Claiming the Throne, Part 2/5: Grimdark
Poor Aristocrat. It looks as if her power play isn’t working out so good. As if the legible stuff wasn’t bad enough, the options obscured by our nefarious #1 Regent include Drowned in Excrement, Anal Implosion, Mouth Impaled, and Autocannibalism. I guess Wicked Uncle gets to earn his name.
It’s been a good long while since we talked about torture. Three IRL years have passed since Fighter brought out the dental pliers, and now we’ve got an allied NPC in the hot seat. In my mind, this goes a bit beyond the mature themes we talked about back in Bad Romance. We’ve all heard about X-Cards and Session Zero precautions, but today I’d like to talk about what happens when we turn the sliders up to 11. What happens to the game when all parties agree to Hard-R play, and things get a little more Game of Thrones than Princess Bride?
First and foremost, the term “grimdark” comes out of Warhammer 40,000, coined with the famous tagline, “In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.” You can read the full history over at Know Your Meme, and you can get a taste for grimdark themes in the corresponding 1d4chan entry. For our purposes today though, I’m less interested in taxonomy than utility. What good is grimdark on the tabletop, and why would you want to consider it for your game?
I’ll admit that I haven’t done much experimenting with the genre. Most of the dudes in my playgroups prefer noblebright, and I’m not going to rock that boat. I can just hear them echoing Aristocrat’s “tone it down a little” line. Speaking for myself though, the big benefit of the grimdark style—and the reason I’d like to give it a shot—lies in psychological realism. Violence, death, and unpleasant settings have been a part of roleplaying since the very beginning. We go adventuring in dungeons after all, and those aren’t exactly cheerful vacation properties. When horrible trauma shows up as a central focus rather than window dressing, however, the tone shifts. Suddenly we have new emotional colors to paint with. Difficult choices, moral ambiguity, and injustice can all yield intense player reactions, the kind that “vanquish monsters and save the day” never quite delivers. And if you’ll forgive me for getting a little bit cultural-commentary up in here, that might just reflect the world we live in better than happy endings and moral certitude.
So what do you say? Have any of you guys given grimdark a chance? I’m sure there are some Dark Heresy players out there. Why do you love this stuff? Is my little “psychological realism” theory on point, or is there a broader appeal? Let’s hear all about your experiences with dilapidated, dystopian, despair-filled gaming down in the comments!
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Honestly, I find it a bit jarring how often grimdark fantasy gets praised for its “realism”. A lot of people’s perception of European Middle Ages seem to be… colored. Red, specifically. As an example, vast majority of the infamous medieval torture devices are in fact fakes created in the early modern era to be displayed in museums. Their purpose was to simultaneously quench the onlookers’ bloodthirst and feed their sense of superiority over their “cruel, barbaric” ancestors. The notion of grimdark being more realistic seems to me to be cut from the same cloth.
As for the actual question… As fond as I am of the genre, I never did it personally, and probably won’t. Inevitably, someone’s threshold for gore is going to be way out of sync with everybody else’s (let’s be frank, it’s probably going to be me) and once that cat is out of the bag, there is no stuffing it back in.
See my discussion with NRSASD below concerning “psychological realism.” TLDR, it’s more a question of the PCs’ reaction to trauma than historically accurate setting details.
I find that grimdark in our group edges more toward “Oh god its on the ceiling” styles of bloody than anything else. The emotional angst, moral questionableness and other trappings just get sprayed in viscera when the guys try to do them. And, I mean, that’s fine. I know it isn’t their favorite genre anyway, so it’s no big. but every once in a while (mainly during my depressive states), I want to play with “evil with values” and people tend to lose that.
I’ve mentioned before the assassin I played that was capable of being a perfectly nice human being but all the gods help you if you messed with her kids (The orphans she had adopted.). While there was blood, the blood served as the message. The concepts of “no one is safe” and “There is no line after this” were actually the grimdark elements.
But, my group mostly seems to think Grimdark is another word for Slasher.
Put some gears on it and call it steampunk.
Put some skulls on it and call it grimdark.
Seems that this is a tough genre to pin down.
Its actually my preferred setting – I started in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, have done lots of Dark Heresy, and when I DM D&D, my fallback is Ravenloft.
