How to do Grim & Gritty in standard (medium magic) D&D and/or high magic

[Altalazar]

Wanting to explore the separate issue of grim and gritty, I thought I'd start a thread on this separate from the low magic thread.

I'm curious if anyone has run any grim & gritty games with the standard (medium) magic of the core rules or even with high magic games.

Or even if you haven't, what are ways to do so? It seems to me that there should be nothing preventing a grim and gritty game, regardless of magic level.

Perhaps just the circumstances of the world are enough - like where everything is under the control of a very oppressive, big-brother like empire - making it extremely difficult for players to operate.

This thread can also explore what makes something grim and gritty without reference to the level of magic.

Thoughts? I have a few which I will share later...

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I think you're dead right!

Aside: Grim n Gritty is a term like 'munchkin' or 'low magic', IMO it means different things to different people.

Partly coloured by recent threads: MY take on Grim n gritty is that the players don't 'win' - you may need some opponents that they cannot beat no matter what actions they take - such as the big brother empire you mention - possibly make it run by the Council of Great Wyrms, Immortal Lich Kings, Evil Gods, etc.

Additionally, there should be problems cropping up all over the place, so there's too many things for them to deal with.

An element of sacrifice is often there. Need not be death - could be irreversible corruption, etc.


Magic level can be anything from no magic to 'everyone is superman' level of play... more a GMing style than anything else.

 

[Whisper72]

Okay, first off, from my perusing these fora, there are roughly two types of definition of grim & gritty:

- realistic in terms of lethality (i.e. the DM wants to avoid a 120HP warrior from falling 100 meters and just getting up 'only a scratch', and wants that a goblin shooting an arrow really well can kill off a PC regardless of the level of the character)
- grim & gritty in terms of look/feel of the campaign world itself (i.e. no clear good versus evil, but focus on 'more realistic' 'grey' problems, where a tribe of kobolds is just a group of 'people' trying to make a living in the world and not by definition an infestation to be slaughtered man, woman and child)

Which type do you mean, or do you want a combo of both...

 

[Altalazar]

Okay, first off, from my perusing these fora, there are roughly two types of definition of grim & gritty:

- realistic in terms of lethality (i.e. the DM wants to avoid a 120HP warrior from falling 100 meters and just getting up 'only a scratch', and wants that a goblin shooting an arrow really well can kill off a PC regardless of the level of the character)
- grim & gritty in terms of look/feel of the campaign world itself (i.e. no clear good versus evil, but focus on 'more realistic' 'grey' problems, where a tribe of kobolds is just a group of 'people' trying to make a living in the world and not by definition an infestation to be slaughtered man, woman and child)

Which type do you mean, or do you want a combo of both...

Either/or/and - A combot of both. After all, part of this is defining what grim and gritty really means. Especially when combined with the normal, medium level of magic (or even high magic).

Probably "realism" isn't going to be the primary way, simply because the game isn't designed to be a simulation, it is a fantasy role playing game, including magic (and in this case, not just a token amount of magic). So in my mind, probably the second category is more what I think of in terms of grim and gritty. Realistic falling damage doesn't seem very grim and gritty if you live in the land of the smurfs.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

grim and gritty if you live in the land of the smurfs.

I guess the smurfs are quite grim and gritty. No way they're going to outfight the evil normal sized people or their dog...

Foiling their plans is the best they can do!

Plus, only 1 female smurf in the whole village. That's pretty grim.

 

[I'm A Banana]

There are a few minor things you can do to the world in terms of 'house rules' to affect the level...

For instance, those who die, unless they are buried in sacred ground, rise as undead....and sacred ground is owned by an oppressive church that charges large sums for it.....

Indroduce a level of 'weakened.' When you reach 1/10th of your maximum hp, your character becomes fatigued (exhausted if they already are). This indroduces a sort of 'in between' area between Alive and Dead. If you want a higher level of gritty, you can increase the percentage -- if at 1/2 hp the PC becomes fatigued, they're going to hold on to every hit point to keep fighting at full capacity.

One easy house rule is to have healing spells actually convert regular damage to subdual damage. This means more resting, which means the basic resources of the party are strained.

Without rules like that, it's a bit strained. While you can do grim-and-gritty without any house rules whatsoever, the preponderance of save-or-die effects and high-damage-output monsters may be off-putting for some.

