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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6463409" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think there is a structural feature of RPGing that can make genuine "darkness" difficult to achieve.Darkness and horror are linked to despair. And despair is linked to hopelessness - a perceived lack of ability to achieve desired goals.The last notably dark film I remember seeing was "Wake in Fright", an excellent Australian film from the early 1970s that was re-released around 5 years ago. It is not a horror film in the conventional genre sense (no zombies, ghosts, etc), but I think it does evoke horror and hopelessness, and the audience's sympathetic experience of the main character's lack of control over his situation is part of that.Another film that I think is quite dark is Tod Browning's "The Freaks", although its relationship to loss of control is different (and probably more disturbing).In an RPG, it is hard to give the players a sense that they have no control over their fate without removing control. Which can easily come into conflict with the goals of RPGing, where players tend to at least feel that their choices make a difference to what is happening in the story - even if those choices are simply choices about how to roleplay their PC.</blockquote>