I tend towards PG-13. With a few excursions into graphic-ness, but never too deep.

Quote from: Omega;832709That doesnt look grim at all. In fact it looks the opposite of grim. Just a standard over the top battle.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;832737We're talking about points on a spectrum here. A full blown satanic-themed demon slitting a good dragon's throat in full view while a helpless party slips into the treacherous heaving earth is somewhere between Warhammer 40k and Veggie Tales. I'd argue that image is much closer to 40k than a lot of Disney movies, which are closer to Veggie Tales.

Oh it's a good dragon? I was wonder why the demon was slitting his own mount's throat.

Quote from: Bren;832744Oh it's a good dragon? I was wonder why the demon was slitting his own mount's throat.

Since when does evil cooperate with each other???  Good barely tolerates other Good on the best of time, and Evil is more open minded, what?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;832746Since when does evil cooperate with each other???  Good barely tolerates other Good on the best of time, and Evil is more open minded, what?

Cooperate? Who said anything about cooperation? Spells, threats, and pointy hooves to keep the mount in line.

Heh, only now do I realize how ambiguous that image is. I actually experienced Path of the Righteous as a player, so of course it all makes sense to me, but to a casual buyer...

Once in awhile I sip a little something in.  I had the PC's get hired to rescue a nobleman's daughter, kidnapped on a hunting trip in a swamp by a tribe of lizardmen.  When they tracked the perps down she was already dead and eaten.  

It was also something of a trademark for me to describe the deathblow of the last villain in a comically over the top way.  It started with a horse mounted bandit getting killed by an arrow.  I added the detail of him being dragged a bit because his foot got caught in the stirrup as he fell lifeless from the saddle. One guy commented that he liked the detail, so I got more and more elaborate.  Stuff like a JFK style "magic arrow" bouncing off stuff and piercing an NPC's eyes/ears/vitals multiple times, and such. I can't even remember them now, but the party used to look forward to them and we all laughed our asses off a couple of times.

Since my campaign focused on Lovecraftian themes, I had Nyarlathotep pay their area a visit, and turn a formerly good and noble paladin evil, prompting him to rape and beat his betrothed half to death. The PC's were hired to bring him to justice.

Sometimes the party made things dark; they surprised a hobgoblin hunting party once, and after they killed them all and realized the tribe they came from was occupying the dungeon they wanted to get into, they cut the heads off the corpses and mounted them on spikes. One guy wrote "The Hunter has Become the Hunted" in blood as a sort of terrorist threat.  The hobgoblins sent out search parties, one of which they killed and treated in a similar fashion, writing "Send More".  

But as a GENERAL rule, my campaigns were  a lot like a Fritz Lieber novel level of violence.  Sex was almost nonexistent, because we were teenage boys and that would have been perceived as weird.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;832737 No, this is the opposite of grim:

No. Having to sit through it with your neice is grim. Oh god the grim!:eek:

Quote from: tenbones;832648I find it funny that GRRM is being used as some kind of standard for "grimdark" or "gritty". While they are more realistic than frolicky-fantasay (yay! the anti-grimdark term!!!) it's not like GRRM invented it.

As has been pointed out - Moorcock, Howard, Leiber, and the rest of the S&S luminaries have been doing this for the better part of a century.

In fact, I'd say GoT is not "grimdark", it is a different thing altogether, a form of 'realistic gritty'.

Yes. Since I moved to Newcastle my games have become as grimdark as I have always wanted, it's a synthesis of time, players and mood. That's our Thursday night group, and all our games there, whatever the system or setting, have a grimdark edge. Murder, intra family poisonings, dodgy affairs, betrayal, all that. We don't play rapists, but they exist and we usually have dealt with them grimly.

Now on Sundays.. similar people, but it's happy and moral, lawful good and positive attitudes have followed.

So, Grimdark Thursdays and Pure as Driven Snow Sundays..

The new Tuesday night group is still finding it's tone...

Violence? Graphic, but not wallowing in gore. Limbs are cut off and people get disembowled or devoured by monsters. But we don't indulge in sadism, or linger on the details.

Grim? Our campaign worlds tend to be cruel places where everyone is watching out for number one - think Lankhmar, Nift the Lean, or Warhammer Fantasy. But that's not the same as A Song of Ice and Fire. The stuff we run has an underlying streak of black humour and irony missing from Martin's world.

Sex? Never bothered with it. No interest in introducing romance, whores, or rape in our RPGs.

My gut reaction is no...violence yes, but R at best. Grim yes, but not overwhelmingly so because in the past those games tend to be short and my campaigns always run long. Sex? Not really, a hand-waive to it at best when there's a player who wants his PC to pursue some relationship or something, otherwise a lot of PG-13 vague references or implications without actually stating anything whenever possible. Except for once when I ran what I called a "Heavy Metal rated" campaign years ago, mostly because the players at that time were the sort to appreciate it. But my "HM rated" campaign was still nothing even remotely as freaky as you'll see Raggi produce, so YMMV.

I actually have to take it back.  My games never go the GRRM level.  Simply because we have moments of humour in our games.  So far, in the show at least, it's been relentless brutal to the point of numbing.

My games never go that far.  Do people lose limbs, if the system supports it.  Do people die?  Yes.  Are there horrible things happening?  Of course, monsters are well, monsters.  But there are also lighter moments, like the time there was the Kobold holding up a stone on Lance Rock (it's a dropped menhir of stone that's a 60 degree angle, and we had one of the players mention that if he saw a monkey holding up a baby lion he was going to run.  I played with it, and had a Kobold Shaman using the Forgotten Realms sun to find the right rock to do some divination with.)  The players had a bit of fun with that, and they actually talked to the little guy about what he was doing.  And got a free reading out of it.

Quote from: RPGPundit;833327In fact, I'd say GoT is not "grimdark", it is a different thing altogether, a form of 'realistic gritty'.

Yep.

"Grimdark" for me - R. Scott Bakker. Hands down. That's some dark, scary shit. It's very Cthulu-Fantasy, not in a Conan way. I read those books and they infested my dreams. And I don't say this lightly as a former EMT in LA - I've seen it all. Almost every form of inhumanity short of really crazy shit you'd require time to conceive and execute on - I've probably seen it up close. Bakker's books had moments that plucked a few of those strings for me.

I think he does a good job of using that horror as a conceit of the world.

I've considered "going there" in my Spelljammer game - on one planet where the conceit - essentially where the big bads are Tscimice like monstrosities and their servants are vile creatures motivated by the pleasures of the flesh over all else. I probably won't. For all the reasons we understand wouldn't make for a fun time.

That brings up an interesting new thread about horror-scary vs. horror-campy for games! I'll post it.

As a rule my fantasy campaigns tend to be not all that "realistic gritty", but my Dark Albion campaign has certainly played like Game of Thrones.  Considering that both settings come from the same historical source (the very gritty War of the Roses), I guess that's not surprising.