It's a form of game play that appeals to teen and preteen girls.

I would argue that running a cozy game for a group of girls is a good idea for a GM looking to up their game.  I had to come up with encounters and events that were interesting and challenging without leaning on throwing monsters at the party.  Villains needed to be run as long standing NPCs.  I did races, treasure hunts, mysteries, and all sorts of social encounters.  While I found it to be a little stifling in a way, I think I learned a lot about how to mix it up and run batter games.

Quote from: BadApple on February 05, 2024, 11:21:38 AM
It's a form of game play that appeals to teen and preteen girls.

I would argue that running a cozy game for a group of girls is a good idea for a GM looking to up their game.  I had to come up with encounters and events that were interesting and challenging without leaning on throwing monsters at the party.  Villains needed to be run as long standing NPCs.  I did races, treasure hunts, mysteries, and all sorts of social encounters.  While I found it to be a little stifling in a way, I think I learned a lot about how to mix it up and run batter games.

The reason I said this works well with video games is because social encounters tend to become romance encounters for women. At least that's what I experienced. Romance works great in video games because it's self contained. At a table, it can lead to one person monopolizing the time to advance their personal agenda.

If it remains casual and fairly simple, yeah it can work for a limited time. But like real life, once the players form cliques and develop social circles, drama tends to follow. But everyone's mileage may vary.

Quote from: Silverblade on February 05, 2024, 11:45:35 AM

Quote from: BadApple on February 05, 2024, 11:21:38 AM
It's a form of game play that appeals to teen and preteen girls.

I would argue that running a cozy game for a group of girls is a good idea for a GM looking to up their game.  I had to come up with encounters and events that were interesting and challenging without leaning on throwing monsters at the party.  Villains needed to be run as long standing NPCs.  I did races, treasure hunts, mysteries, and all sorts of social encounters.  While I found it to be a little stifling in a way, I think I learned a lot about how to mix it up and run batter games.

The reason I said this works well with video games is because social encounters tend to become romance encounters for women. At least that's what I experienced. Romance works great in video games because it's self contained. At a table, it can lead to one person monopolizing the time to advance their personal agenda.

If it remains casual and fairly simple, yeah it can work for a limited time. But like real life, once the players form cliques and develop social circles, drama tends to follow. But everyone's mileage may vary.

That's because men and women have different power fantasies.

Look at comics and games since women took over. They said no more muscle men kicking ass and scoring with chicks, because it was just appealing to the male power fantasy.

Then they made all the main characters incredibly average women, that everyone inexplicably loves and constantly validate. Female power fantasy.

Quote from: Silverblade on February 05, 2024, 11:45:35 AM

Quote from: BadApple on February 05, 2024, 11:21:38 AM
It's a form of game play that appeals to teen and preteen girls.

I would argue that running a cozy game for a group of girls is a good idea for a GM looking to up their game.  I had to come up with encounters and events that were interesting and challenging without leaning on throwing monsters at the party.  Villains needed to be run as long standing NPCs.  I did races, treasure hunts, mysteries, and all sorts of social encounters.  While I found it to be a little stifling in a way, I think I learned a lot about how to mix it up and run batter games.

The reason I said this works well with video games is because social encounters tend to become romance encounters for women. At least that's what I experienced. Romance works great in video games because it's self contained. At a table, it can lead to one person monopolizing the time to advance their personal agenda.

If it remains casual and fairly simple, yeah it can work for a limited time. But like real life, once the players form cliques and develop social circles, drama tends to follow. But everyone's mileage may vary.

I watched a lot of Rainbow Bright, Strawberry Shortcake, My Little Pony, and later Winx Club due to the girls in my life.  I was able to draw from these stories to GM for girls.

Yes, there was a lot of forming cliques and dealing with drama.  A lot of my effort was about tempering that and keeping the party a team.  One of my biggest tools was having a NPC start drama with a PC in a way that the other PC needed to help and sort it out.

This is not my favorite form of gaming.  I did it because I love my daughter and wanted to do something fun for her.  In the end, I found ways to make it fun for me and to to keep things fresh and moving forward.

Quote from: tenbones on February 05, 2024, 10:00:27 AM
I do Cozy Grimdark.

The inns are warm and inviting, I go to great lengths describing the food and drink and decor. The NPC's all have these fun innocuous "problems" that can be roleplayed through, some with cross-wired agendas that can lead to hilariously fun hijinks.

then the cute Chibi-zombies smash in the door and eat everyone in slow-motion, as the inn catches fire.

That's sorta how I tend to run games. The towns where the PCs frequent are safe and inviting, and the people are (mostly) welcoming. Once they step outside the town, however, it gets dangerous and uninviting.

Cozy games sound like a great way to introduce your normie girlfriend to roleplaying games.

Quote from: BadApple on February 05, 2024, 11:21:38 AM
It's a form of game play that appeals to teen and preteen girls.

