Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 10, 2023, 01:25:14 PM
I've always understood "dark fantasy" to mean fantasy with an edgy aesthetic in an attempt to appear more mature than Tolkien. Writers throw in blood, guts, boobs, butts...

Nothing more mature than a ton of boobs and butts.  I'm working on my new Heavy Gear campaign RN and I keep having to tell myself Not Every NPC Can Be A Bootilicious Babe, Simon... 

Quote from: Eric Diaz on July 10, 2023, 09:49:49 AM
I mentioned suffering, others mentioned nihilism, and I agree. "Meaningless suffering" might be a good criteria, as meaningful suffering/sacrifice can still be epic (not tragic). Still, I think suffering is the main focus, even if something partially good comes out of it.

I have to disagree pretty strongly about that. The Norse myths inevitably end in the final defeat of the gods at Ragnarok. Are they meaningless? Are they not tragic? What about the Iliad? That's almost entirely about violence and suffering. The way I see it, the meaning in a tragic story is found in the tragedy itself.

I think you're conflating tragedy with sadism.

Going back to the original examples:

Elric's story is one of dramatic irony. A creature of Chaos who by a quirk of fate is pressed into the service of Order. Elric's death comes as the culmination of his destiny, of routing the forces of Chaos and restoring balance to his world. The tragedy is in the fact that he never had a choice, and in the personal cost he pays in fulfilling it.

Berserk's story is unfinished, and with the death of Kentaro Miura, any ending that gets published will always have an asterisk attached to it. That said, I don't see how anyone can read the manga seriously and not see it as a morality play. Guts' world is first built, and then destroyed, by the arrogant ambition of Griffith. Miura played it pretty cagey as to what the ultimate moral of the story was going to be, but at the time of his death the trajectory appeared to be that while Guts' quest for revenge was justified, he could never fulfill it until he let go of vengeance for its own sake, and learned instead to fight for the people he cared about.

Dark Souls plays things even more cagey with its overarching narrative (as it does with most things), and the "point" has probably changed with different directors and creatives throughout the series. I think the most credible interpretation of the first games' ending is that you're presented with a choice: 1) Sacrifice yourself to preserve the Age of Fire, returning the world to the state of former glory you've been witnessing the ruins of the whole game, but do so in the full knowledge that state is transient and will inevitably fade again; or 2) gamble on the Age of Dark, which might easily prove to be worse, but will at least be different (conservative vs. progressive you might say, though I think that's unintentional). The second game toys with the idea of a middle way, but never confirms whether it's actually possible, and the third game implies that the fire/dark dichotomy is itself illusory and the world will inevitably return to it's pre-cycle state of changelessness.

Of the three, the most seemingly "nihilistic" is Dark Souls. The concept of an eternal cycle of entropic decay is arguably a nihilistic one. The problem is that Dark Souls also has a concurrently running theme of purpose and perseverance. The entire Undead Curse, which is the central narrative device of the games, is built around it.  Undeath in the Dark Souls universe is actually a pretty good gig. You retain all your faculties and are functionally immortal. The downside is the hollowing process, wherein you lose your mind and become a ravenous monster. Hollowing only occurs when an Undead loses their spirit and sense of purpose. All of the NPCs you meet that later go hollow are cautionary tales about what happens when you give up in the face of adversity.

It's also worth pointing out that the appeal of the Dark Souls games is much less about the grand narrative, and more about the little sub-stories that are sprinkled throughout. For proof of that, just go look at any of the million youtube videos retelling those stories and their view-counts. I was going to spell several of them out, but this comment is already too long. Suffice to say that while the vast majority of them are tragic, the most memorable ones are rarely about senseless cruelty. They're about things like love, honor, devotion, greed, or sacrifice.

There are valid objections to all three: Elric arguably strips the protagonist of agency in making him a pawn of fate. Berserk arguably doesn't need to be so grim and gory to tell its story, and Dark Souls is likely to be unpalatable to a Western mindset. The idea of eternal cycles and escaping them as the goal has a distinctly Buddhist bent to it. But I don't see how you can credibly reduce any of them down to meaningless violence and sadism.

Even more lowbrow Dark Fantasy stuff like Goblin Slayer or the Death Dealer comics usually has something else going on beyond just being gorey.

