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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6014402" data-attributes="member: 4937">To keep the list short and to the point, I'll just list examples of 'gritty violence' in decreasing grittiness.1) Actual war.2) Gladiatorial combat or other duels that are generally to the death.3) Being attacked or eaten by carnivorous animals.4) Duels which are likely to be called off a first blood.5) Gang combat.6) Getting mugged.7) Street fights.8) Barfights.10) Bloodsports with few or no rules, such as early era MMA, ancient pankration, or boxing.11) Full contact combat sports involving frequent victory by contact, such a MMA, kickboxing or boxing.12) Play ground fights.13) Full contact historical reenactment, including real jousting and combat in armor or padding with real but dulled weapons.14) Low contact combat sports usually decided on points, such as free style wrestling, taikwano, judo, etc.Below this level, combat is not gritty because it is not constrained by reality.In otherwords, gritty involves 'looking like things are real and trying emulate things that are real'.By contrast, things that aren't gritty would include:1) Action movies that are trying to be gritty.2) Wuxia.3) Staged combat, such as faked jousting at dinner theater or RenFair.4) Theaterical combat, such as in a play.5) Video games.6) Action movies that aren't trying to be grittyCombat of this sort is designed to be 'showy', fun to look at, entertaining, to have a point, and to tell a definite story.Games that attempt to be really gritty tend to also be low combat, high melodrama RP fests, because frankly if the combat is actually gritty no one really wants to engage in it because it tends to maim, impair, and kill those involved.  GURPS played gritty with high tech weapons would tend to be like that.  Games that attempt to be really theaterical tend to have lots of combat, but can also get so divorsed from reality that loose thier dramatic punch - like the sterilized bloodless combat of a 1940's war movie, the Matrix especially the sequels, or the visually stunning combat of an action movie or video game which - when translated to a PnP game - never seems to be quite as interesting because it really did depend on that viceral motion and visual effects to excite you.   That can also get so cinematic that they lose any sense of tactics and problem solving.  Exalted has all those problems in spades IMO, and still manages to be too lethal and swingy for what it is trying to achieve.</blockquote>

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