I tend to find the key is contrast and moderation: people often make the mistake of thinking it has to be dark and harrowing all day, every day, but all that results in is jaded players. The key to making the really bad moments their most traumatic (in a fun sense, honest!) is to truly play up the moments of peace and happiness, so when the dark cloud descends, the characters have something good and pure to fight for.
One of the important things is to grant little victories. Sure, the players will never overthrow the Darklord, or dismantle the monolithic Imperium, but that should never be the goal. The goal should be making the grim dark world that little bit nicer for the people they most care about. It will involve faliure, it will involve sacrifice, but if they hang on, and fight the good fight, when the characters finally go to their graves, they will know they made a difference, no matter how slight, for someone.
And if all that seemed a bit grim, the last thing to remember is humour. The grimdark setting is ridiculous, and occasionally it is good to crack a hole in the clouds to let the players (if not the characters) have a good laugh at that. Occasionally parodying the ludicrousness (if only for the players, and played straight in-character) is a good way to keep players lifted and having fun when things get their darkest.
I like this explanation quite a bit. Any movies / video games / etc. you can point towards that do your take on grimdark well?
This is perhaps why I love the Commissar Cain series of 40k books. They are honestly quite funny, but can be quite grim and visceral but the character has very human reactions to just trying to survive the 40k universe.
Heh, called it. Somewhat!
At least one of those tortures seems like they came from the ‘other’ handbook!
I predict the next comic will be wizard’s backstory drama senses… Tingling.
…or completely missing the fact aristocrat even needs saving because she covered her tracks too well / Wizard is an idiot / party actively hiding it from him. Thus requiring extraordinary measures to get him informed.
http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2014/07/Sam-Max-IGN_14.jpg
*furiously rewrites scripts just to be contrary*
Grimdark can certainly be fun, in an over-the-top edgy way.
I think the main appeal comes from the sense of style it often comes with, there are reasons that Warhammer covers it’s figures in skulls and spikes and cloaks made of flayed skin, it’s kinda cool.
But it being realistic? No not even slightly, it’s about as realistic as one of those saturday morning cartoon where not only does good always win without anyone getting hurt, but where no one even truly disagrees about anything important and all fights can always be resolved purely through empathy.
This blatant non-realism is honestly one of the key elements of the genre (it’s the difference between something being grimdark and merely dark, I’d argue that normal dark stories are still pretty unrealistic but there’s at least an argument to be made there).
As a slight tangent, it’s one of my pet peeve how often people act like “everyone are terrible people or even outright monsters” is somehow moral ambiguity, when it really isn’t.
It’s very clear what the moral status of something like the Imperium of Man is, or the hordes of chaos (both are absolutely shit).
Moral ambiguity would be situations where the sides involved all has a point and where it isn’t clear how it should be resolved or who is in the right/wrong.
See my discussion with NRSASD below concerning “psychological realism.” TLDR, it’s more a question of the PCs’ reaction to trauma than historically accurate setting details.
I think that part of the problem here is lack of examples. Can you point to any media that do “grimdark ambiguity” well?
Part of it might be differing expectations to what Grimdark means, because no I cannot point to any medium that really does grimdark ambiguity well in large part because “grimdark” is to me defined by the exaggerated nature of it all and as a result lacks in ambiguity.
This being why the term is made up of two words which each refers to more or less the same thing. It is not just that the far future is dark, or that it is grim or even that there is only war, but that to achieve the desired tone it includes all 3 of those descriptors in the same 11 word sentence.
In my experience out and out grimdark stories don’t really focus that much on the actual reactions to trauma, it feels more like a particular style of metal cover, or slick dystopia more interested in the flaming piles of skulls, or the hard men making hard decisions than on the sorrow the mourners of the dead or what psychological cost it has to make those decisions.
Ofcourse in a roleplaying game one can focus on all sorts of details in all sorts of systems or settings, but it’s a bit outside of the core experience of a grimdark setting.
I’ve heard the term “grimderp” thrown around to distinguish heavy handed and badly done grimdark…?
I mean, isn’t it fair to say that Gamr of Thrones has more grimdark qualities than Shanara?
“I’ve heard the term “grimderp” thrown around to distinguish heavy handed and badly done grimdark…?”
From what I’ve always heard, that difference exists between “dark” (as in dark fantasy) and “grimdark”. In my understanding, all “grimdark” is heavy handed and poorly done “dark”. “Grimderp” is either a particularly egregious example of “grimdark” that is ineffective due to excess, or when the work deliberately becomes comedic in its grimness.
