Theme Versus Tone - Part One: Tone
By Jason Campbell
GMs creating RPG adventures and settings will spend time trying to create a certain tone or theme for their game, so it’s a good idea to discuss the difference between these terms. Theme is an underlying idea for a story, like love and loss. Tone is the feeling you get from the environment. In this article we’ll explore establishing tone, and next week we’ll discuss themes. We’ll look at three similar scenarios from popular culture that each have a different sort of tone. Each scenario involves a group exploring an area.
Scooby Doo
The gang from the Mystery Machine are exploring an abandoned amusement park. This saturday morning cartoon shows the characters frightened by monsters but the good guys always win. There’s usually a fun musical number as they clumsily dodge the monster which is usually found to be a not so dangerous shyster. The tone is funny and cute.
You can use the NPCs to establish the tone by having them act silly or say funny things. As the player characters enter each scene, describe it showcasing something surprisingly non-seniscal. This could be inappropriate clothing, weird decorations or even playful music. It's important to let these descriptions create a light hearted atmosphere without breaking immersion. The GM must read the players’ reactions to avoid going too far into outright farce.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the television series)
Buffy and her friends are exploring an abandoned house at the edge of Sunnydale. The Buffy tv series’ tone is somewhere between horror and outright comedy. The characters are often in serious danger, but still use occasional sarcastic remarks and in-jokes to break the tension. This is key to maintaining the tone - it’s still a tense situation with only a whiff of absurdity.
The tone of these scenes is set with a threatening situation: moody darkness, dangerous traps and creatures. The key to Buffy the Vampire Slayer is that the protagonists inject sarcasm even while the rest of the scene is dangerous. If a trap involves a huge object threatening to crush the characters, the object might be a huge can of energy drink. If a swarm of creatures attacks the gang, it could be a swarm of hungry stuffed animals with huge fangs. The antagonists act in threatening ways even if there’s an absurd element to it.
Alien
The crew of the spaceship Nostromo is exploring an abandoned spaceship. The Alien movie franchise builds on the tone of horror movies. The characters have little knowledge of their surroundings and the tension builds as they explore, finding evidence of a monstrous alien creature. The initial scene should uncover something disturbing, but not a definite threat. The scenario is more mysterious than threatening at first. With each scene, the danger is increased, so each trap or monster does more damage and is more difficult to escape. The true horror of Alien is the persistence of the creature. To keep up the tension the monster should only be exposed a bit at a time. It should have abilities to attack from the shadows and escape into the interior of the ship. The tone is created by the sense of the unknown - the characters don’t know the entirety of what they're dealing with until the final scene.
Conclusion
In each of the scenarios described the plot is very similar, but the tones are very different. Establishing tone involves planning the descriptions of sight, sound, smell, etc, the pacing of the exposure of the details of the mystery,and the level of threat the player characters feel. In our next article we’ll explore establishing themes in a RPG.
What do you think? Do you have tricks to establish tone in an RPG? Let us know in the comments.
