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Talakeal
2015-01-25, 01:04 AM
So I just had a great idea for a campaign. The problem is, it requires a rather serious genre shift half way through, and the first half of the campaign is going to be big into mystery and investigation.

How do I tell the players this? I can't just out and out tell them, as it needs to be a twist.

In the past I have tried this once or twice (for example a zombie apocalypse game where I didn't want the players to show up with characters built to survive a zombie apocalypse) but it has never really worked in the past. The players have either rebelled, or worse, laughed at the idea, and the campaign slowly died after the reveal.

Any idea on how I can stop that from happening again?

WarKitty
2015-01-25, 01:13 AM
Could you be more specific as to why previous campaigns died? I feel like that's relevant here. Some players just don't like certain things. I know personally if I build my character and then find out that character's not particularly good for the game I'm playing, especially if it's as compared to other character, I'd be pretty annoyed.

At the very least, you could say "I can't tell you why without ruining the plot, but these sorts of abilities should come in handy."

jaydubs
2015-01-25, 01:25 AM
As Warkitty mentioned, I see two causes for this.

1. "I didn't sign up for that type of game." - This is pretty straightforward. If you sign up for intrigue, and get endless dungeons. Or if you were looking for something combat heavy, and it's nothing but social encounters. Essentially, vet your players beforehand. Ask what types of games they'd like to play. Make sure they're interested in both genres, even if they don't know it's going to switch.

2. "Oh, so now my character sucks." - Again, most people don't have a good time if their character is suddenly rendered useless or totally unprepared for the campaign. Wizard in a null-magic world. Hacker in an island survival setting with no computers. You get the idea. Give some guidance during character creation to make sure that doesn't happen. The characters don't need to be perfectly suited to the campaign (aka, they don't need to be playing expert dragonslayers in a dragon themed campaign), but make sure their defining strengths and characteristics aren't rendered impotent.

Red Fel
2015-01-25, 01:33 AM
The biggest issue I see is that certain genre changes are so stark as to obviate a character concept.

For example, if I tell my players we'll be doing a campaign about political maneuvering in the medieval court of King X, with all of them playing lesser nobles jockeying for position, they'll plan accordingly. They'll invest heavily in social skills and contacts, wealth and etiquette, perhaps some dueling skills.

If I inform them halfway through the campaign that King X has declared war against the Duchy of Yberg, and that all able-bodied nobles have been conscripted into His Majesty's Service, they're hosed. Suddenly they've gone from playing the sexy part of Game of Thrones to playing the gory part of Game of Thrones, without any warning or ability. Jaime Lannister can play in both worlds, sure, but what if you made Cersei?

And that's nothing to speak of player expectations. The suspension of disbelief is a thing. As a rule, within the first chapter of a book, or the first fifteen minutes of a movie, you set expectations. This is the world, these are the rules. You need to establish those fairly early on to create immersion. So if, for example, your players are engaged in a Golden Age Superhero RPG, and then halfway through, the sky goes dark, all superpowers vanish, and suddenly it's Call of Cthulhu, there's going to be a lot of upset, because you disrupted those expectations, those rules about how the world works.

Now, there are genre changes that work. One-off "beach episode" or "murder mystery" sessions within a larger campaign, for example, because the players will be returning to their comfort next time around. Or if you take two concepts that are close in power and tone, such as "wild west" and "noir detective," you can easily transition between the two.

Long story short, as everyone else has said, you need to have the players on board from the beginning. You don't have to spoil it, but you have to have players who are willing to re-invest in the plot; once the tone changes, it's effectively a brand new game, and they need to be willing to re-immerse themselves in it. Otherwise, that suspension of disbelief, once broken, can't be repaired.

Talakeal
2015-01-25, 01:46 AM
No, not talking about ruining anyone's character concept or making them useless. I am talking about the setting they are in more so than the tone of the game. Actually, some of my best campaigns have been those where ordinary people are thrust into crazy adventures. Hell, in my current game I told them to make regular people and they just kind of assumed the game would be set on modern Earth (with no prompting or trickery on my part) and didn't realize their mistake for two or three sessions, and this has been a 10 year long game.

Off the top of my head past examples are fantasy into Sci Fi running the D&D adventure Night of the Comet, Fantasy that was actually post apocalyptic (by having modern Earth relics occasionally show up in a D&D campaign set thousands of years after a nuclear war), a zombie apocalypse in a world of darkness campaign, and Call of Cthulhu in an Old West game.

In every case the players just couldn't take the game seriously anymore or got pissed. I have never got a handle on why they don't like it though, the closest I ever got to an explanation was in the White Wolf game where they didn't like me "turning the campaign into a cheap Resident Evil knockoff".

WarKitty
2015-01-25, 02:08 AM
My advice? Don't. For whatever reason, doing this is making people feel cheated and not really enjoy the game as much. It hasn't been working. With that sort of history, if you really want to do a genre change I'd just be up front, tell the players what you're planning, and trust them to keep it out of their rp.

