So it's a misery sundae with a cherry of hopelessness on top. That's a rough row to plow though, because everyone has their satiety limits before they slip into full blown apathy. Could be fun but you'd need some really dedicated players who can travel as darkly cynical as the setting, a misery meter to tell when players are getting almost full, and a release valve to flush away the excess crap to make way for new colors of crap.

Fun, but in a forbidden adult guilty pleasure sort of way. Now if grimdark is closely related to crapsack world, does that mean we can call playing grimdark ttrpgs "brownbagging"? =)

Oh I know all about Neuroshima, mate - barely a mainstream Polish RPG that skipped my notice. It has a good enough world, but it's mechanics are SHIT.

Especially combat, which is the worst chapter about it I ever, ever read.

THe good thing is that the RPG spawned some really neat board game.

Quote from: Opaopajr;503506So it's a misery sundae with a cherry of hopelessness on top. That's a rough row to plow though, because everyone has their satiety limits before they slip into full blown apathy.

It should also be noted that RPG's are about setting, with "on-screen" action only really happening at the table (to a lesser extent, in metaplots or fiction.)

TV Tropes is focusing on works of fiction (though tabletop games are well represented). In those, it's the author forcing it to be a crapsack world, by having the hero fail or whatever. (See The Mist. This is often mistaken for "deep" or "challenging".)

In RPG's the players and DM control the action, so he can take the crappiest of crapsack worlds and, as other posters noted, play it as satire or whatever. In other words, you aren't forced of necessity to make it always turn out for the worst.

The background can assume that, the GM advice can tell you to do that, but you can ignore them both and have glorious fun tooling about a post-apocalyptic hellhole, dicing mutants and running over gangers. (Screw you, Apocaplypse World.)

It's all in the play, for RPG's. Does that mean they can be redeemed?

Sure, I guess, if you're willing to put in the work. Up to you, really.

Perhaps it is just me, but I find that, the darker the setting, the more fun I have playing a hero in it.
It is incredibly satisfying to say "fuck the odds, we do the right thing anyway".
For me, that satisfaction only increases as the odds against my character rise. At least that is my experience so far.

Actually, reading through this thread it leads me to really wonder if there is any setting aside from WH40K that actually meets the definition of "Grimdark"...

RPGPundit

Perhaps the question should have been "is WH40K at all redeemable?"

Quote from: RPGPundit;504292Actually, reading through this thread it leads me to really wonder if there is any setting aside from WH40K that actually meets the definition of "Grimdark"...

RPGPundit

Not really.  Any other setting that might come close will probably be disqualified simply because it probably is consistent and has a point.  40k has been cobbled together over 20years of influences of British Gonzo Sci-Fi, irreverent religious parody, the Rule of Cool where art and minis writes the fluff and anything and everything can be retconned depending upon who is writing the edition.

The thing the 40k fanbois never really got was that 40k is really like Traveller without an OTU, only MTU's.  There is no coherent setting, only a mountain of trappings meant to serve as a wargame backdrop.

So to answer the question, is 40k redeemable?  Sure, assuming you don't try to declare everything canon and realize you have to interpret your own 40k setting.

It occurs to me that the "redeem-ability" of a setting might be a bit like the notion of "story" in rpgs: it's something that emerges, rather than being built it.

What I mean is that a setting is redeemable only insomuch as the characters take action to redeem it.  

Certainly, the characters have the deck stacked against them in grimdark settings, but it's a real failure of the imagination (similar to following a pre-set story) to not have the setting's level of grimdarkness altered by a character's actions in the setting.

Poor Halloween Jack is too frightened of us over here, so he decided to complain about our "Modify Memory" discussion over on grognards.txt. That makes four or five times now I've been quoted there. As far as I can tell from a partial read, only Pundit has been quoted more often (though to be fair, many quotes lack attribution).

Jack, of course, doesn't have a very good imagination, so he thinks that Modify Memory means "rape" (he is, of course, complaining about rape on a board that filters the term to "surprise sex" so that he can clearly show how concerned he is about it). Presumably this is because he imagines that love = sex, or that curses have a proximity trigger of about ten feet, or that the magic is contained in the woman's vagina and that therefore Strahd's curse will only be shorted out when his penis is inserted into her magical vaginal terminal.

Dummy, you can do it anywhere, leave the girl there for the half-hour while you port over to kill Strahd, then restore her memories when you get back. L2P.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;504495(he is, of course, complaining about rape on a board that filters the term to "surprise sex" so that he can clearly show how concerned he is about it).

I've always wondered: do the knobs who post there have to pay extra to see actual curse words?

Quote from: misterguignol;504499I've always wondered: do the knobs who post there have to pay extra to see actual curse words?

The wrong response is to get angry at them mate. Just mock 'em and hope that the good ones end up over here.

Quote from: RPGPundit;504292Actually, reading through this thread it leads me to really wonder if there is any setting aside from WH40K that actually meets the definition of "Grimdark"...

RPGPundit

We get it, you don't like 40k. Next?

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;504505The wrong response is to get angry at them mate. Just mock 'em and hope that the good ones end up over here.

Oh, I'm not angry...it's a genuine question!

My research confirms that vaginas are magical.

Quote from: Aos;504514My research confirms that vaginas are magical.

Well, if an archaeologist says it, it must be true.

Quote from: misterguignol;504513Oh, I'm not angry...it's a genuine question!

I don't actually know, though I'm occasionally tempted to pay the $10 bucks so I can address my fan club directly.