TTRPG Settings: A Canny Valley of Playability?

[MGibster]

I've run far more sci-fi campaigns (50+ sessions) than I have fantasy.

The weakness of sci-fi settings is, IME, the learning curve required. Fantasy settings generally are cookie cutters, with just cosmetic differences; you can brief a new player in very few words. But sci-fi settings require players to have to absorb a lot more background information. To run sci-fi campaigns, you need mature players with a strong commitment to the hobby.

You, sir, are a magnificent outlier and an inspiration to us all. I agree with you regarding the cookie cutter nature of most fantasy games. Most of the D&D settings seem to play the same to me with some exceptions for Dark Sun, Planescape, and maybe 2nd edition's Ravenloft. But campaigns in Greyhawk, Eberron, or Forgotten Realms all pretty much seem alike to me. Any time I've run fantasy games outside the D&D mold, it's required some additional work on my behalf as well as that of my players. Some players love that additional work and others would rather stick with what they're familiar with.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I only know it from the accounts of others, but there's at least an argument that the BitD setting (Duskvol?) fits this description.

Doskvol (also called Duskwall, Duskvol, The Dusk, and other slight variations) is kind of an interesting example because I think it could fit both extremes. There are certainly strong similarities to the real world.....the city is kind of Victorian overall and there are things like trains, firearms, uniformed police, class struggles, labor unions, street gangs, large ships, ghettos, industry, farming, a prison....and so on.

But there are also ghosts and demons, spectrological powers, eternal night, and the city is fueled by the blood of giant demons found in the void sea. So yeah.....pretty bonkers.

I suppose the question is do the familiar elements help ground and offset the unfamiliar, and therefore make the setting work? Is it the right balance of mundane and strange? I suppose everyone would have a different answer for this, a different balance that would work for them.

But I can see someone looking at the setting and not being interested because it's too similar to the real world, and also someone looking at the setting and not being interested because it's so strange.

I think one key piece, although I'm not sure exactly what impact this may have, is that some of the more outlandish elements are designed with play in mind. They have a fictional purpose, but also a gameplay purpose.

So, the fact that killing a person will result in the creation of a ghost and also alert the Spirit Wardens to the killing is a setting element that is evocative, but also designed around the idea that killing is something that needs to be considered because it has ramifications on play. The lightning barrier that surrounds the city is there fictionally to keep the unquiet ghosts and other horrors of the deathlands from getting into the city.....but from a play perspective, it also makes the city inescapable for the PCs; they can't get out of Dodge when things get dicey, and instead have to stay and face the fallout of whatever crimes they get up to.

Such a marriage of fiction and function, if noticed, will influence how the setting is perceived.

I think this also hints at differing priorities when it comes to @Aldarc's OP; for some, verisimilitude of the fictional world may be the goal, regardless of how outlandish. For others, a setting that promotes a certain play experience may be more important.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

You, sir, are a magnificent outlier and an inspiration to us all. I agree with you regarding the cookie cutter nature of most fantasy games. Most of the D&D settings seem to play the same to me with some exceptions for Dark Sun, Planescape, and maybe 2nd edition's Ravenloft. But campaigns in Greyhawk, Eberron, or Forgotten Realms all pretty much seem alike to me. Any time I've run fantasy games outside the D&D mold, it's required some additional work on my behalf as well as that of my players. Some players love that additional work and others would rather stick with what they're familiar with.

I think it's a little more than that. IMO.

What I was getting from the thesis isn't that things can't be different; many games can mash up different genres. "Hey look, it's a vaguely steampunk crime setting with darkness and ghosts and stuff. Cool!"

Instead, it's about how the farther we get from reality (or, at least familiar tropes) the more discomfiting it is to play.

The culture aren't anything we are familiar with.
The gravity isn't anything we are familiar with.
The technology isn't anything we are familiar with.
The names of objects aren't anything we are familiar with.
Common things (whether it's genders, or common objects, or flora, fauna, and terrain types) aren't anything we are familiar with.


...and so on. The more we add on, the more we remove ourselves from the instant moment of play (Wait, I am picking up a ... what ... and how does that work ... and I am in a ... hmmm... and my character thinks of things like ... oh boy ...) the more it removes us from that synergistic play experience.

