[Rant] Is Grim n Gritty anything more than prejuidice?

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

The chance of rolling a single 20 (on a single roll) is 1-in-20. The chance of rolling two 20s (on two rolls) is 1-in-400. The chance of rolling three 20s (on three rolls) is 1-in-8000, or 0.000125, or 0.0125%.

Hmm, not denying math, trying to figure out where the memory came from in relation to the system that was related. Though I will gladly blame my idiocy in simply spewing the memory out without relation to the math on general distraction and tiredness. Now I'm wondering how or if I messed up the equation. It's certainly not a wrong equation, just the wrong one for the answer. Maybe I'm misplacing it on a comparison chart.

Regardless, I'm dreadfully sorry, thankful for the much needed correction, thinking that I roll too many dice in multiples, and happilly taking the consequent loss in all mathetmatical credibility.

Also, I've happilly seen Sith and I'm actually trying to recover my genre sensibilities. The cinematography on the first lightsaber battle just about had my jaw hitting the floor as I contemplated how many rules they violated that they had done well in the past.

All the droids were cool though. What episode IV was to aliens this movie was to droids.

 

[LostSoul]

I apologize. I felt your post was condescending, and I responded in kind.

No sweat. I didn't realize my post was condescending at the time, but I can see that now. Sorry about that.

If the fighter dives to the side behind a corner or a tree, then steps back into place or stumbles back so that he ends up in the same square, with a net result of no movement... how does that not jive?

I think that I think about things too much. I can see a situation where it would be better to stay down or under cover, and if I were to include that in flavour text, I would ask why my PC was getting back up. But that probably doesn't come up so much.

 

[takyris]

No sweat. I didn't realize my post was condescending at the time, but I can see that now. Sorry about that.

All good.

I think that I think about things too much. I can see a situation where it would be better to stay down or under cover, and if I were to include that in flavour text, I would ask why my PC was getting back up. But that probably doesn't come up so much.

Also true. If you're going to do that kind of flavor text, everyone in the group has to agree that it's flavor-text, that it's there to provide a good feeling but isn't there to trump the rules. If the player declares that his guy dives into a ditch where there was no ditch before to make his Reflex save, he has to then explain why he gets out of that ditch -- and if he can't come up with an explanation for why the player would do that, then he can't dive into the ditch. Or he can stay in that ditch, and the GM will rule that the enemy wizard is on a hillock that that negates any cover that hero might have had from being in the ditch -- that the wizard can just re-target now, and that cover won't work automatically (ie, it'll have to be another save).

And as the GM, you have to avoid making completely featureless rooms where there couldn't possibly be any way to get cover against the fireball or any way for the hero to get out of the fireball's radius. (Well, you have to if you want to use this method.) For me, this works, because it gets me off my butt and forces me to make more imaginative areas than I otherwise would. I'm usually pretty weak on setting.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

The chance of rolling a single 20 (on a single roll) is 1-in-20. The chance of rolling two 20s (on two rolls) is 1-in-400. The chance of rolling three 20s (on three rolls) is 1-in-8000, or 0.000125, or 0.0125%.

Aha! I figured it out! To get a 20 as your roll where you roll three twenty sided die and then take the middle score you only really need to roll two 20s as the last twenty sided die needs only be a twenty or lower. Certainly not enough to excuse my gaffe, but enough for me to understand how my memory got it so egregiously wrong as to be off a whole decimal place.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Right, this started in the Iron Lore thread, but I've transferred it here as its merely a tangent there but I think it's very good here as a specific statement of my concerns at this point.

Correct, and with respect to Dr. Strangemonkey, he doesn't get grim and gritty in the same sense that GnG afficiandos do. (There's another thread for that.)

I actually think "cinematic" is among the best descriptors for this style and is one of the primary things he's going for. Everything we have seen so far is certainly more cinematic than gritty.

Indiana Jones is not grim and gritty, nor Jackie Chan, 3M, James Bond, or Zorro.

They are not at all in the same genre as Conan and Fafhrd/GM.

But there is a difference between playing a game that allows us to do things we cannot do in the real world as a matter of skill and opportunity, vs a game that allows us to do things that are simply not possible within the laws of physics.

And it is understandable if the typical GnG player does not find Iron Lore a perfect match.

Wulf

With respect to the other thread and my complaint, which I still do hope to ressurect at some point, I think as a result of it it may be that my complaint is levelled solely at the afficianodos', as you might define it, interpretation of GnG in terms of any context larger than a gaming style.

So that a 'typical' GnG player may not find Iron Lore a perfect match, though I would find it hard to believe that a typical afficianado finds perfection in anything that isn't tinkered with, and that's more or less ok, but I have to disagree with the literary readings.