What does feel that way to me is Game of Thrones (I use that title, because I haven't read the books). That really strikes me as a fictional world built on pointless cruelty, randomly directed at innocents with no greater narrative or thematic purpose. That's a big part of why I dislike GoT.  But I might just be ignorant of what's going on under the surface of that story.

By reputation, the Black Company books sound like the same thing, but again I haven't read them. I finally bit the bullet and got eBooks of the Kane series, so I'll have an opinion on those soon. Maybe I'll feel the same way; maybe not.

Trying to circle this back to the topic, I have a real problem squaring the circle of Game of Thrones and Elric being in the same genre. GoT is relentlessly grim and practical; down-to-earth to the point of being covered in mud. There is no apparent cosmic order or right and wrong. Meanwhile Elric is far more romantic and conceptual, and is centered around a conflict between cosmic forces.

As I said above, It's possible that I've got the wong end of the stick entirely by even trying to talk about "Dark Fantasy". The more the conversation goes on, the more I think "Dark" is just a modifier that ought to be applied to other sub-genres. Everything I've been talking about might be described as "dark heroic fantasy" (or as I suggested, "cosmic fantasy"). Maybe Kane is "dark swords and sorcery" and GoT is "dark historical fantasy". 

I don't know. I'm definitely not claiming to have the perfect answer on this.


EDIT: To add to that second-to-last paragraph, I suppose that's kind of what I was getting at when I posited that "dark fantasy" is more an aesthetic and tonal genre than a thematic one.

Quote from: S'mon on July 10, 2023, 08:36:24 PM
I'm working on my new Heavy Gear campaign RN and I keep having to tell myself Not Every NPC Can Be A Bootilicious Babe, Simon... 

Why not? Setting all the seriousness aside, boobs are fun.

Quote from: ForgottenF on July 10, 2023, 09:01:40 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on July 10, 2023, 09:49:49 AM
I mentioned suffering, others mentioned nihilism, and I agree. "Meaningless suffering" might be a good criteria, as meaningful suffering/sacrifice can still be epic (not tragic). Still, I think suffering is the main focus, even if something partially good comes out of it.

I have to disagree pretty strongly about that. The Norse myths inevitably end in the final defeat of the gods at Ragnarok. Are they meaningless? Are they not tragic? What about the Iliad? That's almost entirely about violence and suffering. The way I see it, the meaning in a tragic story is found in the tragedy itself.

I think you're conflating tragedy with sadism.

Going back to the original examples:

Elric's story is one of dramatic irony. A creature of Chaos who by a quirk of fate is pressed into the service of Order. Elric's death comes as the culmination of his destiny, of routing the forces of Chaos and restoring balance to his world. The tragedy is in the fact that he never had a choice, and in the personal cost he pays in fulfilling it.

Berserk's story is unfinished, and with the death of Kentaro Miura, any ending that gets published will always have an asterisk attached to it. That said, I don't see how anyone can read the manga seriously and not see it as a morality play. Guts' world is first built, and then destroyed, by the arrogant ambition of Griffith. Miura played it pretty cagey as to what the ultimate moral of the story was going to be, but at the time of his death the trajectory appeared to be that while Guts' quest for revenge was justified, he could never fulfill it until he let go of vengeance for its own sake, and learned instead to fight for the people he cared about.

Dark Souls plays things even more cagey with its overarching narrative (as it does with most things), and the "point" has probably changed with different directors and creatives throughout the series. I think the most credible interpretation of the first games' ending is that you're presented with a choice: 1) Sacrifice yourself to preserve the Age of Fire, returning the world to the state of former glory you've been witnessing the ruins of the whole game, but do so in the full knowledge that state is transient and will inevitably fade again; or 2) gamble on the Age of Dark, which might easily prove to be worse, but will at least be different (conservative vs. progressive you might say, though I think that's unintentional). The second game toys with the idea of a middle way, but never confirms whether it's actually possible, and the third game implies that the fire/dark dichotomy is itself illusory and the world will inevitably return to it's pre-cycle state of changelessness.

Of the three, the most seemingly "nihilistic" is Dark Souls. The concept of an eternal cycle of entropic decay is arguably a nihilistic one. The problem is that Dark Souls also has a concurrently running theme of purpose and perseverance. The entire Undead Curse, which is the central narrative device of the games, is built around it.  Undeath in the Dark Souls universe is actually a pretty good gig. You retain all your faculties and are functionally immortal. The downside is the hollowing process, wherein you lose your mind and become a ravenous monster. Hollowing only occurs when an Undead loses their spirit and sense of purpose. All of the NPCs you meet that later go hollow are cautionary tales about what happens when you give up in the face of adversity.