CarpeGuitarrem
2015-01-25, 02:15 AM
My advice? Don't. For whatever reason, doing this is making people feel cheated and not really enjoy the game as much. It hasn't been working. With that sort of history, if you really want to do a genre change I'd just be up front, tell the players what you're planning, and trust them to keep it out of their rp.
Yeah, basically this. There's two things you have to nail down for something like this, no matter how cool the idea is, because it is a cool idea.

Earn the players' trust. You need them to trust that you'll deliver interesting things no matter what. You need them to be ready to entrust even their genre expectations to you. That's not easy to accomplish.

Know what the players want. Most players want exactly what they signed up for. If you know them well enough, you'll also know what they'll spring for, and whether your surprise is something they'll be onboard with. If you can't say for sure that they'll enjoy that surprise and that genre in particular, don't do it. (For instance, I remember hearing about a Call of Cthulhu one-shot in London where The Doctor suddenly showed up, and the entire tone of the session changed.)

Most importantly, you need to do it because the players will enjoy it, not because it's clever and you like to see it play out. And to figure out which one it is, you need to be brutally honest with yourself.

So, really--it's probably too much trouble to do. If you're interested in messing with something like this, there is an interesting alternative: finish one campaign, then start another campaign in a different genre and reveal that it's the same world as the previous campaign. (Currently musing over maybe doing this by finishing a Dungeon World game and then later doing an Apocalypse World campaign set in the same world, decades later.)

jaydubs
2015-01-25, 02:24 AM
I have never got a handle on why they don't like it though...

I'm getting the impression this is less about changing genres, and more about bait and switch. It's one thing where the natural evolution of the story changes the focus of the game. It's another when the DM advertises one genre, specifically to try to surprise players with another.

I mean, imagine the exact same surprise happening in a movie. Say you saw a trailer about the wild west, gunfights, and frontier life. You buy a ticket at the movie theater, and then suddenly half way through it turns out the movie is about aliens. Regardless of whether or not the movie is actually good, the switch is going to upset a large part of the audience.

So instead, the trailer usually hints that something creepy and unexpected is going to happen, even if it can't reveal the exact nature of the plot twist. They'll show a normal frontier town, and then characters talking about mysterious disappearances and signs, and then play creepy music. The audience is still surprised when it turns out to be aliens, but they don't feel deceived.

Follow the same principle during recruitment. Describe the current genre, and then drop a bunch of mysterious and ominous hints about what you intend to turn it into. Your players will be more likely to be on board with the change if they implicitly signed up for it.

aspekt
2015-01-25, 02:46 AM
Ya you have got to get people onboard for any setting or game you GM. It honestly sounds like you're building the campaigns you want to play in. This is a frequent temptation, but one that rarely pays off. Make the campaign all of you want to play.

Thrawn4
2015-01-25, 12:11 PM
Many people didn't like it when From Dusk Till Dawn switched genres in the middle, it's a matter of expectation.
Your examples sound fun, but depending on my mood I might still have hated the change of style because I wanted to play something else.

My suggestion would be to introduce the new genre in a session and towards the end you ask the players whether they would like to continue this way or not. If they do that's great, if not you can still treat this session as an exception / weird incident nobody will ever mention again / dream.




So instead, the trailer usually hints that something creepy and unexpected is going to happen, even if it can't reveal the exact nature of the plot twist.

Follow the same principle during recruitment. Describe the current genre, and then drop a bunch of mysterious and ominous hints about what you intend to turn it into.
That's brilliant.
Can also be combined with my approach :smallwink:

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-25, 12:57 PM
I might also get upset, if my back story and attempts to involve my character with the others hinged on a certain type of game. Some characters work better with certain types of games.

My advice? Do a one-off genre switch. Something small, that could be leading up to a larger mystery. If the players jump it like its the last bag of chips, go with it. If they don't, play it off as something other then it was that goes back to the original premise of the game. So you can try something new...But have a back up plan in case it doesn't work.

Talakeal
2015-01-25, 02:51 PM
Ya you have got to get people onboard for any setting or game you GM. It honestly sounds like you're building the campaigns you want to play in. This is a frequent temptation, but one that rarely pays off. Make the campaign all of you want to play.

While I agree with this on a surface level, I am not quite sure how you would go about executing that.

How would you actually go about designing a campaign "by committee"?

If the DM isn't into the campaign no one will be having fun, and I certainly wouldn't want to play in one where I already knew the big plot twists before they happened. Also, trying too hard to please everyone tends to just result in either an inconsistent jumble or a bland mush.

I am not trying to be dismissive, I really would like to hear your advice on the matter if you have any more to give.

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-25, 04:58 PM
What I've seen is that the DM pitches an idea, including genre and a few themes. Those interested, play. You can't please everyone, so don't try. If your games require a lot of creativity from the DM, then you'll need to see who among your players will gel with a certain idea you think you can work with and go from there. Usually people are pretty open to different ideas and play styles, so you should get most people agreeing to any given game in my experience. Fantasy RPG players usually won't snub a chance at a Superhero game if they like the DM.