I am unfamiliar with Shanara and therefore can’t really make that comparison. I don’t think Game of Thrones is grimdark on it’s own (at least not the first couple of seasons/books i.e. the ones I have watched/read, I can’t really speak for the later ones).
It’s important for my understanding of grimdark that the lack of ambiguity isn’t really an (objective) flaw, it’s just not really something the genre is going for.
“Grimderp” mostly seem in my experience to be a result of fans of Grimdark embracing that term instead of being ashamed of their taste (which is a good thing), and people therefore needing a new term to mock the concept.
Said new term then getting expanded in use to mean essentially “grimdark that I don’t like”.
I’m no 40k expert, but if one was going to argue for its moral ambiguity, I would say that while the Imperium would clearly be the villains of just about any other setting, in 40k, for all of the Imperium’s mindless stupidity, there is the possibility that it might actually be NECESSARY, that something like it is the only hope of fighting off the Chaos hordes. Moral ambiguity can certainly be two side both being partially right, but it can also cover situations where evil-like things are done, but because of the circumstances it is unclear whether they were truly evil or not.
Speaking of being flayed with a rusty spoon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VDvgL58h_Y.
You’re welcome.
On the subject of Grimdark, I agree with Vegetalss4. Grimdark is not realistic. To me personally, it runs the risk of completely losing my investment in the game. I play these games to encounter interesting choices and experience the consequences, and Grimdark tends to erase those consequences in its pursuit of brutal “realism”.
Case in point: saving a puppy. If you save the puppy, it turns out to be a vicious murderous hell beast who eats the town the moment your back is turned. If you don’t, it was just a puppy! Both choices are bad because Grimdark necessitates both choices MUST be bad, which isn’t interesting; just a misery simulator.
Having realistic and brutal consequences for your actions though can be fun. So long as there are good options interspersed with the bad, and that when a lose-lose scenario does crop up, the line can be drawn directly to the players’ actions.
Case in point from my own Curse of Strahd game: The party got real friendly and attached to the wereravens (in the warlock’s case, more than friendly ;)). So after several adventures, Strahd decided to take them out. The party knew it was their fault, because they knew Strahd had been watching them constantly, ever since they entered Barovia. The PCs were so mad at themselves because they knew they posed a risk to the wereravens, but hadn’t thought to take any precautions. They knew that the wereravens were dead entirely because the party befriended them.
I want 10 minutes and 16 seconds of my life back. 😛
I suspect I’ll be copy-pasting this point a lot today, so let me try and get it right. I said “psychological realism” rather than “realism.” The protagonists and their reactions to trauma tend to be more nuanced than in other fantasy genres. What we want here is difficult choices in a chaotic world, not utter hopelessness. When I suggest that ambiguity itself reflects the real world, I don’t mean quantum demon puppies where all choices are shit. I mean characters muddling on and doing their best, hoping that they make some kind of a difference in a complex and inimical world.
My mental model here is “The Road.” You don’t slay Lord Cannibal, disperse the cannibal clans with a stirring speech, and then start rebuilding society. You try to protect the people you care about despite overwhelming odds. Focusing on those personal stakes rather than saving the world makes for a different and perhaps more relatable emotional experience.
Ah, I think I see what you meant now. My apologies for the misunderstanding!
The concept of no clear way forward, or even if there is a clear “good path” there are serious, not-good consequences for trying to follow it, is my default. I don’t consider this grimdark for two reasons: a. the violence and torture that very much happens isn’t explicit, and b. very few situations are truly hopeless.
Point a is self explanatory, since gore/gruesomeness either gets comedic or unfun real fast. But point b means that while yes, every action has consequences, they all exist as a reaction to the world, not to be a “gotcha!” moment for your players.
P.S. I just realized that my immediate rejection of the label grimdark may be a matter of scale. In my games, a 1-20 lvl campaign might just barely succeed at starting a small country, or liberating a large city. The Evil Empire can’t be overthrown in one character’s lifetime, no matter how competent; it’s just too big and scary. The campaign world changes due to the players’ actions, but short of causing an all-out apocalypse they can’t alter the societal framework too much.
Case in point: After a 2 year, 1-11 lvl campaign, they managed to elevate Xvarts from being a “shoot on sight” to an “oppressed, begrudgingly accepted lower class”. Which was a tremendous victory for the PCs!
