Understanding the Vibe

I work with the Cypher System a lot. This means that while I might be writing about the horrors of The Magnus Archives, I could just as easily be in the weird science fantasy realms of Numenera or anything in between. So that also means I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes the different worlds and games using the Cypher System distinct. While each game might use the same three stat pools, a d20 for task resolution, and the concept of Effort to enhance player agency on almost any action, they need to all feel different. They need to each have their own vibe.

Art by Sam Wolfe

Vibe is both the written and the unwritten feeling of the piece. It’s the feeling the reader (probably the GM) gets from understanding the information and the ideas generated by the product in their mind for how to present things to the players and how to handle things at the table. Furthermore, if done well, it winds through the mechanics and everything else that’s presented in such a way that the right tone and feeling come through without anyone even realizing it.

One of the best examples of art and graphics conveying vibe is Mork Borg. Arguably, that game product is all vibe. Even the way random tables are presented (not just the contents, but the presentation) conveys a tone and a feeling that translate directly to the game table. This is a series about game design, not art or graphic design, but it’s impossible to talk about conveying vibes without mentioning the look and the presentation. Obviously, these things need to not only match the vibe, but they can be crucial in the very creation of it.

Probably the easiest way to convey vibe is simply through the intricacies of the mechanics (or the lack thereof). If the vibe is a superhero action experience where things move really fast and can turn on a dime, then the mechanics need to match that. If the mechanics are slow and intricate in order to achieve a great deal of detail, they might be great but they do not fit the desired vibe at all.

Beyond presentation, vibe gets a lot more subtle. This can be tied to specific terms used. In a fantasy game a PC might have “possessions,” in a modern investigation game, they could have “items at hand,” and in a military sci-fi game they might have a “loadout.” Understanding the impact of categorizing equipment in different ways—as just one example—is important in understanding vibe.

*  The fantasy character’s “possessions” implies that they carry everything they own in a pack on their back. They travel and wander and have a wide variety of adventures.

*  Calling the modern character’s stuff “items at hand” suggests that it’s not a complete list of possessions, but just what they have in their pockets or maybe their briefcase. They might have an apartment full of stuff somewhere, but the fact that they own a toaster and subscribe to a wide variety of streaming services has no impact on the game at all. And in fact, even if they own a handgun which would be useful in fending off the bad guys, if it’s at home (and not “at hand”) it doesn’t matter.

*  The high-tech cyber-soldiers got a “loadout,” which implies modularity and perhaps interesting complexity in the way their stuff might interact. It suggests how good choices made in selecting the loadout will alter their effectiveness. It might also imply that the choice isn’t theirs, but that the loadout is something assigned to them depending on their mission.

It’s probably strange to suggest that a designer wouldn’t know the vibe of the product they’re working on, but it’s more common than you might think. The disconnect comes when a designer might not fully realize what can be done to a design to subtly but effectively shape the way the whole thing feels to capture the vibe they’re after.

The key, sometimes, is to just look for the things that stick out and don’t fit. Look at the terminology and description used in the mechanics as well as the mechanics themselves. Whenever possible, the words used in the mechanics should convey the vibe. In fact, you could put the exact same mechanics in different games and convey entirely different vibes just by how things are named or described. In a game or setting about elegant, stylish behavior, the attack that finishes a foe might be called the coup de grâce. In a different, perhaps more basic game, it might be a finishing blow. In a cruder game with a blunt, violent vibe, it might even be a clincher or comeuppance. In a game of gothic darkness, mausoleums, and skeletal figures, the exact same mechanic might be called quietus.

Obviously, then, the blunt bloody game shouldn’t use coup de grâce or quietus. These terms would stand out.

Likewise, that game of bloody fisticuffs might describe combat in terms of broken bones, cracked skulls, and lost teeth, while the gothic game could portray the same mechanics as quick and relatively bloodless but quite severe and final.

You could have two games involving space travel, but one describes it as very routine and safe and the other as risky, with the starships shuddering and groaning as they enter hyperspace. The mechanics could be identical, but the terms they use shouldn’t be. (Although if the designer is being entirely true to the vibe, the latter game would use mechanics to show that space travel is, in fact, dangerous, with frequent mishaps and difficult navigation rolls.)

In the early days of RPGs, most games used very formal language regardless of their vibe. Lots of lofty terms were used and then replaced with abbreviations or acronyms. The texts read like computer manuals rather than descriptions of magic, dragons, or other exciting and whimsical concepts. You could argue that the very idea of vibe was missing from the process, or perhaps that the vibe was just “a roleplaying game,” with the trend set by Gygax’s impressive vocabulary, stilted sentence construction, and authoritative voice. A great example of this is the very real fact that it took the “industry” a long time to shake itself loose from a very heavy reliance on passive voice. For a long time, passive construction just sounded “RPG-ish” because the early D&D books used it almost exclusively. (Look at how it fills this very article literally 50 years later.)

Game design in 2024 relies more heavily on vibe than ever before. It needs to be considered at every stage, from the initial creation of the mechanics, to the presentation of the mechanics/characters/setting/etc., to a final pass through the finished product to look at everything as a whole to see if it matches the vibe. Awareness and management of a game’s vibe grows ever more important as an asset in a designer’s toolbox—perhaps mostly because failure in this exercise stands out like a sore thumb.