Yora
2015-01-25, 05:34 PM
Like a book or movie, a campaign begins by making a promise about what the story will be like. If it fails to make a promise, people will generally not care about the story at all and have no real investment. If you have a promise it's absolutely vital that this promise does not get broken. The creator controls the entire flow of all information and the audience has to trust that they are not being lied to. If they are fed lies, it becomes impossible to make any attempt of understanding what is going on or trying to predict what will happen. And what's the point then to bother with the rest of the story at all if it will be just more lies?
Breaking the promise of what kind of campaign the players will get destroys that trust. Even if they have not been fed an actual lie, theg still feel like they have been actively and purposefully deceived by the GM, and the trust that any error they make is caused by their on mistakes is gone.

What you can do is making a promise, but the actual content of the adventures turns out to be something different than was assumed, while still being within the promise. The Sixth Sense is still about a boy who sees ghosts of people who don't know they are dead. Predator remains a movie about soldiers in a dangerous jungle fighting a hidden and ellusive enemy cutoff from any help.

Whatever shift you make, it still has to be about what the players signed up for. An adventure about killing a witch who has taken control over a horde of violent barbarians might lead the players to an actual portal to Hell in the witches hut, with the witch turning out to be a demon lord in disguise and the barbarians being merely a cover until the horde of demons is ready for battle.
After the players battled force of barbarians or sneaked through it to get to their mysterious leader, they have to fight or sneak through a demonic army in hell to get to their mysterious leader. It turned from a campaign in the northern forest to an invasion of hell, but it's still true to the promise to fighting a huge horde of savage warriors to destroy their magical leader. It's still within the established parameters of the setting and genre, and the players are still going to engage in the types of activities they expected to do.

WarKitty
2015-01-25, 06:10 PM
Like a book or movie, a campaign begins by making a promise about what the story will be like. If it fails to make a promise, people will generally not care about the story at all and have no real investment. If you have a promise it's absolutely vital that this promise does not get broken. The creator controls the entire flow of all information and the audience has to trust that they are not being lied to. If they are fed lies, it becomes impossible to make any attempt of understanding what is going on or trying to predict what will happen. And what's the point then to bother with the rest of the story at all if it will be just more lies?
Breaking the promise of what kind of campaign the players will get destroys that trust. Even if they have not been fed an actual lie, theg still feel like they have been actively and purposefully deceived by the GM, and the trust that any error they make is caused by their on mistakes is gone.

What you can do is making a promise, but the actual content of the adventures turns out to be something different than was assumed, while still being within the promise. The Sixth Sense is still about a boy who sees ghosts of people who don't know they are dead. Predator remains a movie about soldiers in a dangerous jungle fighting a hidden and ellusive enemy cutoff from any help.

Whatever shift you make, it still has to be about what the players signed up for. An adventure about killing a witch who has taken control over a horde of violent barbarians might lead the players to an actual portal to Hell in the witches hut, with the witch turning out to be a demon lord in disguise and the barbarians being merely a cover until the horde of demons is ready for battle.
After the players battled force of barbarians or sneaked through it to get to their mysterious leader, they have to fight or sneak through a demonic army in hell to get to their mysterious leader. It turned from a campaign in the northern forest to an invasion of hell, but it's still true to the promise to fighting a huge horde of savage warriors to destroy their magical leader. It's still within the established parameters of the setting and genre, and the players are still going to engage in the types of activities they expected to do.

This. So the example upthread - turning a world of darkness game into a zombie apocalypse - is a violation of this. World of darkness is as much mystery as horror, and a shades of gray setting where you expect to have to fight with moral choices and creeping moral decay. The zombie apocalypse, while a nice setting and one that works within the rules, is just too different. There's far more combat against an opponent that's numerous but pretty dumb, as opposed to standard wod where most opponents are clever and alien. And it's changed from subtle horror and the struggle to keep up normalcy, to a world where that's all gone.

They may both be horror, but players are going to feel like they signed up for the wrong thing.

Talakeal
2015-01-25, 06:39 PM
This. So the example upthread - turning a world of darkness game into a zombie apocalypse - is a violation of this. World of darkness is as much mystery as horror, and a shades of gray setting where you expect to have to fight with moral choices and creeping moral decay. The zombie apocalypse, while a nice setting and one that works within the rules, is just too different. There's far more combat against an opponent that's numerous but pretty dumb, as opposed to standard wod where most opponents are clever and alien. And it's changed from subtle horror and the struggle to keep up normalcy, to a world where that's all gone.

They may both be horror, but players are going to feel like they signed up for the wrong thing.

Keep in mind, there are a heck of a lot of things that fall under "World of Darkness." I have been in games that play it as horror, romance, comedy, action, super hero, mystery, adventure, and every combination thereof. Heck, in my current Mage game one player insists that the game is about "learning magic" and that we should all be focusing on studying magic and hunting down new spells instead of each advancing our own personal goals or helping other people.

