's the last time a story had a drastic tonal shift and the effect was actually good?

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>>45238808
>When's the last time a story had a drastic tonal shift and the effect was actually good?
I don't like to inflict this image onto people, but you're asking for it.
No it's not something horrible.
Not unless you know exactly what it is.

>>45256494
The last time I played fetch with my daughter was her last.

>>45238430

It's overall bad.
Unless the players are ok with it, or know something regarding it beforehand, it tends to ruin the game.

Even "minor" genre switch, can be annoying.

For example, once I was in a game that was promised to be lighthearted and all. So I made a friendly character, fit for that kind of adventure.
Two sessions in, we were thrown in the middle of Ravenloft with the DM going "Surprise!".
The game didn't last long afterward as we were looking forward for high adventure, rather than grimderp everywhere we looked.

I remember a Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. campaign where we ended up on another planet, fighting aliens who'd kidnapped entire villages to extort sacrifices from them. Turns out the GM had stolen the idea from a sci-fi novel he'd read recently...

He'd even planned this whole thing from the start, and had told us ooc after one session before the twist happened that what was coming was NOT what we'd signed up for, so it's not like he changed tack on a whim. That campaign was damn good fun, and the GM was amazing at setting the tone, but... yeah, it was kinda weird.

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>>45256494

I didn't ask for these feels anon. Curse you.

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>>45259546
I warned you, the path you walked was, as is for each of us: Your own.

in a game that I am still playing actually. not a complete shift, just a completely unexpected game changer.

playing as a bunch of Brotherhood of Steel dudes in a semi fallout thing, and after a few weeks we discover some old dusty experimental armor. enough for everyone in the PC squad.

we use it and discover that it lets us have some green lantern energy armor shit, but it needs to use stats that not one of us set up our characters to use.

it was a weird thing to come in the middle of a fairly normal game. but the GM has been good about giving us buffs to the ability to use it so we are not crippled.

>>45256494
Fuck you, man.

Group builds characters for a Rogue Trader game.

Get through 2 adventures that lead the group to wormhole gate. "Well, we should find out where this goes!"

Ship ends up in the Star Wars universe. Grimdark meets space opera.

Giggles were had.

>>45240217
Do you actually have something valid to say or are you just exploding in a Reddit-like fit of autism whenever you see things you don't like

>>45256494
I know exactly what it is.
A hamfisted attempt at shocking people that ignores that the law of equivalent exchange doesn't let you lose something.
Neither girl nor dog are actually lost.

If you want feels watch the episode where Ed and Al return to central in good spirits, learn that you know who was murdered and visit his grieving widow who cries behind closed doors but put's up a smiling facade for guests and her daughter.
Shit was tragic.

>>45260767
Can we just agree that that show was full of feels?

>>45238808
Vagabond went from IMMA FIGHT EVERYONE AND BE THE BEST THERE EVER WAS to quiet introspection and farming.
Vinland Saga did the same thing.

>>45260767
>Neither girl nor dog are actually lost.
True, but they ended up in a more messed up version of Tuvix, and we all know how that song and dance goes.

>>45240506
My current GM did it by making them truly magic instead of just "infected" and by making them art projects of a demon obsessed with decay. They wear these cool wooden masks, too, I can't wait to get someone to look at it.

>>45260813
Sure, I'm just salty because the only feel that went viral is the one I don't share and think is stupid.

Now something related to the OP:
A lot of animes change tone after a couple of episodes or halfway through.
kill la kill fight for revenge > fight of alien invaders
NGE giant robots vs monsters > cureing the human condition
Psycho Pass crime solving > working around a conspiring government to neutralize a revolutionary terrorist

>>45251749
It's still a testament to the story's quality that it can make you feel depressed.

>>45251643
The Big Lebowski had a big tonal shift? I thought it was pretty consistent for most of the movie.

>>45240150
>grey moralities
Fucking when? The Crystal Gems have been show as being 100% good while Homeworld have been shown as mostly being dicks that are obsessed with efficiency.

>>45240015
Actually I think he has kids, it's more that Mormons don't bring sex in to things.

>>45261772
>it's more that Mormons don't bring sex in to things

In the newest book, the grimy sidekick dude propositions a lesbian for a threesome and then screws an immortal shapeshifter.

>>45238578
I tried to run a game kinda like that once. Players began modern day nonmagic alternate universe, normal human points. Then, end of first session, they discover a supernatural underbelly to the city, and become host to alien parasites that grant them 100 new points for magic powers.

No setting change to gimp players, though.

>>45261424
There was a period where it was kinda grey - when they freed lapis. Dumped a lot of questions into the moral assumptions that had been made that weren't really cleared up until Jailbreak.

>>45262173
Yeah, and it was made fairly morally black and white in the end, right?

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>>45256494
AH NOT THIS SHIT AGAIN

>in a Weird War Campaign
>in Sicily
>fightan some Micks, going good
>DM says he wanted to change settings, asked if that's okay with everyone
>say yeah
>became a Day After Ragnarok game instead
Loved that game shame my friend died and I didn't go back to it

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>>45238430
Best campaign was a genre shift from high flying steampunk fantasy to reality warping horror. The core "dungeon" throughout the campaign was a research facility that the party later discovered to be a dead god. The substance that was causing the world to go to shit was his crystallized blood.

>>45270299
>god dies
>some crazy fuck sets up a research facility inside its titan corpse
>the crystallized blood of a god is tampered with, causes bad shit to happen

That's not a bad set-up to a campaign. I like it.