It's also worth pointing out that the appeal of the Dark Souls games is much less about the grand narrative, and more about the little sub-stories that are sprinkled throughout. For proof of that, just go look at any of the million youtube videos retelling those stories and their view-counts. I was going to spell several of them out, but this comment is already too long. Suffice to say that while the vast majority of them are tragic, the most memorable ones are rarely about senseless cruelty. They're about things like love, honor, devotion, greed, or sacrifice.

There are valid objections to all three: Elric arguably strips the protagonist of agency in making him a pawn of fate. Berserk arguably doesn't need to be so grim and gory to tell its story, and Dark Souls is likely to be unpalatable to a Western mindset. The idea of eternal cycles and escaping them as the goal has a distinctly Buddhist bent to it. But I don't see how you can credibly reduce any of them down to meaningless violence and sadism.

Even more lowbrow Dark Fantasy stuff like Goblin Slayer or the Death Dealer comics usually has something else going on beyond just being gorey.

What does feel that way to me is Game of Thrones (I use that title, because I haven't read the books). That really strikes me as a fictional world built on pointless cruelty, randomly directed at innocents with no greater narrative or thematic purpose. That's a big part of why I dislike GoT.  But I might just be ignorant of what's going on under the surface of that story.

By reputation, the Black Company books sound like the same thing, but again I haven't read them. I finally bit the bullet and got eBooks of the Kane series, so I'll have an opinion on those soon. Maybe I'll feel the same way; maybe not.

Trying to circle this back to the topic, I have a real problem squaring the circle of Game of Thrones and Elric being in the same genre. GoT is relentlessly grim and practical; down-to-earth to the point of being covered in mud. There is no apparent cosmic order or right and wrong. Meanwhile Elric is far more romantic and conceptual, and is centered around a conflict between cosmic forces.

As I said above, It's possible that I've got the wong end of the stick entirely by even trying to talk about "Dark Fantasy". The more the conversation goes on, the more I think "Dark" is just a modifier that ought to be applied to other sub-genres. Everything I've been talking about might be described as "dark heroic fantasy" (or as I suggested, "cosmic fantasy"). Maybe Kane is "dark swords and sorcery" and GoT is "dark historical fantasy". 

I don't know. I'm definitely not claiming to have the perfect answer on this.


EDIT: To add to that second-to-last paragraph, that's kind of what I was getting at when I posited that "dark fantasy" is more an aesthetic and tonal genre than a thematic one.

I think we mostly agree with this - I meant nihilism and meaningless suffering can often be present, but the "suffering" part is the important one, "even if something good comes out of it".

Notice, suffering permeates the entire human experience. Dark fantasy DWELLS on it - hopelessness, eternal punishment, torture, endless death ("scorched earth" style), and so on. Both Elric and GoT do this, but while Elric has being condemned to suffer for aeons or never find peace, GoT talks about famine, dysentery and SA - while Berserk does both torture/SA and some comic horror.

These are both "dark fantasy" in the same way as Lovecraft and Texas Chainsaw massacre are both horror, but one is "cosmic horror" and the other is "slasher".

Believe Game of Thrones was loosely based on the War of the Roses.

Which if you read the history on that war, it was as bloody or worse than the TV series/books.

Quote from: ForgottenF on July 10, 2023, 09:01:40 PMI think you're conflating tragedy with sadism.

No Id say Dark Fantasy borders on sadism. As in enjoyment comes from the suffering of the characters. And explicitly suffering.

A Dark Fantasy with a happy ending or overcoming the odds in a meaningful way without everybody else suffering in hell for millenniums generally instantly loses its "Dark Fantasy" connotations. Ergo it is about suffering. It's not necessarily sexual pleasure, but our kicks come from how shit everybody else is.

I'm bilely fascinated with Dark Fantasy settings. I like reading up on them, and they indeed look cool, but a key aspect is HOPELESSNESS and suffering. Nihilism need not apply. I mean there is a meaning in Kingdom Death - Amusement for a malevolent deity.

