As a large chunk of the game takes place in turnsheet actions, as GMs we work to make everyone's game very personal. Playstyle options are your opportunity to tell us how you would like your game to play out. This game is very narrative-driven, which means we aren't necessarily focused on making things “balanced” between players - if you're wanting a game where the odds seem constantly stacked against you, and you're barely making it by, then it'll seem like the player who's chosen a game where they're largely successful with their plans will look like they've got it easy (because they have!)

Think of it like difficulty sliders and other options in video games - at the end of the day everyone is playing the same game, but we want you to be able to choose to play the game in the way that's most enjoyable for you.

These are not set in stone - you're welcome to update us as the game goes on if you're finding things aren't quite as enjoyable as you hoped. Similarly, they are not strict rules; GMs will factor playstyles into how things pan out when writing turnsheets, but it's just one factor that'll go into the mix. Also different players will pick different playstyle options, so while we will factor in everyone's choices when planning outcomes, we do have to pick an outcome to happen that accounts for them all!

Playstyle options are picked on a system of -2 to +2, with the meaning of each scale changing a lot based on the particular option, and 0 representing leaving it entirely up to us. Remember these are only visible to you and the GMs, so won't impact how you interact with other players (and in particular, other players won't know what options you've picked).

Some people like feeling like a big damn hero. Other people like that feeling of precariousness, where things seem to always go wrong, and the odds are stacked against you. Different people are looking for different things in their narratives. This won't necessarily affect how successful you are when you succeed - people who face bigger struggles aren't necessarily going to get bigger rewards for their troubles, for instance. This will just affect the tone of your game.

This is a playstyle option that is most likely to run into conflicts when interacting with other players, especially when doing group actions together. We'll try to accommodate it where possible (e.g. if one player has a low chance of success and the other has a high chance, the action might succeed, but the player with the low chance may receive some personal negative outcomes for it), but the more players involved, the harder this will be to do on any given action. For actions where players are directly opposing each other, this will not be taken into account, and the result will depend on each player's plans and relevant qualities.

Note that this playstyle will only affect the narrative over which GMs have control. It won't affect things like other player choices. A low chance of success won't completely negate a bulletproof plan, nor will a high chance of success allow a plan based on a complete misunderstanding to succeed - this mainly comes into play in the (fairly frequent) middle ground where it's not certain which way an action will go.

The style and tone of the game and themes are outlined elsewhere in the wiki, this option specifies what the overall tone of the game you'd like to experience. This will mostly affect how dark the themes are for any personal plot we introduce, and how much we lean in to the horror in encounters with monsters. You should separately let us know of any themes you particularly do or don't want to come up, or that you would prefer to be steered away from if they come up elsewhere in the game, regardless of your choices here.

Picking higher options here won't prevent lighter and more cheery things happening, it's just about how dark the dark end of things get for you. This isn't a choice between a “comedy” and “drama” - it's entirely possible for dark themes to come up during relatively silly parts of the narrative, or for dramatic tension not to draw on the darker sides of the game.

Sometimes, characters die, or otherwise become unplayable - in Night Knights, this will be referred to as a toy being “lost”. Once a character is marked as lost, there is no way back - that PC is no longer a part of the game, and rescuing them will not be possible. This is to ensure that character death is a clean break - i.e. to avoid a situation where someone creates a new character, plays a couple of sessions, and then their previous character is resurrected and they have to choose which to play.

As a general rule, GMs will only kill a character if they are “standing on the X”¹⁾ - i.e. the player has sufficient knowledge to know that the thing they are doing is dangerous and has the potential to lead to death, or has actively said that they are doing the exact thing that will trigger a trap that they could feasibly have found out about previously. If you'd rather we were more generous with this, this option lets you tell us that. On the other side, if you like the idea of dying spectacularly in a blaze of trauma for your fellow players, then this is where you can let us know that instead.

If a character is lost, the GM team will let you know by the Friday after the turnsheet deadline - while this does result in a significant spoiler for the turnsheet, it also gives you an opportunity to generate a new character, or potentially (particularly towards the end of the game) we may offer an NPC role.

Note that occasionally, e.g. if a player cannot attend a session and lets us know they would like this, a toy will be temporarily lost in a way that they can be rescued from - such as being captured and stuck somewhere but with an opportunity to intervene and save them. In these cases the character bio will not be marked as “lost”.