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>>45238430
I remember signing up for a random CoC game on Roll20 that was advertised as us going to investigate some mansion that one of the PC's character's uncle owned and had died and they were now inheriting. I get into the session and it turns out that it's not in fact set in the 1920s, and instead we're traveling through space and we know what Cthulhu and the Old Ones are and, Cthulhu's been dead for years now and is trying to come back. And in order to prepare for that we keep jumping into some sort of "dream simulator" and go back to different time periods like the 30s, 70s, etc.

I felt like I was false-advertised, and coupled with the fact that there was constant tension and drama between one player and the GM, as well as the fact that we were reprimanded for any iota of OOC fun, I quickly decided to leave.

Never again.

>>45261308
>Sure, I'm just salty because the only feel that went viral is the one I don't share and think is stupid.
Hey, spoiler feels guy here.
I actually agree with how this particular moment isn't the best executed out of the series, however, I think the reason people caught on with it so much, is because it's kind of where shit gets real.
Anything else that is dark up to that point, is just so distant, and feels like it's a part of the lore, and then this moment comes and it signals just how fucked up what's to come is.
Which is also why I put this particular moment in, instead of what I agree is a much better moment by your example. Since that already came after the tone shift.

>>45260767

I thought the whole point of it was that the law applied, because she lost her humanity. Like, the one thing Alchemy can't get back is the god damn soul.

>>45261308
You're just a simplist.

>>45238808
The Venture Brothers.

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>>45238808
Wow way to make a good point in the worst possible way

>>45261308
>I'm just salty because the only feel that went viral is the one I don't share and think is stupid.
Fair enough.

>>45238808
Gurren-lagann
Berserk
Bloodborne
From Dusk till Dawn
Now, I agree, if there is no forewarning at all. G-L and Berserk both had in medias res intros that let you know what it would become and in BB the cosmic horror builds slowly.
From Dusk till Dawn is the only exception to this I can find, but that really was just Tarantino trying to fuck with as many people as possible, until the marketing department spoiled the twist.

>>45252617
>>45252617
>>45252617
Anyone else got feedback on this?

>>45261364
It didnt, the post was stupid

>>45238430
Do whatever you want man.

The only problem is when your group ends up feeling like you gypped them.

Have you talked with your group before starting the campaign, and do you have a firm grasp of their expectations and wishes, and do they have an idea that you like mixing things up? Then nothing can go wrong.

But don't just invite people for D&D and then suddenly go "we walking dead now." That's just a recipe for people feeling tricked.

You don't invite people over for barbecue and then serve them vegan.
But you don't show up for a buffet without letting someone know in advance what you're allergic to either.

>>45256757
My group got surprise bullshitted into Ravenloft as well. We were originally from a Sundered Earth setting, pretty much just Fallout with elves n' shit thrown in. Tone remained about the same, it was pretty grimdark to begin with. What pissed me off was that this was right after a significant story shift: a dead god was brought back to life, but at the cost of letting Asmodeus back into the world, as if it wasn't crapsack enough. My character, the LG cleric of the god's mother, was now pretty dead-set on ensuring the child could rise to full godhood without being killed again; but thanks to the wish of some asshole vampire, we'll all stuck in the land of brooding fucksticks and filthy thieving gypos that drug you in the middle of the night and steal all your armor, weapons, and the plot coupons needed to get back home.

>>45238430

Once our GM made the darkest fantasy campaign I've ever had chance of playing in.

First session was gold. We barely managed to infiltrate some dark cult.

Second was even better with us discovering that the cult was planning to "stop worlds in their walk from child to an elder world" thus providing their master with power of that world.

On the third session he threw us on a colorful, floating island full of blue goblins with white hats, living in fucking mushrooms.

We finished playing just as we picked up all our sides.

>>45282760

We wound up in Ravenloft by way of Athas. Most of us came to the conclusion that this gray, misty, brooding place was far and away nicer than home, and enjoyed the respite from rapespiders, scenery that tries to eat you, and death from exposure.

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>>45238808
What's his name again?

>>45238808
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure went from victorian melodrama to kung fu Dracula to fucking anything you can think of

>>45284056
I loved this show but on some level I feel like "hey, let's model the plot for this based on what a lawful stupid and bored fashion model would write in his spare time, and justify it at the end with a huge asspull"

Arguing over who gets to be red Flamenco was the best though.

>>45283723
>On the third session he threw us on a colorful, floating island full of blue goblins with white hats, living in fucking mushrooms.
So the smurfs?

>>45284112
JJBA's strength is that it can be any tone you can think of, as long as weird shit is involved.
>prison break
>Goodfellas
>suburban murder mystery
>horse race across America

>>45277160
All this time and not a single bad pun I'm ashamed of you /tg/

I'm so mad I can't even think of any myself.

>>45285067
All this impotent rage at other people lacking puns, and yet you failed to think of a pun aHead of time.

Who's disappointed in who now?

>>45283810
I'm really hoping we can leave soon, but now all our shit's been stolen, that might take a while. I was the unlucky one who got drugged and abducted from my room while I was sleeping; everybody else got to get their fighting gear at least, while I, the only current heavily-armored pc, was and still am reduced to spamming spells in a nightgown in a campaign where long rest = 1 week.

DM does get a real chuckle that we're trying our damndest to get out of Ravenloft and back to a war-torn post-nuclear wasteland.

>>45284112

Every individual section maintains a consistent tone within itself, and to be honest the changes in settings don't change the tone of the story that mich, it's still primarily a shonen battle series.

>>45285840
Hasn't been shonen since stone ocean

>>45285120
Oh God your right I should be hanging my Head in shame