When you look at tone, or also known as atmosphere or feeling, we show you why its vital in your tabletop role-playing game and how you can utilize it to give off a certain feeling within your games but also help differentiate adventures, and campaigns from one another. We look at examples like Marvel movies and themes such as Warhammer 40k and how they work and how you can apply it in your game.
Today we are looking at tone – how to make your players have all the feels.
Tone can be referred to as many things – the theme, atmosphere, mood. Whatever you
label it as – tone refers to the feeling that your players get when they are in your world
space. You want your players to feel like they are in a different world space and in a
different adventure too.
Some important notes regarding tone in your roleplaying games:
• Changing tone – changes your adventure completely. So, it is important to
understand tone.
• Tone = constraints. We want constraints! We want them all, and we want them to
change from time to time, to give us alternatives.
• Use comfortable tones – never force tone upon your players, and always make sure
everyone is comfortable with the tone.
• Tone can drift – over time your tone might drift, remember to refocus it or to lean
into the new tone if everyone likes it.
• Choose tones that you find interesting and that you enjoy – do not force yourself to
play a tone that you don’t like. You are just as important as the players.
• Express your tone – display your tone in your world space, in your adventures and
make sure that what you include is in alignment with your tone.
Now that you have your tone – you are ready to start planning your campaign. Which is
what we will be discussing in next week’s video!
Catch a new video every Monday