That is to say, utraviolence?  Grittiness?  Sexual content?  A general depiction of a truly shitty world to live in?

Yes, this is borrowed from something similar posted on another forum.  I suspect we'll see some different points of view here.

RPGPundit

Oddly enough, they don't. Even though I am a refugee from TBP with all sorts of warnings there, and despise any form of censorship, my fantasy games play out like Ray Harryhausen movies.

Depends on the game. I like "High Fantasy": Tolkien, Alexander, Legend of Zelda, etc. In which cases, no, they arent much darker or grittier than an Andrew Lang collection of Faerie tales.

But if I'm running Warhammer Fantasy? All bets are off. Extreme violence with highly entertaining descriptions from the critical hits table. Diseases abound, some of which are intelligent, because Papa Nurgle loves his children. Cities are dirty, dangerous, and mostly take cues from Gilliam's Jabberwocky and Ankh-Morpork. Sex is there if you want it, with ALL the inherent risks, and a few one might not expect. And just about everything in the world that possesses any sort of awareness hates you and wants to kills you.

Just depends on the setting. My personal settings tend to run more toward the Warhammer end of things. The world is rough, folks get killed for a few coppers, the law is more dangerous than helpful etc.

I largely don't enjoy HBO style adult grim-dark. I've played Warhammer where some sad things happened, but more in a dark fairy tale way. I've played in gritty worlds, but they are not gritty due to people being evil-jerk as in GoT, Oz or Deadwood. PCs do not get tortured, and PCs  doing it means a bad session. Nobody sexually assaults or is sexually assaulted.

If it is a game of dark hopelessness, there is at least a gallows humor. For the most part, though, I'm looking for brighter. Even sadness or moodiness is OK. I just don't want prison rape (Oz), a sheriff forced to crudely strangle a horse thief before ranchers let him leave town (Deadwood), or endless sexual assault, cruel humiliation and gory death (GoT). It's just not what makes me feel better after a week of work, basically.

I don't really do sexual assault in my games. Ultimately, even in my horror games, its about having fun. Certain subjects just are not what I consider fun. This extends to films I watch too. I avoid the whole rape-revenge genre like the plague. Just not my taste.

And yes, that means that I do, under certain fictional circumstances, consider murder "fun". I'm completely okay with that.

A Human mafia don has many similarities to an Orc mafia don.And there are differences too.  Half Orcs come from somewhere and choice isn't always involved.  The details are speculated, not usually played out in the game.  On the other hand, when the two dons fight for territory; the slaughtering is definitely played out.  Dice rolling can be fun.  The Heroes, of course enter that gray area of 'good' killing 'evil'.  Yeah,  a lot violence.

No, never.

I was all set to say not too grim really. Then I recalled the room key for the adventure I ran last Saturday.

Room C1 - Jacob, Huguenot craftsman   (he is audibly mumbling "help me" from behind his cell door)

• top of skull removed > brain matter is visible
• face is a mass of scars > missing nose and lips
• left eye replaced with glass lens >  magnifying lens to allow observation of the optic nerve
• missing left arm replaced with metal prosthetic > metal claw hand with adjustable clamps

Room C2   – empty

Room C3   Armand de Lebrousse, Manacled to Wall by all limbs, waist, and neck with metal cuffs and collars and thick leather belt around his waist and multiple chains > outer portion of cuffs is iron > inner portion of cuffs is silver,

Room C4   – empty

Room C5   - Gabrielle peasant girl

• hair covers right side of face > missing right eye
• mumbles when she speaks > no teeth
• keeps left hand behind her > missing left arm replaced with metal prosthetic > metal claw hand with adjustable clamps

Room C6   Jean-Paul peasant   Manacled to Wall by right hand

• skin on right upper leg has been removed > peeled off
• skin on left lower leg is burned and blackened > by fire
• missing left hand > stump capped with metal cylinder > cylinder contains maggots removing dead or damaged skin
• cannot speak > tongue has been removed
• left eye covered with a patch > beneath the patch is a dead, rotting eyeball

Is this grim?

Several of the PCs would like to kill the guy responsible. Makes it worse that they let the guy responsible get away and then found out what was hidden in his dungeon. On the up side, the two PCs who freed the three would-be highwaymen they had captured are happy that they didn't turn them over to the guy responsible who is the Chief Magistrate and Town Governor of the nearest town.

I have little to no interest in the description of violence in a white-washed, euphemistic way. Prmarily, because it is quite boring, but secondarily, because it is also a bit dishonest, especially when the lack of description is used to hide the consequences of the PCs' actions.
And yes, I have sexual contents in my games, if the players have an interest in them: having eye candy NPC to seduce is something that both the men and the women (both straight and gay) in my groups seem to enjoy, at least occasionally.

However, nothing about that indicates "ultraviolence" or something like that.  Up close and personal, when  you are directly, physically involved, violence is inherently brutal.  Describing the world as it is (or was), instead of how it should be isn't the position that should require extra justification; after all, it is not the one that deviates from verisimilitude.

Grimdark - it varies hugely by campaign, but I generally can't maintain the level of seriousness necessary for GRRM Grimdark - my default tone tends to levity even when horrible things are happening, as in Fritz Leiber's Swords saga.
Also while Martin is great at depicting realistic consequences for stupid behaviour, I don't generally have my good-guy NPCs behave as stupidly as he does. In particular, even Lawful noble houses have had a lot of experience at not dying, and a lot of selective pressure for not dying, too. So the kind of level of grotesque incompetence displayed by the Starks in the TV show would be vanishingly rare IMCs. I tend to have the Lawful Good guys be just as capable as the Littlefingers & Lannisters - they may not engage in the same kind of behaviours, but they are aware that other people may do so and can thus usually take account of it as a possibility in their own plans.

