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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6463979" data-attributes="member: 4937">Given that we are talking about an emotional impact on the viewer/player, I don't think that we can separate the two.&nbsp; Are the demons in Hellblazer or The Exorcist necessarily darker than those in other medium?&nbsp;&nbsp; Yet we experience the stories as being darker, and so the antagonists in the stories as darker.&nbsp;&nbsp; We do so because ultimately the protagonists in that setting can't win.&nbsp;&nbsp; They end up making terrible moral comprimises - deals with the devil, as it were - in hopes of making things better, but evil has won at the end.&nbsp;&nbsp; These stories would be completely different if the protagonists triumphed over darkness, and our perceptions of the antagonists would change.I'm suggesting that if you want real darkness to permeate the play experience of interacting with a monster, you have to develop mechanics that suggest evil can't be defeated.&nbsp; Call of Cthulhu for example does this with the ever descending maximum sanity score, monsters that can't be defeated but only inconvenienced or delayed, and a backdrop that mindless Azathoth and his uncaring incomprehensible minions will always inevitably win in the end.You can't separate &quot;this monster is dark&quot; from &quot;evil wins&quot;.&nbsp; Especially in an RPG, if you want that impression, you'll enforce it mechanically.&nbsp;&nbsp; Otherwise, you'll just have another sack of XP and loot no matter what depravities you dip your imagination in to in your attempt to find darkness.&nbsp;&nbsp; Lamentations of a Flame Princess is an example of a company working in the dark.&nbsp;&nbsp; I've not been exposed to a lot of their work, but of what I have, they basically get the idea that to advance a dark theme you have to have a structure where evil wins or at the very least, that the PC's will tend not to achieve a traditional victory.&nbsp; Pretty much every one of their works I've seen basically is up front with the need to have reasonable expectation for failure.&nbsp; They deliberately put the PC's in situations where they are below the level they'd need to be to have a reasonable chance of success against the foe, and where the PC's are invited to mess with powers beyond their understanding, and where having accomplished nothing but live while probably having made the world a whole lot worse in the process is a likely ending.&nbsp; I'm not saying I like their stuff*, but at least they understand what they are after.*(The reasons for that are too complex to explain, but ultimately revolve around the writer's notions about what is normal human behavior.&nbsp; For most of my players, past or present, the modules would be sheer and utter tedium.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6463979, member: 4937"] Given that we are talking about an emotional impact on the viewer/player, I don't think that we can separate the two. Are the demons in Hellblazer or The Exorcist necessarily darker than those in other medium? Yet we experience the stories as being darker, and so the antagonists in the stories as darker. We do so because ultimately the protagonists in that setting can't win. They end up making terrible moral comprimises - deals with the devil, as it were - in hopes of making things better, but evil has won at the end. These stories would be completely different if the protagonists triumphed over darkness, and our perceptions of the antagonists would change. I'm suggesting that if you want real darkness to permeate the play experience of interacting with a monster, you have to develop mechanics that suggest evil can't be defeated. Call of Cthulhu for example does this with the ever descending maximum sanity score, monsters that can't be defeated but only inconvenienced or delayed, and a backdrop that mindless Azathoth and his uncaring incomprehensible minions will always inevitably win in the end. You can't separate "this monster is dark" from "evil wins". Especially in an RPG, if you want that impression, you'll enforce it mechanically. Otherwise, you'll just have another sack of XP and loot no matter what depravities you dip your imagination in to in your attempt to find darkness. Lamentations of a Flame Princess is an example of a company working in the dark. I've not been exposed to a lot of their work, but of what I have, they basically get the idea that to advance a dark theme you have to have a structure where evil wins or at the very least, that the PC's will tend not to achieve a traditional victory. Pretty much every one of their works I've seen basically is up front with the need to have reasonable expectation for failure. They deliberately put the PC's in situations where they are below the level they'd need to be to have a reasonable chance of success against the foe, and where the PC's are invited to mess with powers beyond their understanding, and where having accomplished nothing but live while probably having made the world a whole lot worse in the process is a likely ending. I'm not saying I like their stuff*, but at least they understand what they are after. *(The reasons for that are too complex to explain, but ultimately revolve around the writer's notions about what is normal human behavior. For most of my players, past or present, the modules would be sheer and utter tedium.) [/QUOTE]

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