I enjoy Warhammer tables of random criticals, and simmilar things in other games. I prefer squishy meaty body simulation over abstract HP.

I am currently running mostly with my 11-14 year old godkids and their parents. We keep it on the low end of PG-13... Star Wars, the Lord of the Rings films... maybe Jurrasic Park with people swallowed whole and only evicerated off camera at the high end of the gore scale.

Quote from: Spinachcat on December 29, 2021, 03:30:48 AM
I'm a fan of splatterpunk. For me, I've always preferred R vs. PG for my RPG violence. Something about bloodless combat irks me. Not a surprise that I enjoy the Warhammer Critical charts.

So what is your preferred level of gore?

Does it vary per genre?

The genre thing is odd with me. I understand the sentiment that Horror would be more gory than Mystery, but for me Fantasy is all about ripping claws, biting jaws and blades cutting deep and severing heads.

Well, there's different sub-generes within fantasy. I don't think Neverending Story would have benefitted from a scene of explicit gore and violence.

I tend to run about a PG-13, depending on the game and it's tone.

As per others, roughly PG-13.

Depends a lot on who I am playing with. Some groups like splatterpunk and some like it cartoony. I usually go with PG-13 until I get a good feel for the people in the group and then adjust accordingly.

Quote from: Spinachcat on December 29, 2021, 03:30:48 AM
I'm a fan of splatterpunk. For me, I've always preferred R vs. PG for my RPG violence. Something about bloodless combat irks me. Not a surprise that I enjoy the Warhammer Critical charts.

So what is your preferred level of gore?

I prefer the same amount of gore as seen in either Aliens or in The Empire Strikes Back.

My players are all of the Mortal Kombat generation so gore is pretty much a prerequisite but I do not go into graphic detail. I think such things are more visceral by using the 'less is more' approach. A single brief sentence is typically enough.

Depending on the sort of situation, however, I tend to like to use gore by approaching it in a tangential way. Smells, sounds and tactile descriptions rather than purely visual ones. Saying "your bare feet feel that the floor of the dungeon is coated in a slippery, fatty grime that speaks to the sort of acts that have been occurring in here" really says nothing explicit but almost demands the player conjure up dark imaginings about what has taken place in the room.

I just ran a first session where a player is playing the equivalent of a warlock and wanted to get his 'witch mark' during the first session. To facilitate this I had the cult he was part of use him as part of on-going Old One-related experimentation they were doing that involved him being strapped to a column, his right eye plucked out of its socket. Definite a gore moment but the other PC had his view of what was going on blocked so I only described things from the PCs point of view...including his vision being 'split' in different directions when the eye (its nerves intact) was removed...his body managing to keep from fully going into shock and having him go unconscious since he made a successful Con save, etc.

I knew it was all effective because by the time he'd had his ocular nerves snipped and fused to the ganglia of some alien orb to replace it and the other PC had lock-picked himself free and freed him it lead to an amazing exchange between them

Lock-picker: "I'll free you...but I need to know you'll be useful to me. Can you fight?"
Eye-surgery recipient: "I can kill"

Perfection. That's when I felt I'd hit the right gore-level. He had FELT what was done to his character and was right in the moment with his savage highlander.

Of course, this is in a game that is very sword & (somewhat high) sorcery...so gore varies by gametype. When I'm running superhero tabletop, blood rarely ever even comes up.