Why do DM's like Dark, gritty worlds and players the opposite?

[TheAuldGrump]

Heh - I think that I have a fairly Grim 'n' Gritty setting, and I love it when the PCs mess with it. Hell, that is the whole point of the thing! I want them to destroy my cleverly crafted (TM) plot.

My 1600s game has a bad guy behind what, in our world, was the Thirty Years War. Someone is manipulating the nations into a catastrophic war that will nearly destroy both sides. And the PCs have a chance to stop him/her/it [pick one]. They can trim ten years off of the war, and salvage much from its destruction.

The players aren't alone, there are folks on both sides of the war who are trying to tame things back down. Some of them are even cooperating across the divide.

In the meantime plague, war, fire, and rapine sweep across the land. Mercenaries, loyal only to themselves, turn brigand when work is scarce, others take entire towns hostage, or just take over as de facto rulers.

Then add in witchcraft trials, and even some genuine evil witches - who are generally not the ones being stoned to death in the town square.

And there are people who are caught up in eye for an eye vengeance, sowing the seeds of atrocity.

Add to this the fact that the disruption of the Faith is allowing magical things back into the world and you begin to see what the villain is up to, and why he is doing what he does.

The Auld Grump

 

[Garthanos]

And, I think there is evidence for Emrikol's point. Look at all the threads decrying the ease of ressurection or raise dead. In a G&G setting, you shouldn't be able to be raised, or it should carry serious consequences. Somehow, I don't think that that idea is being pushed by players.

I certainly see that... first thing out of the box I do make raise dead more interesting... it involves a mystic quest by those most motivated and who knew the character the best in to the "grey realm" to attempt to recover the spirit before they pass too far from the world. On the way they might find themselves encountering nightmare like "things" to distract or way lay them ...

For me this is a "Yes but" ... I resist the temptation to say no I don't want your characters death to feel cheap and similar things.

 

[Thunderfoot]

First off, I want to apologize - (yeah you heard right). I get passionate when an uber-fantasy fan calls grim and gritty a power trip, it set me off and so - I'm sorry.

I do have a couple of comments to sharpen my point without being as confrontational...

Auld Grump has the right of it. I like having a solid starting point so that when the players go far afield it makes me smile. I don't like when the rules go far afield and the players take it farther, it makes my head hurt....

It's more of a sense of foundation to build off of than power control. G&G is a personal thing, I get that, Hussar, thanks for not blasting me for my ill timed comment though you could have rightfully done so. But I think you saw through what I said to what I was "trying" to say.

It IS possible to have an epic campaign without losing that "realistic" feel, it takes work, a lot of work, but that becomes a labor of love. My last campaign was co-DM'd with a more free form DM who interjected a bit of fantastic magic without first consulting me. I let it stand, obviously you can't take back what was given without making people go, huh? But we had a long civilized discussion of why it could be dangerous - "power corrupts and absolute power...." - even in the hands of NPCs.

I guess my point is I like to see players use something other than uber powers to overcome obstacles. I guess it comes from having to do it when I was a young player and I just expect it to be a part of the hobby for the ages, and whether rightly or wrongly (IMO) I see newer players being less imaginative and more imitative. I did it too, but only in doses, I liked to emulate the heroes I read about, but it was finite, I see a trend to recreate whatever is popular this week and completely import it into home-games. Yes, I'm getting old, yes I'm becoming that grognard I reared and respected when I was but a lad in the 70s; I have kids that play that will soon enough be having their own kids (but not too soon I hope) that will also play, I guess for me it is a little personal when I see the future of gaming move towards technology versus imagination and that "my" game is becoming "their" game.

I realize I've gone far afield and hijacked this thread a bit, sorry for that, but I think it is relevant in that approach is, by and large, a learned thing in DMing. I learned gritty, I live gritty, I teach gritty, seeing something else just makes me scratch my head and go, why?

 

[JohnSnow]

Lots of good points here. Personally, I'm not sure it's a strict dichotomy of "DM's like dark and gritty settings and players don't." I think there's a couple of different issues at play here.

