Genre
From D20advanced
There are countless different genres of gameplay possible out there. Which type you want to run depends entirely on your tastes. d20 Advanced is built to be genre-neutral, allowing you to use it to play any sort of game you want with it. From fantasy games with knights fighting dragons to future games with lasers and starfighters to horror games with werewolves and vampires.
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Animated/Comedy
A little-explored genre in roleplaying games, animated and comedy games share some characteristics, but are quite different in others. The slapstick comedy popular throughout the 20th century had its roots stretching back centuries to ancient Greece. Many of the genre conventions crystallized in Vaudeville, the traditions of which were heavily adopted by the characters in Looney Tunes (especially Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck), including pratfalls. The tradition was also explored by the physical comedy of teams such as Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, and The Three Stooges, all of which made heavy use of physical action as part of their comedic appeal.
Playing the Genre
Slapstick games of this genre are often as episodic as their source material, and the characters are just as wacky. All that matters is getting a quick laugh, and players who manage to get a good one-liner in deserve Hero Dice for their efforts. The PL for these games are usually relatively low, but the characters are usually quite durable (as they can survive getting pianos and anvils dropped on them). Characters can generally use FX, but only for gags. Combat tends to be minimal, and the ability to get laughs is the most important thing. This genre of gameplay lends itself best to shorter, less-serious games which can work well for breaks from longer or more serious games.
Breaking the Fourth Wall
More than in other genres, characters in animated or comedy games are likely to be aware that they're in a game. As such, at the cost of one hero die, a player can "break the fourth wall" and have their characters directly plead with the GM. This genre convention is illustrated masterfully in the Looney Tunes short Duck Amuck (1953), where Daffy Duck winds up in a sort of artistic and verbal sparring match with the animator, demanding all sorts of things and changes as things he didn't like in the short. You might use "breaking the fourth wall" as your descriptor for how hero dice work. Rather than just taking your reroll, your character might look at the GM, clear his throat, point to the anvil crushing his head, and say, "How about a little help here, Rembrandt?"
Genre Examples
- Abbott and Costello
- Looney Tunes
- The Three Stooges
- Tom & Jerry
Crime/Caper
Games where the crooks are the heroes (or at least the protagonist) of the story can be extremely fun. Daring rebels who take what they want and who outsmart the law day in and day out excite audiences, who come to admire how they use their wits to survive. Beyond that, criminals who fail in their crimes and are captured or killed (or even better: a hapless rube getting what he has coming thanks to his own greed or hubris) is a satisfying turn of events. The former is often the case in more romanticized mafia movies (such as The Godfather or Goodfellas), while seeing the antagonist get his comeuppance is more popular in caper or heist films (especially The Sting or Ocean's 11).
Playing the Genre
This genre tends to have very few (if any) FX, and the characters, while quite skilled, are rather mundane otherwise. A bullet from an ordinary gun is life-threatening, so avoiding combat (or at least ending it quickly) becomes important to characters in these games. If characters need a particular FX, they might need to steal a device that can do the job. Reputations and planning become very important, and this is reflected by keeping the PL of the game relatively low, so that the bonus from feats like Master Plan become critical in succeeding in particular jobs. And since the underworld is so dangerous a place where your image and your deeds might speak louder than your words, characters must often maintain good reputations to get what they need (or possibly just to stay alive).
Genre Examples
- The Godfather
- Ocean's 11
- The Sopranos
- The Sting
Cyberpunk
A (usually dystopian) genre which was a response to the implications of ubiquitous information and data. Cyberpunk explores the implications of computers becoming common to the point of omnipresence, to the point where the difference between man and machine becomes blurred. Protagonists in cyberpunk are often rebels or social outsiders who become masters of not necessarily the physical world, but the digital world, thanks to their world-class hacking skills. Monolithic towers, the headquarters of megacorporations, loom over squalid, dirty city skylines. It's a fight for freedom and for individuality against cold, impersonal, greedy megacorporations and their puppets in the government.