Red Fel
2015-01-25, 07:14 PM
Keep in mind, there are a heck of a lot of things that fall under "World of Darkness." I have been in games that play it as horror, romance, comedy, action, super hero, mystery, adventure, and every combination thereof. Heck, in my current Mage game one player insists that the game is about "learning magic" and that we should all be focusing on studying magic and hunting down new spells instead of each advancing our own personal goals or helping other people.

And that's fine, provided the players' expectations aren't suddenly changed. I'm not saying you can do only comedy or tragedy, horror or fluff, but you have to be internally consistent as to how you apply it. Batman, for example, rarely bursts into riotous musical number (with the exception of the occasional one-off episode guest starring Neil Patrick Harris); it's fairly grim and gritty throughout. Contrast that with, say, M*A*S*H, which did a good job of switching between comedy (and dark comedy) and tragedy. M*A*S*H was successful in this regard because its setting established the premise - yes, these are a bunch of jokers and hooligans who don't want to be there, but they're funny because it's how they cope with being surrounded by death and pain. Thus, the changes in tone work. The premise also works on the occasional "very special episode" sitcoms, when dealing with a tragic slice-of-life issue. It would not work on, say, Seinfeld, which is premised upon humor found in absurdity.

And as an aside, my favorite WoD campaigns were the funny ones.

Talakeal
2015-01-25, 08:42 PM
And that's fine, provided the players' expectations aren't suddenly changed. I'm not saying you can do only comedy or tragedy, horror or fluff, but you have to be internally consistent as to how you apply it. Batman, for example, rarely bursts into riotous musical number (with the exception of the occasional one-off episode guest starring Neil Patrick Harris); it's fairly grim and gritty throughout. Contrast that with, say, M*A*S*H, which did a good job of switching between comedy (and dark comedy) and tragedy. M*A*S*H was successful in this regard because its setting established the premise - yes, these are a bunch of jokers and hooligans who don't want to be there, but they're funny because it's how they cope with being surrounded by death and pain. Thus, the changes in tone work. The premise also works on the occasional "very special episode" sitcoms, when dealing with a tragic slice-of-life issue. It would not work on, say, Seinfeld, which is premised upon humor found in absurdity.

And as an aside, my favorite WoD campaigns were the funny ones.

Oh sure. I was just responding to the assentation that "WoD is X". I don't think we have ever done a WoD campaign where all the players were on the same page as one another, let alone the GM, and we always have a mix of conflicting themes and play styles; so to act like the GM not running it in a specific style being a betrayal of trust is a little hard for me to follow.

CarpeGuitarrem
2015-01-25, 09:25 PM
Now that I think about it, a one-shot has a lot more leeway for this than a campaign, because a campaign is a massive commitment.

genmoose
2015-01-25, 10:54 PM
Talakeal and some others mentioned betrayal of trust, but I think that may take it a bit too far. I think CarpeGuitarrem hit it pretty much on the head if I may take it a bit further.

Today it seems like we are saturated in possible entertainment stimuli, all for increasingly less and less relative cost. I'm probably not the only one here with a backlog in my Steam library or a Netflix queue that could take me from now until the 4th of July. Often as the choices in ways to entertain ourselves increases our available time to enjoy said media decreases due to pesky things like a job, family or the physical need for food and sleep.

So for a good number of us time becomes our most precious commodity.

As was mentioned before there are a great number of people that will get pissed when a two hour movie turns out to be completely different than the trailer. Sure there are sometimes great surprises (what I think the OP is trying for) but more often than not there are big letdowns. If this summer I carve out two hours to watch the new Terminator movie I want to see robots, gunfights, explosions, cheesy one liners and some Austrian accents. If it turns out to be a twisty romantic comedy between Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese I'm going to be quite unhappy. I don't care if it's so good that it becomes the next Pretty Woman of the 21st century I'm going to end up throwing my popcorn.

So the issue becomes how much time are people willing to invest. Unfortunately for a normal campaign that can be months to years. If you look at it on an hourly basis some folks could easily expect to tie up dozens if not hundreds of hours per year. So if the twist happens lets say 2 or 3 sessions in (9 or 10 hours?) then yea a lot of people may get upset no matter how intriguing the twist. If I decided to spend my time role playing in a world that feels like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and turns into Walking Dead I'm going to be a little upset at the opportunity cost because of that time commitment.

However sometimes these sort of genre bending ideas can be amazing and the world is full of wonderful concepts that everyone thought were insane. So I'm not saying don't do it. I have a few humble suggestions.

1. Make the twist at the end of the first session. Or better yet, maybe about 75% of the way through the first session. If they don't like it, they walk and hopefully you can avoid any 'flip the table' moments. There is limited investment on your part, and theirs so if it goes sour people can hopefully just pick up and move on.