I’ve never played Exalted, but I suspect routing armies and flattening kingdoms are fairly par for the course?
No worries. I got halfway through writing the blog on this one before I realized that I was getting myself into the dread lands of Genre Definition. I expect that we’re going to get A LOT of different interpretations of “grimdark” today. And that’s OK! I admittedly haven’t played much grimdark myself, so it’s going to be an education for me. I just wanted to clarify where I was coming from in my own conception of the genre. 🙂
Exalted is weird. It varies heavily by campaign. You can do “heroic mortals,” which are low-powered mooks. You can do mid-level terrestrial exalts, which tend to be a bit “wuxia A-Team.” And then you can roll with celestial exalts, who are either being hunted like Frankenstein’s monster by everyone else, or slaying gods depending on your campaign focus and experience level. But yeah, I would say that major, earth-shattering events happen with fair frequency. It’s a bombastic game, and volcanoes explode and kaiju rise and cities get destroyed all the damn time.
Most Grimdark stuff is too over the top for my group. We just cant take it seriously. The urge to indulge in vicious mockery overwhelms us, and it suddenly becomes significantly less grim.
Even at its absolute darkest, when my paladin was chained to an alter with 11 other elves to be sacrificed in a ritual that would summon Lloth to the world, my first thought was “nice, im not a statue anymore!” and my second thought was “crap, I still don’t have my hand! That was my second favorite hand!”
Also, is it just me, or is Aristocrat specifically staring at the “Non-elven Wine” option on the wheel?
There’s a reason I haven’t attempted much grimdark myself. Given my love of humor in gaming, I fear I would descend into grimderp. That is a silly place.
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Grimdark#Grimderp
I debated about including non-elven wine, but ultimately decided to leave it in. This isn’t usually a disturbing comic, by I judged that my readership could handle such horrors in a one-off.
At least it wasn’t Dwarven wine. Even mustache twirlers need standards, I guess.
… can elves even grow mustaches? Or does he just have a stolen dwarven mustache on a bust in his chambers for whenever he feels the need to twirl?
I’m leaning towards “no facial hair for Handbook-World elves,” but I’d need to run that by Laurel for approval. Homegirl loves her character design options.
I see Wicked Uncle takes some of his inspiration from the Alan Rickman playbook… =D
Well then. That’s the voice that’s going to be in my head from now on.
I almost hate to ask, but what in the nine hells is retro infanticide? Running over a baby with a chrome plated mustang?
Laurel came up with that one, so I’m not the authority. I’m guessing it involves timey wimey bullshit though.
As a writer of moderately-realistic military sci-fi, I frequently find myself slipping into grimdark, or at least questioning whether I’m going too far. Largely because the stuff I write is based on deeply-researched and well-documented real history from the 20th century, and what becomes very clear is just how unpleasant people are willing to be to those they are at war with.
My own discomfort at writing the things I read about means that the end result doesn’t really get very grimdark at all, but I’m hoping to overcome that over time.
In a gaming setting, I can take it or leave it. I’m happy to play the chivalric ideal of Arthurian legend, or a game set in Westeros. When you don’t yet know which setting you’re in, that’s where it gets interesting.
That’s intriguing. Most of the time these heavy themes come with a healthy dose of “make sure everyone is on board for adult themes.” If you’re with a long running group though, and if you know that everyone is OK with this stuff from previous experience, it becomes possible whiplash people out of complacency in really dramatic way.
I remember some of the Happy Jacks guys talking about a “Ghostbusters Meet Cthulhu” game. It was all wacky shenanigans and one liners until they met the insane little girl eating her own mother’s eyeballs like a lollipop.
“Do you want some?”
That moment is only possible when there’s some genre ambiguity going in.
Dang, this story arc keeps hitting close to home. I like it.
See, back in the day my old DM also played things strictly noblebright. But that was over a decade ago, and the DM I’m playing with now has proven to be a grimdark fan. There’s been some GoT moments and body horror, but more than anything else the campaign is full of eldritch horror.
