The Old Ultraviolence
It’s no secret that the writer and illustrator of this here Handbook are a couple of card-carrying Critters. I’ve been listening to Critical Role for the better part of a decade now. It’s shown up in my academic work, and Laurel has actually done a bit of fan art. We watch together and talk about plot development and trade memes. Yet despite the fame and ubiquity of Matt Mercer’s catchphrase, it never occurred to me how violent the “how do you want to do this” moments really are. At least not until I started watching Legend of Vox Machnina.
Just take a look at this Table to Screen video as our plucky goliath protagonist bisects his foe. It’s remarkable to see the juxtaposition (and not just because every gamer in the world wants to see the animated version of their party’s exploits). You see, there’s a world of difference between the words “I cleave him in twain” and actually witnessing the bloody carnage. This is even clearer when you look at the brutal specter fight from season 1, where the show quickly descends into Tarantino territory (especially around the 3:30 mark). There’s something about the visual depiction that makes for a more intense, visceral experience than the verbal description. And I think it has a little something to do with Marshall McLuhan.
I won’t delve to much into theory, but we’re talking about the difference between McLuhan’s concept of “hot” and “cool” media. You can get the cliff’s notes version from Wikipedia (or from Woody Allen). But the important bit is that hot media are rich in sensory data, while cool media have less sensory data. That means cool media like TRPGs require more participation on the audience’s part to “complete” than hot media like television.
Now consider the above in terms of role distance. This one is a term from sociology, but it’s crazy relevant for our hobby. We tend to identify closely with the characters we portray at the table. We speak of the things that “I did” last session, even though we really mean things “my character did.” We aren’t crazy; we know the difference between fiction and reality. They just bleed through on an emotional level sometimes. So even as cool TRPGs tend to be less intense than hot film, they also get us involved more deeply due to our participation.
So when we talk about violence in our games, just remember that it’s about more than the fictional events themselves. Killing goblins is a far different experience in the cartoony cool module “We Be Goblins” than in the hot anime Goblin Slayer. For similar reasons, the depravity depicted in Game of Thrones might win an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series, while the same events showing up in your game will win a place in r/rpghorrorstories. The difference here is in role distance, where things happening “to me” are far different than watching them happen “to a character.”
So bearing all this in mind, let’s talk about the old ultraviolence. Does your tolerance for this stuff vary depending on media? Do you find graphic depictions more acceptable at the table or in the theater? Sound off with your own personal version of parental-guidance-suggested down in the comments!
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At most tables I’ve been in, we generally reserve describing a killshot at all for ridiculous crit dice luck or BBEG types, and even then it’s not toooooo detailed.
Don’t forget the mug violence.
The line about strawberry jam reminds me of Dinkledork playing detective in Viva La Dirt League’s “Epic NPC-Man”. ^^;
Definitely low-gore, barring the odd game where “splatter” is appropriate (Paranoia, for instance, or perhaps W40K). Mostly, it’s nothing worse than a crit described as “you cut him in half”, or the odd joke about heads rolling. Even the character I’ve mentioned before in the context of eating protagonists didn’t get especially graphical about it.
Things might occasionally get a little more descriptive in backstory, though my own preference is to allude to such things without detail. “Yes, tearing a person in half is messy. Please don’t ask how I know this.”.
Like you said, it’s all about the presentation. If you roll a crit or finish an enemy, of course you want it to be awesome and unique. For example, my small 4-armed Vivisectionist/Thief was once climbing on the back of an ogre, using his claws/daggers as climbing tools, and slitting his throat. The focus is more about “what would this character do with the tools and abilities it has to look awesome, while killing that guy”. And usually the focus is more on the first part, and less on the second. But with videos, that is not really an option.
I’ve told the anvil story before but I’ll tell it again. So in a module there’s a secure villa. On the periphery of said villa there’s a stable, and in said stable there’s an escape-tunnel for the secure compound under the villa. Some map artist thought it was a good idea to put an anvil in the stable, and this is when I had an idea. The DM and I agreed that an escape-hatch over a ladder would swing away from said ladder, so I put the anvil on top of the hatch, then we went into the villa to deal with everyone knowing their main avenue of escape would be cut off.
On the way out a fleeing cultist tried climbing the ladder, only to find the trap door jammed. Great success! The cultist then tried slashing through the trap-door, only to have an anvil fall on them and smash them on the head down a 20′ ladder. We all laughed at how Looney Toons it was. Then we thought for a moment aboot what that would do to an actual person’s body. Then we all got quiet and uncomfortable.
Someone’s been watching Cabin In The Woods.
Am I the only one thinking about how bad a headache he must have after goring that guy through metal armor
Weirdly enough, I find that graphic descriptions bother me more than graphic visual media. So I tend to keep my games low gore. Or rather, potentially gory, but not detailled, e.g I might say “your blow decapitates the bandit and he falls to the ground” but I wouldn’t go into detail about how blood is spraying everywhere and such. Not sure why honestly, maybe because with a description I’m forced to be more “invested” since I have to actually build the image in my head, whereas a movie or such will just present it and I can keep it surface level.
“Does your tolerance for this stuff vary depending on media?”
No. I’m fine with realistically depicted ultra-violence in all forms of my media, what I don’t have a lot of tolerance for is the cartoony ultra-violence and basically any sex.
