Maintaining Grim and Gritty Flavour!

[BadMojo]

These are great ideas, but I'm interested in how the "superheroic" mechanics of D&D are handled to get "grim and gritty."

I believe someone already mentioned using the Vitality/Wound Points system, but you could also lower the threshold on the Massive Damage rule. Call of Cthulhu D20 mechanics help to enforce a more "gritty" feel through a combination of lower HP and a much lower Massive Damage threshold. If you want your game to be even more deadly you might consider making the Massive Damage roll harder to make.

As for non-rules stuff, I would say this:

Nobody has plot immunity. If you have a long-term NPC and the players absolutely love him/her, then kill off that NPC and make it a nice plot hook.

Don't pull punches with the PC's. Adventuring is dangerous business, and even "heroes" often die quick and seemingly meaningless deaths. Of course, it can be hard to strike a balance between a grim & gritty campaign and an absolute meatgrinder where you have very little continuity due to PC's dropping every single game session.

The lesser of two evils. Sometimes heroic types must make tough choices. Sometimes you need to sacrifice the village to save the Kingdom. Make sure the PC's realize that their actions have consequences and the "right" action isn't always readily apparent. Definitely take advantage of moral "shades of gray". If the PC's fail lots of innocent people could die...if they succeed hopefully fewer innocent people die!

 

[Grazzt]

Re: Re: why does grim and gritty imply low magic?

Oh, really? Look again. 25 replies. How many of them actually call for low magic? It sure isn't a majority. A couple call for low magic. A couple more specifically for having little clerical healing around (which isn't the same as low magic). DOesn't look like "a lot" to me.

Good call. Take the whole Elric series. Not really low-magic, but very dark and grim. Same could almost be said for Witch World (Andre Norton) though it isnt really that dark (not like Elric and some other stuff).

 

[Warchild]

Yeah, the same goes with Thieves World. It doesn't get any grittier than that setting, but it wasn't low magic. There were bunches of high level wizards. Not a lot of fireball tossing, but then the vast majority of the stories happened in the city and who wants to blow up your home? But it did happen a couple times. There weren't any clerics ressurecting anybody (well okay, they tried once but it was more like a ritual), but there was a whole bunch of Divine intervention situations and more than once gods walked the streets.
Its all about the mood and attitude, not necessarily mechanics. Sure i have my mechanics changes too (huge changes in the case of my homebrew) but thats not what makes the campaign.
Granted, being able to absorb 10 blows from a 2-handed sword can cause Superhero mentality. But if your players are also interested in the same campaign you are (a gritty one in this case), that sort of stuff won't really be a problem. They'll play along.

A Commandment i use:
-No script Immunity - or "pay attention or die!". Just because the players are the stars of the show, doesn't mean they can do whatever they want and get away with it because "they are the heroes". Think about what you are doing. Your characters don't live in a vacuum and what you do matters. Thats goes double for npc's.

 

[pomes]

Include wicked peasants. This sets the groundwork for a disturbing society.

Homosexuality. Sure everyone professes to be pro-gay these days, but you'd be surprised how supposedly open-minded players are unable to deal rationally with homosexual NPC's.

Paedophilia - nobody likes a rockspider. Want your players to hate the Royal Wizard? Give him a 9 year old boyfriend.

I've used both of these to wonderful effect in my game world. Homosexuality in particular is something that I try very hard to be careful avoiding stereotypes, and I have had both homosexual heros and villans. In fact, there is one nation in particular in which homosexuality is considered the social norm among males, and it makes for huge culture shock when a group of foreign adventurers with foreign ethics visit.

I've had one child-molesting villian. Seemed to make the party more uncomfortable and squeamish than anything. Grim and Gritty should probably include some amount of stomach-turning, but as a DM with a relatively weak stomach, it doesn't make it into my games much.

 

[Umbran]

Re: Re: Re: why does grim and gritty imply low magic?

If a cleric can cure diseases, then influenza and cholera sweeping through the slums isn't very dangerous.

Lots of people say this, but they usually don't check out the numbers before they do so. It isn't as true as you might think.

Let us consider the demographics given in the DMG, and a city of 25,000 or more people. By the DMG demographic, there will be 28 clerics capable of casting the third level spell Remove Disease. On average, probably half of those are not of the proper alignment or ethos or personal temperament to spend their 3rd level spells curing the populace.

So, following the basic pattern outlined in the DMG, I estimate the remaining clerics can cast the spell 44 times a day, total. In a city of 25,000 people, only 44 can be cured each day. In an influenza epidemic, where hundreds catch the disease each day, and may be dead in a week if they don't recieve help, the clerics aren't going to stop the problem. They can only cure 300 people a week. A real epidemic is beyond their control.

And, here's the clincher - Remove Disease speciifcally states that it doesn't stop the patient from becoming re-infected. So, in this epidemic laden city, if the cured don't leave, they're likely to need the cleric's services more than once!