Sex - a few of my campaigns have about as much sex as the HBO show, most have much less. Usually the sword & sorcery type campaigns have relatively more sex (and certainly more nudity), but my Forgotten Realms game has some sex, in a nod to Ed Greenwood.

Romance is fairly frequent in most of my campaigns. I tend to avoid 'doomed romance' tropes, I definitely avoid the 'girlfriend in the fridge' trope of killing a romantic interest NPC to motivate the PC. That sort of thing is best left to a PC's backstory.

Rape - in my more adult games NPC characters may be implied or (rarely) stated to have been raped. I've never depicted forcible rape 'on screen' in any D&D campaign, which is pretty much the same as the HBO show. I have a hard 'no raping the PCs' (male or female) rule. I will look for ways to make this plausible in-universe. If a player were to insist on putting their PC into a situation where this was a likely outcome I would work with the player out of game to discuss what they wanted and what should happen - basically unless the player has consented, the PC cannot be raped. In lighter-themed settings NPC antagonists generally either have a code against rape (eg chivalry, for human types) or no interest in it (eg for non-humans).

Sex slavery - Swords & Sorcery style settings may well have slave concubines. My trashy Deathstalkery campaign has a lot. Most settings don't, or it's not mentioned - eg in Mystara the Alphatians likely have such but I'd probably avoid mentioning it in my 'child friendly' Karameikos campaign.

Food -I try to describe the food & drink to help get a feel for the setting, especially if it's significant - eg in one campaign nobles compete to lay on feasts for guests as a sign of prestige.

Gore - generally the swords & sorcery campaigns have more gore, the Palaces & Princesses campaigns don't have viscerally described gore. My described gore levels may be similar to the HBO show in the most adult-oriented games, but usually less.

Sexism - gender role differentiation IMCs tends to be less than IRL, but I don't make a Paizo-style fetish of avoiding it.  If there are female players I try to keep an ear out for what they want - eg it's very common for players to want an 'overcoming entrenched gender norms' theme for their PCs, usually in the lighter more Palaces & Princesses themed games like my current Karameikos game. If players don't want their PC to face any gender-based obstacle I'll work with that, too. I'm generally more considerate of the feelings of female players here because they tend to bring in more baggage from real life, and for D&D I think players should be able to play a PC of their own sex if they want without being disadvantaged thereby.

Homosexuality - I tend not to use historical medieval attitudes to male homosexuality (and there's no ancient Greek style pederasty - not a trope in GRRM either afaik). My default setting is something like Western Europe ca 1995, or the very early Paizo stuff - no 'gay marriage', but no persecution either.  There's a male homosexual NPC couple in my Loudwater Forgotten Realms game, who 'came out' at Lady Moonfire's summer ball, at the same time Lady Moonfire 'came out' by being escorted by her Tiefling girlfriend Tawny Kytra.
In my Karameikos game my son Bill (age 7 3/4) playing his Baron William PC was annoyed that the Baron's daughter Hope, instead of submitting to the usual arranged dynastic marriage, was smitten with the roguish Elf Sea Captain Anastasia and threatening to sail off with her. At one point he threatened to 'ban being gay' in his Barony - which I think would have gone down badly with some of the other (adult) players! - but he was talked out of it, in-game by the Baron's wife. Instead he bribed Anastasia with his Medallion of ESP to go take a hike. Some 'mature themes' but the overall tone was much lighter than GRRM.

Depends on the game.

My Warhammer is grimdark...because Warhammer!

Ultraviolence is common for most of my games. I'm a gorehound so I like my battles bloody. Of course, that doesn't work for running Star Trek or Star Wars so genre conventions are important considerations.

I don't do rape. Yeah, I agree there's a huge history of literature and art where rape is a key aspect, but its one of the few things I won't do at my table.

Quote from: Bren;832407Is this grim?

Yes - doubly so if your setting doesn't have healing magic.

I don't use anything that doesn't fit with the kind of adventure I'm running. I wouldn't usually use gratuitous violence in my swashbuckling, Dumas-esque fantasy game. I would use it in a Dragon Age game, or should I ever run a LotFP adventure where extremes of violence are pretty much a part of the setting.

I always steer clear of sexual violence. It makes me uncomfortable and doesn't really serve the plot of the games I run. I have played games where the GM put in lots of sex with minors, sex slavery etc. in a post-apocalypse world, and I felt like the idea was more to try and make the game more hard-core than to actually explore the setting. That didn't sit well with me, and I wouldn't want a group I ran to be put through the same kind of discomfort.

Quote from: Bren;832407- snip -

This is GOLD! I may need to shamelessly stea- eh... be inspired by this description for one of my games.

Grimdark?  Never.  Brutal?  Every single time.  Limb removal, decapitations, entrails spilling.  And that's just the players.

Currently running a Mutants and Masterminds game on Sundays, and a couple of months ago, the PC's met an Eco-Terrorist named Dryad in the same vein as Batman's Poison Ivy, except she can clothe herself in bark-like armour.  She tore down the Monorail train they were on and killed about 100 people by impaling them on branches and crushing them with falling building when she fast grew a tree in a local rooftop park and garden.

My villains are villains, they're monsters who either don't care, or have convinced themselves what they're doing is the only choice.

It's gotten there at times, sometimes outside my own expectations because that's where the PC consequences went. But generally I shoot for happier fare in my fantasy, and am upfront about it. I am OK with grimdark, but it's often farcical to me and hard to keep a straight face about it. Once you drench someone in that many buckets of shit, it starts to come off more like "You Can't Do That On Television!" (I am now dated...)