I'm not convinced that Cozy-Gaming infiltrating "traditional" RPG's is something that is wholly intentional. edit: by this I mean I think it's effectively *inevitable* with the proliferation of D&D as a brand.

I think it's a mindset. MOST people (read: normies) are not into general violence in gaming to whatever degree that it exists. That degree is where the real dividing line. Remember that RPG's are born out of wargaming. A hobby massively represented and consumed by men.

Cozy-stuff is exactly the opposite of that. It's about things that are non-threatening, and make you feel safe *intentionally* while protagonists do <X>. This is a genre in literature - Cozy Mystery. Where you have amateur detectives solving mysteries in locations that are non-threatening and the mystery might not even be "dark" (but could be and it's *always* offscreen). It's never frantic, There might be some romance but it'll be very implied and not overt. "Cozy" attracts people of a certain mindset and psychology - which tracks with generalized feminine personality traits.

The problem with having expressly "Cozy gaming" for me is that I run big sandboxes that tend to exist in settings where those "Cozy" moments are completely relative to time/place and never the standard mood. Because my sandboxes thrive on the very thing "Cozy" finds anathema - conflict. This doesn't mean "cozy moments" don't happen - and if this is where one wants to say that it 'elevates' my game, sure. I know this. Those moments exist, as I said earlier, to give contrast to the stuff my PC's tend to endure outside of those places where "cozy moments" can happen.

It's important for me that my PC's have a "home" or a sanctuary in order to give a reason to come back and regroup. It also underscores the need to belong to a "place". Downtime in this place, the "cozy content" IS important. My player whose PC is a blacksmith, that has been collecting rare materials while adventuring needs to have a smithy run by his apprentices/NPC friends where he can come back to, touch ground, and of course craft his Sword of Truth or whatever. The interactions of those NPC's and PC's is *very* important for my games (and yours too if you want to get into sandboxing).

The proliferation of Cozy-Exclusive games is not odd - I know those people would be super-uncomfortable in my games, I think the insertion of that kind of content into D&D is like inserting Soft 70's rock into modern tits'n'dicks-out Hip-Hop. It feels forced and weird.

BUT I'd also say it's because of the execution of design and writing more than anything else. And I don't give me gold for dogshit product.

Quote from: tenbones on January 08, 2025, 02:32:06 PMI think it's a mindset. MOST people (read: normies) are not into general violence in gaming to whatever degree that it exists. That degree is where the real dividing line.

Using videogames as an analogy again: There's a definite cozy gaming "scene", and a fair few people (mostly women) who only play that kind of game, but there's also a lot of cross-over with the general gaming market. There's plenty of people playing Doom one day and Stardew Valley the next. There I think the difference is that videogames are much less of a time commitment, so it's easier to be playing 4 or 5 of them at a time. it's possible the rise of dedicated cozy RPGs might be attributable to online roleplaying making it easier for people to be in more games at a time and/or bounce between them.