Quote from: Moracai;832621And Paizo doesn't exactly advertise Golarion as a grim setting.

Their cover images don't exactly look like Disney though, so the buyer should know what they're getting into.

It depends on the campaign, and it depends on how you measure the brutality. Many of my games have met or exceeded the level of brutality, if you look at specific atrocities or certain people, but maybe not in terms of how pervasive the depravity seems to be in what I've seen of Game of Thrones... there are almost always some fairly decent people, including some aristocrats, in my campaigns. I haven't seen enough Game of Thrones to see if there are any places that are relatively all right, or not.

One of my campaigns was headed for a pretty horrible set of wars, though, it seemed, if the campaign had lasted another decade or two, that could have plunged almost all of it into the sacking of most/all of civilization.

And I already described the blood slave pens in the Evil Campaign thread, though I didn't go through with that, even though I might use it as NPC location.

I don't have quite the cynicism of GRRM, but there has been even more excessive depravity, at least by some measures, in many of my games and my friends' games.

I've played in a few which I think were inspired by corrupt-Catholicism, Pol Pot and Jonestown, etc., which had widespread people enmeshed in terrible religions which were various varieties of murderous soul-sucking and/or Orwellian dystopic horrors. Not to mention all the corrupt authorities (who were sometimes good cathartic targets for the PCs to lay waste to).

In some games, PCs who were supposedly fairly positive likable sorts most of the time, took to some pretty murderous ways, pre-emptively attacking other armed parties before knowing they were hostile, stripping their bodies of all possessions, letting the orc sever and collect their toes, and at least once dissecting a body looking for more loot.

I ran a sci fi game where the PCs went uber-vigilante and would just show up where thuggish people hung out, and encourage escalation and then turn it into a full-scale bloodbath for fun and loot. A favorite event was gleefully running people over with air cars, and laughing at good Samaritans, pacifists and bystanders. It was a cathartic comedy campaign that didn't last long, but was very brutal in a way only (some?) gamers would understand. Actually I prefer its morality to the Grand Theft Auto series, which it pre-dated by over a decade.

If you measure brutality in terms of murders per character, then many CRPGs may top the statistics. That elf in the bikini on the cover of EverQuest, in order to level up a high level character in that game system, probably had to murder thousands of inferior races, since that's about the only path offered to gain levels in those games.

I 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.

I'd also say that categorizing GRRM's violence in his books as "pointless" is a silly criticism, given the fact there are authors out there far more egregious in terms of the level of violence implied or otherwise that make use of those acts on purpose for illustration on how their world works. GRRM's violence is implicit, not pointless.

Of course if ones sensibilities are too reserved for that... there's plenty of Pern and Xanth books to tickle you.

My apologies.  I thought "GRRM" was just some kind of new semi-derogatory slang for grimness, like "grimdark."  It's only now just dawned on me that it's supposed to be initials.  So, DOH!

Oh, also, one of my favorite brutality examples was when the players explored a fortress, and found room after room with old hacked bodies that had been stripped of their clothes and anything of value gone. They were appalled, and were wondering what horror had done this... and then eventually realized that they had been here before, and this was just the aftermath of their own earlier handiwork.

Quote from: Gabriel2;832650My apologies.  I thought "GRRM" was just some kind of new semi-derogatory slang for grimness, like "grimdark."  It's only now just dawned on me that it's supposed to be initials.  So, DOH!

I'm pretty sure it stands for Grim Ravaging Rape Murder.

At least, I haven't seen evidence to the contrary.

While I don't think any subject is "off-limits", I make generous use of "Fade to Black" to keep my games as close to PG-13, as possible.

Quote from: Skarg;832652Oh, also, one of my favorite brutality examples was when the players explored a fortress, and found room after room with old hacked bodies that had been stripped of their clothes and anything of value gone. They were appalled, and were wondering what horror had done this... and then eventually realized that they had been here before, and this was just the aftermath of their own earlier handiwork.

... I post this post-screen-clean after choking on my coffee from laughing so hard.

hahahaha awesome!

Quote from: Skarg;832652Oh, also, one of my favorite brutality examples was when the players explored a fortress, and found room after room with old hacked bodies that had been stripped of their clothes and anything of value gone. They were appalled, and were wondering what horror had done this... and then eventually realized that they had been here before, and this was just the aftermath of their own earlier handiwork.

Priceless. :rotfl:

Quote from: Novastar;832656While I don't think any subject is "off-limits", I make generous use of "Fade to Black" to keep my games as close to PG-13, as possible.

I don't have have any young folks playing with me (wouldn't mind if I did). I only fade to black to speed things up.

Usually I'm juggling all the players desires to hack away at various plot-threads they have working so I don't have a lot of use of needless expository scenes for their own sake. But... every now and then it's required.

The nastier stuff is largely in the background in my games. If I say that pirates have been raiding villages along the Somewhereorother Coast, it's implied that rape, murder & etc. was taking place, but I'm not going to go into the details.

Quote from: Gabriel2;832650My apologies.  I thought "GRRM" was just some kind of new semi-derogatory slang for grimness, like "grimdark."  It's only now just dawned on me that it's supposed to be initials.  So, DOH!

Ooooh, everyone's talking about George R. R. Martin and Game of Thrones... You're not the only one confused. Stupid fucking acronyms. I also though it was slang for grimdark, like Riot Grrls music.

If that's the boundary, then pfft, my average D&D campaigns are grittier, even pastel-colored fantasias. Go run Birthright or Stormbringer and tell me GoT is something special in terms of nastiness. Politics is nastiness, as it is the struggle for power distribution by those who hold power.

Everyone tells me to watch or read GoT as if it is something special. My brief skims of it leave me cold. It seems like cheap melodrama in mud 'n blood fantasy trade dress. If you want gritty ruthlessness go read dynastic history of pretty much any place on earth. Japanese, Latin, English, and Korean period soap operas were more entertaining — prettier costumes and actually useful due to fidelity. One day I'll sit and binge GoT proper, but I get the same "it's going to be a let down" feeling like the buzz around LOST or Heroes.

The only thing that Game of Thrones does better than anyone else, in the market, is the author's willingness to off every single character for what I think is mainly shock value.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;832643Their cover images don't exactly look like Disney though, so the buyer should know what they're getting into.

That doesnt look grim at all. In fact it looks the opposite of grim. Just a standard over the top battle.

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

No, this is the opposite of grim:



We'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.