2. As others have hinted, give some subtle hints that things aren't completely straight forward. I'd think of it kind of like planning a surprise bachelor party. You don't want to tell the groom exactly what you're doing but you want him to know if he should at least pack a toothbrush or not. If he leaves his house thinking he's getting booze and strippers and you fly him to Aspen for skiing he's going to be upset. Not because Aspen isn't insanely cool but because he's got a wad of singles and mints in his pocket as opposed to a coat and boots. You don't have to say 'bring skis' but 'dress warmly' wouldn't hurt. Or even, expect the unexpected.

3. Make the twist change the characters from mediocre in the previous genre into awesome in the new one. They go from average goes to the people that are going to save the world. And make that evident within that last 25% of the first session.

So for example let's say your crew is in a sci-fi setting and you throw them back in time to the modern era. This has the potential to have your guys kick ass. Sure someone who put points into warp core engineering may not have much use of it in modern times, but he knows enough about general engineering to turn him from Lt. Barclay in his time into Tony Stark now. That's the player's buy in. They didn't waste that time, or those points, or whatever on what may not be useless; they were able to trade up into something that they otherwise couldn't have made.

There's still plenty of fish out of water fun to be had from crossing genres, but with any luck everyone leaves happy.

Those few things would make me choose to come back next week for another session. Just remember that the players are going to trust you with their time so be careful with it.

VincentTakeda
2015-01-26, 03:51 AM
I posted this same answer in another thread for a very similar purpose.

Recently I read an article stating that a movie that spoiled its entire plot in the trailer got a full order of magnitude more money and more satisfaction from its viewers than movies that don't.

Moral of the story: people don't like surprises... I know as a gm we like the glee of springing something unexpected on folks... Your players are showing exactly why thats not a good idea... Despite the fact that we're playing 'adventure games'... And your players might count themselves as adventurers... For the most part people do not like surprises.

You'd be amazed at how the tone would change if instead you started off by saying 'I want cthulhu in the old west' before the campaign started, even though doing so removes your ability to experience the glee of the reveal. Sadly, the rest of your table usually wont enjoy your personal glee of the reveal as much as you do.

goto124
2015-01-26, 04:38 AM
In before "wouldn't it be boring if players already knew everything and there are no surprises?"

Talakeal
2015-01-26, 04:46 AM
I posted this same answer in another thread for a very similar purpose.

Recently I read an article stating that a movie that spoiled its entire plot in the trailer got a full order of magnitude more money and more satisfaction from its viewers than movies that don't.

Moral of the story: people don't like surprises... I know as a gm we like the glee of springing something unexpected on folks... Your players are showing exactly why thats not a good idea... Despite the fact that we're playing 'adventure games'... And your players might count themselves as adventurers... For the most part people do not like surprises.

You'd be amazed at how the tone would change if instead you started off by saying 'I want cthulhu in the old west' before the campaign started, even though doing so removes your ability to experience the glee of the reveal. Sadly, the rest of your table usually wont enjoy your personal glee of the reveal as much as you do.

Honestly, even if that was the case, I would feel like a chump sitting there playing out a mystery where the PCs already knew the answer from either side of the screen, just like I wouldn't want to waste my time telling a friend a joke where they already know the punch line or a story they have heard before.

This goes both ways by the way. I have played in modules that I have read before, and the need to "play dumb" so I avoid meta-gaming is hair pullingly frustrated, and the puzzle / mystery solving aspects are eye gougingly boring.

Oh, and in said zombie game where the players rebelled, one of them actually came to me after the game and told me the scene where I revealed the first zombie was one of the scariest things they had ever experienced in a game because I described it in such a way that they had absolutely no idea what it was or what it could do, so I don't think all players hate surprises or mystery, I sure don't. It is basically the only way to actually feel real anxiety about the outcome of something in my experience.

goto124
2015-01-26, 04:52 AM
I'm guessing it's the amount of surprise. A bit is good. Too much uncertainty isn't. For example, you might be told 'zombies acopolypse (spelling)'. So you get a general idea of the campaign, but you don't know what the exact events are. You don't know who's behind the zombies, or the locations of the traps, or the answers to the puzzles. Knowing an entire module is an extreme example of knowing everything, akin to having read the entire book. A surprise genre change is, however, very different, as it topples even your basic assumptions of the campaigns, and above posters have already covered this bit quite well.

Red Fel
2015-01-26, 07:37 AM
Honestly, even if that was the case, I would feel like a chump sitting there playing out a mystery where the PCs already knew the answer from either side of the screen, just like I wouldn't want to waste my time telling a friend a joke where they already know the punch line or a story they have heard before.

Here's the thing - it's possible to have "a mystery," and have the players know to expect "a mystery" at some point, and still have it hit hard when it happens. In a good way.

For example, if you say to your players, "We're going to start with a bright, shiny, Golden Age Superhero campaign, and at a certain point it's going to get incredibly dark, stark, bleak and scary," they know that there will be a genre change. They don't know what it is specifically, but they know it's coming. When you unload your zombie apocalypse midgame, they know to expect the genre change, but they didn't specifically expect the zombie outbreak. Because they expected the change in tone, they handle it better; because they didn't expect the zombie angle (or whatever angle you use), it still has an impact.