I'm revisiting Conan and Fafhrd/GM to confirm this, but I just don't think there's an honest reading of any set of media that fits what has been described to me as a hard core GnG aesthetic. There's certainly a sensibility that has been distilled, but I don't know that that's enough to justify a rigorous reading or criteria. And one certainly has the impression that that doesn't really exist given the variety and exigencies of products that have been touted as GnG, though it may be there are in fact one or two true GnG products and the rest are poseurs, but that's problematic in its own right.

The qualification of physics and physical impossibility intrigues me and seems to make it more workable, but I really really balk at the idea of verisimilitude as a criteria given the level of play into probability that would realistically involve. Aside from Napoleanic war gamers who are pursuing a very probability based narrative I don't think it's feasible as a story form.

If, as you say, it's simply something you know when you see then it would seem to me to both lack any claim to rigor and require subjective caveats, even to the level where typical probably requires qualification, or to not so much be an aesthetic with any sort of principles or structure as a refined set of rather arbitrary cultural expectations. In which case it would function as a clique dynamic along the lines of various punk subcultures united by markers and internal recognition that develop strange exclusionary identities for brief periods of time before being reintegrated into the general punk melange.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

As a side note, I'd previosly argued in that thread that GnG is inherently cinematic in that it's focused on character action and material sensuality and, in most cases, very detailed in that regard. A quality that cinema generally must have, that literature may have, and that I would argue every instance of GnG flavored media that's been used this far has.

There've been two objections to that idea thus far:

The first was that in a GnG game the DM can simply state a thing is GnG by fiat and ruling. Which I find an interesting theory as it implies a level of gaming aesthetic which is really very unique.

The second is the sense in which Wulf is using it here where cinematic action is specifically over the top action. I generally have a problem with this interpretation only in that this is explicitly not the way that I was using the term and that I think the best use of cinema is to capture exceptional performances such as Fred Astair dancing or Olivier playing Hamlet or even the early movies of horses in motion in which case the essential cinematic quality is inherently a-over the top and the over the topness is simply an addition or elaboration on the basic action orientation of medium. For Wulf's argument it works just fine except that I think its a tad confusing for the discussion generally.

 

[the Jester]

Do most people ignore this rule?

--sam

In my epic game, there's a DC 15 Fort save almost every combat. Sometimes there's lots of them. Last game someone died from one.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

That's true of high(ish) level D&D, but not low level D&D, which could arguably be called fairly grim-n-gritty. D&D is particularly odd in that PCs change from fairly fragile things to superheroic beings over the course of a few levels. Saying that 1st level PCs are "somewhat vulnerable" considerably understates the situation, IMO.

I think this is a pretty significant point.

The way I see it DnD, as a heroic fantasy system, covers the whole of the range of the genre between the deeply grim and gritty world of the first level adventurers to the sort of fragile Hercules world of the 20th level character.

It's certainly odd in terms of the way most narrative is put together, but makes sense in terms of both the distinctly modern sensibility of caring about GnG at all and the anthology idea of early fantasy.

As with Conan or Zorro being written up as a series of short stories where the character and genre itself change a great deal from story to story but with some regard for a chronology inherent to the character.

I think its weird but interesting that most RPGs have some sense of this kind of 'evolutionary' idea to storytelling.

 

[WizarDru]

I think its weird but interesting that most RPGs have some sense of this kind of 'evolutionary' idea to storytelling.

It's only weird if you approach it from the angle of 'this emulates my favorite stories' as opposed to 'this is a game' or 'this is a system that originated from a miniatures wargame'.

As Monte Cook has pointed out on numerous occasions, level advancement is the 'carrot' of the 'carrot and stick' approach. Characters are eager and excited to advance through levels, growing more competent and heroic with new powers and abilities. That hardly means that's the only way, many other systems have a completely different approach.

In the case of D&D, it best models the classic 'youth seeks his destiny and becomes a great hero' archetype. A game like GURPS, for example, takes the tack of 'one day, our heroes met up and their story began'. It's the difference between the Belgariad and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. In a D&D game, you start as a relatively weak hero, somewhat more accomplished than the average joe, and rise to the level of a legend. In a game like GURPS, you start as an accomplished hero...and advance very little.

D&Ds rapid and early advancement out of the first couple of levels is designed to get players away from such ready fragility. One might make a case that starting the players at 3rd or 4th level and then restricting level advancement to a much slower rate might be sufficiently grim-and-gritty for some....but I'll be honest: I like using Beholders and other crazy critters that would just not work in a grim-and-gritty game.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I'd also argue that the evolutionary model gives you a fuller range within the given genre that the game is set up to explore.

One way I've begun thiking of the gritty portion of grim and gritty is as a sort of value neutral criteria so that where heroic fantasy should always have some level of gritty it varies a great deal over the range of the genre.

The other aspect I've sort of 'discovered' through this conversation is that gritty has both a high lethality/threat constant and a variable bad ass action factor. I'm not really certain what to make of that except that it seems to be the source of both the coherence to the idea and diversity in its application. Just caused some confusion for me because I could understand why things with a high/lethality threat constant weren't necessarilly gritty.