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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9672108" data-attributes="member: 18">There's no hard contradiction between those two genres in terms of mechanics that support them.That's just tone. You can run grimdark 5E no problems despite 5E being clearly a heroic fantasy game. It's about what happens plot/character-wise not how it happens so much.It's bizarre and kind of funny even trying to argue that they're separate and exclusive when grimdark is massively broad that it includes ultra-super-heroic stuff like the top end of 40K, and grimy, ultra-gritty stuff like the bottom end of 40K! And that's from the trope-namer itself! Grimdark is everything from badass god-men battling on a spaceship over the fate of the universe to some poor grunt slogging it through mud, wishing he'd make it home to see his family but knowing he's going to ripped in half by a Tyranid. Mechanically, the superheroes and the grunt are absolutely different genres. You wouldn't want to use the same RPG for both, and indeed that's part of why 40K has multiple different TTRPGs with different mechanics by the same company! (Wrath and Glory and Imperium Maledictus, for example)But they're both grimdark.I'd say go ahead and do that but I'm surprised you were seeing a conflict between "grimdark" and "Heroic fantasy" or "Epic Fantasy". Those genres overlap very significantly. Indeed, a significant proportion of heroic and epic fantasy is "grimdark" in the sense that it's set in a very dark and unpleasant world, that people come to bad ends, that there's an element of hopelessness and so on. Also note, you can have pure heroes in a grimdark setting - this has always been true - 40K (which is the original "grimdark") has figures who are purely or primarily heroic and always has done.You might say this is people using the term "grimdark" too liberally but that's how it's been used for the 10+ years so...Also, more to the point, I wouldn't personally call Age of Umbra, or say, Elden Ring, "grimdark" but perhaps that's a separate issue. It's reasonable shorthand for a lot of people I guess, but I don't love it. There's a focus on real "tragedy" and "humanity" in both Age of Umbra and as was mentioned by [USER=7044099]@zakael19[/USER] The One Ring that isn't present in a lot of grimdark stuff (though it is present in some).</blockquote>

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