That's how I view it, which is why I think it's an interesting idea. I'm not sure it's right in all contexts, but it's worth exploration.

 

[MGibster]

It is difficult for people to relate well to both the more historically accurate societies and the more utterly fantastical ones, both being "alien" or "uncanny" in some regards to cultural mindset of players of contemporary society, particularly the greater the amount of detail and depth these settings are given.

I've often made the argument that most players would not be interested in playing truly alien fantasy or science fiction characters. It's hard for most players to relate to such characters and it would require a lot of work to do so. There's a reason Star Trek aliens are just humans with odd coloration and bumps on their heads. When they do feature truly alien aliens, like the Tholians, the Sheliak, or the Crystaline Entity, the story is solidly focused on the people dealing with them.

And I think that same attitude carries over into campaign settings. And when I say this, I'm not attempting to belittle anyone for their preferences. Playing in an unfamiliar setting requires a bit more work on the part of all parties involved and I don't fault anyone for their preferences when it comes to a recreational activity. I've found that most fantasy settings are pretty much alike with worlds that embrace modern western liberal values and sensibilities so it's easy for people to just jump right in. Fantasy settings like Legend of the Five Rings and Pendragon require everyone to get into a mindset that is decidedly not very modern and that's somewhat difficult. And some people probably don't think it's fun.

 

[pemerton]

Citation to sales? I don't think it exists, but I'd love to see a source for TTRPG sales from the 70s and early 80s.

I'm judging from the relative degree of support in early RPG magazines - especially White Dwarf, but Traveller also got support in Dragon.

 

[pemerton]

Playing a sci-fi game doesn't require engaging with alien worlds or cultures.

Star Wars doesn't have any more aliens than LotR.

D&D had a really low bar to DM, get some graph paper, draw some rooms and connecting corridors and populate with monsters, treasure and traps. They even had rules/an algorithm for it in Basic D&D and most tables would be happy.

<snip>

the default D&D playstyle - murderhoboing, if you will, does not work with many settings.

I agree with this. D&D can be played essentially as a one-unit=one-person wargame, where the fiction is important to resolution (eg "I tap the chest with my 10' pole) but there is no setting in any thick sense. Or, perhaps, the setting basically provides a backdrop to the wargaming. (The G modules, and KotB, can easily be approached in this way.)

I'll leave it to @Aldarc to consider how this might bear upon the OP.

 

[Aldarc]

I think it's a little more than that. IMO.

What I was getting from the thesis isn't that things can't be different; many games can mash up different genres. "Hey look, it's a vaguely steampunk crime setting with darkness and ghosts and stuff. Cool!"

Instead, it's about how the farther we get from reality (or, at least familiar tropes) the more discomfiting it is to play.

The culture aren't anything we are familiar with.
The gravity isn't anything we are familiar with.
The technology isn't anything we are familiar with.
The names of objects aren't anything we are familiar with.
Common things (whether it's genders, or common objects, or flora, fauna, and terrain types) aren't anything we are familiar with.


...and so on. The more we add on, the more we remove ourselves from the instant moment of play (Wait, I am picking up a ... what ... and how does that work ... and I am in a ... hmmm... and my character thinks of things like ... oh boy ...) the more it removes us from that synergistic play experience.

That's how I view it, which is why I think it's an interesting idea. I'm not sure it's right in all contexts, but it's worth exploration.

This is an excellent summation. But I think that sometimes it can also be that the closer we get to reality, it can also be discomforting in a way or psychologically more difficult for modern audiences to plug-in. For example, Hârn seems fairly niche, but it's incredibly detailed world that seeks to emulate a lot of European Middle Age history, albeit in a fictional non-Earth world. But there is a lot about actual history of the European Middle Ages that could almost seem alien to modern audiences, which is discussed in one of the blog posts that I posted.

 

[Aldarc]

And there's at least an argument that Glorantha is a counter-example to @Aldarc's thesis, being a very detailed setting based on a close reading and engagement with realworld mythology and history, but one of the most enduringly popular of RPG settings.