Edit: Dark Souls is unpalatable to me not because "Anybody that dislikes it is a filthy gaijin" its because it sets up some people as bad or good (in framing) when everybody turns evil and suffers for eternity no matter what except the player character because nobody would play that otherwise.

Search for immortality? Turn into a monster because of your folly.
Don't search for immortality? Monster it up because fuck you.
Try to fight the darkness? Turn evil and get killed by the player character anyway.
Revel in darkness? Probably get the most fun out of anybody else. If you RELISH in spreading suffering chaos and Darkness in Dark Souls (and most souls-borns), you're on the winning team even if you will die anyway.

Taken as a whole Dark Souls and its Souls-likes are about the triumph and supremacy of EVIL. Which I guess is beyond nihilism. Its a castigation of reality. Reminds me of Angels Egg which Dark souls cribs from at one point.

I like Sekiro however. It turns a sort of end-of-the-world scenario more humanistic. It doesn't need to tell a story about desperation, suffering, and struggle in the face of literally impossible odds without needing to make a universe whose base rules is that everybody dies for eternity.

This reminds me of music sub-genre invention every few years.  If I say "Like Dark Sun 1e with BROM art?", will I get hair-splitting for a forum page or twelve? I am kind of too old to care about such granular categorization nowadays.

Whatever, come up with definition out of the word-smithy and we might run with it until the next re-forging of words. Best of luck!

Quote from: Opaopajr on July 11, 2023, 12:04:05 AM
This reminds me of music sub-genre invention every few years.  If I say "Like Dark Sun 1e with BROM art?", will I get hair-splitting for a forum page or twelve? I am kind of too old to care about such granular categorization nowadays.

Whatever, come up with definition out of the word-smithy and we might run with it until the next re-forging of words. Best of luck!

Yes, genre are not neat boxes, but vague directions. Some great works mix and defy genres (this is the case for the "weird fiction" we all love).

About dark fantasy RPGs, here is something I wrote about mine.

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2018/04/whats-so-dark-about-dark-fantasy-d.html

As you might know, Dark Fantasy Basic is my vision of how a dark D&D (BX/5e) would look like.

[...]

Here is a small list that may be useful if you're trying to add "dark" elements to ANY version of D&D, or other RPGs.

- Magic is dangerous! DFB treats magic as any other skills - roll against a DC (10+spell levelx2), but with a caveat - fail by 10 more and the spell might turn against you, drain your strength, cause mutations etc. Magic "fumbles" are the worst fumbles of the game. You can cast spells WAY above your level.. but that is asking for trouble!

- Nonhumans are mysterious! I made the player's guide human-only; nonhumans should mostly be monsters (and I plan to mention humanoid monsters in monster's books in the future), I think, although I'm not sure many people would enjoy D&D without demihumans (and, it seems, wouldn't work very well for your setting), so I added a few options.

If you're adding elves and dwarves to your dark fantasy games, better make them rare, mysterious and, preferably, utterly alien.

- Alignment isn't black and white! I prefer Chaos/Law instead of Good and Evil (well, good and evil are black and white after all), but I take a Moorcockian, not Andersonian, view of these forces. No good/evil axis on my game. Many evil foes think themselves to be good...

- The gods must be crazy! Deities are unreliable, and followers too. If a paladin "falls", he doesn't lose his powers, and chaotic deities can give you spells if you bargain for it.

- Sacrifice! I don't think being "deadly" is necessarily a mark of Dark Fantasy. This is a common misconception - dark fantasy heroes do not die like flies, nor must they be foolish or weak. I love DCC's funnel, but dark fantasy, IMO, is more about sacrifice than random death - so characters should have some CHOICE about fighting to the death. Basically, they can fight past 0 HP, but this is incredibly risky.

There are other things that can make a game of D&D "dark", but these aren't in the DFB Player's Guide:

- Monsters are strange! Each monster is unique. If you encounter an orc after another, or small groups of identical skeletons, they soon lose all mystery. Another way of keeping PCs guessing is making sure some monsters are alien, well-intentioned or simply dumb instead of downright evil. What's worse, some monsters may be guardians against greater evils.

- People are stranger! There is no clear distinction between monster and NPC. NPCs can be, literally or metaphorically, actual monsters, or even something in between - since everybody is prone to corruption of mind, body, and soul, you can never really trust anybody. Maybe not even yourself (see next item).

- Corruption! Madness, corruption, mutation... PCs face threats from within, not only from without. As Nietzsche famously said, "Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.".

