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[POLL] NARRATIVE THEMES & SETTINGS

Poll

What is your favorite narrative theme & setting? - Results

Adventure
4
11%
Intrigigue
3
8%
Mystery
11
30%
Relationships / Romance
8
22%
Simulation / Management
3
8%
Survival / Horror
3
8%
War
1
2%
Other; specify
3
8%

Posts

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Happy
Devil's in the details
5367
I wanted to do a poll asking everyone their favorite narrative themes and settings... so here! ps. I apologize for the typo in intrigue. Seems I can't edit it anymore!

Stories in games can usually contain several of these themes and settings, but I'd like to ask you to explain which specific narrative scenario appeals to you the most and for what reasons?

In addition to the most interesting narrative themes you can also include the specific framework where you prefer these themes, or any themes to be portrayed in. eg. A post apocalyptic world, a surreal dimension of some sort, a high fantasy medieval land, etc.

Adventure: Your general adventure theme where you don't usually stick to one place for too long and you pretty much travel all around the world in different less or more epic scenarios.

Intrigue: A political, corporate, or some other sort of intrigue setting, where you can clearly tell there are opposite factions at play, but it often seems hard to tell who's part of which faction now.

Mystery: While this could be similar to intrigue, here it isn't always other humans or factions that you're dealing with, but generally something still seems to be wrong and you can't quite put your finger on what it is without spending a good while solving the mystery that pretty much the whole setting is.

Relationships / Romance: In these settings you spend most of your time building and inspecting the relationships between the members of the cast by interacting and communicating with them.

Simulation / Management: Not so much of a narrative setting as it is a mechanics setting. In these settings you're usually in charge of some sort of unit that contains several factors you need to take in to account while managing it. eg. A house of Sims, a city with skylines, a planet with civilizations!

Survival: Usually when you look around you it's pretty dark, and often you are fighting for your life with something that's lurking behind your blind spot and creeping towards you when you aren't looking. Sometimes it's just about finding the tools to hunt and rations to carry on for another day.

War: Many settings have wars in them, but if it's specifically a war setting you'll probably be spending most, if not all of your time fighting in the war zones, carrying out different kind of missions and advancing your war campaigns.

Other: I might have forgot something, so if you have other preference, just vote for this and specify.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
ROMANCE!!!!! :DDDDDDD
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21806
Probably adventure with a little bit of mystery and/or intrigue.
Roden
who could forget dear ratboy
3857
No Drama option seems strange, so I'll choose mystery instead.

I'll add context later, drinking now.
I would say I like Adventure mixed with Relationships/Romance. But since you can only pick one option in the poll, I'll choose Relationships/Romance! :)
pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32388
Science-fiction and Science-fantasy.
Roden
who could forget dear ratboy
3857
Now that I have the time/am back at my computer, I can go into more specifics about my opinion.

Honestly, I enjoy dramatic stories the most. But with drama I usually like to see some mystery as well, which is why I picked mystery in lieu of drama. I like it when stories take themselves seriously and build a world around the conflicts and challenges that the hero or party faces, and I like it to be as deep and believable as possible. I feel that mystery in particular fits the mold of RPGs and to a larger extent gaming in general really well- since games string people along by constantly bringing new mechanics or plot threads/sidequests to the table, mystery seems like a really natural fit for the medium.

I would have picked romance, but no games write the kind of romance I want to see- specifically, Human x Furry or Human x Non-Human romances. Every JRPG is too preoccupied with showing the generic white swordsman hook up with the generic white healer girl, and every other game genre is too concerned with showing a macho man hook up with every girl in a 14 mile radius. Nobody writes interesting love stories, so I can't pick romance as my favourite narrative, even if in a perfect world it probably would be.
Ratty524
The 524 is for 524 Stone Crabs
12986
I like mystery because it always gets me thinking. I feel more involved with the story when there are complex problems with unexpected answers. They just feel fun to play around with.
Nobody except me likes horror?
I like horror... but I voted for romance/relationships. A mix of those would be ideal, really.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
I went with mystery; while I love horror and romance as elements, the former being attached to "survival" implies that it's the kind of horror I'm not as big on ("Oh no the big thing will eat me if I do not shoot it enough!" vs "Holy balls this is fucked up and weird and I don't know what's going on but I know I do not like it one bit!") and the latter tends to be less exciting as a standalone thing.

If a story can keep me engaged and guessing, I'll usually be p. happy, regardless of other elements. (That is, of course, assuming it's not so badly done or abhorrent that I decide I don't care THAT much.)

Honestly, tho, this whole question feels like a mix of structure (mystery, survival, sim) and flavor (war, romance, adventure), so picking a single option is a bit weird.

Deltree
doesn't live here anymore
4556
Are we talkin' narratives we like to play, or ones we like to make? Or both, maybe!

I don't really know if ones I make fall into an overall category, since I tend to be more character-driven than plot-driven. Here is a situation; here is how these characters handle it. I guess intrigue would be the closest for me!

Same with other games, though I can't argue with the effectiveness of a good mystery. Persona 4 is my favorite RPG plot of the century, even to this day. Though, again, it's very character-forward (in a literal sense, with characters gaining power by facing up to their shortcomings).

I'd say that "simulation" could be extrapolated into writing one's own narrative; a pseudo-RPG like X-COM or a dungeon crawler like Etrian Odyssey could qualify (the latter with shades of "Adventure" by virtue of its presentation).
Intrigue. Just Intrigue.

I love having a vibrant world full of warring factions all trying to undermine each other, with the heroes caught in the middle. :P
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