Campaign Feel
From D20advanced
Not quite the same thing as Realism, a campaign's feel determines just how pleasant (or unpleasant!) day-to-day life is for a world's inhabitants. Do characters get up in the morning, see a bright blue sky with birds singing and all the inhabitants of their hometown tipping their hats and saying, "howdy, neighbor"? Or do they pull themselves out of the gutter under an overcast sky and spend the day dodging bullets while digging around for breakfast?
A campaign's feel informs you on what sort of encounters the players' characters will have, what sort of lives they will lead, and what sort of direction their world is going in.
| TABLE 11.2: CAMPAIGN FEEL | |||||
| Feel | Public Attitude | Personal Conditions | Social Conditions | Global Conditions | |
 | Utopian | Helpful | Characters revered and generally considered to be the authorities | Crime rare; Organized Crime Occasional | Disasters rare |
 | Four-Color | Friendly | Personal Troubles Rare | Crime occasional; Organized Crime rare | Disasters occasional |
 | Typical | Indifferent | Personal trouble occasional | Crime common; Organized Crime occasional | Disasters common |
 | Gritty | Unfriendly | Personal trouble common | Crime daily; Organized Crime common | Disasters daily |
 | Against All Odds | Hostile | Characters considered villains, though may still retain supporters | Crime constant; Organized Crime daily | Disasters constant. Apocalypse imminent. |
 | Hopeless | N/A | Rock-bottom. Characters considered a stain on history. Utter failure. | Complete anarchy and the breakdown of the system. Back to caveman times. | Disasters constant. World in ruins or completely destroyed. |
Contents |
Utopian
A Utopian setting is an idealistic, relentlessly-perfect world where conflict and danger are rare. The term was first used by Sir Thomas Moore to describe a mythical island in the Atlantic Ocean with what Moore conceived to be the ideal socio-politico-economic system, but it has since become synonymous with an ideal society. The PCs will at best be worshiped a great heroes and at worst be regarded as useless in their perfect society.
In a Utopian setting, crime and threats are rare. Everything is as perfect (or as near-perfect as you can get), so threats really only arise from outsiders or from the occasional twisted madman within the society itself. Even more-so than in Four Color games, the PCs are going to be admired as heroes, and nothing can go wrong for them. At the end of the adventure, they'll still be living perfect lives and they'll be shining examples of all the best the world has to offer.
Needless to say, Utopian settings often don't always make the best of campaign settings, other than Utopian societies on the brink of collapse or in danger from an outside force. If there's no conflict, there's no story! But it is one end of the spectrum, and one that can be very interesting for the players to explore.
Four-Color
Also affectionately referred to as "Saturday Morning Cartoon" feel, Four-Color refers to the means by which old comic books of the Silver Age were printed, where things can be a little goofy at times, but are usually brightly-colored, relatively friendly (other than the villains), and where heroes where heroic twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Heroes didn't struggle with the moral question of whether or not it's right to kill a madman bent on ending the world, and they didn't have drug addictions to sort through.
Certainly, the characters' world wasn't always perfect: it seemed to get itself in peril about once a month, usually thanks to the diabolical machinations of some fiendish villain. Most crime came in the form of one-off burglaries or heists. Organized crime tended to be very rare, and violent crime even rarer (except against the heroes).
But the one thing you could count on Four-Color Feel for: at the end of the adventure, everything would be back where it started. None of the heroes were going to die, the major villains would be around to start trouble again the next time (even if they were captured). Characters had a certain amount of title protection, and the stories were all about the action heroes, not the secret identities.
A Four-Color feel is most appropriate for games where danger is present, but it's assumed that the heroes are going to triumph, and that morality is going to be black and white, where the heroes are unambiguously heroes and the villains are clearly (but not too sinisterly) villains. The villains even seem to follow rules which prevent them from hurting helpless characters (especially children or pets). If you want it to be clear that, yes, this game will have adventure, but you don't want to deal with thorny social or moral or ethical issues, and that you don't want people to take everything in the game so seriously, then this is the feel you want for your game.
Typical
A game with a Typical feel be best exemplified by the phrase "The World Outside Your Window". It's very similar in many ways to the world we live in, where the good comes with the bad, where people can be wonderful and they can be jerks, and the world can be a great and horrible place all at once. The key with games at this level of feel is that neither one is overwhelming the other. The PCs won't have endless misery, just as they won't have endless joy. They'll have low-points and high-points, but nothing lasts forever.
In a Typical world, crime is common, if rarely spectacular (most crime will likely be subtle and almost expected, like low-level corruption in government, scoff-laws, and the like). Violent crime becomes important for the first time in Typical worlds, and the big criminal events are often organized. People aren't always friendly, and while they might make an attempt to help one another, they're usually looking out for themselves and their close friends and family first. Disasters like train wrecks, mine collapses, hurricanes, and forest fires are common enough that people won't be surprised when they turn on the news and see these events.
