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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ryltar" data-source="post: 5408212" data-attributes="member: 19393">I'll give this a try, Silvercat. I guess that the basic misunderstanding here is that you think adventure levels have anything to do with, for lack of a better term, the 'feel of an adventure'. They don't.The term 'level' basically is nothing but a measure of the player characters' power. Higher level characters generally are stronger, can take more damage, know more and stronger spells, have access to more abilities and so on. If an adventure says it is 'for level x to y', that means that you as a DM can run this game without modifications if your players' characters are within the level range of x to y.This misconception may be informed by WotC's decision to separate 4th edition class levels into so-called 'tiers' to facilitate talking about adventures; the logic behind this is that each of the (as far as I know) three 'tiers' or level ranges requires a dungeon master to allow for different considerations when approaching the adventure. For example, if players can only cast a certain spell (say: teleport) once they have reached level X, then a DM running an adventure at level (X-1) doesn't have to worry about his characters teleporting all over the place and ruining his carefully thought-out barriers and traps.Now, for the 'feel' of the adventure. Gritty is basically a made-up word which describes a setup in which the characters are often facing overwhelming odds, are more flawed and/or realistic than it is the case in 'heroic fantasy', and the adventure's themes often touch upon complicated, political and/or mature themes rather than light-hearted adventuring.For example, let's take a very basic situation. Assume that a group of heroes is attacking a lair of monsters. In a lighthearted adventure, the PCs might wipe out the monster tribe, loot their treasure and go home. In a more 'gritty' adventure, the PCs might have to work together to get captured hostages out of the monster camp. Upon finding the camp and scouting it, they find that several hostages have already been tortured and/or killed, another is in danger of dying. They must act quickly and decisively in order to get her out. But the only viable way leads through a section of the camp where the monster young are kept. Can the PCs take it upon their conscience to basically kill monster babies in order to rescue the hostage? Basic Conundrums such as this might arise in a 'gritty' game.What I'm trying to say is this: Adventures for all character levels can be 'gritty', but don't have to be. You can have more light-hearted adventuring with a level 1 party as well as a level 18 party, although the campaign themes tend to stray towards the more 'complex' the higher in level a character gets.Hope this helps you out.</blockquote>

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