Firstly, I have noticed some preference for dark settings in gamers of a certain type, more of whom tend to be DMs. Let's bluntly state that only more committed/serious gamers are likely to take up the reins of the DM. More casual gamers just don't DM. That said, more serious gamers are more likely to favor a dark and gritty setting. Partially, that's a desire for variety and involvement. Hack and slash dungeon crawl settings are perfectly fine for casual gamers - for the more "involved" players, they get real old, real fast.

Secondarily, I think DMs tend to favor worlds that have more adversaries. As a DM, it's much easier to move from one adventure to the next if you don't constantly have to either a) randomly move from one adventure to the next, or b) invent reasons why the foes are connected (or fall back on the old stereotype of the BBEG and his legions of goblins, undead, and yadda, yadda, yadda). Hence, "more evil" (i.e. darker) worlds are easier to create adventures for, because you have more adversaries to pick from for any given adventure.

Finally, there's the issue of "world consistency" versus "player options." Now, while these aren't necessarily in conflict, they tend to be. Players, naturally, like to have plenty of options for their characters - often gravitating to an unusual race so that they don't have to play "the same character" over and over again. DM's, by contrast, tend to like worlds where each race has a set "place" and role. Partially, that's the influence of the fiction on which we're basing stories. Most fantasy novels feature between 1 and 4 protagonist "races." Fitting in more than that can start to feel very cluttered from a DM's point of view. And it presents a problem.

As a DM, you have a couple options. First, you can embrace the "Mos Eisley Cantina" feel of D&D and let your players play any race imaginable. But the problem with this approach is that it tends to feel very "unrealistic" very quickly. Mos Eisley has dozens of sentient races because it's a waypoint for hundreds (thousands?) of worlds. A D&D world (other than, say, Sigil) is, almost by definition, a SINGLE world. It's hard to imagine all those races in a single world "getting along." Tolkien made it work (mostly) for 4 races (Men, Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits). But each added race raises the complexity level (and hence creative challenge) required to make the world "work" in a consistent way. For obvious reasons, halfbreeds and related races don't increase the complexity level much.

Multiple races tend to feel more "logical" in higher fantasy settings (like Eberron, for example). Why that is, I don't exactly know. Maybe it's the influence of, on the one hand, the Star Wars cantina, and on the other, classic Sword & Sorcery novels, where there's only usually ONE protagonist race - men. But for me, multiple races fit better in a freewheeling high fantasy mix. Lower, more "down-to-earth" settings seem to call for fewer races.

I hesitate to say this, but I'm tempted to think of Athas (Dark Sun) as down-to-earth - which makes it an exception to the general rule.

Personally, my current conundrum is making room for Dragonborn (which I like the idea of being available) into my setting. For the record, I have the same problem with all the different kinds of "magic" in D&D. But that's me.

Just a few thoughts. Cool discussion thread.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

I think several different dimensions are being confused here.

1) Grim v. happy SETTING.

2) Points of Light v. happy funland.

3) Power level. Low magic v. high magic. PC's with races like human v. PC's with races lke angel or devil.

4) Villany where there's a single opponent v. multi-vectored villany.

5) Campaigns where PC's are self-serving mercenaries on the make, versus campaigns where PC's serve a greater good.

This is a nice analysis. I think there's one additional aspect that often colors how gamers talk past each other when discussing these things:

6) Lethal vs non-lethal.

Many people roughly equate "lethal" with "gritty". This, of course, is loosely tied to power level, and addresses questions like: Is Death effectively permanent, or is it relatively easy to overcome with magic, "hero points", or some other mechanic? Are conditions like ability damage, blindness, insanity, etc. significant drawbacks, or just tactical inconveniences?

 

[Garthanos]

I guess my point is I like to see players use something other than uber powers to overcome obstacles. I guess it comes from having to do it when I was a young player and I just expect it to be a part of the hobby for the ages, and whether rightly or wrongly (IMO) I see newer players being less imaginative and more imitative.