- The Dark! The Dark is an important element for, well, Dark D&D. In the earlier versions of the game, restricting lighting sources played and important part, and infravision/darkvision was less widespread, as you can see in OD&D (Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, page 9):

In the underworld some light source or an infravision spell must be used. Torches, lanterns and magic swords will illuminate the way, but they also allow monsters to "see" the users so that monsters will never be surprised unless coming through a door. Also, torches can be blown out by a strong gust of wind. Monsters are assumed to have permanent infravision as long as they are not serving some character.

So not only monsters have infravision but also they lose this ability if serving some characters, that are mostly restricted to sources of light that will call their foes attention and can be blown out by wind.

In Dark Fantasy Basic, PCs usually don't have this ability, since they are all human, but I've added it as a feat as an option if you want to play one. I also mention this:

"Carrying a light in the darkness will ruin most PCs' chances of stealth, but other characters in the party might be able to move around undetected."

Anyone care to define weird fantasy and how it might differ from dark fantasy?

Quote from: Ruprecht on July 11, 2023, 05:23:38 PM
Anyone care to define weird fantasy and how it might differ from dark fantasy?

Sure.

All of my fantasies are dark, but yours are weird. 

Quote from: Ruprecht on July 11, 2023, 05:23:38 PM
Anyone care to define weird fantasy and how it might differ from dark fantasy?

I believe Eric defines it in his blog as the nexus point of science-fiction, horror, and fantasy, which suits me fine.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on July 10, 2023, 10:52:15 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on July 10, 2023, 09:01:40 PMI think you're conflating tragedy with sadism.

No Id say Dark Fantasy borders on sadism. As in enjoyment comes from the suffering of the characters. And explicitly suffering.

A Dark Fantasy with a happy ending or overcoming the odds in a meaningful way without everybody else suffering in hell for millenniums generally instantly loses its "Dark Fantasy" connotations. Ergo it is about suffering. It's not necessarily sexual pleasure, but our kicks come from how shit everybody else is.

I'm bilely fascinated with Dark Fantasy settings. I like reading up on them, and they indeed look cool, but a key aspect is HOPELESSNESS and suffering. Nihilism need not apply. I mean there is a meaning in Kingdom Death - Amusement for a malevolent deity.

"Bilely" is a word I'm going to have to use in future 

Admittedly I know nothing about Kingdom Death other than what I saw in the artbook. $500 for a board game is far too rich for my blood.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on July 10, 2023, 10:52:15 PM
Edit: Dark Souls is unpalatable to me not because "Anybody that dislikes it is a filthy gaijin" its because it sets up some people as bad or good (in framing) when everybody turns evil and suffers for eternity no matter what except the player character because nobody would play that otherwise.

Yeah, I knew I phrased that poorly. I didn't mean any weebism by it. Just that the universe rejects the stereotypically Western/Christian conception of a universe in which good and evil are locked in internal struggle, with the tacit assumption that good will ultimately win.

Honestly, I'm not sure which side represents capital "E" Evil in the Dark Souls universe. The "Fire Team" is set up as the villains, but they also have most of the more heroic characters in their ranks. Meanwhile the "Dark Team" is cast as the virtuous rebels, but also includes a lot of the more reprehensible characters, including the big villain of Dark Souls 2. A lot of people think the fundamental tension is between stagnation and change, and that the games make a positive statement in favor of change, but I suspect that's their own internal bias talking. I'm kind of just citing my previous post at this point, but there's one of your examples I want to discuss.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on July 10, 2023, 10:52:15 PM
Try to fight the darkness? Turn evil and get killed by the player character anyway.

I actually really agree with you on this one. I think one of the reasons the Souls games get away with being so bleak is that they go out of their way to absolve the player of moral culpability in their worst atrocities. Most of the tragedies have already occurred before you arrive on the scene, and the hollowing plot device is very useful for casting most of your actions as mercy-kills. The games also give you a surprising number of opportunities to positively affect a character's story. You can save Solaire, rescue Karla, alleviate the Fair Lady's suffering, befriend Benhart, help Siegward fulfill his quest, unpetrify Rosabeth, have mercy on Priscilla, etc. etc. And they also make some of the more morally questionable boss fights optional, such as Priscilla again, the Old Demon King, Gwyndolin, and the Nameless King. Most of the mandatory bosses are either so corrupted or mad that they attack you without thought, or they have ideological reasons that make it inevitable that they stand in your way. 