So, comparing the two experiences, there’s been some upsides and downsides. For downsides, the biggest that sticks out is that it’s far more emotionally taxing, IC and OOC. Even when the plot has some silly elements to lighten the tone — that can actually make it even more trying, as if it’s underscoring what a cruel, unfair joke life feels like for my character. On the other hand, this is something the DM can remedy if they’re paying attention to it. When things grew particularly bleak, our DM has scheduled some breather plots — including one literal beach episode — to keep us from feeling so bogged down that we stop having fun. She’s also cleared some of the darkness in a hurry by giving the creeping horrors a name and personality, and removing some of the “fear of the unknown” factor. And then, when the players start getting comfortable, the DM merely has to remind them what horrors they’ve grown complacent with to reestablish the tone.
That being said, you’ve got the upsides on point. But I’d like to elaborate on a particular element that’s stuck out to me, in comparing the two experiences.
Back in the old days, the circles I ran in mostly had serious players — the only issues were that about half were serious about the plot, and the other half were serious about the game system (and usually became min-maxers, unfortunately). There was only one player I can think of who fell into a third group, who didn’t care for the mechanics or the story and came to the table wanting to play around with a silly character idea. You know, like that one comic floating around with Slap-Happy Jack. It’s with a lot of love that I currently refer to these types as shitpost players.
Because in my current campaign, the group is dominated by this type of player, including two who are self-professed as mostly writing shitpost characters. Even I’ve started falling into it and rolled my current character thinking along the lines of, “Well, what’s something I haven’t seen at the table before? Sure, that sounds weird enough to shake things up.” Previously, a different DM in their circle ran a noblebright campaign filled with these types of characters. The drama couldn’t last for more than a minute, and the players gleefully burned the campaign to the ground.
But I brought up that Slap-Happy Jack comic for a reason, because something about the grimdark setting has been a catalyst for the same sort of character evolution all across the party. The characters simply feel more nuanced as they cope with problems completely out of their depth, and in turn the players grow more invested in their progress. And I mean far more invested. It’s by far the longest campaign I’ve been a part of, and it shows no sign of stopping anytime soon.
With such terrible realities to face, any character trauma gets outlined in marvelous detail, and characters want to sit down and talk through it rather than chuck the wimps at enemies to toughen them up. And it’s not just the byronic heroes, either. The heavier despair makes the optimist characters shine that much brighter, as they are forced to prove whether their outlook is born out of naivety (everything will work out when this storm passes) or out of defiance (if the storm is unending, then we will carve a path through it).
And I should say, this doesn’t necessarily come at the expense of laughter at the table. We’re still interrupting serious, dramatic scenes with puns and other quips.
If you like the sound of all of that, then yes, I strongly endorse giving grimdark a shot. Just remember to keep that emergency beach episode on standby.
Dang, Pie. You certainly make me want to give it a shot.
I’ve got a session zero for the Strange Aeons AP coming up, and I have a feeling I’ll be referring back to your post as I try to zero in on tone. Cheers for the primer!
Hahahahaha this is exactly the kind of game I run. And I don’t run Grimdark games 😛
Or at least, I don’t think I do!
Looking at your approach, and your thoughts on what constitutes grimdark, I think a real question needs to be asked here:
A grimdark setting should be brutal, gritty, and downright despondent for the characters. But should it also be that way for the players?
Because in my campaign, the answer has been an emphatic no. We want those moments of happiness amidst the gloom, having a hand to hold when tentacles are wrapping around our ankles, to feel like all our breakdowns are ultimately cathartic and all our trials are forging a stronger fellowship. And most of all, the key ingredient for keeping investment has been leaving the tiny hopeful chance for a happy ending, even if it means defying the unraveling of reality itself.
In short, danger and horror is great for drama. Nihilism, not so much. When things start going that far, it’s time to turn the lights back on for a few minutes.
I like grimdark stuff, its always a fun thing of mine, but I would also like to note that it isn’t quite realistic not matter which way you drive it at is.
Warhammer will always be warhammer, and well thats a fuck fest XD
But I also like grimdark because it also drives home a point of the world being a crap and how much it needs someone doing good things.
‘w’) I like trying (and probably failing) to be a hero in a grimdark world because it makes the victories that much more worth it. Sure my char will lose an arm, an eye, probably become scarred or cursed but he will have saved someone or something.
I like grimdark because it lets the chars shine more I believe, and not just through trying to delve into the local cthulu cult and banishing the beast that is shackled within for 100 years while trying not to go insane.