I would argue that running a cozy game for a group of girls is a good idea for a GM looking to up their game.  I had to come up with encounters and events that were interesting and challenging without leaning on throwing monsters at the party.  Villains needed to be run as long standing NPCs.  I did races, treasure hunts, mysteries, and all sorts of social encounters.  While I found it to be a little stifling in a way, I think I learned a lot about how to mix it up and run batter games.

Greetings!

Indeed, Badapple. In my own campaigns, playing with younger girls, though mostly also adult women, has been a good experience. Cultivating the DM skills to incorporate "Cosy Roleplaying" has certainly made me a more flexible, detailed, and creative DM. It broadens the DM's skills and abilities in running a kind of multi-dimensional campaign.

I definitely appreciate my men gamers that play with me, as I can trust them to resist the women flooding the campaign with too much estrogen. *Laughing*

Running games for kids though can be so much fun, too. I think kids--both boys and girls--demand a different kind of game from playing with adults that is refreshing. While obviously I change the campaign rating for kids--the pre-teens and teens I have gamed with, honestly, in many ways, are superior gamers than many adults in the hobby. Kids are often 110% devoted to the campaign, full of wonder, creativity, and craziness, while also being entirely unconcerned with 75% of the issues that adult gamers bitch about.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: 1stLevelWizard on February 05, 2024, 12:03:37 PM
That's sorta how I tend to run games. The towns where the PCs frequent are safe and inviting, and the people are (mostly) welcoming. Once they step outside the town, however, it gets dangerous and uninviting.

That's pretty much how Ryuutama plays though.  The travel rules can be surprisingly punishing especially when you add in weather.  There's a death spiral of sorts in there.  The Ryujin make a big difference in how the game works as well.

What's more, there are four types of Ryuujin: Green, Blue, Red, and Black. The Ryuujin's color determines the kind of stories that the campaign will be focused on:

– Green dragon stories focus on classical adventure, journeys, travel, new experiences. This is the "default" dragon.
– Blue dragon stories focus on friendship, love, family, and particularly feelgood human dramas. This is the second-most-common dragon used for Ryuutama stories.
– Red dragon stories focus on competition, adventure, war, monster hunting and dungeon exploring.
– Black dragon stories focus on suspense, conspiracy, betrayal, disorder, and tragedy.

Red dragon stories aren't that different from regular D&D adventuring fare.

I think this is the major dividing line with these cozy games.  The good ones like Rytuuama or Golden Sky Stories invoke that cozy feeling while still including conflict with real stakes and adversity the PCs must overcome.  The stories in Golden Sky Stories are small scale and have small stakes but the stakes and problems are still there.  Every story with someone who has a problem that they need the PCs help to overcome.  The bad ones like Wanderhome try to invoke that cozy feeling but forget to include the other stuff.  Everything is fine.  There are no problems.  Everyone is nice.  The player can say, "No" to any outcome they don't like.  Nothing ever goes wrong in any significant way.  It renders the entire thing a tedious, pointless improv exercise. 

Quote from: yosemitemike on February 05, 2024, 07:32:55 PM

Quote from: 1stLevelWizard on February 05, 2024, 12:03:37 PM
That's sorta how I tend to run games. The towns where the PCs frequent are safe and inviting, and the people are (mostly) welcoming. Once they step outside the town, however, it gets dangerous and uninviting.

That's pretty much how Ryuutama plays though.  The travel rules can be surprisingly punishing especially when you add in weather.  There's a death spiral of sorts in there.  The Ryujin make a big difference in how the game works as well.

What's more, there are four types of Ryuujin: Green, Blue, Red, and Black. The Ryuujin's color determines the kind of stories that the campaign will be focused on:

– Green dragon stories focus on classical adventure, journeys, travel, new experiences. This is the "default" dragon.
– Blue dragon stories focus on friendship, love, family, and particularly feelgood human dramas. This is the second-most-common dragon used for Ryuutama stories.
– Red dragon stories focus on competition, adventure, war, monster hunting and dungeon exploring.
– Black dragon stories focus on suspense, conspiracy, betrayal, disorder, and tragedy.

Red dragon stories aren't that different from regular D&D adventuring fare.

I think this is the major dividing line with these cozy games.  The good ones like Rytuuama or Golden Sky Stories invoke that cozy feeling while still including conflict with real stakes and adversity the PCs must overcome.  The stories in Golden Sky Stories are small scale and have small stakes but the stakes and problems are still there.  Every story with someone who has a problem that they need the PCs help to overcome.  The bad ones like Wanderhome try to invoke that cozy feeling but forget to include the other stuff.  Everything is fine.  There are no problems.  Everyone is nice.  The player can say, "No" to any outcome they don't like.  Nothing ever goes wrong in any significant way.  It renders the entire thing a tedious, pointless improv exercise.

See the first one, Ryuujin, sounds neat, but the other ones you mentioned sound boring. I'd want some sort of conflict to keep the game tense, with downtime to pad it out. That's why I never really got behind the thespian style games that eschew dice and random outcomes. Ultimately, to me, it is a game and you should be able to lose. I wanna roll some dice and feel like my actions have real outcomes, good and bad.