My son plays (11 year old) and my daughter at 4 likes to play (well sort of). I see their imagination far more vivid.. than mine even now... I see my son describing and interpreting the 4th editions powers in various different ways and using the environment of the battlefield and keying off what I say...in combination with this... and it makes me go "its better than ever before". One of my sons friends who hadn't played till just yesterday commented after my son made a particularly vivid description of a green flame blade attack... "wow, I am beginning to really see this"

 

[Derren]

My son plays (11 year old) and my daughter at 4 likes to play (well sort of). I see their imagination far more vivid.. than mine even now... I see my son describing and interpreting the 4th editions powers in various different ways and using the environment of the battlefield and keying off what I say...in combination with this... and it makes me go "its better than ever before".

He is still just using his powers to overcome the obstacles.

 

[Ariosto]

Hack and slash dungeon crawl settings are perfectly fine for casual gamers - for the more "involved" players, they get real old, real fast.

Simple "hack and slash"? Yes, whether in "dungeons" or not. Proper underworlds with plenty of tricks, traps, puzzles, mysteries, intrigue, comic relief, wonders, portents, treasures, etc., and opportunities for fights? Not so much. In a milieu that also offers wilderness expeditions and urban excursions; adventures nautical, aerial and interplanar; politics by diplomacy as well as by other means; romance, friendship, family; exploration, discovery, and development; no end of new frontiers ...

"Grim and gritty" is hardly necessary to variety and involvement. Indeed, a devotion to such a tone and theme seems quite likely to limit the dynamic range by excluding whatever seems incompatible.

 

[JohnSnow]

Simple "hack and slash"? Yes, whether in "dungeons" or not. Proper underworlds with plenty of tricks, traps, puzzles, mysteries, intrigue, comic relief, wonders, portents, treasures, etc., and opportunities for fights? Not so much. In a milieu that also offers wilderness expeditions and urban excursions; adventures nautical, aerial and interplanar; politics by diplomacy as well as by other means; romance, friendship, family; exploration, discovery, and development; no end of new frontiers ...

"Grim and gritty" is hardly necessary to variety and involvement. Indeed, a devotion to such a tone and theme seems quite likely to limit the dynamic range by excluding whatever seems incompatible.

Agreed. Which is why I deferred on the originally presented dichotomy, and instead characterized the differential in 3 ways:

1) Involved setting vs. Serial Adventure
2) Darker worlds (more adversaries) vs. Brighter (more settled) ones
3) Low Fantasy (with fewer races) vs. High Fantasy (with more races)

I've seen the phrase "Dark & Gritty" used to represent the left side of each of those 3 dichotomies. Notice that I specifically eliminated "Grim and gritty" because I feel that has a very strong connotation of utter hopelessness. It carries an almost Lovecraftian feeling of impending doom. And I don't know many DM's (or players) who enjoy THAT. Certainly, not in their D&D.

"Dark & Gritty" can describe, for example, the world of A Song of Ice and Fire. And while I suppose some might call that setting "grim" as well, I wouldn't. One doesn't have the sense that the world is well and truly "doomed." It's just in deep doodoo - that, hopefully, the protagonists can save it from. I say "protagonists" because the main characters in that series aren't (all) particularly "heroic." Which is part of why it's still a "dark" setting.

Just clarifying.

 

[WayneLigon]

I think many people's bad experiences with 'grim and gritty' campaigns stems from a GM that really doesn't understand the 'grim and gritty' genre but thinks he does.

Here's an analogy. Frank Miller wrote a wonderful Batman tale called 'Return of the Dark Knight'. It was a stand-alone book not integrated into any of the Batman titles. It was dark, grim, very much outside the vein of what many mainstream comics were at the time. It made a pile of money, and so that inspired many imitators. They got the 'dark hopelessness' part right but that's all they ever saw.

Similarly, I think many GMs who attempt 'grim and gritty' see only the horrible things that happen to the PC's and not the positive things, such as trials that prepare you for travails that normally you would fail at otherwise, or rewards that come from suffering for a cause, etc. I think many of them look at it as some kind of modern 'save or die' mechanism. 'Oh, you forgot to set watches in your room at the inn. Thieves come in and slit your throats and steal all your stuff*. What? It's a grim-and-gritty world, guys...'

*actual play anecdote