It lets their personality shine more than they would normally would in a bright setting but I don’t really know I haven’t played in one since forever!!…I think
As for gameplay, when everyone I know plays in one the general censuses is “we’re all gonna die so hard” and we generally make joke about that. Its has its own fun a in a sense 😛
But it also has its own drawbacks sometimes you just wanna relax and not be taught the world sucks I think I have with over 4-5 years of experiencing worlds gone to crap. But you know I have no idea how not to make bright chars anymore XD
“Okay I have an idea!”
“Oh what is it?”
“Okay so he’s a disfigured bard and he wears a mask tha-”
“I’ll stop you there”
It takes me like an hour to make a concept for a bright char compared to a grim char although Linksof and the adventuerous dudes I sometimes make attest to the opposite 😛
I have no idea what I’m trying to say anymore to be honest…
Well I’ll leave it like this yes I enjoy grimdark, but it is starting to wear down on me and im starting to ache for a bit more bright content.
So i’ve trying to spice up the world that I am creating with it adding key points, making factions that want to help the world while still trying to keep the theme of the world recovering out of a great cataclysm while having to endure the horrors of both the present and the past.
Also learning how to beach sessions and the like 😛 I’m not good at writing/doing like low key stuff that is heroic, funny or etc. But i want to try to get a mix of both grim and bright, or noblebright?
I dont know the mix to be honest, a book is a book o3o
I guess its the theme or feel that counts?
shrugs
One of the big themes I’m hearing throughout the comments is a need for contrast. Being oppressively grimdark or unwaveringly noblebright can both get old in their own way. It’s a bit yin yang like that.
Non-elven wine? Pssh, at least it’s not Bud Lite.
Never played the warhammer rpg, only the wargame.
I ordered a bud lite lime once. Morbid curiosity. Thought i was gonna die.
While I dislike GrimDark (Especially when taken to silly pointless extremes that make it GrimDerp) I do enjoy playing a noblebright character whose unflinching Captain America Paragon nature causes the GrimDark to break in their presence.
While I dislike non-Elven wine, Elven wine is sweeter and less alcoholic. It’s basically grape juice. The cheap kind with added sugar. As bad as non-Elven Wine is, it’s a step up from Elven wine. If you wanna kill an elf, give them Dwarven baby-formula. Their liver will give out. (Using Dwarven baby formula may get you dirty looks from some busy-body Dwarven mothers because they argue that it doesn’t have as much alcohol content as natural Dwarven breast-milk)
Captain Ned Stark America doesn’t do so hot in grimdark universes. In my mind, that might be the defining characteristic. Good intentions aren’t enough.
But more than either, I kind of like not being sure which universe I’m in until the moment of truth arrives.
I admit my experience with “Fantasy that pauses every 20 minutes for porn” is limited, but isn’t Ned’s problem that he handles the information that could stop the entire series in its’ tracks like an idiot and shares it with the wrong people rather than the fact that he’s a good person?
Here:
With a bottle of non-elven wine,
i hope to suffer double undeath,
for being away from you is like
be flayed with a rusty spoon.
To the other who stole you, something awaits,
either a retro infanticide or
maybe being eaten by rabid familiars.
In any case i miss you my goddess with
adamanitine nipple pliars, i hope to have
my mouth impaled to not scream in pain.
Better to be drowned in excrement
than see you with him, i hope to
make autocannibalism to show you my heart.
In my heart i feel an explosion
but i wish for him an anal implosion.
Hope you are better with him
for forever i will lay here.
Metal enough for you? 🙂
Metal. As. Fuck.
Give it a Finnish accent and it even kind of works!
Seriously? Good for me, even when all i did was to take the punishments and weave that with some song themes. But why Finnish and not Swedish? 🙂
Sweden doesn’t have Heavisaurus:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E2eXICPPBdQ
Is that Metal for children? I am a grow up person you know, also in my country even Metallica is Metal for children 🙂
That is metal for children. My point is that it’s seeped into ever level of Finnish life to the extent that it’s got a freakin’ kid show. It’s a country that starts ’em young.
