jgsugden
Legend
Mechanics for a gritty campaign are fine to consider, but you can do gritty with no rule changes at all ... You want a feel to your game. That feel come from the storytelling, not the mechanics. A story about a high school girl struggling with a part time job, getting through school, and dealing with friend and family drama... can be a gritty Veronica Mars story, or it can be Saved by the Bell. It is all about how you tell and flavor the story.
Grit often goes hand in in hand with a noir feel.
Gritty is all about realistic pain and consequences. You can have magic, but it can't just solve all your problems. It should have the opposite effect: Causing problems. In the 'real world' gritty stories, characters often have access to money. Money is power in those stories. But the money makes life worse. Others want it. Others want to mke the heroes use their power for their purposes. People manipulate to get it. Other people condemn the heroes of the tale for not using their power the 'right way'. Someone else always has more power.
I see a lot of talk about paying attention to the nuances and details - tracking water, food, encumberance, ammunition, spell components.... Be careful. This can get tedious. You want the feel of grit without actually inflicting the pain of grit on your players. Any mechanics that slow down your game should be considered carefully. The most important element of a great gritty tale is a good flow to the story.
To that end, when I go grit I look for:
* Small victories for the heroes are common, but those with real power are rarely truly beaten. Often, the heroes victory is a darned if you do or don't situation... they're choosing the lesser of two evils and the bad guys in the shadows benefit either way.
* People without power come to the heroes for help, but they often want what the heroes can't provide by themsleves. The heroes need to obtain what is needed and it always comes with a cost. When the heroes provide the assistance, it may not actually leave their clients with a better situation. Instead, those people may twist that assistance for foul ends - vengeance, greed, etc... That get them killed... or worse.
* Things more powerful than the PCs should be around, but not combat foes for the PCs. They should be foils, masterminds and threats... but not someone the PCs will hit with weapons. The heroes should ideally have something that barely keeps these forces in check... something fragile. Something these threats want to eliminate.
* Don't be afraid to break up the tension with the occasional delve into a dungeon. Let the PCs be distracted by a good old delve into a forgotten ruin... only to find that something bad took place while they were gone. Moments of light followed by pain are part of the noir feel that underlies most gritty stories.
Or, you know, just have a game on the Elemental Plane of Earth. Grit.
Grit often goes hand in in hand with a noir feel.
Gritty is all about realistic pain and consequences. You can have magic, but it can't just solve all your problems. It should have the opposite effect: Causing problems. In the 'real world' gritty stories, characters often have access to money. Money is power in those stories. But the money makes life worse. Others want it. Others want to mke the heroes use their power for their purposes. People manipulate to get it. Other people condemn the heroes of the tale for not using their power the 'right way'. Someone else always has more power.
I see a lot of talk about paying attention to the nuances and details - tracking water, food, encumberance, ammunition, spell components.... Be careful. This can get tedious. You want the feel of grit without actually inflicting the pain of grit on your players. Any mechanics that slow down your game should be considered carefully. The most important element of a great gritty tale is a good flow to the story.
To that end, when I go grit I look for:
* Small victories for the heroes are common, but those with real power are rarely truly beaten. Often, the heroes victory is a darned if you do or don't situation... they're choosing the lesser of two evils and the bad guys in the shadows benefit either way.
* People without power come to the heroes for help, but they often want what the heroes can't provide by themsleves. The heroes need to obtain what is needed and it always comes with a cost. When the heroes provide the assistance, it may not actually leave their clients with a better situation. Instead, those people may twist that assistance for foul ends - vengeance, greed, etc... That get them killed... or worse.
* Things more powerful than the PCs should be around, but not combat foes for the PCs. They should be foils, masterminds and threats... but not someone the PCs will hit with weapons. The heroes should ideally have something that barely keeps these forces in check... something fragile. Something these threats want to eliminate.
* Don't be afraid to break up the tension with the occasional delve into a dungeon. Let the PCs be distracted by a good old delve into a forgotten ruin... only to find that something bad took place while they were gone. Moments of light followed by pain are part of the noir feel that underlies most gritty stories.
Or, you know, just have a game on the Elemental Plane of Earth. Grit.
).
With regards to Spell Components, I did find that for 5e, letting the player decide if he wants to go with a "spell component pouch" (focus, I guess it's called in the game now), he can....BUT...if his PC actually has the required listed spell component that would otherwise be covered in the "spell component pouch" (e.g., "a bit of sap and a piece of goose down"), the PC can increase/vary an aspect of the spell. So he could double the Range or Area of Effect, or do at least 'average' damage on a dice roll (e.g., 5d6 would count 1-3's as 4's; so, 20-30 as a total, not 5 to 30), that sort of thing.