Glorantha has indeed been something of a pickle. But it may be in how it balances a lot of the cultural realism with the mythical metaphysics. It is alien, but it may be familiar enough (e.g., Celto-Vikings vs. Lunar Romans) that it falls within the valley in a way that Tekumel does not. Tekumel is purposefully non-European in its design. And its main culture (Tsolyanu) is fairly alien to modern Euro-American audiences, including things such as its conceptualization of familial relations, clans, and caste systems.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I will not tread heavily into summarizing the well-known principle of the "uncanny valley" (as per the link) regarding the corollary relationship between an object's resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to it. But I am wondering whether Fantasy TTRPG settings operate as the inverse. This is to hypothesize that there is a general "canny valley" of psychologically acceptable play with settings for the aggregate of people between the "all too historical" and "all too ahistorical."

It is difficult for people to relate well to both the more historically accurate societies and the more utterly fantastical ones, both being "alien" or "uncanny" in some regards to cultural mindset of players of contemporary society, particularly the greater the amount of detail and depth these settings are given. On one end, the settings are perhaps too similar to the familiar, while on the other end, the settings are to dissimilar to the familiar. So settings often have the onerous task of striking the right balance between the poles of familiarity to create a "canny valley" of play. Outside of this "canny valley," players have difficulty psychologically plugging themselves into the setting and so such settings are mostly niche. Examples of possible niche settings may include settings like Hârn and Tékumel.

But it's also possible that we are not dealing with a canny valley of playable settings at all, but, rather, we are in fact dealing with an uncanny valley of unplayable/niche settings.

I think this is largely true, as an approach. The settings I've seen players engage with most tend to be either:

1) Set somewhere from about 1860 to the near future, with some supernatural, superhero, or sci-fi elements.

or

2) Set in a totally unrealistic past/future that somehow has societies that aren't particularly fantastical, but actually kind of straightforward/modern-day, just transposed to use medieval or futuristic tropes. Basically Disenchantment and Futurama, in a sense. Star Wars is a good example of this, where, despite it being a galaxy far, far away, long, long ago, it's basically the 20th century in SPAAAAAAAACE in a lot of ways, with fascists, rebels, unscrupulous capitalists, and so on.

And yeah things like Harn, RuneQuest, Eclipse Phase and so on challenge this, by not conforming, and are rewarded for their bravery and often excellence with mediocre sales and limited popularity. Glorantha is awesome but it definitely crosses some threshold that makes it challenging for a lot of people to engage with.

Basically if you game isn't largely 1850-present in terms of mores, social concepts, and so on, you are limiting the audience, perhaps steeply. It's fine to have a setting where you juxtapose something alien next to that, that can work, of course. But if you go full historical realism, or full fantasy, or even fully-realized sci-fi, a lot of people will be turned off.

I think one successful approach to this sort of weirder setting might be to make the default PCs be outsiders to the setting. I.e. if you have some wild/wacky sci-fi setting of a highly speculative nature, where it might be hard to come up with an "in-setting" PC for a lot of players, just have the default be that players are all 21st century people who uploaded their brains in like 2050, and have been downloaded into cloned bodies and so on, so the players can experience the setting as an outsider.

It's important that this doesn't limit what class-equivalents or power-sets the players can access though.

This is a good thread because it makes me think hard about what I should actually do if I create a new setting/RPG.

 

[pemerton]

It is difficult for people to relate well to both the more historically accurate societies and the more utterly fantastical ones, both being "alien" or "uncanny" in some regards to cultural mindset of players of contemporary society

there is a lot about actual history of the European Middle Ages that could almost seem alien to modern audiences, which is discussed in one of the blog posts that I posted.

Tekumel is purposefully non-European in its design. And its main culture (Tsolyanu) is fairly alien to modern Euro-American audiences, including things such as its conceptualization of familial relations, clans, and caste systems.

I don't want to be overly pedantic, but your argument seems to have become one about ignorance or familiarity - because (Euro-American) RPGers aren't familiar with <insert setting or setting element here>, they find it hard to roleplay in.

That seems plausible enough, but I don't think it's an uncanny/canny valley phenomenon. You could replace the imaginary Tekumel with a historically accurate <something that predates 1850, per the blog you linked to, or something contemporary but non-Euro-American, like (say) contemporary Lybia> and (so the conjecture goes, at least) the players would not relate to it.