I have seen 10 years old child hearing Rammstein. In my country it’s not matter of starting young or old, but when people start they go up pretty quickly 🙂
Leaving Metal aside. I was thinking something, people may play grimdark settings for two reasons. Because they live happy lives and want to experiment the crappy ones or because they live crappy ones and want to experiment even more crappy ones. Catharsis in any case. The grim kind of settings give the opportunity to play with different things. In many games you will vanquish the evil and rescue the princes, you will, because that is what happens, good wins no matter what and while that is kinda fun having certainty you will win takes away the fun and lets be sincere, people play to have fun not to make math homework while they should be doing their math homework. Grimdark takes away that certainty, you may not win, in fact your PC may fail or turn to the forces of evil. Is kinda comparing a Shonen manga with a Seinen one. D&D is Shonen, the merry party will defeat the evil guy accomplish their dreams and all that, WH40K and The Witcher rpgs are Seinen, there is lots of death, betrayals, sex, and your character may achieve what he wants or not. A seinen/grimdark game let you play with a different gamut of things and in a different way to the normal one, some people will want to change for a while, but there is a reason that TV Tropes have a page called “Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy”. Still when people like that kind of things or can wait before “tone it down a little” and enjoy the darkness 🙂
Nice job brining in Seinen. Broadening genre vocabulary is useful in this kind of conversation, and I think you’re spot-on.
If I’m hearing you right then, the appeal may lie in a simple desire for a new bag of tropes. If you’re already mined out shonen, it’s a refreshing change of pace to tell a story in seinen terms.
More like you are reading me right, not hearing, but yes. Grimdark can be different, dark, deep and challenging, if well used 🙂
„Non Elven Wine“…?
yeah, tone down a little.
You know the depths of his villainy in that the Wheel of Torture displays the winning choice //upside down//.
Now that’s Evil.
Took me all day to figure out what you were talking about. Can’t unsee now.
The paizo adventure paths don’t stray from grimdark. Case example – Rise of the Runelords. The goblin larder. The quaint homestead of the ogrekin. Foxglove Manor. The incident at Fort Rannic and its many decorations. The Skinsaw cult. The list goes on and on.
What’s the difference between heroic fantasy and grimdark? Is it just guts and gore?
I guess the amount of ‘unfortunate implications’ and amount of suffering that’s unfixable and unpreventable, plus gore/deaths that are outright shown? Plus the PC / DM interaction about it (read – seriousness vs black comedy). Sooner or later someone makes a ‘orc guard’s last day before retiring to his family of 5 orphans’. Or a PC decides to reenact the first episode of Goblin Slayer. Any game turns grimdark once a DM applies realism and consequences to typical PC actions. Or the PCs get… Villainous.
A good example: the tale of the industrious rogue.
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Tale_of_an_Industrious_Rogue,Part
Its also sort of known that Golarion has been slowly turning from noblebright to grimdark ever since Aroden vanished and triggered a bad set of doomsday clocks (worldwound, rovagug’s prison, erc…), though the Starfinder setting is a bit vague about what happened – nothing good, probably.
Is Goblin Slayer worth watching? It seems like the grimdark fantasy anime par excellence, but it also looks vaguely exhausting every time I see a trailer or a clip. I’m not sure I can deal with 10+ hours of slow zooms to young girls’ horrified eyes as blood splatters their faces.
I’ve watched the first season and read the manga. It’s not quite as horrifying as that first episode. Though it’s still pretty bloody, it does have its lighter moments.
If there is one thing I associate with grim dark it’s probably neccissity OVER morality. A good person and an evil person who in any other situation would be having a superman v luthor battle are chatting a room discussion what they will do next. Why? Cuz it’s gotten that bad. An (potential) example of grimdark done quite nicely that actually isn’t 40k related might be Tyranny the obsidian video game.
What platform are we looking at for Tyranny?
pc, not quite grimmdark but evildriven.
The most grimdark stuff I’ve done is play in Worm themed games. Which is pretty dark honestly. Though I still was trying to push for less dark in those games since that level of grimdark isn’t super enjoyable for me. Not because I’m squeamish at all, more that I prefer some light to make the shadows seem deeper. Or in less poetic words, all dark all the time gets dull or numbing. At that’s exactly the wrong result you’d be aiming for. Unless you’re going comical with the darkness of the setting (which is honestly how I view Warhammer).
I think that may be the most concise explanation I’ve heard for “how to do grimdark wrong.”
Maybe I’ve missed something, but why does the Wizard look like she’s 12 in this arc so far? Even proportionally she’s much smaller than her uncle.
That’s not Wizard. It’s her younger sister Aristocrat, now posing as Wizard to stake a claim to the Ivy Thone. See the top paragraph of the previous comic for the relevant recap links.
Okay that makes a lot more sense. Somehow I completely misread that.