The players don't need to know who the killer is to know that a murder will be committed, metaphorically speaking; they just need to be aware that they're entering a crime scene.

Algeh
2015-01-26, 07:56 PM
I dislike genre changes because they interrupt my character's goals. When I play a character, I tend to develop quirks and goals for them to help make them more of a person and less of a stat sheet, and give them a reason to be doing whatever it is the party's doing right now. These may not be goals that we'll actually do in play (settling down to raise horses and marry the girl next door would be pretty boring for everyone else, so if I want to play that out I should just go play Harvest Moon instead), but they should be things my character can be plausibly working toward, by putting money aside or agonizing over whether they should buy that beautiful horse they just saw since they' d have to take it into danger, or by what they tend to do with their down time, or whatever. Genre changes almost always disrupt those goals (apocalypses are not kind to raising horses), which means my character will be upset about their dreams crashing down around their head. Well, if I wanted to play "all of my dreams lie shattered at my feet" I'd go back to graduate school. It's just not fun, and so I don't enjoy spending weeks pretending that something upsetting is happening to me and I have to figure out how to go forward in the crumbling ruins of my life.

On the other hand, if I were told in advance it was, say, a dimension-hopping game where the setting was always changing, I wouldn't create a character with a goal about returning to their original village to raise horses in the first place unless I wanted to spend a lot of IC-time whining (I don't). I'd create a character with a goal to, I don't know, find the most awesome pair of sunglasses in the multiverse, or sleep with as many of their alternate selves as possible (ok, probably not that, because that would be incredibly obnoxious for the rest of the players), or something else that meant they were generally on board with this hopping around stuff and could work toward their goals as time allowed.

I just dislike having to re-do that whole process of finding a reason for my character to want to go adventuring with these people in first place because the assumptions changed, I guess.

Talakeal
2015-01-26, 11:17 PM
I dislike genre changes because they interrupt my character's goals. When I play a character, I tend to develop quirks and goals for them to help make them more of a person and less of a stat sheet, and give them a reason to be doing whatever it is the party's doing right now. These may not be goals that we'll actually do in play (settling down to raise horses and marry the girl next door would be pretty boring for everyone else, so if I want to play that out I should just go play Harvest Moon instead), but they should be things my character can be plausibly working toward, by putting money aside or agonizing over whether they should buy that beautiful horse they just saw since they' d have to take it into danger, or by what they tend to do with their down time, or whatever. Genre changes almost always disrupt those goals (apocalypses are not kind to raising horses), which means my character will be upset about their dreams crashing down around their head. Well, if I wanted to play "all of my dreams lie shattered at my feet" I'd go back to graduate school. It's just not fun, and so I don't enjoy spending weeks pretending that something upsetting is happening to me and I have to figure out how to go forward in the crumbling ruins of my life.

On the other hand, if I were told in advance it was, say, a dimension-hopping game where the setting was always changing, I wouldn't create a character with a goal about returning to their original village to raise horses in the first place unless I wanted to spend a lot of IC-time whining (I don't). I'd create a character with a goal to, I don't know, find the most awesome pair of sunglasses in the multiverse, or sleep with as many of their alternate selves as possible (ok, probably not that, because that would be incredibly obnoxious for the rest of the players), or something else that meant they were generally on board with this hopping around stuff and could work toward their goals as time allowed.

I just dislike having to re-do that whole process of finding a reason for my character to want to go adventuring with these people in first place because the assumptions changed, I guess.

Although I don't agree that a genre shift necessarily invalidates a characters progress, goals, or self image, I do agree that there is definitely a huge risk of doing just that, and I think that trying to avoid it is some of the best advice yet.

Raine_Sage
2015-01-26, 11:58 PM
As far as picking genres goes you can do that without spoiling anything simply by polling the players. Go "Ok guys I haven't quite decided what I'm going to run yet, here's a list of genres, pick all the ones you'd be interested in and mark the ones you absolutely don't want with an X."

Once the poll is completed tally up the results. If there are two Genres that all of the players have marked "interested" (or more) then you know which things you have license to combine with a minimal chance of ticking people off. I know I love fantasy games, sci-fi bores me to tears, and horror games can go either way depending on the setting. So I wouldn't mind if a game started fantasy and morphed into horror, or if it started horror and became fantasy (however that would work) but I would lose interest sharply if either one suddenly became sci-fi. Magic turning out to really be advanced tech is probably my least favorite trope ever, I admit I'd probably drop the game in that case.

BWR
2015-01-27, 02:00 AM
You could just say that you are going to introduce something of genre shift some time after play starts so they should be warned that something else is coming along, but that you don't want to ruin the surprise so you aren't telling them exactly what the new genre will be.

dps
2015-01-27, 11:02 PM
You could just say that you are going to introduce something of genre shift some time after play starts so they should be warned that something else is coming along, but that you don't want to ruin the surprise so you aren't telling them exactly what the new genre will be.

