Can I ask a question?
Why does there seem to be such a large proliferation of "low, dark, gritty" settings or setting elements? Especially gritty: it seems that every new setting I run across, published or otherwise, is trying to focus on the gritty elements.
I don't think that there are that many well-done low dark gritty settings out there. The major ones published by WotC (Greyhawk, FR, Eberron) certainly aren't, at least not in my book.
Since there’s been some discussion upthread about the meaning and attraction of “grittiness” in a setting, let me try to clarify what I meant.
By “gritty” I mean a setting that includes and often emphasizes the darker, more “realistic” (obviously a relative term in FRPGs) aspects of life in a quasi early medieval world where life is nasty, brutish and short and people behave accordingly. In a gritty setting, the good don’t always win; in fact, it’s sometimes hard to find any of them at all. There’s no archetypical fairytale “knights in shining armour”; only frightened, desperate people trying to deal with hard times and, just maybe, reluctantly, becoming heroes in the process. In a gritty setting, nuance and detail matter more, because rewards are few and hard-won and setbacks are frequent. Often, success means just getting by, choosing the lesser of two evils.
Some people may wonder why this style of gaming is attractive. And indeed, for short campaigns or pick-up games, there is probably little appeal to it. Why to start out as a lowly peasant who is glad to make it through the session in one piece when you can be a hero from the start? Certainly, from a gameist perspective, more powerful protagonists offer more interesting options, both to the player as well as to the GM designing the campaign. You can follow up powerful opponents with more powerful ones and have heroes turn into near superheroes, battling demons and demigods, all in the span of a few sessions. I’m sure that to create these kinds of plots takes real skill and, if done right, is a very enjoyable thing. The reason I don’t is because a) I fairly suck at it and b) my group likes for our campaigns to go on over long periods of time.
And here’s why I like my settings gritty. My campaigns have tended to run for two or three years, spanning probably 80 or more sessions, and I believe that under these circumstances, the individual episode’s dramatic arc must take second place to that of the campaign. Otherwise, things get bland. If the PCs start out as minor heroes, vanquish dragons, powerful undead and arch-villains all in the first ten sessions, how do I top this?
“Things were great and then they got even better and better” just doesn’t make for compelling long-running plots. “Things were really tough and then, gradually, there was a glimmer of hope and finally, against all odds, the heroes prevailed (for the moment anyway)” is much stronger in terms of dramatic potential.
So I prefer gritty, because it gives me more room to pace long-running campaigns, and slowly develop challenges, enemies and allies. The rewards, for our group, are that by starting out slow, gradually, a really well-defined world and hero personae emerge. And that’s satisfying in a way that you just don’t get from one-shots (or indeed any other kind of game, imho).