Playing the Genre
While characters might be helpless or weak in their physical bodies, they're often very powerful in cyberspace. These hacker-type characters will usually have something like the Normal Identity drawback, where their physical body will be built on half the character points that their cyberspace avatar will be. More physically powerful individuals often make use of cybernetic implants to enhance themselves with otherwise-unavailable FX. Android constructs are common, both as PCs and as NPCs.
Cyberspace Avatars
If all of the PCs are capable of entering and functioning in cyberspace, and you intend to make cyberspace adventure a major part of the game, it might be a good idea to require all your players to build their characters as per the Normal Identity drawback, so they all have relatively normal (and weak) physical forms, but they become very powerful and potent in cyberspace. Check Required (Technology) is a common flaw for cyberspace avatar FX, but be certain to set the DC to activate an ability high enough to accommodate high Technology skill modifiers for the hacker characters (usually 15~20 + Skill Ranks).
Genre Examples
- Bladerunner
- Ghost in the Shell
- The Matrix
- Neuromancer
Gaslamp/Steampunk
A more recent genre in the vein of Cyberpunk, though instead of focusing on the dehumanization of mankind through the expansion of computers and the online world, Gaslamp/Steampunk stories tend to replace "computers" with the emerging 19th- and very early 20th-century industrialization. Gritty streets are still gritty, though thanks not to pollution from cars and disregard, but from the smokestacks of Victorian mills and factories. Steam power was the cutting-edge technology of the day, and Steampunk tends to take this technology far beyond its real limits to create impossible steam-driven technology (such as the fantastic mechanical vehicles seen in the works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, early science fiction writers). Even devices impossible with modern electronics are a part of the steam-and-clockwork world of Steampunk. The protagonists of Gaslamp or Steampunk games tend to populate a Victorian setting filled with weird science and usually a dash of supernatural monsters.
Playing the Genre
Steampunk and Gaslamp games in particular lend themselves to accents, especially Cockney British accents. However, from a mechanical point of view, characters are often brilliant inventors or engineers, and the Inventor feat and Technology and Science skills are both very common for PCs. The ability to create a brilliant invention to save the day, or to repair and/or jury-rig a piece of captured technology is an important one, and a staple of the genre. Like in Cyberpunk, characters who understand the new technology, and who represent the geniuses of the "next generation" are common protagonists.
Genre Examples
- Girl Genius
- Last Exile
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
- The Works of Jules Verne
High Fantasy
A genre of epic conflicts between the forces of good and evil, high fantasy trends towards the fantastic where its close cousin sword & sorcery trends towards the gritty and the weird. Popular ever since the works of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were first released, high fantasy is the convention that many fantasy roleplaying games favor, with powerful protagonists fighting the forces of evil. High fantasy stories tend to put more magic in the hands of the protagonists, and they are usually able to stand toe-to-toe with the worst the forces of evil can muster (or at least have a fighting chance). Characters might be human or some other fantastic race, but usually very close in appearance and mannerisms to human. The entire world has a faux-medieval or -renaissance dressing to it, with knights in shining armor, dragons, and wizards populating the land.
Playing the Genre
FX in high fantasy are almost always magical in nature, whether they come from wizards' spells, the blessings of the gods, or ancient magical artifacts. PCs can be expected to have and use such FX in some way or another to remain active and influential in the game-world. In this genre especially, you should work out some racial packages for your PCs to use which help to establish the different common humanoid races they might choose from.
Looting
While more true in high fantasy roleplaying games than in the genre itself, one of the hallmarks of fantasy roleplaying games is killing things and taking their stuff. For the most part, using the optional wealth system works well. Simply add a staged use of the Perception skill (or perhaps the Academics skill) as a way to determine how much loot (in the form of bonus Wealth Dice) the PCs can find after a given fight. For special magical items that enemies drop, there are a few ways you can handle it. A good idea is to require that characters train with new magical equipment before they can unlock all of its abilities.
Genre Examples
- The Chronicles of Narnia
- The Lord of the Rings
- Record of Lodoss War
- The Wheel of Time
Horror/Occult
In a horror game, the protagonists are usually innocent bystanders, or at best mundane investigators with an interest in the weird. They rarely have any supernatural abilities, or if they do, their abilities are minor at best. Danger lurks in the shadows, against which the protagonists are likely to be more or less helpless. They rely on their wits to see them through, not power. If their horrific enemies capture them, it's the end, so they need to be ever-careful and ever-vigilant less the terror find them and destroy them.