So, what happens when the epidemic hits? There are 8,000 sick people, who may be dead in a week if not cured, and only 300 can be saved? You work out how grim and gritty this city becomes

So, while the availability of Remove Disease is great for an individual or adventurer on a normal workday, it won't stop the really bad problems. Especially in a world where the DM likes Darwinian evolution, and realizes that the ability to cure the diesease quickly favors highly virulent strains

Oh, also, what else is going on while the nice clerics are curing and handling crowds they cannot serve? Well, the not so nice clerics are having a bit of an unchecked field day, now aren't they?

 

[Tiefling]

Sweet Be-jezz-hus! That is so darn vile I don't even think Monte Book of Vile Things will even touch on it. And neither will I, that is just WAY to contraversial.

Really? I was under the impression that the public opinion of pedophilia was pretty universal.

Anyway, I think a big part is to have people whom the PCs think of as friends do things that in modern times would be considered immoral, but wouldn't be in a Grim and Gritty world (or Grym and Grytty if you prefer, Grymlord ). Things like pedophilia, slavery, etc., so that you can firmly establish the morals of the world in the minds of your players. And if a player who's really LG-ish in real life starts to have his character do those things, you know you've got something.

 

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Teifling! How have you been? Haven't seen you around here in quite some time!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[Grazzt]

Re: Re: Re: Re: why does grim and gritty imply low magic?

Lots of people say this, but they usually don't check out the numbers before they do so. It isn't as true as you might think.

Let us consider the demographics given in the DMG, and a city of 25,000 or more people. By the DMG demographic, there will be 28 clerics capable of casting the third level spell Remove Disease. On average, probably half of those are not of the proper alignment or ethos or personal temperament to spend their 3rd level spells curing the populace.

So, following the basic pattern outlined in the DMG, I estimate the remaining clerics can cast the spell 44 times a day, total. In a city of 25,000 people, only 44 can be cured each day. In an influenza epidemic, where hundreds catch the disease each day, and may be dead in a week if they don't recieve help, the clerics aren't going to stop the problem. They can only cure 300 people a week. A real epidemic is beyond their control.

And, here's the clincher - Remove Disease speciifcally states that it doesn't stop the patient from becoming re-infected. So, in this epidemic laden city, if the cured don't leave, they're likely to need the cleric's services more than once!

So, what happens when the epidemic hits? There are 8,000 sick people, who may be dead in a week if not cured, and only 300 can be saved? You work out how grim and gritty this city becomes

So, while the availability of Remove Disease is great for an individual or adventurer on a normal workday, it won't stop the really bad problems. Especially in a world where the DM likes Darwinian evolution, and realizes that the ability to cure the diesease quickly favors highly virulent strains

Oh, also, what else is going on while the nice clerics are curing and handling crowds they cannot serve? Well, the not so nice clerics are having a bit of an unchecked field day, now aren't they?

Very nice Umbran. Check this out for another example. No way clerics could handle this one:

In October of 1347, several Italian merchant ships returned from a trip to the Black Sea, one of the key links in trade with China. When the ships docked in Sicily, many of those on board were already dying of plague. Within days the disease spread to the city and the surrounding countryside.

The disease [black plague] struck and killed people with terrible speed. The Italian writer Boccaccio said its victims often

"ate lunch with their friends and dinner with their ancestors in paradise."

By the following August, the plague had spread as far north as England, where people called it "The Black Death" because of the black spots it produced on the skin. A terrible killer was loose across Europe, and Medieval medicine had nothing to combat it.

In winter the disease seemed to disappear, but only because fleas--which were now helping to carry it from person to person--are dormant then. Each spring, the plague attacked again, killing new victims. After five years 25 million people were dead--one-third of Europe's people.

 

[Errant]

Nobody has plot immunity....

Don't pull punches with the PC's....

The lesser of two evils....

Definitely, all of the above. I think I'm getting a handle on using descriptions, but I still need to work on all of these plot angles.

I can be hard not to pull punches though. I've wondered if having my players keep backup/replacement characters would help, or hinder a game.

 

[mmadsen]

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.

Then you sit down with your players to start gaming?

Ruthless sob's who kill without flinching. No mercy, no whining.

To borrow from other media, one of the best ways to show how lethal or cruel the enemy is is via "red shirts" or "spear carriers". That's why henchmen and followers are so great. You can torture them, you can maim them, you can enslave them, you can graphically dismember them, etc.

It does ruin the mood though when a cleric can just heal the fellow who had his eyes burned out with a hot poker.

Few enemies that play stupid, like they are in some low-grade western wearing the black hat.

Rather than have the enemy play stupid, I prefer to either (a) use a smaller, less powerful enemy, if that's plausible, (b) use a smart enemy that simply doesn't know our heroes' abilities and isn't prepared, or (c) use a strong enemy, play them smart, but give them objectives other than killing our heroes.

Why not capture the heroes? Captured enemies really are worth more than dead enemies, especially when slavery (or ransoming) is expected, and there are no Geneva conventions on handling prisoners.

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 like that. You can kill yourself struggling through a hard day's work for a silver penny -- or you can make great money adventuring! Hey, how bad could adventuring be? I'll see the world!

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!

Exactly.