Gritty gone?

[Raith5]

Instant grittiness rule: Instead of regaining all your healing surges after a 6 hour rest, you only regain 1.

Nightmare mode: You regain 1 per week.

Interesting idea. I like what I see about 4th ed but I cant help that the number of healing surges are a bit over the top for me. So some form of restriction on them (and no auto heal via an extended rest) may add a bit of realism/believability to the process. Regaining 1 surge per week might be too much though!

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Personally I view grittiness as less a mechanical standpoint and more a visual/Roleplaying standpoint.

I know my first campaign will be quite gritty. The combat will be fierce and violent and dirty. The world around them will be unforgiving and its creatures resourceful and cunning.

I will still keep the basic rules, but bring in things like:

-Multi-stage encounters, where players cannot rest and are flung back into the fray.

-Extended rests being disrupted by storms, enemies, sickness, etc.

-Serious injuries being Roleplayed out.

-Having fewer resources both in supplies, repairs, and knowledge of an area.

-Really making it seem that the players survive and manage to survive not from luck, but because they truly are; more resourceful, stronger, and simply have toughened it out.

So essentially it isn't the rules that make grittiness in my games, it is the world and its environment and how you play out this world.

I really don't think actual deadliness makes a setting gritty, it is the feeling that it CAN be deadly that does.

I guess my grit is more Pulp meets Noir. Then Warhammer Grit.

 

[Will]

Low magic appeals to me, and I'm curious to see how that will work. Also, the 'tier' thing means I can stick to whatever-the-hell-ter 1-10 is.

One thing that might be interesting is only allowing spell classes as Cross-trained options, not full classes. But we'll have to see how the rules work in detail first.

 

[Cadfan]

And heroic means player characters killing men by the hundreds, consuming the English with fireballs from their eyes & bolts of lightning from their arses.

Had you mentioned anime, your sarcasm would have worked.

I have to go with Doug McCrae. If I hear a DM describe their game as "gritty," I tend to expect that they have communicated to me nothing about their actual game, and an awful lot about their self image.

The only phrase less communicative than "my game is gritty" is "I want a game that honors the longstanding traditions of D&D." Tells you nothing about the game. Tells you SO MUCH about the speaker.

 

[Wormwood]

It means the PCs can't do anything. DMs love it.

I've played with those guys.

Once.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

See that annoys me when people think grittiness means a pin-prick should kill you, and players can't do anything neat.

Grittiness is a setting, just like if you called it sci-fi, steampunk, FR, it is a feeling and a appearance, a atmosphere that makes a setting gritty not mechanics or dying all the time.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Grittiness is a setting, just like if you called it sci-fi, steampunk, FR, it is a feeling and a appearance, a atmosphere that makes a setting gritty not mechanics or dying all the time.

To me, grittiness means realism, in the sense of how closely the game models the real (or historical) world. Magic is not gritty. The more magic there is, the less gritty the setting becomes. Particularly D&D-style flashbang magic.

Difficulties usually arise due to differing perceptions of what constitutes reality. For example, should a 100ft fall always be deadly?

I think the rules have a big part to play. If they let PCs bounce bullets off their naked chests, through accident or design, then goodbye gritty. And hello superhero, yay!

 

[Henry]

The only phrase less communicative than "my game is gritty" is "I want a game that honors the longstanding traditions of D&D." Tells you nothing about the game. Tells you SO MUCH about the speaker.

So to be clear: 3:10 to Yuma or Raiders of the Lost Ark as compared to 300 tells you nothing about the qualifications I consider for a gritty game versus a very heroic one? At worst, a person hasn't seen the movies in question and watching it would convey it pretty quickly; at best, it conveys in an instant what kind of flashiness characters have in one, and the others don't.

By contrast, what does "anime" convey? Heroic? Cinematic? Over-the-top? How would one go describing movies like 300 if not "heroic" or "cinematic"?

Difficulties usually arise due to differing perceptions of what constitutes reality. For example, should a 100ft fall always be deadly?

I think the rules have a big part to play. If they let PCs bounce bullets off their naked chests, through accident or design, then goodbye gritty. And hello superhero, yay!

100ft fall? Almost always, yes.... But I'd be fine with throwing a little cinematic in there if there were awnings, or if it ended in water, etc. -- and even then damage would be involved.

And I'll second the "rules play a big part", of course. A rule that says that you heal to full by eating a can of spinach won't work for any game except Popeye the RPG. And bullet-proof skin is definitely a "heroic" one at the least. One disappointment I do have is that prior to now, I could have played a "zero to hero" game with D&D with any prior ruleset (otherwise, why would people be so upset by 1st level characters being so easily killed?) But now, it's looking like the only thing that will kill a level 1 character is EXTREME unluckiness. (Take 20+ damage, be out of healing surges, have no cleric nearby AND fail three saves? Wow, what odds!)

 

[Fallen Seraph]

While I agree such extreme rules do play a part. I think people depend too much on the rules to make a gritty setting.

For instance you talked about flash-bang magic well, in my world for example. A fireball is described visually:

"the thaumaturge (wizard) let loose a wave of energy, this invisible wave rippled the world around it like a mirage, everything it touched along its path burst into blue flames before turning to ash. As it reached the orc, the orc yelled out as its skin slowly peeled back and burst into blue flame before the body crumpled to ash."

I believe descriptions like this, while maybe not as "gritty" as a real-life medieval game, can give the illusion of grit.

 

[hong]

I still like my term "sludgepunk". It beautifully communicates my intentions, opinion and evaluation of the thing in question in two syllables.