Playing the Genre
In the horror genre, helplessness and hopelessness are essential feelings, but in a roleplaying game, the PCs need to be able to do something to make enough progress to give their efforts meaning. So while the PCs might not be able to fight the Horror From Beyond Reality, they might be able to fight Its cultists. And maybe the zombie horde is unstoppable, but individual zombies can be killed, and maybe the horde can be slowed or delayed. The PCs need some victories, however small, to give them something to hang their hats on, to give them something to keep struggling on for. The rules for Mental Strain are appropriate for most horror games, and for more deeply psychological games, the Madness rules work even better.
Genre Examples
- Alien
- Psycho
- The Works of HP Lovecraft
- The X-Files
Mechs
While their origins reach back to the earliest science fiction, the genre of giant humanoid robots got its start in earnest in Japanese anime and manga. In these stories, young men and women climb into the cockpits of their mecha and do battle with other giant robots (or occasionally, giant monsters). The pilots in many ways represent a blend between modern fighter pilots and medieval armored knights. The pilots out of their mechs might be capable soldiers, but it's only in their mechs where they truly rise above.
Playing the Genre
Similar to hackers in a cyberpunk game, mecha pilots are generally best built with the Normal Identity drawback. Their non-powered identities represent the pilots themselves outside of the cockpit, and their powered identities represent the mecha themselves (since pilots tend to have customized mecha). It's also a good choice for players to roll their defense themselves as an opposed check against enemy attacks, which makes it feel more like the mecha's ability to evade attacks depends on the pilot's skill.
Genre Examples
- Gundam
- Macross
- Mechwarrior
- Neon Genesis Evangelion
Pulp Action/Film Noir
The cheap adventure magazines that predated comic books, pulp action comics were filled with mystery, action, excitement, and fantastic worlds. Pulp heroes are usually less powerful than modern heroes, relying on very human levels of skill and cunning to make their way through the world. Many of the old pulp heroes were explorers or detectives, who were often good brawlers to boot, had few if any powers (though some knew a few magic spells from time to time). This style of hardboiled detective found its way onto the big screen in the crime stories of film noir during the 1940s and 50s.
Playing the Genre
The pulp genre is first and foremost about exciting action in fantastic places, usually with morally ambiguous undertones. PCs in such a genre are often at a lower power level (usually 5-8), but are quite potent for that power level. Globe-trotting adventuring is a very common plot-element in exploration pulp stories, so it should never be too difficult for PCs to travel from one adventure site to the next. "Random encounters" en route are extremely rare.
Genre Examples
- The Adventures of Indiana Jones
- Casablanca
- The Maltese Falcon
- Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Space Opera
Adventures set entirely in space, usually in a future distant enough that it ventures far from what could be called "hard" science fiction. The characters usually wield fantastic technology (at least enough that they can battle easily in and travel almost effortless through space) and often have amazing abilities (usually psychic in nature). Alien species and robots do often exist in such stories, even if humans seem to be the center of the story. In many ways, space operas tend to be similar to High Fantasy set in space.
Playing the Genre
Space opera heroes tend to be similar in power spread to high fantasy. However, the key difference is that in space operas, the steed of choice for battles between noble warriors is the starfighter. As such, you might consider using rules for characters and their starfighters similar to the rules for mecha pilots and their mecha, so pilots need to make opposed checks to avoid shots during dog fights.
Genre Examples
- Battlestar Galactica
- Firefly
- Star Trek
- Star Wars
Suburban Fantasy
A smaller genre that explores the adventures of relatively ordinary children through worlds of imagination parallel to their ordinary lives. Most examples of this genre are rather whimsical and idealistic, hearkening back to seemingly simpler times. Suburban fantasy tries to explore the subjective nature of reality, where the imaginative perception of one group (the children) in stark contrast to the mundane world the adults occupy. A favorite toy might just be a doll to an adult, but a best friend to a child. An exception to this is the subgenre of a darker sort, where the escapism of imagination becomes conflated with madness (such as in Pan's Labyrinth).
