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

[Mark]

This is an interesting set of works and tropes to look at here. In terms of the hit point issue, for instance, 13th Warrior seems less grim than Crouching Tiger. In 13th W people get hit a fair amount and knocked around a lot without much seeming consequence. If someone's actually going to die then it needs to be a huge gaping wound that kills them and not before they get in their significant plot development/final heroic sequence. In CTHD if you get hit, you die. The main character dies from a needle wound. The policeman dies from an axe to the head tossed off almost haphazardly and without his being able to really achieve the end of his plot. True of Li Mu Bai as well.

Deadwood is Grim and Gritty. 13th Warrior is Heroic Fantasy, with Grim and Gritty elements. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is High Fantasy, with tragic elements.

In Deadwood, people plot and scheme and murder and dispose of the bodies. Almost everyone is dirty (in many ways) and people are only portrayed in shades of moral gray, some extremely dark.

In 13th Warrior, heroes are gathered (the best of the best) to aid people that are doomed (but not helpless) to overcome great odds. There's no real magic and those who seem larger than life are so (a bit) because they manage to fight on through a fair number of wounds aren't unprecedented even in real life. Mind you that most who fight on for a bit wind up dead anyway. Many, many die on screen and we're sure that in that world many, many more will die from future carnage and disease...but for today there was a triumph. No one is coming back from the dead and they know it. Note, btw, that the sequel would have to be named The 4th Warrior.

In Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, people practically fly around and do impossible things.

We have very different ideas about what Grim and Gritty is or can be, I think.

To each his own but I prefer D&D games that are Heroic Fantasy, with a mix of Grim and Gritty elements, and a measure of magical elements sometimes associated with higher fantasy, but not so much that it becomes common place or taken for granted. Howard was my first and favorite author, and I think he captures it well.

 

[philreed]

You can die at any time, no matter what level/how bad ass you are. However, because you are heroic (or have a cleric able to cast raise dead near by) you overcome the deadly obstacles and live to tell about it.

It's my opinion that any cleric nearby automatically kills the concept of grim and gritty. Raise dead, magical healing, creating food and water from thin air -- these aren't grim and gritty (to me).

 

[The Shaman]

Deadwood is Grim and Gritty. 13th Warrior is Heroic Fantasy, with Grim and Gritty elements. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is High Fantasy, with tragic elements.

Just so we're clear, I wasn't suggesting those movies as examples of grim 'n' gritty, but rather the difference between heroic fantasy and super-heroic fantasy.

Tough guys with swords? Heroic fantasy. Tough guys with swords who run up walls and fly between tree branches? Super-heoric fantasy. Grim 'n' gritty? Could be either apparently.

To each his own but I prefer D&D games that are Heroic Fantasy, with a mix of Grim and Gritty elements, and a measure of magical elements sometimes associated with higher fantasy, but not so much that it becomes common place or taken for granted. Howard was my first and favorite author, and I think he captures it well.

Me, too.

My last fantasy game was more of an homage to Tolkein, but next time around, it's Howard and Leiber all the way.

 

[Dragonblade]

In that case, Iron Lore should fit a lot of bills, since it makes characters bad ass without relying on magic items.

Iron Lore simply builds the abilities that you would otherwise get from magical items into class abilities. The power level is essentially the same as baseline D&D.

In fact, that might even mean that baseline D&D is grittier than Iron Lore since D&D characters without their gear are much weaker than their Iron Lore counterparts.

 

[Lalato]

Do most people ignore this rule?

Massive Damage

If you ever sustain a single attack deals 50 points of damage or more and it doesn’t kill you outright, you must make a DC 15 Fortitude save. If this saving throw fails, you die regardless of your current hit points. If you take 50 points of damage or more from multiple attacks, no one of which dealt 50 or more points of damage itself, the massive damage rule does not apply.

People do realize it's a fairly simple change to either make the threshold lower or the DC higher... or both?

--sam

 

[Mark]

People do realize it's a fairly simple change to either make the threshold lower or the DC higher... or both?

--sam

Or change it to, additionally note, a percentage of hp, i.e. "50% of your hp or 50 hp, whichever is smaller,..." That's gritty.

 

[rbingham2000]

As far as hit points are concerned, the major problems with them come at high levels. Maybe limit the amount of HP your character gets to about third level or so, then institute a defensive bonus each level to make up for it.

As for those powerful critters that can do an obscene amount of damage with one hit, or that can take even your worst blows without even flinching, or both -- the kind of critters the detractors of low magic D&D point to as examples of encounters the PCs can't survive without magic and HP backing them up -- these are monsters that you run away from, treasure be damned! Conan's taken a good number of monsters and sorcerers during his career, but even he knows when to cut his losses and get the hell out of Dodge when he's up against something that he can't hope to defeat.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I'm sorry, but I disagree. Most of the thirteen die fairly quickly: only Buliwyf has a truly 'final heroic sequence' and several of the characters die 'off-camera' or in confused battle scenes.The ax that kills the constable isn't thrown 'haphazardly,' nor is the poisoned needle - they're deadly strikes from a reknowned assassin.Dr. Strangemonkey, I apologize again, but you're really losing me here - could you explain what you mean, 'cause I don't follow your reasoning at all.

I'll get to Kill Bill in a bit, but I think my point with the rest of these movies is to point out why I don't really believe, yet, that GnG actually exists except as a prejuidice. People don't die in Heroic Fantasy except as the story demands it. You have a big battle and to demonstrate its bigness you kill a few characters off camera or very quickly. Let's you know the battle's bad but that the characters will still finish the story since their quick deaths don't indicate a plot complication. You know someones going to finish the heroic fantasy tale and you pretty much know who.

In CTHD you have a much stronger sense that the actions of characters result in death not the demands of the story, at least partially because death is so rarely the end of the story for characters in CTHD. They have students and lovers who will avenge or mourn them and finish the story for them. Heck in House of Flying Daggers you have a character who is dead by virtue of a happenstance and then must choose between that death or another in order to pick out the rest of the story. In Hero everyone dies, and the manner of their deaths and the reality of it are revelations.

In DnD the level of lethality is wonky as heaven. At higher levels you're insanely likely to die. What's the theory that seventh is the deadliest level?

If GnG does actually exist as anything other than a prejuidice than I definitely think that it doesn't know what it's doing as of yet. All too often the complaints I hear seem to bear little weight under investigation. I'm certain they represent a legitimate concern, I just worry that they don't yet know what they are articulating.

It is good to hear that people are seeing a range in how GnG hit points can and can't be.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Certainly I would say that mechanically DnD makes a lot of the GnG theories I'm hearing, the various cries of high lethality, a little unwieldy since you have to invest so much time into making a single high level character.

Now that's great for a lot of reasons. It's not great for having characters die.

 

[SWBaxter]

Do most people ignore this rule?

No, it just has close to 0 effect on the sort of things that make D&D a non-grim ruleset.

People do realize it's a fairly simple change to either make the threshold lower or the DC higher... or both?

Two points: first, in order to have that approach make a high level character sweat if a bandit's covering him with a shortbow, the threshold would have to be set so low (and the DC so high) that hit points are basically meaningless. You'd be better off chucking them entirely and replacing them with something like the UA damage save mechanic.

Second, I'm pretty sure everybody's aware that they can change the rules and maybe eventually get to something like a grim 'n' gritty system. The original poster's rant appeared (to me, at least) to be wondering why anybody would want to make such changes.