Knights of the Kitchen Table, And Game Tone

So far we’ve covered how RPGs guide or encourage certain player behaviors from a lot of different angles: Games have rules, stories have rules, worlds, characters, and improv all have rules. Are there any other ways in which RPGs have rules?

Let’s go back to Of Grub and Grain for a moment. I mentioned cooking as a generally ignored aspect of RPGs, something we tend to just wave away.

What happens if we base a whole RPG around this oft ignored activity?

Knights of the Kitchen Table is an RPG in which the players, quote: “assume the roles of the servants and knights of the royal household on the day of a Big Celebration. The goal of the RPG is to successfully pull off the feast of the century, no matter the obstacles. Players will cook, clean, barter, steal, sneak, fight, and craft their way to pulling off one of the greatest Celebrations the kingdom has ever seen…or die trying, at least.”

It surprises me perhaps a little that this is not a particularly unique take on RPGs. There’s Bakto’s Terrifying Cuisine, Iera Entera, Luton Banwa, and more. Cooking is not an untapped subject for RPGs, and I am here for it.

But what interests me about these RPGs is not just their subject matter, but how differently they handle it. Knights is cartoonishly comedic, while Bakto has a more quirky irony to it. Iera Entera is played impressively straight, while Luton Banwa is downright sentimental.

All of these games are fundamentally about the same thing: go out, get ingredients, come back, cook. The systems are different, yes, but any one of these games could be played with FATE, GURPS, or GUTS+ if a GM wanted to take the time to work out how.

So if not the systems, what is it that makes these games fundamentally different? The games feel different not because of the game-narrative nor ludo-narrative, but by the esoteric and exotic meta-narrative property known as tone.

Tone is perhaps a more difficult aspect to quantify of any game. While genre deals with how players interact with the game-narrative, we could say tone is how players interact with the game itself. I don’t know about you, but I’ve played horror RPGs where the whole table is laughing at how bad things are going for the characters. I’ve played pulpy action games where everyone is pulling their hair in suspense, hoping the dice fall in our favor.

Now, that’s not to say tone and genre are completely independent. A comedy game where the players are biting their nails in anxiety could at least be considered an odd game. Some games, like Liminal Horror, Glitter Hearts, or Critical!: Go Westerly, wear their preferred tones on their sleeves. While any RPG can play any type of game, you may have to actively work against the tone established by the game to do so. More-so than any other aspect of an RPG, tone needs buy-in from everyone at the table.

And I don’t know about you all, but sometimes I have bad days.

All of our bad days may look differently to each others, but they’re there all the same. And sometimes, our bad days can overpower us. We can come to a game ready, willing, and eager to play…but ultimately unable to maintain the established tone. Maybe your light and happy bard just can’t crack a smile anymore. Maybe the grimdark setting is being undercut by your tension-relieving jokes.

And if you’re invested in your character and their story, then the moment when the gruff father-figure is finally cracking his emotional mask to tell your character that he loves them is the worst moment for someone to quip: “Luke, I am your father.” Likewise, after you unleash a perfectly prepared pratfall is the worst moment for no one to laugh.

We all have stories of “that one guy” who ruined a game. Maybe it was complaining, maybe it was calling the game dumb or unfair or just not paying attention, but we all have had an experience like that. It’s a terrible experience, feeling something that you are putting time and effort into being disrespected by someone else.

It would be a mistake, however, to say that an inability to conform to the tone of a game is “playing the game wrong,” because in this case it’s not about playing the game, it’s about emotional labor.

Life can be hard sometimes. Exhausting. Terrifying. Achingly difficult and anxiety inducing. The point of RPGs is to enjoy one’s self, to be satisfied with time well spent, and you know what? Sometimes the emotional investment required to maintain an established tone isn’t possible.

Maintaining tone can be tiring for people, especially if its not where their head is at the current moment. Some people like to drop little jokes, or provide light side-commentary. Some people don’t care about tone beyond that which is supplied by the setting itself. Some people just want to play an annoying caricature dropped in the middle of a bunch of stuffed-shirts and let loose. Some people don’t want to bother with thinking up jokes. Some people don’t like playing a straight-man. Some people just don’t find grimdark fun.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

But…

If you are one of those people who doesn’t like gritty dark games, you probably shouldn’t play Stillfleet, Blood Reign, or Trophy Dark. And if you’re playing something generic like FATE, or GURPS, or a system that you’re not familiar with, then your GM needs to make the tone requirements clear, perhaps more than the rules of the system.

Yes, I would say that tone management is more important than “getting the rules right.” A system can be learned on the go, and mistakes can be easily fixed. A broken tone on the other hand can be very difficult to repair. It’s perhaps trite to suggest giving your players a discussion about proper tone management, but when it goes wrong, it goes wrong.

Going into any game, both the tone and responsibility for maintaining the tone need to be established. If the game is grimdark but no one really cares about reigning in side-jokes, make sure everyone is okay with that.

I’d like to emphasize that. This is a point to be decided on by consensus, not vote. Everyone needs to agree, or else someone might be put in the unwinnable situation of ruining it for everyone without meaning to, or even realizing it.

Does this mean if a player has a bad day the whole game has to be put on hold?

Maybe, yeah. And maybe that’s okay.

Maybe in addition to the GM tools of Lines, Veils, Stars, Stoplights, and X cards, we add another expectation: a grab-bag. A collection of easy one-shots with different tones and easy rules to whip out at a moments notice if someone sits at the table and says “it’s not in me tonight. I’m not feeling the silly. Can we do something more focused on action?”

Maybe the point of RPGs should be too focused on playing this game, but any game, so long as everyone is having fun.

After all, what good is a meal if not everyone can eat it? Do you really want to go through all the effort of hunting for ingredients, dragging them back, and cooking them up, if one of your invited guests is going to frown and say “couldn’t we have just ordered out for pizza?”