No worries. I have a feeling you aren’t the only one. I really need to pay more attention to my “last appearance” spreadsheet and make sure I’m using all my characters more often.
or mebby have a cast list under the comic.
with mebby links to the cast page
I suspect the appeal of grimdark might be similar to the appeal of a lot of horror – it’s actually fun and exciting to live out or “experience” dark or taboo emotions in a safe environment. The word “fantasy” covers more than just “semi-medieval with magic” after all.
While I haven’t run into it in RPGs, there are some fiction works that I’ve found go into somewhat immersion-breaking grimdark-esque with a certain type of villain. Specifically a sub-type of the “100% pure evil” villain depicted not as a hammy Skeletor-type, but as a dark, sadistic psychopath. This isn’t necessarily bad on its own, but when the author gives them infinite competence and resources and they end up like “I woke up this morning, through someone into a shark tank, brushed my teeth, set off a bomb at an orphanage, got dressed…”, I find my immersion broken as I am reminded that this isn’t a person doing all of this, but rather an author saying that they did all of this, and also that author is trying WAY too hard. Certain versions of the Joker (especially from The Batman Who Laughs story, if you know that) seem especially prone to this.
On a somewhat related note, brought on by the Wheel of Torture and “Can we tone it down?”, I was recently working on one of my many non-RPG stories, and it occurred to me that it was starting to slide into the torture porn category, which was not what I was aiming for. What happened was that I used a writing method that I sometime use, which is to plot various points with the main characters dying or being cripplingly injured, and then “pulling back” until I reach a point where they are no longer removed from the story as a result. The result is that characters suffer minor injuries fairly frequently, which keeps up the sense of danger, but they are able to continue as a part of the story. In this case, however, I had both a Groundhog Day loop and certain characters with Wolverine-level healing factors, which meant that could undergo effectively lethal injuries while still being able to be in the story. Add in at least one sadist villain and a plot point of multiple factions trying to torment a character basically to insanity and you can see how things ended up a bit over the line. (Forget torturing multiple characters to death, there was a character tortured to death multiple times!) I caught myself, though, and was able to pull back a bit further, and I am much happier with the result. Anyways, I feel like something similar might be happening in this comic, where the GM, controlling these two NPCs, is starting to go a bit overboard without thinking about it.
I always liked Stephen King on this point. You ever read his “Why We Crave Horror Movies” essay? Here’s a link:
http://faculty.uml.edu/bmarshall/Lowell/whywecravehorrormovies.pdf
I always dug the bit about the roller coaster near the beginning.
This comic sort of shows and odd feature of elves – their longevity and age/body/maturity difference. How old are wizard, uncle, and little sis between each other? How do elves or other long-lived races, like dwarves, age and mature – are they teens for literal decades, in body and mind? Do they have the intellect of an adult in a child’s body, still a half-punt by the time their peers are dying of old age? Do they grow up like a human, but remain a bratty child emotionally for centuries?
I would refer you to this one:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/mature-for-their-age
🙂
I’m a pretty big fan of playing morally ambiguous characters myself. It makes for a good contrast as long as you know how to paint it black without overstepping boundaries.
Most of what I play is PFS so I mostly get my fill on playing the lancer archetype in the party dynamic. But my old group used to play a ton of world of darkness. Good times there. Shame our schedules don’t line up anymore.
I ran a Rogue Trader campaign to completion once, and have run at least a dozen Inquisitor campaigns (tabletop skirmish game). I quite like the setting, though not the d100 based rules. But I’ll admit I always like to shine a little light of hope in the setting – show happiness in everyday ordinary life, even if it only survives by being oblivious to the horrors “out there”. It mightn’t be what the setting’s creators intended, but I find that being too nihilistic carries even less realism than thr idealisitic settings common to fantasy. And it makes it bloody hard to motivate people through a story, too.
It’s not something I’d shy away from playing, if it came up as an option. There are some ideas that just don’t work the same if the threat isn’t leaving half-eaten bodies and traumatized victims around, and if you want a proper horror theme then I think you need some of the darker stuff to be included. I’ve only tried it once or twice, in a system called Shadow Of The Demon Lords. (The system has a spell that literally makes reproductive organs rot and fall off. … They pull no punches against any person, but the writer did avoid animal cruelty. But players aren’t animals, so expect brutal deaths regularly.)