Yeah, that's how I'd recommend doing it. Doing it this way, they aren't going to be ticked off when the genre shift happens, because it was already part of their expectations (and if any of them really have a problem with the idea, they have an opportunity to discuss it with you or even drop out before they've invested a lot of time in the campaign.

Dropping a genre shift on them as a complete surprise has a strong possibility of disappointing them, even if the shift is to a genre they might actually like better. To illustrate, let me mention a non-gaming example that happened to me recently. Wednesday of last week, my wife was scheduled off work, and she planned to make chili for dinner that night. But then about 11AM Wednesday morning, she got a call asking her to come into work at 2 that afternoon. So I didn't get chili for dinner; I fixed some spaghetti instead. I was kind of bummed out about it, even though I actually like spaghetti better, because I had been looking forward to the chili.

NichG
2015-01-28, 02:05 PM
One thing you can do is to set things up so that the genre change is voluntarily caused by the actions of the players themselves (obviously you can't always do this, but its a nice trick to be aware of when you can).

For example, lets say we're setting up a somewhat realistic and gritty game about mercenaries in the modern world, but want to genre-change it to a superheroes versus Cthulhu game halfway through. We could just have Lovecraftian monstrosities start appearing as enemies, but maybe the players will object to that.

Instead, what you could do is have the players discover e.g. some kind of secret government lab with a few samples of a serum and treatment regimen that, when they read the reports, suggests that it would give them permanent improvements to some or other stat in a way that they normally wouldn't have access to in the system. Even if most of your players are cagey about injecting themselves with random vials of stuff, someone will probably go for it.

And that's your in for the genre change. If you present what they receive from doing this as just the tip of an iceberg of stuff they could tap (e.g. the superhero system part of the idea), then they themselves will drive the plot in search of a way to tap it. As they push on that, you can start to interleave it with the occult stuff (the serum was extracted from some kind of ancient Atlantean mummy), and before you know it you've set the stage for 'Lovecraftian monsters invade!'.

Talakeal
2015-02-02, 08:42 PM
I am starting to see what you guys are talking about.

The last three movies I have watched have decided to, about half way through, drastically change tone (not genre, just tone), and introduce new "twist" plot elements and abandoning existing plot elements in favor of them. This is extremely disappointing and ruined what I thought could have otherwise been good movies if they didn't leave me with all sorts of unfulfilled expectations and unanswered question in favor of twists that came out of left field.

While good movies (say Predator or From Dusk 'til Dawn) can pull of a complete genre change half way through, it seems like less good movies can't pull it off without killing whatever they had going for them in the first act. A lot to learn here.

neonchameleon
2015-02-05, 09:27 AM
I know of precisely one time when a genre change has worked and it did it by not changing the logic of the characters at all. The game was billed as GURPS Cops. The first mystery was who killed the high priestess of a Wiccan coven. (Her ex boyfriend set it up to look as if a rival coven had done it through the magic they claimed to have). The second involved a nasty case of gaslighting made to look like a haunting. The third involved a Cthulhoid cult of losers who'd kidnapped a couple of people for human sacrifice. It took until the end of the fifth mystery for the PCs to realise that the game was not actually GURPS Cops but GURPS Call of Cthulhu (despite having come face to face with a Deep One in the fourth). But through all this the logic of the characters (cops and detectives trying to protect the innocent and unravel mysteries) remained unchanged.

Edit: Predator doesn't change the reality of the characters. The characters remain throughout a team of commandos operating against seemingly overwhelming odds in dangerous territory with insufficient support. They signed up for a gritty war story in the jungle and got one. The only thing that changed was the nature of the hunter. From Dusk Til Dawn again starts off with a group of ne'er do wells doing their best to escape an overwhelming force out for their blood in a gritty movie - in this case several groups of cops. They get away, stop, and remain a group of ne'er do wells in a gritty movie, this time trying to escape a different overwhelming force - in this case vampires. In both cases you signed up for a film that tonally and thematically matches the one you started out watching. The huge twist is that the enemy isn't the one you were expecting. Officially the genre changes, but the tone at least harmonises with the old one.

Broken Twin
2015-02-05, 09:56 AM
I'd create a character with a goal to, I don't know, ... sleep with as many of their alternate selves as possible (ok, probably not that, because that would be incredibly obnoxious for the rest of the players)

I dunno, that sounds like a hilarious character motivation for a hijinks focused dimension hopping game.

--------------------------------------

As to the topic at hand, personally, there's two ways to do it. Either gradually invoke a genre shift (so you can backpedal if necessary), or make sure the players are going into the game expecting a shift to happen (although not necessarily what the shift is). Either way, make sure that all of your players enjoy both genres beforehand.

kaoskonfety
2015-02-05, 11:40 AM
While I agree with this on a surface level, I am not quite sure how you would go about executing that.

