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

[Dakkareth]

Black Company has Raven, who was bad ass. He only failed once, due to a SUPER EVIL artifact.

... and it a total loser, when it comes to dealing with people and especially Darling. Which kinda is the point.

 

[The Shaman]

The PC is a hero - but not a super-hero. That is the dinstinguishing element of those who look for that feeling in their game and game system.

That sounds about right to me.

I've used the trope 'grim 'n' gritty' without serious regard for a specific definition in the past - perhaps the contrast between 'heroic' and 'super-heroic' might be better for me, since high levels of lethality, which seems to be a unifying concept of grim 'n' gritty as described here so far, doesn't necessarily describe my approach. I think it's also in keeping with the idea that D&D is a game about heroes, and the differences in campaign-styles are by a matter of degree.

So what is the difference between heroic and super-heroic?

I've been thinking of examples in a couple of different genres. For example, 'heroic fantasy' could be represented by The 13th Warrior or Dragonslayer while 'super-heroic fantasy' would be closer to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Hero (the Jet Li movie, not the Dustin Hoffman movie!). In the Modern genre, it could be the difference between Ronin or The Bourne Identity and Charlie's Angels or Kill Bill, Vol. 1.

Going back to the fantasy, Lord of the Rings would be closer to heroic fantasy than super-heroic fantasy (with the exception of Legolas sliding down the stairs on his shield or swinging aboard the mumakil) while The Golden Voyage of Sinbad would probably be around the midpoint between the two.

I haven't put a lot of thought into this - it just popped into my head on reading Steel_Wind's post - so please be kind as you point out the foolish error of my ways.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

So is Grim n Gritty mostly a hate of hit points then?

Azgulor mentioned cheese as a factor, and that's a point that interests me. Cause while I have real doubts that we could come up with what does and does not constitute cheese I bet we could come up with something a little more functional than the transition from Cheese to the arrow ladder ability. Which isn't to say that I don't think that's right or justifiable just that I think that when we say that we're leaving out the good parts.

BTW, in terms of IL I'd argue that the real complaint with the arrow ladder ability is that it should have been a broader sniper's nest or grappling hook ability. Given the DM more room to play with the description of the ability. Though I should also state that I have no problem with the ability in its own right, it's one of several options in the context, and, honestly, I feel it's more or less appropriate. Though silverware certainly works better for the image than actual arrows.

I like it when, at higher levels, bad ass skill translates into practical abilities. Just as I like it when, at higher levels, practical ability translates into bad ass skill. Like the scene in Long Kiss Goodnight where her assassin training initially shows up as a skill with knives so they assume she's a chef.

Two things I am certainly grateful to grim and gritty for are the insistence on ambushes being far deadlier and the potential for long term wounds. Novels are free to hide a lot of the surrealism compared to RPGs simply because there's so much more narrative control and so much less risk, but I really like rules for lingering injury and long term poisoning as they are such a seriously bad ass trope in all the best fantasy. So I'm grateful to GnG in RPG design where they bring in the good drama from that.

Though I have to say that in the d20 world of GnG I've yet to see a dynamic for that that really felt comfortable. The ambush mechanics in Black Company felt pretty good, very very very good if you were working with groups of characters and their followers, but that's the best I've seen so far.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Reading always begins with an expectation or a set of expectations, I'll give you that. It's just basic hermeneutics. Whether these expectations are genre-related or not (in fantasy they're likely to be, I imagine), they're always there. But in singling out specific features of 'fantasy literature,' for example, in grouping these texts together according to what they have in common, you've already foregrounded what is least interesting about them, you've already created a sort of homogenous zone of 'fantasy' that you can travel over in any direction because you know it already, without even having to read it, because it's 'fantasy.' Just as a sort of example, look at the idea of 'Romanticism.' 100 years ago (well, technically about 105) there was no such thing--literary historians hadn't invented it yet, hadn't yet assimilated the very disparate texts we now think of as Romantic into a whole. 50 years ago, any schoolboy could have told you what Romanticism was. Now we've come full circle. In fact pretty much the biggest "scandal" (used loosely) of English departments in the last ~40 years was the argument over whether there was or was not any such thing as Romanticism, and if it did exist, just what exactly was it?

Anyway, my point here is only that genre comes after the works it describes, so to give it any sort of authority over them is backwards. It is absolutely possible to read without any idea of genre in your head.