But every one of the games includes at least one fight that really doesn't need to be mandatory (in the logic of the story). Two I would cite from the first game are Quelaag and Sif. Both are intelligent creatures, who haven't gone mad, and have shaky reasons at best for standing in the way of the player's mission.  Sif is the more egregious example, but the game tries to guilt you for killing both of them, which falls totally flat when there's literally no way to progress through the game without doing it. That always annoys me when games do it.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on July 10, 2023, 10:52:15 PM
I like Sekiro however. It turns a sort of end-of-the-world scenario more humanistic. It doesn't need to tell a story about desperation, suffering, and struggle in the face of literally impossible odds without needing to make a universe whose base rules is that everybody dies for eternity.

Sekiro is the latter-day Fromsoft game I'm least familiar with, but I can see how someone would find it the most human. I feel a bit similar about Bloodborne to the way you do about Dark Souls. A story about a bunch of selfish maniacs trying to turn themselves into alien gods doesn't hold much attraction for me. Same thing with Elden Ring. Dark souls has my favorite sub-stories in the series, but for grand narrative, I'd pick Demon's Souls. It still doesn't offer a final victory or have a very optimistic outlook on humanity, but it's quite a bit more morally straightforward.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on July 11, 2023, 08:10:13 AM
About dark fantasy RPGs, here is something I wrote about mine.

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2018/04/whats-so-dark-about-dark-fantasy-d.html

As you might know, Dark Fantasy Basic is my vision of how a dark D&D (BX/5e) would look like.

[...]

Here is a small list that may be useful if you're trying to add "dark" elements to ANY version of D&D, or other RPGs...

I agree with you on most of these, but there's a couple of them I'd take issue with.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on July 11, 2023, 08:10:13 AM
- Magic is dangerous! DFB treats magic as any other skills - roll against a DC (10+spell levelx2), but with a caveat - fail by 10 more and the spell might turn against you, drain your strength, cause mutations etc. Magic "fumbles" are the worst fumbles of the game. You can cast spells WAY above your level.. but that is asking for trouble!

Not gonna lie; I hate this idea...at least in this manifestation of it. If every magical cast has a reasonable chance of either blowing you up or causing you to grow hideous deformities, I have a hard time believing any sane person would engage with it (EDIT: and all wizards being madmen gets kind of stale). More importantly, I've always found this mechanic to induce tone-breaking levels of silliness, and on a more meta level, I think it unduly punishes players for choosing to play a wizard. Some people will probably say that's the point, but I think that if you don't want players to be play wizards, you just shouldn't make it an option.

I agree with basic premise of "magic is dangerous", but that's my least favorite way to do it. I'd prefer a system that requires players to bargain with powerful entities for their magic, but that's hard to write rules for. Black Sword Hack takes the easy way out, and just makes players spend HP to cast spells. Kind of an underwhelming solution, but at least it doesn't break the tone.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on July 11, 2023, 08:10:13 AM
- Nonhumans are mysterious! I made the player's guide human-only; nonhumans should mostly be monsters (and I plan to mention humanoid monsters in monster's books in the future), I think, although I'm not sure many people would enjoy D&D without demihumans (and, it seems, wouldn't work very well for your setting), so I added a few options.

If you're adding elves and dwarves to your dark fantasy games, better make them rare, mysterious and, preferably, utterly alien.

- Monsters are strange! Each monster is unique. If you encounter an orc after another, or small groups of identical skeletons, they soon lose all mystery. Another way of keeping PCs guessing is making sure some monsters are alien, well-intentioned or simply dumb instead of downright evil. What's worse, some monsters may be guardians against greater evils.

Yeah both of these strike me as being more important to "weird fantasy" than "dark fantasy". More mystery and variety is always good, but I read Dark Fantasy as being a genre in which characters are more familiar with the strange than they are in something like Swords & Sorcery or straightforward horror.

EDIT: had a bit more of a think about it, and I think in Dark Fantasy, the fact that non-humans are may be more accessible than they are in other genres, doesn't mean they shouldn't be alien. In fact, everything should have it's alien level turned up a bit, so actually you're right after all.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on July 11, 2023, 08:10:13 AM
- Sacrifice! I don't think being "deadly" is necessarily a mark of Dark Fantasy. This is a common misconception - dark fantasy heroes do not die like flies, nor must they be foolish or weak. I love DCC's funnel, but dark fantasy, IMO, is more about sacrifice than random death - so characters should have some CHOICE about fighting to the death. Basically, they can fight past 0 HP, but this is incredibly risky.

