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

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

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.

Close, the frustration I can empathize/recognize, it's the reasoning behind and leading to the specific changes that I'd like to understand.

But seriously, should a single low level bandit with a short bow be a threat to anyone?

Should he even be attacking? I know that were I a hungry guy with a bow I'd go looking for a deer before I went after a trained, well fed, and well equipped adventurer unless I really thought I had him dead to rights.

By the same token I like the Black Company rules where an ambush is certainly deadly enough that you don't want it if you can avoid it while not being so deadly as to wipe out the party.

That strikes me as the proper kid with a crossbow behind a door scenario. You open a door and you're surprised by a kid with a crossbow there who's got you in the sights and neither of you should want that fight.

But does that make the Black Company entirely GnG or is it simply a very cool mechanic.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

To me, as someone who prefers what I think people are calling a grim and gritty game, the defining factor isn't rate of lethality, but rather that consequences matter and continue to matter. (So I guess you could say "grim and gritty" for me isn't "severity of consequences" (I hate killing PCS, though it happens), but rather "persistence of consequences."

The ability to raise dead at a relatively low level drives me up the freakin' wall, for one example. In my game, if you're doing something seriously dangerous, you're not doing it in the knowledge that, "Oh, I'll be respawned, so no big deal." Falling damage is another example; things that should kill a person regardless (or at least with very little regard for) that person's skill level should be dealt with via Constitution damage, not hit points.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I've formed this opinion myself over many years, and will try to integrate some of the things I've read in this thread.

Grim and gritty essentially means that the player is able to identify with the character and the world, accomplished through consistent verisimilitude/suspension of disbelief.

This doesn't mean that magic has to be non-existent, but it must always be aware of the verisimilitude of the world.

This doesn't mean that death and danger have to be everywhere, but also aware of the verisimilitude of the world.

If you, the player, can accept your character taking a crossbow bolt to the chest without flinching, or falling off a cliff and walking away, or even being raised from the dead-- that is to say, if these things can be integrated by the DM in such a way that you, the player, can maintain your belief in the world-- then they very well may be appropriate to a GnG game. (When they appear rarely, or are skillfully integrated, they may also be appropriate to an otherwise "low magic" or "grim and gritty" work of fiction.)

I don't think this is the experience of most players, however. We want a game with more points in common with the real world than there are departures.

With regards to Iron Lore:

Iron Lore doesn't look like it's really trying to go that route. It seems to me that they're still trying to deliver a Monte Cook-style gaming experience-- very high magic, high action, high fantasy; it's just that the magic is intrinsic to the characters as opposed to their gear.

To a dedicated GnG player, it doesn't really matter to us whether a character has a bow that enables him to create an Arrow Ladder to clamber up a cliff, or whether the character can perform this stunt through skill no matter what bow he picks up. The very existence of the stunt (among others) strains verisimilitude. If this is meant to emulate Conan, it's the Conan of Hollywood (and "Conan the Destroyer," at that), not the Conan of REH.

 

[S'mon]

Arrow Ladder sounds more like Xena than Conan to me.

I agree that Moorcock's Elric et al are not grim & gritty. OTOH Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series is _extremely_ grim & gritty high fantasy; certainly much more than Conan, which I wouldn't put in the g&g camp. I think the gime-&-gritty (Thieves' World) vs 4-colour-superheroics (Crouching Tiger) axis is a very different one from the low power (Warhammer FRP) vs high power (D&D), or low fantasy (Lankhmar) vs high fantasy (Tolkien) axes.

 

[S'mon]

I agree that g&g does normally imply a continued danger from low-power threats. In D&D something like a double-20 crit forces a DC 15 Fort save would do it - only a 1 in 8000 chance of an auto-kill vs the high level PC, but in regular D&D it's a zero chance.

 

[Henry]

This weekend, I played a Black Company Campaign Setting game that would have made Robert E. Howard squeamish; A fighter got an arrow-head buried in his leg that gave him half move speed for half of the game, and the wizard who carelessly got too close to front-line combat got 3 fingers hacked off from a critical axe-blow. That system is lethal! In the end, they took and hid the key that opened the Box of Doom (tm), then took their hard-won 100 silver pieces and went home.