Most importantly, a game with a Typical feel is, in many ways, meant to provide a "realistic" feel, to make characters of all sorts behave the way they would in real life. Trouble happens, and heroes aren't always shining symbols: they're people too. They have to pay the rent and study for classes and come home to remember that they forgot to go grocery shopping, so it's Chinese take-out once again. Characters are expected to develop relationships (good and bad) with one another, and quite often, it's these relationships which propel the game forward. Characters can expect their complications to come up relatively often, and many of their complications will be logical outgrowths of who they are, not just their responsibility to saving the day. The PCs are people first. Yes, they're often the heroes too, but you can't neglect the person either.
Gritty
In a game with a Gritty feel, life for the PCs can be nasty, brutish, and (if not approached intelligently) short. They'll have to suffer some unpleasantness that is often left unsaid in many adventure stories, such as contracting illnesses, struggling to find food, or having to deal with tragedy befalling their friends and loved-ones regularly. Everyone with half a brain has a means of self defense, whether that be a knife in your boot, a gun tucked into the back of your pants, a few rough-looking associates, or some supernatural capabilities. Those who don't take measures to protect themselves are going to wind up victims of crime (often violent crime) as everyone is struggling to make ends meet.
These are literally the dark ages, where an inglorious end awaits everyone. Only those smart enough are going to have a home and food and a future, and only the truly cunning are ever going to escape their tenuous existence and achieve anything truly good in their lives. In a Gritty game, while characters might question the morality of certain actions, they're likely only going to do it after they've managed to save themselves and their enemy is already dead or dying. In these worlds, there's no time to philosophize when the only thing between you and the grave is doing something about the guy with a knife pointed at you and doing it right now.
One of the hallmarks of Gritty games is social commentary, where the worst of societies ills are put on display for all to see. The darkness looms high over the game at all times, often seeming all-consuming or inescapable. Tragedy and disasters can happen at any time, and they happen often. And whatever great power the PCs might have, they still find that they can't ever fix the world around them. They can't cure it: all they can do is treat the symptoms.
And that's assuming they even aspire to such lofty ideals. Especially in mercenary or dark swords & sorcery games, it's equally likely that they're just trying to carve out a place for themselves in the world, and find a way to put bread on the table. There's no good and evil. People do what they have to do to survive first and foremost, and if they decide to do that at the expense of the PCs, then they shouldn't be surprised when the PCs retaliate to punish them. After all, they'd do the same thing if the PCs tried it on them.
Against All Odds
Sometimes, the PCs aren't going to be the heroes: they'll be the villains! As far as the world around them is concerned in an Against All Odds campaign, they're the enemy. They might legitimately be villains or evil-doers, or they might just be part of a rebellion or resistance against the true villain, who currently is the one running the show. The end result is still the same: if the PCs show themselves in public, they're very likely to find themselves in grave danger.
Danger literally lurks around every corner for the PCs. The omnipresent enemy could come smashing in at any time to destroy them, whether in the form of a police raid or the true heroes of the world coming in to stop the nefarious PCs. Any one of the people they must trust could betray them and drag them out of the shadows to their doom. The end for the PCs draws closer and closer every day, and every morning brings new disasters for their cause. Things aren't sliding towards oblivion: they're spiraling wildly out of control towards total disaster. No punches are pulled and no mercy is shown, because any hesitation on anyone's part (especially on the PCs' side) could mean game over.
Safe havens are safe in name only, because no matter how many precautions the PCs take, their enemies need only get wind of their latest hideout to bring it crashing down on their heads. And as much as the PCs might want to take the fight right to their enemies, they do so at their own peril. Their enemy might be vastly more powerful than they are, or their enemy might simply have the might of an entire city, or country, or world, or galaxy to throw against the PCs.
If the PCs want to be successful, they'll need to be extraordinarily careful, and likely more than a little ruthless too. They have all the trouble and pain that characters in a Gritty game might suffer in addition to being forced to exist outside of society as public enemy number one.
Hopeless
The world as we know it does not exist, and all that does exist is horrible dog-eat-dog land of madness. The tiny handful of people who cling to life in this world do so at the expense of one another, willing to kill for the slightest advantage. Humanity is practically feral at this point, vicious and remorseless. They might have been driven to this point in the wake of a world-wide apocalypse or after being trapped behind the lines of a ruthless and inhuman enemy who salted the earth and left nothing standing. Whatever the reason, the few remaining people must now put their lives on the line every day in order to hold onto what little they have.
And as the human race speeds towards the abyss, its own actions help it along more than anything else. Those who remain are more than willing to slit one another's throats in a vain attempt to cling to life. The world in ruins as it is, there is nothing to rise above, nothing to achieve. All that the PCs can hope to achieve is survival, and perhaps dominance over some territory or other people. There's so little left that there is almost nothing worth aspiring to.
These sorts of Hopeless games are an extreme which are hard to create adventures for, especially when the overarching theme for the game is just "survive to the next session". Part of the excitement of roleplaying games is seeing how the PCs grow in power and ability, and with nothing to strive towards in Hopeless games, players can become understandably frustrated. To that end, it's common in this sort of game for the GM to dangle a thin ray of hope before the PCs, to compel them to strive for something and to risk what little they have in the name of something greater.