I can't tell you how much I'd love to pursue this conversation further, but I can't help feeling that too much further will take us beyond the area where this helps to explore the issue at hand. Suffice to say that were we to have this conversation, I would argue that genre in fact predicates writing and that you can't, in fact, read a work without an idea of the genre involved. Hopefully, if you don't know the genre from somplace else the work or the context you are reading or seeing it in will teach it to you, but if you don't learn the genre or figure it out then you will never get the work in question and, on a very basic level, you will fail to produce the work in question whether as a reader or a writer. You mention that a lot of kids go into Shakespeare with no knowledge of the genre, but of those who come out of it will there be any who actually got or enjoyed the works in question who won't have learned something about the basic genre mechanics of the tragedian form?

I'm not saying that you have to have a perfect understanding or that your reading of an individual work will not outstrip or underperform in terms of your understanding of the genre, but that there is an essential correlation between your ability to read a thing and your capacity for understanding its genre. This is most apparent when it comes to technical writing such as manuals, the infamous disconnect between the American consumer and the VCR instruction manual comes to mind, but I think it's also very apparent in RPGs as well where the knowledge and understanding of genre function to guide the player and GM in their double roles as readers and writers. It's probably why I find this subject so fascinating.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I've been thinking of examples in a couple of different genres. For example, 'heroic fantasy' could be represented by The 13th Warrior or Dragonslayer while 'super-heroic fantasy' would be closer to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Hero (the Jet Li movie, not the Dustin Hoffman movie!). In the Modern genre, it could be the difference between Ronin or The Bourne Identity and Charlie's Angels or Kill Bill, Vol. 1.

Going back to the fantasy, Lord of the Rings would be closer to heroic fantasy than super-heroic fantasy (with the exception of Legolas sliding down the stairs on his shield or swinging aboard the mumakil) while The Golden Voyage of Sinbad would probably be around the midpoint between the two.

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.

I like Kill Bill because it seems to me that you look at the whole of that and what it is is really a very very sharp, and to me profoundly convincing, critique of the idea of GnG as it shows up in any sort of story or media. If I could parse Kill Bill out I might very well use it as the whole of my argument for why I think you can play at GnG and get great benefit, but you can't actually make it work.

 

[Particle_Man]

From what I get the feeling, it's not so much grim and gritty as reliance on outside magical items to be bad ass.

Yes, Raven, Captain, and others are bad ass, much like Conan and Solomon Kane.

However, stripped to the skin and thrown into a pit of alligators, they are still bad ass.

Typical 20th level D&D character in same situation with no spells memorized, unless it's a monk or monk variant, is alligator chow.

Maybe I'm wrong and people want the grim and gritty instant kill thing but I think it's all abou the magic and the balance built into the game of having that magic, especially in terms of healing.

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

 

[The Shaman]

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.

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.

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.

The ax that kills the constable isn't thrown 'haphazardly,' nor is the poisoned needle - they're deadly strikes from a reknowned assassin.

I like Kill Bill because it seems to me that you look at the whole of that and what it is is really a very very sharp, and to me profoundly convincing, critique of the idea of GnG as it shows up in any sort of story or media. If I could parse Kill Bill out I might very well use it as the whole of my argument for why I think you can play at GnG and get great benefit, but you can't actually make it work.

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.

 

[Treebore]

Grim and Gritty as defined by me:


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.

Of course I feel the need to balance this with the fact that the game is supposed to be fun. For this to really happen I also need players who can handle their character dying, maybe several times over the course of a campaign. They also need to accept this as realistic in a game world where coming back from the dead is possible, and common in most D&D worlds.

Power level has nothing to do with Grim and Gritty, the threat level has everything to do with it, IMO.

Then there is Chinese Grim and Gritty. The heroe(s) always die at the end of the tale. Such as Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Tiger/Dragon, Warriors of Heaven and Earth, etc...

Mulan is the only exception to this (that I know of), of course she is a real life hero, but she still lived to be an old age, but never married or had children. So for a hero, she still died a tragic death, but she had a very honorable life. So a bitter/sweet tale of a Chinese hero. BTW, I am referring to the real history of Mulan, not the Disney movie. The movie is what prompted me to find out the truth of Mulan, though.

 

[LostSoul]

One of the elements of D&D is that, when you gain levels, you become so far removed from the common man that you are effectively not one of them any more.

It reminds me of the X-Men fighting other X-Men in NYC while the hapless police and other normals just run away helplessly. The two super-powered groups beat up on each other, using all kinds of strange special abilities, and then walk away with hardly a scratch (although the clothing is sometimes torn).

I think grim & gritty would try to keep its characters grounded in the real, even if they are kick-ass.

 

[SWBaxter]

So is Grim n Gritty mostly a hate of hit points then?

Not in and of itself - there are lots of grim n gritty rules systems that use hit points, and non-grim rulesets that don't. It's more a desire that hit points and other mechanics don't ultimately have the effect of making ordinarily lethal events trivial.