Playing the Genre
Suburban fantasy is all about exploration and bringing a child's sense of wonder and imagination to a hum-drum world. In this way, Hero Dice represent a child's implacable sense of imagination, and their FX (if they have any, which usually come from Devices of various sorts) are usually only limited to when they're away from jaded adults. Children tend to be very low power level, with low physical ability scores, relying on their mental ability scores and skill to weasel their way out of trouble with their parents (as often the biggest danger in suburban fantasy isn't getting killed, but getting grounded).
Genre Examples
- Calvin & Hobbes
- The Goonies
- Pan's Labyrinth
- The Sandlot
Superheroes
The Golden Age of comics began with the publishing of Action Comics #1 featuring Superman, and colorfully-costumed comic book superheroes have been fighting for truth and justice ever since. Superheroes are just that: people with extraordinary powers who choose to don masks and fight crime and supervillains. In general, superheroes don't kill, and supervillains escape time and time again to threaten the heroes on and on forever. Even characters who have died frequently wind up coming back from the dead. Superheroes games tend to have examples of both solo heroes (like Superman or Spider-Man, who do have occasional team-ups) and teams of heroes (like the X-Men or the Avengers).
Playing the Genre
The FX rules give you just about everything you need to make superheroes (usually making liberal use of the Enhanced (Trait) FX for superhuman strength and toughness. Using the knockback rules is also highly recommended, since superhero fights tend to involve a lot of bodies going flying from high-powered punches and explosions. Make use of the cinematic or epic Time and Value Progression Tables, depending on whether you want a more Modern or Silver Age feel for your game.
Genre Examples
- Heroes
- The Incredibles
- Superman
- X-Men
Sword & Sorcery
The slightly-grittier cousin of high fantasy, sword & sorcery fantasy is less about epic battles between good and evil and the struggle of a few relatively ordinary people (often with extremely good fighting-skills, admittedly) against their own demons. Once again, the world takes on a pseudo-medieval style, and tends to be more medieval than high fantasy (as their worlds tend to be darker and more dangerous). While high fantasy tends to tell stories about great wizards or knights, sword & sorcery tends to tell stories about thieves and mercenaries and cursed souls who fight not necessarily for high ideals, but often just for survival (and they'd often just as soon run away and escape the fight altogether!).
Playing the Genre
While the characters in swords & sorcery adventures tend to be lower power level than high fantasy heroes, and they tend to grow more slowly in power, the big differences between the two genres are how likely the PCs are to have FX and the use of taint rules. Swords & sorcery characters tend to have fewer (if any) FX than their high fantasy counterparts, and very few are spellcasters themselves (magic tends to be something in the hands of villains). If FX are in the hands of PCs, they often come at a very high price (like taint), or are in the form of cursed objects (like demon-possessed swords). Also consider making use of the Mental Strain rules, as swords & sorcery characters, while often quite jaded and hard-bitten, tend to encounter horrors much more frequently than their high fantasy counterparts.
Genre Examples
- The Black Company
- Conan the Barbarian
- Elric
- Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
Urban Fantasy
Where suburban fantasy is about journeying into imagination and contrasting perceptions, urban fantasy is about how the fantastic hides amongst us. Ordinary people with ordinary lives unknowingly brush elbows with supernatural creatures or aliens. They might hide themselves away from the world in secret hideaways or just in the apartment next door. Characters in an urban fantasy are either already members of a fantastic secret world who hide among us or ordinary people who are slowly drawn into that hidden world, where they often learn that many of the legends from the past are secretly true, and that the strange world that they are just discovering is the true explanation. Urban fantasy can be as light-hearted as fun as Men in Black or as dark and tormented as parts of The Vampire Chronicles.
Playing the Genre
In urban fantasy, hiding one's true nature becomes a key facet of gameplay. The characters need to pretend to be ordinary people when in public, and they must master their supernatural abilities while dealing with other members of their secret circle. As such, interactions are very important, and fending off the queries of the curious or posturing with other members of the social group might require dramatic interactions. To make certain that characters face a serious concern about hiding their abilities, you might consider making Subtle into an extra rather than a feat, so as to put a premium on being able to use FX covertly even in public.