Just calling this out because I think it's brilliant. Couldn't have put it better myself.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on July 11, 2023, 08:10:13 AM
- The Dark! The Dark is an important element for, well, Dark D&D. In the earlier versions of the game, restricting lighting sources played and important part, and infravision/darkvision was less widespread, as you can see in OD&D (Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, page 9):

In the underworld some light source or an infravision spell must be used. Torches, lanterns and magic swords will illuminate the way, but they also allow monsters to "see" the users so that monsters will never be surprised unless coming through a door. Also, torches can be blown out by a strong gust of wind. Monsters are assumed to have permanent infravision as long as they are not serving some character.

So not only monsters have infravision but also they lose this ability if serving some characters, that are mostly restricted to sources of light that will call their foes attention and can be blown out by wind.

In Dark Fantasy Basic, PCs usually don't have this ability, since they are all human, but I've added it as a feat as an option if you want to play one. I also mention this:

"Carrying a light in the darkness will ruin most PCs' chances of stealth, but other characters in the party might be able to move around undetected."

Mixed feelings on this one. Physical darkness definitely has its utilities in an RPG, but I find getting overly particular about light sources tends to grind the game to a halt. It's such an irritant that most tables I've been at quickly start handwaving it.  I also don't think it necessarily fits a Dark Fantasy tone. Arguably one of the things that separates Dark Fantasy is that the protagonists often have an element of darkness inside them, so the ability to thrive in dark places is thematically appropriate. Put more simply, it's kind of hard to picture Elric or the Death Dealer fretting about running out of torches.

Quote from: ForgottenF on July 11, 2023, 09:03:10 PM"Bilely" is a word I'm going to have to use in future 

Admittedly I know nothing about Kingdom Death other than what I saw in the artbook. $500 for a board game is far too rich for my blood.

Same but I have the same sort of aesthetic fascination. It is too rich for my blood, but its very cool.

What I find very neat is that same hostile diety (The Scribe) actually looks the most simply human out of all the abominations from the setting. Hes just mundane human, yet he treats the things made most directly in his image (for every monster in Kingdom death takes a somewhat human image for itself) he makes exclusively to torment.

Image for interests sake

QuoteHonestly, I'm not sure which side represents capital "E" Evil in the Dark Souls universe.

Not capital E but that actually makes it worse. Characters who are willing to defile themselves and don't care about preserving anything or retaining their humanity or even anything else except pure power, generally end up as winners.
Aldrich for instance wanted power, and gets it no questions asked. In fact he gets it at the expense of one of the characters trying to do anything to stop the darkness.
If your a lowercase e bastard, and are out to hurt or defile or harm, the darkness is on your side.
Which makes the very nature of the universe capital E evil.

And Id agree with you about the game being about stagnation vs change if both still didn't end with you hopelessly murderfucked for all eternity. Thats why out of most dark fantasy settings I would posit it as the most explicitly sadistic.

The "Fire Team" are shown to be frauds and desiring power with no real goodness backing themselves up....But team dark is never virtuous. Whenever we actually see the darkness, it's just as horrible and mutating and miserable as team fire alleges. Maybe trying to keep the fire going has made it this way (again its never clear because the series is frustratingly vague).
There may be 1 or 2 team darkoes that might just not attack you on sight.
But if team dark was actually heroic and virtuous and the Dark was not a horrific nightmare then the game would not be a dark fantasy. The universe would be moving towards inexorable positive change. Instead, its a colonoscopy moving towards open heart surgery without anesthetic.

Or you can just keep the plot 100% vague with only implications so that way you never have to commit to any idea. I can often be for not-explaining things in fiction, but I hate the way Dark Souls does it.

QuoteThe games also give you a surprising number of opportunities to positively affect a character's story.

This only happens because said characters tend to be delusional, or have very specific small accomplishable things that they can be OK with as they wait their turn to be murderfucked forever. If they acted in any way "humanistic" they would be weeping in the corner because how fucked everything is.