But the basic rule, as far as I can see, to a grim-and-gritty flavor is to make the PC's value every single hit point they have, and make sure they know it's an uphill battle to keep it -- their defualt point is dead, they're fighting against their nature.

 

[Altalazar]

There are a few minor things you can do to the world in terms of 'house rules' to affect the level...

For instance, those who die, unless they are buried in sacred ground, rise as undead....and sacred ground is owned by an oppressive church that charges large sums for it.....

Indroduce a level of 'weakened.' When you reach 1/10th of your maximum hp, your character becomes fatigued (exhausted if they already are). This indroduces a sort of 'in between' area between Alive and Dead. If you want a higher level of gritty, you can increase the percentage -- if at 1/2 hp the PC becomes fatigued, they're going to hold on to every hit point to keep fighting at full capacity.

One easy house rule is to have healing spells actually convert regular damage to subdual damage. This means more resting, which means the basic resources of the party are strained.

Without rules like that, it's a bit strained. While you can do grim-and-gritty without any house rules whatsoever, the preponderance of save-or-die effects and high-damage-output monsters may be off-putting for some.

But the basic rule, as far as I can see, to a grim-and-gritty flavor is to make the PC's value every single hit point they have, and make sure they know it's an uphill battle to keep it -- their defualt point is dead, they're fighting against their nature.

Ah, ok, so that deals with the Type-I grim and gritty listed above, as opposed to the Type-II (where the world may be oppressive even as the rules themselves are the same).

There is a certain grimness to Ravenloft - though it does have rules changes, they aren't quite to the level of what you described above.

I wonder if one could get really grim using just the standard rules - I tend to think so. I imagine a campaign where the players are constantly on the run, having to hide, low on resources, fighting for good in a world almost totally dominated by evil. That is one possible scenario.

 

[ruleslawyer]

I actually think that high-magic, high-level campaigns can be substantially MORE "grim and gritty" than lower-magic campaigns, if you want them to. Given the fact that offensive capability in D&D escalates much more quickly than defensive capability, you're playing a game tantamount to a WMD arms race; each side is cultivating the ability to inflict critical damage on the other, and can do it in consequence-limited ways like scry-buff-teleporting or gating in vicious creatures. Moreover, the number of insta-kill attacks (save-or-die spells, spell combo abuse, nasty supernatural monster abilities) increases dramatically in higher-level, higher-magic campaigns. The only countering factor that may increase in such campaigns is the availability of healing magic and true resurrection; however, healing magic doesn't help you when you've failed your save against a maximized disintegrate, and true res is only useful if you've got a cleric ally left alive to cast it.

I've found that as my PCs hit high levels, the players have become increasingly paranoid and reclusive, distancing themselves from their allies and even their families and performing all adventuring-related tasks under carefully-constructed false identities so that their friends and families aren't destroyed by the surviving opposition in retaliation.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's all about the Evil World-Dominating Organization that Is Invincible.....

PC's can be protective about some things........what if they were fored to go through town under the control of a wizard who was in constant link with their minds, and could hear every thought? Or if the aggressive guards of a town were the only ones allowed to carry weapons?

 

[nopantsyet]

I actually think that high-magic, high-level campaigns can be substantially MORE "grim and gritty" than lower-magic campaigns, if you want them to.

That might be a bit on the superlative side, but in principle I don't disagree. Certainly if your players are thinking about protecting friends and families and feeling the burden and danger that power has brought them, you're doing something very right.

Grittiness is certainly not tied to the amount of magic or the levels of the characters. The essence of it is for the players to feel like the odds are stacked against them. Ultimately they will hopefully prevail, but not without having lost something along the way.

I guess I'll come out and say it. I think that LotR is grim and gritty. Everything is against enormous odds. There are uplifting moments, but those merely soothe wounds already inflicted. And in the end, despite victory, everybody loses somethine, even those who knew nothing about the threat of Sauron.

A good GM can make just about any game gritty, regardless of the ruleset. I've run lm/gng, and I've run Forgotten Realms. Right now I'm running a homebrew with no alteration in the rules on magic or lethality. But I always make my players fight tooth and nail (and magic missile) to stay alive.