Genre Examples
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Harry Potter
- Men in Black
- The Vampire Chronicles
War
Mankind is all at once repulsed and fascinated by war. While we tend to admire the heroes who rise above and who achieve greatness, risking their lives for their brothers in arms, and the ones who come into oppressed lands as great liberators and humanitarians, we are just as horrified by the sheer violence soldiers willingly throw themselves into. War stories tend to explore this dichotomy, all at once jarring us with the gore and the horror (and in films like Full Metal Jacket, using the emphasizing the senselessness of war) and showing examples of truly great humanity rising because of (or sometimes in spite of) the violence around them. The war genre tends to focus most heavily in recent years on World War II and the Vietnam War in the west.
Playing the Genre
PCs in the war genre are weak enough that the horrors of the battlefield are indeed horrors: gunfire can be lethal to PCs at power levels between 4 and 7 or so, and the GM will often choose to use mundane-level realism to limit the PCs' to very human (and very vulnerable) levels of toughness. The PCs might be more potent in a tank or other vehicle, but on foot, the sight of a Panzer rolling their way should strike fear into their hearts: without a teamwork to set up the squad member with the bazooka, they whole squad might very well be killed. Teamwork and caution and careful play are the only way that the PCs will see the end of their tour of duty.
Genre Examples
- A Bridge Too Far
- Band of Brothers
- Full Metal Jacket
- Saving Private Ryan
Western
The wild west has always held a certain romantic quality to it, when people had to step up and defend those who had no law to protect them otherwise. It was a time of pioneers, no-good thieves and robbers, heroes who came as law or just acted by their own consciousnesses. The west was a place where you could go to start over, to take something raw and wild and forge it into a future for yourself. The promise of something fantastic coupled with the excitement of the unknown and untamed were embodied in the old west, and that is no doubt what keeps drawing us back to it.
Playing the Genre
The west was all about chases, gunfights, and talking tough with the muscle to back up the names they made for themselves. Having a strong reputation with plenty of legendary deeds could win you fights without ever needing to draw your gun, as no smart man would ever draw on someone who's killed a dozen men already.
The Gunslingers' Showdown
One of the quintessential elements of westerns is the showdown between two highly skilled gunslingers. In the old west, the law was pretty forgiving on shooting a man in self-defense, which meant that if you shot someone who went for their gun, you were in the clear. For such tests of nerves and speed, it can be appropriate to resolve Initiative in combat with a dramatic interaction, with Persuasion against Perception and Will to try to psych the other gunslinger out and gain the edge. It's also a particularly fitting way to represent the stare-down of two gunslingers in the street.
Genre Examples
- The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
- The Magnificent Seven
- Unforgiven
- The Wild Wild West
Wuxia
Stories of martial artists of unparalleled skill from ancient China, wuxia is a genre which focuses on mastery above all else. Characters in wuxia stories display excellent martial arts skills with ordinary weapons (like the sword and spear) and unusual ones (like needles and musical instruments). The protagonists seek to master their art and do good for their land with their abilities. They don't necessarily bow their heads to the authorities, but they seek to use their martial arts skills to help those around them however they can. Combining these superhuman levels of skill in martial arts with qīnggōng (which allows users to seemingly defy gravity and walk on water), nèijìn to control the mystical internal qi energy to perform impossible feats of strength or endurance, and diǎnxué to strike at pressure points to produce amazing effects on a subject. All of this is greatly exaggerated in wuxia stories, but they're strongly associated with the genre in popular fiction.
Playing the Genre
In wuxia, the kung fu skills (and often weapon skills) are as ubiquitous among characters as qīnggōng "wire-fu" is, well-represented by giving characters at least a few ranks in the Enhanced Movement (Leaping) FX. The most common descriptor for FX will usually be "Training", and some of the more mystic ones might add "qi" as a descriptor as well. Hero Dice represent not luck or good fortune, but simply fantastic to the point of the unreal levels of skill and ability.
Genre Examples
- Curse of the Golden Flower
- Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
- Hero
- House of Flying Daggers