Gwyndolin still gets eating butt first for instance and worn as a skinsuit. In fact some people suggest because of time dilation bullshit even if you killed Gwyn to spare him his fate, he would have been brought back to life by time fucker to get eaten alive and worn as a skinsuit. And this happens to him no matter what and because of time screwery this happens forever. This is what I mean by being lowercase e evil in Dark souls always pays off. If you're just evil, you will get rewarded with power to do more of it.

QuoteIt still doesn't offer a final victory or have a very optimistic outlook on humanity, but it's quite a bit more morally straightforward.

What pisses me off specifically isn't about a straightforward moral victory. Its that it often posits itself about something or makes commentary on people when it then just makes everybody suffer anyway. Edit: I guess specifically. It hides its sadism behind a mask of "commentary". The universe doesn't punish you for being good because its fucking metal, it does it because something something change, something something, embrace death, now get fucked for eternity anyway.

On a side note Darkest Dungeon 1 and 2 are very cool. Because they basically have the same events happen in both game but by framing and focusing on slightly different things they frame human struggle as either pointless in the face of cosmic horror (in 1) or valiant and great in the face of cosmic horror (in 2).

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on July 11, 2023, 11:46:43 PM
What pisses me off specifically isn't about a straightforward moral victory. Its that it often posits itself about something or makes commentary on people when it then just makes everybody suffer anyway. Edit: I guess specifically. It hides its sadism behind a mask of "commentary". The universe doesn't punish you for being good because its fucking metal, it does it because something something change, something something, embrace death, now get fucked for eternity anyway.

On a side note Darkest Dungeon 1 and 2 are very cool. Because they basically have the same events happen in both game but by framing and focusing on slightly different things they frame human struggle as either pointless in the face of cosmic horror (in 1) or valiant and great in the face of cosmic horror (in 2).

I would say the themes you enjoy about Darkest Dungeon are still latent in the other works. The purpose of dark fantasy is typically not to simply wallow in the evil and succumb to nihilism, but to look at how different characters react to grim circumstances where the happy ending or a final victory is out of their reach. Guts is not interesting because of his tortured past or brooding, he's interesting because he doesn't just roll over and die when fate demands it. He pushes forward where others would falter, and that's what makes him heroic and interesting. The same is arguably true of Dark Souls (though it's the player doing the perseverance, and the stakes are not well-conveyed). The Solomon Kane movie is a good example of a dark fantasy character arc in brief. Solomon Kane's soul is damned for his sins, but nevertheless he then seeks to do what is righteous. That is the mark of a righteous soul and it makes for a gripping tale.

The nihilism and evil in dark fantasy are best used to compare and contrast with the protagonist by embodying these ideas in characters. The protagonist is touched by evil and yet he/she perseveres - why? To choose anything other than death or simply moving with the currents of power in a dark fantasy setting is an act of hope. I think this hope is a pretty powerful foundation for the genre. The nihilistic worldview, by contrast, cannot be interesting because it is definitionally bereft of meaning. The protagonist is in a generally caught in a death struggle against that nihilism and self-destruction, even if it's not overt conflict or combat.

RPGs IMO struggle with dark fantasy because of the canonical statements they feel the need to make in their setting books. Whereas a book or movie or other medium would hold its cards a little closer to its chest, RPGs tend to opt for full transparency. In a movie or book, the concept of what fate awaits a character (damnation or whatever) is asserted by different characters, but it's almost never firsthand knowledge of the character or the audience. Even if the character operates under one belief, there's room for different reactions to bad news and different perspectives to clash. Whereas a book or movie would assert a character faces damnation upon death, an RPG for whatever reason feels the need to explain the mechanics of death, the cosmological significance, lay out a map of the planar realms the soul passes through, names all the major powers which might be encountered along the way...it's exhausting and it ends up essentially reinforcing the nihilistic outlook without possibility of hope (which means not much legitimate potential for anything other than despair). It's easy enough to fix this kind of problem by retconning it as GM so long as the setting is obscure, but if it's something like 40k then people generally know too much about the canonical lore to let you change anything (besides the grimdark thing has its own appeal, almost like a dark comedy).

I personally think RPGs should try to deliver their setting/world info a little more like they were transmitted to a character actually inhabiting the setting (not just for dark fantasy more broadly) simply because certainty is a lot less interesting. It becomes actively counter-productive once that certainty is not just held by the GM, but by the players.