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Sk1nnyDud3
2016-08-02, 12:52 AM
Hello everyone. Quick question for anyone who has an answer, advice, or suggestions on this problem that has stumped me for a few days. Posted this on Reddit, but didn't get much help there lol.

Anywho, I am wanting to create a 5E campaign. But every time I have run campaigns in the past, I usually make them a very grim, dark, and realistic medieval setting or a wacky, lighthearted, and fun fantasy setting.

But this time, I want to mash the two together and still be able to relate it to the players so they aren't confused what the tone of the game is along with having a solid foundation to make stuff up from without it seeming, "out of place".

I personally use Roll20 for my campaigns and have in the past drawn the maps and tokens myself. But I have a very cartoonish and colorful art style. I also plan on using music for my campaign, but dont know exactly what kind of music would fit the tone.

But besides that, I have been recently taking inspiration from some cartoons that have a pretty dark world, but have fun and wacky characters on the outside like Samurai Jack and Adventure Time. But I don't know how to keep that medieval setting without it straying too far away into a dystopian world in the future which is the theme I have seen from both the shows I am pulling from.

In short, I wanna balance it so the players don't think the world is completely serious or lighthearted and of course, want everyone to have fun in the end.

Anyone have any suggestion on how I could solve this problem? Thanks in advance!

JellyPooga
2016-08-02, 05:56 AM
Sounds to me like you want the vanilla D&D setting and style. Go take a look at some of the artwork in the 1ed and 2ed rulebooks; two parts serious to three parts comic-like doodles.

The theme of dark gritty complemented by light-hearted humour is rife in D&D. Take Goblins; evil, malicious, spiteful little SoBs who...sing funny (if dark) songs, bounce with a "squeak!" when they fall or get tossed around and are generally quite comedic in attitude, despite their darker tone.

D&D is easy to play this style because it's practically built in and has been since its inception. My advice is to go take a lool at the D&D rulebooks going way back. Read the fluff text of monsters, check out the artwork and give some thought to the thinly veiled puns and reasoning behind the Material Components of spells. You'll find that balance point soon enough!

Sky
2016-08-02, 04:26 PM
First, good on you for wanting to branch out. Constantly challenging yourself is how you become a better DM.

Something you want to make sure you avoid is giving your players emotional whiplash. Give some transition time between emotional high and low points. I would advise looking for examples of media that do a really good job mixing silly and sad. (Pixar movies are an amazing example of this; the first few minutes of Up are an emotional roller coaster.) Read/watch/play through them and keep an eye out for how, when, and how long they transition between emotions.

That's about all the useful advice I can think of off the top of my head. Good luck!

Tallis
2016-08-02, 11:38 PM
I like the way Firefly pulls it off. The world is serious but the people (npcs in the case of a game) add comedy by the way they interact.

Jallorn
2016-08-03, 12:23 AM
I would point to the Ciaphus Cain stories as an example that shows that any setting can have any kind of story. The characters in a grimdark world don't appreciate the lightheartedness, its not lighthearted to them, but the audience can. Conversely, plenty of children's shows, especially well crafted ones, can get incredible mileage out of mundane, even silly things, but because they're so important to the characters, and because the story doesn't ever suggest they're wrong to think so (unless that's the point and then its played to showcase that) the audience can be as fully invested in the stakes.

Honest Tiefling
2016-08-03, 12:30 AM
...realistic medieval setting...

This is probably not helping you. When you get down to it, history is kinda horrifying. I would focus on the setting itself, and make something with darker elements that doesn't go full-blown awful from the ground up. Throw out historical accuracy when needed.

Secondly, communicate with your players, be it bluntly or not. The blunt approach is telling them the theme of the game and working with them on making appropriate characters. or be less blunt and show art of characters and areas that straddles this line. Things aren't perfectly clean and sparkling, but there's also some charm and character and whimsy in there too.

I would also suggest pitching a thief-oriented game. Thieves often deal with the seedy underbelly in a lot of genres, but also have wacky antics and shenanigans giving you a bit of both worlds.

Martin Greywolf
2016-08-03, 02:21 AM
Why do people keep thinking middle ages were dark and humorless? I've read enough sources to know that you had all kinds of people in there, from the morose to the idealistic, and you got a lot of humor even in dark situations - judicial documents are a gold mine for some good snark. Even punishments were often wacky, judicial duels fought with actual, agricultural scythes are a good example.

So, your first problem is that your medieval setting is based on something we call Dung Ages, a portrayal Hollywood picked for the time period, based on Victorian... well, misconceptions is putting it lightly.

So, step one, throw in some colors for variety - a description of clothes can do a lot to set the tone of a scene. As for how they looked, depends on the area and time, as an example, you can find reconstruction of 1300 Hungarian nobles here. (http://galahad.sk/galeria.php#2015_Nove%20kostymy) Note the lack of any mud whatsoever.

Next step is society. You want there to be hardships, but not oppressively so. Remember, lords of the kingdom have a really good incentive to protect their farmers (it's called not starving to death), so they'll do their best. That doesn't mean that you can't have moustache-twirling evil nobles, but even those will have outlets that are more personal (tortures prisoners) rather than wide in scale (taxing everyone to starvation).

While we're at society, there should be frequent celebrations (when recalculated to modern 8-hour work days, a farmer worked about 150 days a year) and people in general should be pretty chatty and interested in your character's exploits - travelers are the only source of news for common man in medieval times. Just imagine, the party is on the trail of mass killer who hid in a large village that is preparing for a wedding - pretty interesting, with potential for both comedy and drama.

With these things in place, you have a world that is somewhat dark (wars and monsters still abound), but has people actually living in there and being happy. Now you need to structure your adventures around it, and this is the hard part. There are a few ways to go about this, but mine is as follows:


Decide on the grand tone of adventure - catching a serial killer in his lair full of corpses is dark, helping a shapechanger with his multiple personality disorder is light. Keep in mind that you could always subvert the expected tone, that shapechanger could go to a very dark place with the psychological problem.
Throw in bits in the exact opposite tone to the adventure. Serial killer and wedding is one example, or you could have shapechanger have people after him who think he has demons in him and are far too fanatical to listen to reason. How much of these you want in there depends on your taste, I usually do 2/3 of primary tone, 1/3 of the opposing.
Make them work together. this one can be easy or very, very hard. Serial killer can be in that village specifically because of the wedding - maybe just because it makes it easier to hide, or perhaps he's related to one of the guests. Shapechanger could have his problems worsened because of the people after him, or maybe one of those personalities really is a demon (and the demon may just be after some wacky fun).

nedz
2016-08-04, 05:56 PM
Tragicomedy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragicomedy) is the genre you are looking for.

The Classical ratio for Tragicomedy was 3:1.

goto124
2016-08-04, 07:30 PM
Decide on the grand tone of adventure - catching a serial killer in his lair full of corpses is dark, helping a shapechanger with his multiple personality disorder is light.

I dunno, I feel serial killers with corpse lairs are so far into 'unrealistic' territory that it feels more 'mustache-twirling evil' than anything truly dark. The PCs can just run in guns blazing. On the other hand, mental illnesses are closer to the 'realistic' area and greater potential to touch on emotional matters. It's not something you can just kill, unless killing the shapechanger counts as a solution.