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Hi everyone! I'm in the middle of writing and playing a cozy campaign with my group based on Stardew Valley. In developing this campaign and its subsystems I've encountered quite a few game design thoughts that I think would be fun to discuss. Here's one:
Wait, Is This Cozy Game Actually Old School Revival Aligned?
Now, admittedly, I'm not an OSR aficionado so I might not be the most up to date with definitions in the space, but as I understand it OSR is all about player agency, fewer prescribed methods for engaging with the game world, allowing players to encounter challenges they're not expected to defeat, emergent storytelling, and increased lethality. In my limited experience, I associate it with a rag-tag group that's banded together to increase their chances of surviving a megadungeon with the goal of extracting loot to increase their own power and pay for extravagances back in town. I think of carousing in town, hiring NPCs, dumping money into local politics, gaining fame, buying castles, or building a wizard school as background goals that the PCs may be actively or nominally doing all this adventuring for. I decidedly don't think of OSR as about saving the world, or even saving the town. In a lot of my early memories it was all about going out and finding adventure from a relatively peaceful starting point.
Setting aside lethality (in my opinion, permanent death should be difficult to achieve in a Cozy game), I was surprised to find out that a lot of the subsystems, goals, and game design I was pulling together fit in well with the OSR mentality.
I'm able to put dungeons together with foes and challenges they cannot yet face, and may have to metroidvania their way back to. If they do try to throw themselves at these threats, they'll probably lose, costing them some penalty but not game over. They could spend time mining through the walls to get where they want to go, but again time is valuable so that would be a meaningful choice.
Since they have all the time in the world to gather resources or earn money, I'm not bothering to hand out loot to make sure they're on the right wealth by level chart. They can do that themselves. They're free to try to invest time in building up wealth so they can stomp lower level encounters, but alternatively they can go in guns blazing and try to get the items they need from those encounters to speed run their long term goals. This also means it's worthwhile to scrap and carry all the loot you can, instead of just handwaving piles of weapons and armor as trash. This in turn makes carrying capacity matter (too many trips back and forth and you don't have time to plant crops!). Having a bag to carry stuff matters.
Building up relationships with the NPCs is critical because it gets them access to a lot of different bonuses and incentives (in addition to just having romance goals), as a natural part of their advancement. As an example, special seeds, buildings, or equipment are locked behind NPC trust. It's almost like how fighters automatically got Keeps and retainers in old school D&D; these NPC relationships are just more organically developed.
Focusing on one region allows the players to decide to meaningfully advance it if they so wish, and be rewarded for doing so. If they wanted to, they could found a wizard school on the land and have the students help them with magical farming, or build out a farming guild to help with collecting a stockpile of food or paying taxes.
I'm of course glossing over the subsystems that I'm working on that encourage these things, like the punishment for subsisting off of rations, the magical farming rules, the bonuses for eating good food, the regional hidden stories and dungeon design, but I thought it was interesting how much overlap there is between OSR and Cozy.
TL;DR:
Aside from lethality, a lot of the elements of a cozy, low-stakes campaign align surprisingly well with what I understand to be OSR goals.
What is OSR to you? Can PF2 even be bent toward what you would consider OSR gameplay?
What is Cozy Fantasy / Low Stakes Fantasy / Cozy Gaming to you? Have you ever gotten tired of being tasked with saving the world all the time in your TTRPGs?
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That last point reminds me of a conversation between 2 incarnations of Moorcock's Eternal Champion, where one asks why they always have to save the world instead of dealing with mundane everyday challenges. And the other answers that maybe mundane everyday challenges are actually more difficult.
Alas, I cannot for the life of me remember the exact book, characters or quote.
That last point reminds me of a conversation between 2 incarnations of Moorcock's Eternal Champion, where one asks why they always have to save the world instead of dealing with mundane everyday challenges. And the other answers that maybe mundane everyday challenges are actually more difficult.
There can definitely be mundane, everyday challenges that are incredibly difficult (figuring out what to say to someone who's lost a family member, for instance). Saving the world can also be a straightforward, black-and-white affair that represents someone's escape from day to day stress. That's why I think it's important to point out that Difficulty and Coziness are not opposite ends of a spectrum.
I've yet to define what cozy means in the context of gaming, but that's partly because it's a bit different for everyone. Some people say cozy games should emphasize nonviolence, but I'm not convinced that kicking skeleton butts can't be cozy. To me, Cozy gaming is all about going at your own pace, making your own goals, self-expression, and being able to fail or make mistakes without it costing you too much.
That last part is why, in general, I see "High Stakes" being opposed to Cozy, which is why I'll often use Low Stakes Fantasy as a name for it.
I think, technically, a saving the world campaign could feel low stakes if you had unlimited tries at it, or the conclusion was foregone and you were more worried about personal priorities, but I think that structure is very rare.
Ryuutama would be probably the epitome of "Cosy Fantasy" to me & my groups (if for nothing else than the vibe & aesthetics)! :D
Carry on,
--C.
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Ryuutama would be probably the epitome of "Cosy Fantasy" to me & my groups (if for nothing else than the vibe & aesthetics)! :D
Carry on,
--C.
Ryuutama has definitely come up a lot in my research! There are quite a few cozy games these days. One I thought I'd mention is Iron Valley if only for how adorable it is.
I don't really think PF2 is OSR-compatible at all. At the risk of seeming like a big grouch, I'm not sure this thread really fits here - it seems much more like a blog post, IMO!
I don't really think PF2 is OSR-compatible at all. At the risk of seeming like a big grouch, I'm not sure this thread really fits here - it seems much more like a blog post, IMO!
Would you like to go into more detail? I'd love to discuss it!
I've yet to define what cozy means in the context of gaming, but that's partly because it's a bit different for everyone. Some people say cozy games should emphasize nonviolence, but I'm not convinced that kicking skeleton butts can't be cozy. To me, Cozy gaming is all about going at your own pace, making your own goals, self-expression, and being able to fail or make mistakes without it costing you too much.
That's pretty much my take on it too. A "cozy" game is one you can play at whatever pace you want, where you can play the game in your own way and errors aren't punished significantly.
That doesn't need to be nonviolent, though lots of nonviolent games fit.
TTRPGs definitely can be that when the system discourages things like character death and features things like fail forward mechanics.
ie: if a bad die roll can result in the dog you're trying to rescue dying, it's probably not a cozy game. But if it results in you rescuing the dog but now you have to deal with some new complication, then it might be.
But it's a pretty nebuluous genre in that its a bit different for everyone.