I agree with Wulf that a gritty game doesn't have to be about being poor, with arms hacked off and a pyrrhic outcome to the game. It does however, have to give a "realistic" expectation about outcomes without being all bright, shiny and happy about victory. The funny thing is, both are fun to play, and switching between styles periodically (high versus low-fantasy is what we used to call it back in the 1980's) is my preferred method of play.

 

[Azgulor]

I've formed this opinion myself over many years, and will try to integrate some of the things I've read in this thread.

Grim and gritty essentially means that the player is able to identify with the character and the world, accomplished through consistent verisimilitude/suspension of disbelief.

This doesn't mean that magic has to be non-existent, but it must always be aware of the verisimilitude of the world.

This doesn't mean that death and danger have to be everywhere, but also aware of the verisimilitude of the world.

If you, the player, can accept your character taking a crossbow bolt to the chest without flinching, or falling off a cliff and walking away, or even being raised from the dead-- that is to say, if these things can be integrated by the DM in such a way that you, the player, can maintain your belief in the world-- then they very well may be appropriate to a GnG game. (When they appear rarely, or are skillfully integrated, they may also be appropriate to an otherwise "low magic" or "grim and gritty" work of fiction.)

I don't think this is the experience of most players, however. We want a game with more points in common with the real world than there are departures.

With regards to Iron Lore:

Iron Lore doesn't look like it's really trying to go that route. It seems to me that they're still trying to deliver a Monte Cook-style gaming experience-- very high magic, high action, high fantasy; it's just that the magic is intrinsic to the characters as opposed to their gear.

To a dedicated GnG player, it doesn't really matter to us whether a character has a bow that enables him to create an Arrow Ladder to clamber up a cliff, or whether the character can perform this stunt through skill no matter what bow he picks up. The very existence of the stunt (among others) strains verisimilitude. If this is meant to emulate Conan, it's the Conan of Hollywood (and "Conan the Destroyer," at that), not the Conan of REH.

Thank you Wulf! You've summed up my definition of GnG perfectly - and much more succinctly than I appear to have done earlier. And, in support of your conclusion, D&D as written, regardless of version, has never maintained the verisimilitude/suspension of disbelief for very long in the games I've run or played.

Also, given the success of Grim Tales, Conan, Black Company, etc. (all of which make emulating novels and movies much more believable than default D&D) and the # of posts I've seen on this site alone regarding GnG, there's definitely a large audience that desires a GnG, high verisimiltude style of game. As another example, I suppose you could argue that WHFRP is just the flavor of the month, but as a non-d20 game getting a lot of discussion on ENWORLD, I'd surmize that part of it's popularity also stems from its ability to satisfy the GnG audience.

Your assessment of Iron Lore also mirrors mine (at least the later one I formed after reading the Archer preview). Prior to that preview, I thought Iron Lore would complement my Grim Tales and Conan books which would make them MUST HAVE NOW books. Given the additional information we've seen on the book, I doubt that will still be the case (for me and my games). That's NOT an indictment of Iron Lore. The excerpts, design diaries, and forum posts I've seen all suggest it's well thought-out and written. I'm just not the core audience they're targeting.

Azgulor

 

[Desdichado]

GnG is little more than a prejudice, because you can't get a straight answer on what it means?

That's absurd. Of course you can't get a straight answer; it's a nebulous concept that has to do with an aesthetic, and you want it to be something else. You want it to be a concrete thing that can be defined mechanically in game. That's a quixotic pursuit, though -- since it's a nebulous, vague aesthetic, naturally fans of it will have completely different mechanisms for applying it.

I believe it was hong, actually, in one of his rare serious moments (which, when they do occur, tend to dazzle me with his oft-concealed brilliance) who summarized it as the level of wahoo you're able to wrap your brain around. To fans of the GnG aestheic, D&D just has way too much wahoo for us to do much more than raise our eyebrow at it and say, WTF? at especially high level hijinks that seem to be a matter of course for the game.

