Thinking about Vibes in RPGs

I've been thinking a lot about vibes. I think they matter, and I think they matter more than I've seen people aknowledge. Everyone praises fun systems, and they praise clever rules, and they praise light rules that allow for fun systems without tedium; they praise dense rule systems that allow for complex simulation; they praise art quite a lot. A few people praise the layout of rulebooks.

But people seem to take vibes for granted, and I'm not so sure that's wise.

Some questions.

What are vibes?

Do you mean tone?

You really think nobody talks about how important mood and tone are?

What, are you dumb?

Let's answer these in reverse, because I can build up to something rather than open with my thesis. This being the opposite of most writing advice, it will obviously catch readers off guard. Art of War.

Yes, I'm probably dumb. But I'm doing my best.

Of course everyone recognizes how important tone is! They would immediately say so, I'm certain. I just...don't ever see it, at all. I see people praising mechanics all the time, and fun or not-fun, they praise originality, they praise artistic styles, they condemn annoying conservative writers...but while everyone dances around the idea of tone, they rarely actually comment on it. A lot of OSR people seem to have settled on a house art style that I gather is inspired by the scratchy black-and-white art of the 70s and 80s RPG scene; a lot of cozy games rely on pastels and cartoon aesthetics to create a calm, pleasant, whimsical vibe they can either lean into or gently subvert. But I haven't seen people discussing the way art and rules and even text layouts work together to create a vibe.

A vibe is a little different from a tone, though the tone obviously affects the vibe. Tones are, after all, a musical term. Tones describe the feel of a sound; the timber that makes a note on a piano distinct from the exact same note played on a cat. The tone of Wanderhome is similarly distinct from that of Call of Cthulhu. In one, you might be a cat who bakes an apple pie with her friends and gets a bit of fur in the filling. In the other, you might *be* the filling, and the cat is an ancient space creature. The difference in tone is obvious. 

But tone is not vibe. They are distinct concepts, though there is a dependency: just as sound waves create musical tones, vibes create the tone of an RPG. Tone is really just an expression of vibe.

A vibe isn't just the mood, and it isn't just the tone. It's the elaborate mental space, complete with its own values, that players create collectively when they agree to play a particular game. When players gather to play Call of Cthulhu, they agree to enter into this shared space together. They agree to feel a joint tension, to create characters they're willing to lose, to look up monsters in a library rather than barge into its lair with broadswords. Their goal is mostly to survive, not to collect gold or take down a space dictatorship. And the vibe affects the way they react to everything. When an investigator dies, the players might feel regret, but there's also a surge--admit it, psychos--of satisfaction, of vindication. The stakes are real! This is a dangerous world you're mucking around in! Bad decisions or bad luck; either way, you don't get a lifeline. You love when you roll low and everyone groans and cheers as a slug eats your left arm. You love when the sexy jazz singer you've played for 9 months finally cracks and drives a truckful of dynamite into a cult leaders house. Everyone loves it. The keeper loves it. This is Call of Cthulhu, you think to yourself.

Now imagine that happening in D&D. Unfh, for some players that's upsetting. It happens, it's always a risk, but...you played that halfling for 8 sessions! Are you really never getting closure on her missing lost sister? What about the blood oath she swore to reunite her tribe? What about the mysterious prophecy she received in the Sunk Swamp?

Now, imagine that happening in Wanderhome. Look, sicko, I don't know you. I bet you could find a way. Maybe the pie was just that good. Or just that bad. I don't know; but the points the same: If you find cannibalism occuring in Wanderhome, someone at the table is a psycho. 

Maybe you're skeptical; maybe this feels broad. Hey, think about the worst people you've ever played with. No, not the outright creeps; the ones that just didn't play right. They kept making weird decisions; they wanted to murder NPCs or they wanted to hit on them or maybe they refused to murder any npcs. Maybe you wanted to bake an apple pie and they wanted to stuff it with goblinflesh. What did this person do wrong? In tons of games murdering NPCs and goblins is fine?

They didn't get the vibe. Somewhere they failed to enter the shared mental space; the game didn't bring them in, the others players didn't; their own brain was just wired differently. The why here doesn't really matter, only the reality: every time I've ever had an annoying player, it's because they didn't get the vibe of the game they were in. It wasn't just the tone; they often understood the tone. But they lacked the rights vibes, so everything they did felt grating; it chafed against the fiction everyone else was creating and sharing. They were in the same world, but at the wrong angle. The notes were discordant. The vibes were off. 

Vibes are fizzy and rarely defined specifically, but I think can best be summarized by answering What experience is this game designed to support. For Call of Cthulhu, you're meant to read about a weird guy who bought an Egyptian manuscript and used it to kill his neighbor with a Lemurian; you'll faint several times while doing so and possibly get ripped to shreds if you open one particular door in his house. The others all contain vital clues. Also, if you find his mother's birthplace a secret diary explains everything. 

The whole game exists to build this vibe. The rules are intuitive but fairly detailed, allowing a crunchy bit of character creation that's nevertheless extremely easy to play once you start. The monsters have stat blocks even though nearly all of them can kill any human; most can't even be harmed. The stats aren't for combat: they're to show you how unwise combat really is. The art is heavy black lines showing middle-aged professors being scared--you're supposed to be a scared nerd, not a grizzled hero! And of course, the rulebook itself opens with the Call of Cthulhu itself. The entire book exists to build a vibe. There's an entire section on old books--most you'll never use, but their presence builds the vibe. There is an entire list of gods, each with stat blocks; all of them are immortal and utterly impervious to human weapons. Most will immediately kill your investigators; those that survive will be driven insane. The stat blocks have no reason to exist mechanically--you'll never fight Azazoth. But you can see how big the numbers are, and how *obviously* you'll never fight him. The stats aren't truly stats. They're for the vibes. 

The best games build the best vibes. TTRPGs are a shared experience and they depend on group dynamics. The more invested your group in the spirit of the game, the more they'll like it. No individual rule, no system, no drawing, is enough to get people invested in the shared psychosis that is a great RPG session. You need to use them, as many as you can, to build a vibe. Once it works, and everyone starts humming along with it, you've got a good game.