How would you actually go about designing a campaign "by committee"?

If the DM isn't into the campaign no one will be having fun, and I certainly wouldn't want to play in one where I already knew the big plot twists before they happened. Also, trying too hard to please everyone tends to just result in either an inconsistent jumble or a bland mush.

I am not trying to be dismissive, I really would like to hear your advice on the matter if you have any more to give.

Set some guidelines of what you want to run:
i.e
- I am planning to run a game, probably using D&D, in a "Fall of Rome/end of the great empire" high fantasy setting, low to medium level, the gods are abundant and multifaceted, worship is common but empowered clerics of the empires gods are all but unheard of due to decadence and loss of faith. Others spell casters are "ungodly" and shunned or reviled.
- my plan is for you to be playing disillusioned members of the empire or outsiders looking to survive the madness coming for the collapse (I, the DM, am looking for a survival into empire building generational game set in/near the grand ruins of a shattered people, and this will come up more in play/when we are done general world building)

proceed to...
I the DM am asking for:
- What is the nature of the Empires strength? Military conquest, divine right to rule/god kings, Atlantis supertech, wizard kings, Abotheth overlords
- Flesh out some pantheons, both of the empire and the outside forces (is there more than one pantheon?)
- Outsource building a few heads of state - a great general or 3, some honourable, others less so, some senior priests and a few other big wigs (leave spaces for less well known persons/your own playing pieces)
- Write up some thumbnail sketch of the surrounding civilizations, and perhaps a few notable persons therein
- etc. etc. etc.

The PC's are FROM the world - if the players help make it in the broad strokes this saves ME alot of narrative time outlining local politics and such - they wrote it from the ground up.

I've done this several times - if interest doesn't exist from the players, then the game doesn't happen and I table the idea(s) for another day (I have a note book for this stuff).

Pros:
Players are more invested in the setting
Players don't need to be spoon fed exposition about the setting
Players generally have their character concepts ready before this process is over - and they fit in the world, or made the world fit them
Almost always the party seamlessly forms in here.
The DM gets an excellent read on the type of games the players WANT to play in this new world

Cons:
Sometimes things get away from the DM and the planned campaign needs some re-tooling/get ditched - this is generally fine as the brainstorming gives other, new, vibrant ideas to run with. ("survival" gets ditched as the players all want to play pirate looters, picking at the carcass of the once superpower looking for treasure, fame and power and evading the authorities whose power crumbles - this can still lead to empire building later, but the initial thrust changes)





The "best" bait and switch I saw was out of a gaming magazine - the players are presented with "Hijynks" - you play a group of band members who run around in a cube van solving mysteries - it REEKED of Scooby-Do. Had a little custom D&D-ish levelling system and everything. (I'm probably recalling a few details wrong but...)

You unveil a few masked weirdos and save the day a few times... and then session 2 wrap up ... someone in the audience is... wrong, hungry eyes glowing red... the stink of blood and rot... but you save the day... but odd things keep coming up and get more frequent over the next couple games.

Session 4 - you are actually playing White Wolfs "Hunter" - an "unveiling the villain" goes wrong, its not a zombie suit, its the walking dead, animated by fell Voodoo, strength to shatter concrete and fel cunning, your employer and several staff members are a bloody mess and you are holding heavily used improvised weapons by scene end. Queue horror music and running from the cops.

It worked because while Hijynks was internally a bit of fun, it got old FAST and a quick change of pace WORKED - full play time for the "campaign" was a short 8ish sessions so even if this was not what the players wanted most were willing to run with it a few more games "to see what happens" to the blood soaked, ax weilding, Velma rip off (you could with ease pad it out into an ongoing game if interest was high). The game also STAYS A MYSTERY GAME - the main change being the monsters are very real and very dangerous.

Would I spring this on a table who had never done a horror game? Maybe if there had been some interest in trying out horror? Otherwise it may be a bit much. Check for interest in game types - pitch the 'current game' as "something to do while I prep the real game' and BAMB.

Don't worry about "if it flops" TOO much: Try it and learn from it. Multimillion dollar budget movies with highly paid professionals flop all the time. All this will likely cost you if it goes awful wrong is some apology pizza, and then you get pizza!

endur
2015-02-05, 07:34 PM
My recommendation is not to lose the old genre while adding in the new genre.

Following the Game of Thrones example, once social games of thrones becomes civil war game of thrones, keep some of the politics stuff going on even if there is lots of combat.

Another example, the RPGA Living Greyhawk campaign had the country of Geoff conquered by giants. There was a huge army of goblins, orcs, ogres, and giants that needed to be kicked out of Geoff.

We also had a genre change in that, unknown to the players at time of character creation, there were a lot of Fey involved in the Geoff campaign (seelie fey as allies and unseelie as enemies).

The main genre was war against the giants, but now we have this second genre based around the fey. One genre was very serious (the giants enslaved and ate people); in contrast, the fey could be very silly and humorous.

The combination worked great.