I think the simplest solution is often the best. Look up grim in the dictionary. Here's a cut and paste from dictionary.com:

grim adj. grim·mer, grim·mest

1. Unrelenting; rigid.
2. Uninviting or unnerving in aspect; forbidding: “undoubtedly the grimmest part of him was his iron claw” (J.M. Barrie).
3. Ghastly; sinister: “He made a grim jest at the horrifying nature of his wound” (Reginald Pound).
4. Dismal; gloomy: a grim, rainy day.
5. Ferocious; savage: the grim advance of the pillaging army.

To me, that sums it up pretty well. I like GnG for the same reason I like actual medieval history, and for the same reason I like horror. It's more grounded in something that makes sense. It allows me to identify with the characters. It plays to my nature as a jaded, cynical bastard. It doesn't have more wahoo than I can get my head around.

As for the notion that GnG fans are "prejudiced" against D&D, that's almost insulting. Do you really think that GnG gamers are unfamiliar with D&D and are making judgements that are not based on their personal experiences with the game? You could maybe make a case that I'm prejudiced against Exalted, because I don't want an anime feeling game, I don't like the presumed level of wahoo, and I don't like what I know about the conventions of the game. But I've been playing D&D for years, and so have most GnG fans I know. They get that way after long exposure to D&D, and growing dissatisfaction with the game. That's not prejudice. That's postjudice, based on long, personal experience.

If you want to talk about prejudice, you might want to check your own tone. You even infer that folks who are familiar with high fantasy but who prefer GnG must not have read the high fantasy "properly." Apparently, to you, high fantasy is so absolutely superior, that the only explanation why someone would not prefer it is that they can't get it, or are just prejudiced against it. That's a pretty absurd bending of logic there to bolster up your own opinion. Is it not possible to simply say that some folks don't have a taste for D&D levels of wahoo and leave it at that?

 

[S'mon]

While I generally prefer running & playing non-g&g D&D, I have to say that the most memorable combats I've seen were in g&g systems like Runequest - having one leg crippled by an enemy javelin, pinned to the floor and throwing my spear from prone to slay the enemy broo champion, that kind of thing.

 

[WizarDru]

So, the question seems even more valid to me: what IS Grim and Gritty, other than a catchphrase? It sounds like it's like art or pornography: "I don't know what it is, but I know it when I see it." Except that several posters here clearly have differing definitions of what 'it' is, although Wulf seems to hit the closest to a more solid definition.

To me, the origins of GnG always stem from the fact that D&D is built around fighting monsters, in the same way that Champions was built around fighting Supervillains. In Champions (at least, in previous editions) a baby could throw a football the length of a football field. Verisimilitude took a dive, in favor of the overall system. In D&D, a 10th-level figher is Frazetta's Deathdealer, standing atop a pile of th vanquished dead. Normal humans? They are not threat to the Deathdealer; nothing short of a great wyrm raises his ire.

The problem, of course, is that this strains our sense of disbelief. The idea that a 10th level fighter can hold an army to stand-still irritates someone who doesn't want an Achilles or Cuchulain in his game (who, by the way, were crappy team players). Unless we're talking about the Hot Gates and the 300 (and look how that ended), it fails the logic test. At a certain point, D&D stops being about Conan and starts being about Wuxia and some folks don't dig that, they don't dig it at all.

For me, the 13th Warrior IS grim-and-gritty. As someone pointed out, the lethality is high (and was expected to be). While the filmmaker plays with our expectations a little, it's a non-magical environment and except for the occasional nod to cinematics, is very internally consistent. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is Exalted material, regardless of how tragic. People die because honor and fate decree it should be so, not because of true physical breakdown. It's not grim...quite the opposite, in fact, it's tragedy in the classic Chinese/Greek mold. At some points in the movie, it looks like everyone has a chance at a happy ending; the fact that they are all denied it so unpleasantly doesn't feel grim, to me.

The Black Company, to me, is GnG. With the exception of Croaker, anyone can die at any time, sometimes totally without warning. Combat is violent, bloody and its consequences are long-lasting. Yes, there are god-like beings astride the earth...but with the exception of the Dominator, they all can be vulnerable, even the Limper. None of the Taken are beyond death, as they discover the hard way as things go on.

Grim and Gritty, I've always thought, contained the key elements of realistic, unpleasant combat and a certain degree of fatalism or pessimistic realism. But, like I said, "I know it when I see it."