@RDC said in Gray Harbor Discussion:
ITT @Kanye-Qwest snidely complains about how snide and weird it is to assume people will, at least via osmosis, get a pretty inoffensively shallow Star Wars joke.
ON TOPIC: Tell me about Dark Men. I have been wondering what the actual conflict is on Gray Harbor and what there is to be scared of, IC, to drive RP.
Just in my own experiences:
The Veil itself is pretty scary. It's an alien realm that PCs are only just being able to explore, and while it's not evil, it's absolutely dangerous and in ways PCs don't really understand, yet. A fair amount of conflict is probably going to come from people poking at the Veil and the Veil poking back.
Then you have the Dark Men, of course, who are actively malevolent, and who feed on the negative emotions of humans, especially humans who 'Glimmer' (have psychic powers). It means that the town, in general, has a fucked-up Derry sort of vibe, because even people who don't understand what's going on are on edge more, and you've got an outsized crime and suicide rate.
Which also leads to a lot of people tending to app in characters with some traumatic backgrounds - some supernatural (like a screwed up asylum for people who Glimmer) and some very mundane (abuse, neglect, loss). So a fair amount of conflict is PCs dealing with that - in a setting where a supernatural force that knows all your worse fears and insecurities actively does not want you to get over it, but does want you to hurt. Which adds a fun additional element to the character-development/soap opera stuff.
Also, it's not a PVP game, but you do have characters with opposed agendas/desires - there are criminals and cops, for example. I think people are still feeling out how to navigate that in ways that are fun for everyone, but the playerbase thus far has seemed pretty willing to have conflict IC while remaining chill OOC, and to respect the difference between 'fun conflict' over 'and I must murder this PC and everyone they know because it is what my character would do'. Which is something that I very much hope continues.