At work we play movies and tv shows in the background to give bored call center operators something to watch and I’m known for answering the question “Wait, this is R rated, can we still watch it?” with “Oh, it’s just language and violence, it’s okay, we spoon feed our kids on violence here.” (We have a lot of immigrant workers due to needing bilingual staff and phone operators, so some are still getting the feel for USAin social norms.)
“Do you find graphic depictions more acceptable at the table or in the theater?”
Both. When I run horror, part of making it horror is ratcheting up the Tarantino and moving away from the old cartoon Gi Joe.
Blood starts flowing, Players start feeling uncomfortable when they’re taking penalties in the fight not just from exhaustion, but because they’re wiping sweat and blood from their eye. When they’re tripping over body parts. When the grip on their weapons is slippery with both their enemies and their own blood.
When I’m given reign as a Player to describe the results of an attack, I give the bloodiest description I can*, when it’s appropriate for the group or genre. Fantasy can get bloody, but comedy usually steers clear, and 80’s style morning cartoons is distinctly non-deadly.
.* Usually to remind people what is “really” going on. Like, the Fighter just split the last gobbo guards head open like Gallagher does melons and splattered the gobbo kids behind with it’s brains… is it really far-fetched to think one might pick up a fallen knife to defend itself? Is it really now appropriate to ‘finish off the family” just because they might have 1d3 copper coins in their “pockets”? — Yeah, I’ve been “that guy”, the one injecting non-“colour coded for our convenience” morality into D&D in more than one group. And I’ve gotten the pushback over it. There have been some very uncomfortable conversations for people I’ve known over the years…
This is me but A Clockwork Orange level of ultraviolence in either media is acceptable. I get why some people may dislike it, but violence, specially against imaginary NPC or in a controlled context can be cathartic. That is why Liam Neeson is in many action movies. I don’t really think the level vary between media but how it’s pictured does. Visual media is way more graphic since it’s a graphic media. Game of Thrones show the things people read and picture it on their head but as images they don’t need to picture but to watch. That marks a difference since people may censor stuff for themselves. Unless there is actual censorship on graphic media then you see what happens the way it happens. That marks a difference too, as does what the person watching or playing may find tolerable 🙂
For me I think it’s all about context. Like it’d be uncomfortable seeing crazy detailed gore in say your typical buddy cop TV show but I’m rather expecting it in the Boys or such. Admittedly, I still prefer if it’s being played up for laughs rather than being gross for the sake of being edgy. (So really I guess Evil Dead is the ideal high gore type scenario for me?)
And that same thing applies to the table for me. Just yesterday my friends and I sat down for our first game of Feng Shui. There was some light description of how some kills/ko’s were made, but even the closest we got to “gorey details” were absurd jokes rather than visceral descriptions of the in character action. But I suppose if we were playing something in a Warhammer setting or the like and we’d edstablished the tone as comedically gorey, I would be comfortable with that.
Though I still wouldn’t want to spend *too* much time on it. If it takes you more than a minute to describe a kill, you’re probably going too far. *shrug*
I tend to lean into the violence when I’m GMing. (Perhaps paradoxically) because I want my players to explore other avenues than “if it moves, kill it.” So the fights, especially in fantasy games where edged weapons tend to be the order of the day, can be very bloody. And if a monster fumbles a roll, that’s almost always going to be them slipping on the bloody floors. And I find that it tends to work. Not because it squicks out the players (because I dial it back in those situations) but, I think, because it humanizes the monsters. The more sanitized the violence is, the easier I think it is for it to become a go-to solution.
With D&D not having any penalty for being wounded — you fight at full capacity until you drop — a lot of our fight scenes were described like “you slash him up good! he’s quite upset about it and now’s his turn *roll*”
In some other webcomic ( https://www.egscomics.com/egsnp/wie-104 ) the DM goes “this is a ‘kid’s show’ style of KO” and it made me curious whether there actually are anyone who plays D&D-style games this way, with violence kept as a non-consequential cartoony level and villains are explicitly not killed off ASAP. It’s certainly never been my personal experience… and judging by RPG stories told online as well as the popularity of terms like “murder-hobo”, it doesn’t seem like a popular option.
Of course killing goblins feels different in We Be Goblins: in that module you’re playing the goblins!
More seriously, that’s actually the one module where I went too graphic in my descriptions of the PCs pulling the legs off a giant spider they were fighting, and made my players uncomfortable by accident. Had to dial things back for the rest of the module.
reminds me of this
http://www.theallguardsmenparty.com/images/stories/prompts/PieAngel.png
Story time.
I had a character in HERO that was what I call an Assimilator, which is that however it happens (mechanical, biological, supernatural means), they transform other creatures and beings within in the limits of the rules into their race. Additionally, this can have a mental component.
So there’s my character-he’s a space bug! And one of the things he does is turn other people into productive members of his space bug hive! In context of the game, this is a wacky power that is used to non-lethally take down enemies with a mental component that specifically makes them cooperative, but I didn’t want to spend the points to go into full on mind slaves so I didn’t.
One of our players “took issue” with this. It didn’t come up in session 0 as being a problem. The design was even altered a bit since I was concerned it might be an issue, so the whole thing was toned down from an Aliens type lethal transformation/replacement to sort of an acquired insectile template with essentially permanent Charm Person.
I took him aside, and I ask him… so it’s ok that I can carve people into chunky salsa, dissolve them with organic acid, but making them grow chiton and be cooperative is a bridge too far?
In his defense, he admitted he didn’t understand why, but yes, yes it was.