Quote from: SHARK on February 05, 2024, 06:57:21 PM

Quote from: BadApple on February 05, 2024, 11:21:38 AM
It's a form of game play that appeals to teen and preteen girls.

I would argue that running a cozy game for a group of girls is a good idea for a GM looking to up their game.  I had to come up with encounters and events that were interesting and challenging without leaning on throwing monsters at the party.  Villains needed to be run as long standing NPCs.  I did races, treasure hunts, mysteries, and all sorts of social encounters.  While I found it to be a little stifling in a way, I think I learned a lot about how to mix it up and run batter games.

Greetings!

Indeed, Badapple. In my own campaigns, playing with younger girls, though mostly also adult women, has been a good experience. Cultivating the DM skills to incorporate "Cosy Roleplaying" has certainly made me a more flexible, detailed, and creative DM. It broadens the DM's skills and abilities in running a kind of multi-dimensional campaign.

I definitely appreciate my men gamers that play with me, as I can trust them to resist the women flooding the campaign with too much estrogen. *Laughing*

Running games for kids though can be so much fun, too. I think kids--both boys and girls--demand a different kind of game from playing with adults that is refreshing. While obviously I change the campaign rating for kids--the pre-teens and teens I have gamed with, honestly, in many ways, are superior gamers than many adults in the hobby. Kids are often 110% devoted to the campaign, full of wonder, creativity, and craziness, while also being entirely unconcerned with 75% of the issues that adult gamers bitch about.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Any GM that hasn't had the pleasure of running a high heroic campaign for a bunch of 10yo boys hasn't lived.  You tell them that they are going to slay dragons and save princesses and they will show up with plastic swords, bed sheet capes, and dinosaur toys ready for the game.  They are 153% in with no hesitation.  I get to ham it up and the boys go bananas.  I also find that boys really do want a more challenging world where they can put it all on the line.  I also learned that I don't need to simplify everything into black and white for them as they love to explore morally grey problems and contrasting ethics codes. 

For girls, It's less about running a game than it is allowing girls to feel out difficult personal interactions.  The fun for me is in seeing the girls grow up.  It's more work though and I need to be extra careful in keeping the moral codes in game very consistent.  Oddly, that seems to be the point for them as they discover who they are against a constant. 

Mixed gender adult tables are the hardest for me as everyone has completely different desires for an experience and everyone won't talk about it at the table.  It's a series of one on one conversations after sessions and I feel like I'm a referee for an emotional cage match.   

Quote from: BadApple on February 05, 2024, 11:21:38 AM
It's a form of game play that appeals to teen and preteen girls.

I would argue that running a cozy game for a group of girls is a good idea for a GM looking to up their game.  I had to come up with encounters and events that were interesting and challenging without leaning on throwing monsters at the party.  Villains needed to be run as long standing NPCs.  I did races, treasure hunts, mysteries, and all sorts of social encounters.  While I found it to be a little stifling in a way, I think I learned a lot about how to mix it up and run batter games.

I did find it sad that several people seemed to equate fights with challenging. And that there was no other way to challenge the players. Our favorite parts in it are not the fights -- but all come from the other stuff in the game. We can go several sessions without a fight.

Quote from: Tod13 on February 05, 2024, 09:05:05 PM

Quote from: BadApple on February 05, 2024, 11:21:38 AM
It's a form of game play that appeals to teen and preteen girls.

I would argue that running a cozy game for a group of girls is a good idea for a GM looking to up their game.  I had to come up with encounters and events that were interesting and challenging without leaning on throwing monsters at the party.  Villains needed to be run as long standing NPCs.  I did races, treasure hunts, mysteries, and all sorts of social encounters.  While I found it to be a little stifling in a way, I think I learned a lot about how to mix it up and run batter games.

I did find it sad that several people seemed to equate fights with challenging. And that there was no other way to challenge the players. Our favorite parts in it are not the fights -- but all come from the other stuff in the game. We can go several sessions without a fight.

Yep, like I said, running for girls re-tuned how I saw gaming and made me a better GM for it.

Quote from: 1stLevelWizard on February 05, 2024, 07:45:36 PM
See the first one, Ryuujin, sounds neat, but the other ones you mentioned sound boring. I'd want some sort of conflict to keep the game tense, with downtime to pad it out. That's why I never really got behind the thespian style games that eschew dice and random outcomes. Ultimately, to me, it is a game and you should be able to lose. I wanna roll some dice and feel like my actions have real outcomes, good and bad.

Golden Sky Stories doesn't have combat but it does have conflict in it.  It's just low key.  It's more helping the kindly old lady find her lost cat than life and death battles.  Ryo Kamiya is an eccentric character who writes eccentric games.  This is one of his least eccentric games. 

Back in my day a cozy rpg was one you played sitting on the living room floor in front of a fireplace with a cheery fire crackling-while you killed things and stole their shit.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on February 05, 2024, 09:41:32 PM
Back in my day a cozy rpg was one you played sitting on the living room floor in front of a fireplace with a cheery fire crackling-while you killed things and stole their shit.

Hell yeah!