Play to cheer - can we do it?

#1

I recently was on a larp weekend in Germany under the theme play to cheer in contrast to the predominantly dark themes our games have. It was an interesting perspective to analyze each of the games I usually love under that angle.

Most games come with a heavy side on violent conflict resolution - think: dungeon crawl. Even when there isn’t much violence - the threat of violence is often at the table.

Then we have plenty of games on being morally torn between bad resolutions: a dilemma or unavoidable catastrophic events ahead. Sometimes our epilogues are happy endings but they way there is full of suffering or at least some form of tragedy.

Which games do you enjoy which are purely based on joy? Can you be entertained the same way as with drama based games? If not, why is that so? The lack of direct conflict to get to ‘interesting’ decision points?

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#2

Games like Golden Sky Stories or Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple come to mind here. Both present situations where the PCs are working to cheer people up, and while they may have some slight difficulty in achieving that goal, the opposition and conflict isn’t the core of the story. They just tell pleasant, cheerful stories about people trying to help other people.

So it can totally be done. You can make games that tell stories that are cheerful and not conflict-driven. And it should probably be done more, so that we could have a few more examples.

(The fact that the examples I can think of are both Asian themed fantasy stories for children is, I think, not a coincidence.)

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#3

Storm Riders (a game about 1980s weekday afternoon cartoons) is very much about this. In addition to your cartoon hero you make an audience member who looks up to your hero. One of your goals of the game is to inspire them.

I think in general you see individual games choosing a tone and sticking to it. It can be tough to bring the serious tone back after things get hilarious. (I wonder if that is the case the other way - though I don’t know of any games offhand that are happy/cheerful with periodic points of intentional sadness.)

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#4

Pasion de los Pasiones is pretty solidly based on joy. There is conflict and occasionally even violence, but it’s in service to joyous melodrama and lots of silliness. I feel like playing to cheer doesn’t mean there’s no space for conflict!

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#5

Melody of a Never-Ending Summer is a game about joy, about building things, teaching creatures, finding friends. There are conflicts, sure, but I can’t see that there is any space for a violent resolution. Still, it’s easily as intense as a dramatic gore-fest - probably more so.

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#6

I can’t say my games are purely based on joy, or as you put well that “the threat of violence is on the table”, but playing with 5e D&D homebrewed to be a classic resource intensive Dungeon Crawl I’ve managed to run a fairly cheerful, whimsical and positive campaign about being down and out in fairyland. There’s plenty of darkly humorous stuff and sinister plots but It’s not a grim game.

Nor do I think that’s especially special in classic system circles. Something like Hydra’s Mad Manticore adventure or other gonzo offerings may even have intense violence, but from the player (if not character) perspective everything is archly goofy and amusing. I even find this makes for a good way to introduce high character lethality mechanics, and It’s far less likely to sink into overwrought bathos then trying to be seriously grim.

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#7

More and more this is where I want to go with design and play. My new game Space Post is about delivering space mail, and it is very gentle and kind. In the most recent playtest the postal agent encouraged the budding romance between two spaceships and later smuggled a bride-to-be to her spouse’s planet as “freight” and then solemnized their marriage in the postal service capacity as traveling space magistrate.

The game’s main rule is that in any situation where there are two possibilities, you must choose the least dramatic option.

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