Maintaining Grim and Gritty Flavour!

[SHARK]

Greetings!

In the "What flavour does your campaign have?" thread by my friend Mmadsen, he asks "How do you maintain grim and gritty flavour in your campaign?" Also implying, --"With all of the magic and normal assumptions that D&D generally has, intrinsic to the system."

I usually start with dark clouds, some people being burned at the stake, and lots of rain and mud. Dirty, nasty roadside inns, fleas, and prostitutes. Lots of gambling, smoking, booze, and friendly women, too. Ruthless sob's who kill without flinching. No mercy, no whining. Few enemies that play stupid, like they are in some low-grade western wearing the black hat. No, they kill player characters, and then stamp their cigar out on the dead player's body as they walk off in the rain, leaving the player's body laying there in the mud. Corrupt, lascivious nobles, slave-keeping merchants, and bankers who enslave women and young halflings. Lots of riots in the urban streets, as well as strikes and demagogues screaming one thing or another.

I also include dank, nasty, rat-infested sewers. Jobs where player characters make a few silver as part-time Rat Catchers, or having a few beers after a day of work as a stonemason or something hard and backbreaking. That way when they make some "easy" money fighting for their life against vampire knights or fire-breathing Tyrannosaurus's they will appreciate it more.

I torture the players with chain-smoking corrupt, powerful watchmen that they know are vicious, ruthless bastards, but they have to toe the line anyways, because they know that the watchman's captain is even worse. Sometimes, he's not just a ruthless, greedy sob, but maybe he's a slave-owning S/M freak cult-leader seeking to usher in the new apocalypse of the Dark Gods. The players oftentimes aren't sure. Sometimes, as the Witch-Hunters go to work burning someone alive for heresy, or consorting with demons, they wonder if the Witch-Hunters are burning an innocent person. Ehh...then they figure, well, if the bastard isn't guilty of heresy or consorting with demons, he's probably guilty of murder, slavery, prostitution, and corruption, at least. Yep...let's go have a beer to celebrate! And so on. They might enjoy a short time of peace with their girlfriend/boyfriend/prostitute, eat some decent food, and have a party or something with some friendly wizard or an honest, forthright nobleman, before the one of their followers is raped in the dark alleyway, or a cohort gets strung out on white strawberries, or they are attacked by bands of vicious assassins on the road, or in the market square, and they are off onto some other quest.

Add one dose of epic happy goodness and heroism to seven parts grim and gritty, and somewhere along the way, everyone has a great time!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[Weeble]

bullets. lots of bullets.

 

[Frostmarrow]

Stop SHARK. Reading about your game is like looking at a cake through the baker's window.

 

[S'mon]

Here's my trick for keeping it grim:

No high level friendly NPCs! Especially, no high level clerics. In my current game with PCS 4-6 level, there are no friendly clerics of level 7+ in the area, so no Raise Dead or Restoration... a PC monk got Wisdom drained by an Allip last week, which means a lot more when it appears to be permanent!

 

[Yuan-Ti]

So, SHARK, you play Warhammer then? Or do you just use the Warhammer setting?

 

[Errant]

Don't tell them what they're facing. Describe what they're facing.

Its not a Death Knight and a couple of sword wraiths.

Its two insubstantial looking warriors, with faintly glowing eyes, clad in dark plate armor, bearing swords, large steel shields & crossbows, moving with unnatural quiet. Unsettling in appearance, but inconsequential compared to the figure standing between them. A charred, near skeletal remnant of a man, with the hellish light of infernal flames radiating from his eye sockets, and visible plumes of steam accompanying every breath. Exuding an almost palpable aura of fear, carrying himself with the practiced ease of a master warrior, seemingly little less than a physical manifestation of death itself. His blackened full plate, large shield and bastard sword all of scorched by flames.

 

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Hello Yuan-Ti I used to play Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, like back in the day when it first came out. I have my own game world that I've been playing in and developing for over 14 years now. Over time, I have blended elements of Warhammer into my own 3E game. It's wierd, perhaps, but my world has seen witness to D&D 1st edition; D&D 2nd edition; Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay; Rolemaster/RMSS, and now, D&D 3E. There are elements about Warhammer that I just love! Great setting, simple and elegant rules for stuff, but the magic system chewed, and to be honest, after playing it for some time, the game really broke down after characters reach 8-12 careers.

The game works fine if you have little or far and few between magic, and keep the careers to about 6-8 or less. At that point, the characters all begin to look alike, abilities don't differentiate, the skill system maxes out, and the system just begins to not handle characters at that level. Which, depending on how often and how intensely you play, can be rather quickly. Warhammer has a lot of good memories for me, and I remain fond of it. Warhammer reminds me of a kinda quick "beer & pretzels" rpg where you don't play very often, and don't really care that much about the individual character, because it's likely he'll die soon anyways.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[Orcus]

Shark-

Feel is great.

A good way to maintain that is to use a "bible" concept like cartoons or movies do. The director usually creates a "bible", meaning a set of images and guidelines to help set up all the scenes. For example, the Batman cartoon's bible had things like "all scenes at night, exaggerated camera angles, etc". I create similar "bibles" for my campaigns and I review it every time I prep for an upcoming session to make sure I include those thematic elements.

I had a real low magic (magic-dead initially) campaign where my "bible" included things like "the twin moons, rain, magic is evil, all friends are actually foes, common beliefs are lies, good intentions lead to unexpected bad resulty, etc". I wanted a very dark, frustrating and unheroic feel to help highlight true heroism. I even created a whole history and backstory that turned out to be superstition and totally inaccurate--which the PCs slowly learned (simulating their years of value indoctrination) was incorrect.

I then worked these elements into every session. Not always each element every time. But it really helps you focus on keeping your theme in the forefront. Sometimes the things in your bible are concepts (treachery), sometimes they are physical (rain) sometimes they are overarching symbols (the twin moons, one red and one white, representing a duality that ran through the story) of the campaign.

I had a rule: always start the night's session with something that came from my "bible". That firmly set the tone of each session.

I hope this tool helps you. It has been invaluable to me when running very "feel" and "theme" driven campaigns. Not every campaign, of course, needs such extreme attention paid to theme and feel, but for those that do this is a big help.

Clark

 

[Krug]

Gritty

1) Keep it real. If you add realistic details you add to your game.

2) No high level mentors/saviours.

3) NO freaking faeries.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Re: Gritty

NO freaking faeries.

Wellll.... maybe the Fairy Meat kind of faeries. The kind who swap babies at birth, enslave young maidens, etc.