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.

If it's too gory it just turns into parodic comedy for me. Violence is bloody but Mortal Kombat games aren't horrifying, they're hilarious. A pool of blood under a dead body that was stabbed through the heart or the slow dripping of blood from an open wound are more effective to me.

Ultraviolence.

Different games (not just genre) will have different tones and some settings fit gore very well while in other it would just feel wrong.

In World of Darkness I can describe how a hive of Black spiral dancers have pieces of human meat hanging from hooks in the ceiling and a human torso being rotated on a spit like a human kebab, but I would not do that in a game of Star Wars where a blaster shot just result in a spray of sparks and the wounds are just "markings of burnt flesh". Even a cut off limb is PG since a lightsaber cautirizes the wound.

Fantasy is somewhere in between. Particularly D&D games. Since there are just hit points ticking down until someone falls, you can't just describe how limbs are chopped off since it makes a hassle to explain healing or raise dead.

Depends on the game. Generally we go for PG-13 because gratuitous gore for most of us is just absurd.

(If I start making power tool jokes, they know it's over the top.)

I prefer to limit the gore so as to maximize the effect when I use it.  Sauce rather than main course.

PG-13 for the most part. Occasional R if someone crit-kills a particularly gruesome opponent.

As an aside, when you watched FOTR back in the day, was anyone not feeling a little sorry for that cave troll by the time Legolas put the last two arrows in the crown of its head? They did a number on that thing! That, to me, was a fight falling right between PG-13 and R.

Gore is like sex. They're both fine among consenting adults, but can get pretty creepy if someone focuses too much on either in a game.

I play with adults - we like it over the top currently.

The head doesn't just fall off the body, it goes for distance, possibly doing damage to his friend if the damage is high enough. The rooster-tails of blood are in tens of feet, the PC's expect it and dive for cover. Who knew that Orc had a blood-pressure of a runaway fire-hydrant?

Guts, entrails, is on a case by case basis. We tend to go high-carnage.

It's variable. It depends on the audience and the place in which the group is playing.

Gore has it's place, as do rape, elder abuse, or any other controversial scene - so long as it advances the campaign plot and isn't just gratuitous for it's own sake.

I once had players express less than major concern over a band of marauding orcs terrorizing farmsteads.  It was "meh, they're just stealing cows and beating up farmers for their life's savings of a few coppers. Let the authorities handle it."  So I stole a scene from a novel I read, as well as various horrific real life news reports, and described them coming upon a farm where I was graphic in my description.  Their first thing they saw was a small child, disemboweled with his intestines tied to a tree branch as he was forced to run, pulling them out of his own body.  Then the father lying on the ground, nailed to the front door with his eyes burned out by hot coals, the embers still smoldering in the sockets, missing fingers, body full of slice wounds - obviously death from torture.  And then the tied-up bodies of the wife and daughter just inside the smoking remains of their burned homestead, the top halves of them burned, the bottom halves obviously having been put to use by the orcs before they threw them into the flames like cordwood.

Horrific. Yep. Graphic. You bet. But it got the point across that the PCs are supposed to be doing hero shit.

I usually attach realistic levels of gore especially when describing battlefield trauma. The sights, sounds and smells of it all. The sprays of blood, the smell of blood and shit, the screams of men and boys crying for their mothers in their final moments, the feel of bone giving way to soft tissue.

In fantasy the aftermath of the battle, the ghouls and robbers picking through the dead, the flies and maggots. Rare but when necessary I'll go into butchery and torture and rape if it serves the plot such as the aftermath of an unprofessional army burning it's way into the heart of the kingdom or a band of orks

It depends on the game. When I GM I try to depict violence in a relatively realistic manner (not that I'm a coroner). But swords and head shots are fucking nasty - so you need nasty descriptions. If it's horror then it could very well be ramped up.

When I'm playing I also expect a certain level of violent description for the sake of realism.

I will not play with kids or squeamish people. Scooby Do is over thar'.

No Dolly Mixtures 'round here... 

Gore is alright but I'm much more likely to be using it to describe bad guys and would prefer my players not focus on this.

My games tend toward either morally-grey political games, or heroic fantasy. Neither of these really benefits much from excessive gore IMO. The former type is one where I generally want to force my players to wrestle with morality of any destruction they cause and high levels of gore description doesn't benefit there. Whereas with heroic fantasy I don't want to emphasize the heroes bloodthirstiness -- I'd rather put emphasis on smiting evil, restoring peace & order, etc.

Obviously there's a level of gore that's acceptable but I think this is mostly about using it correctly & framing it for the genre you are trying to evoke.

I prefer PG-13 most of the time, but it does depend on game and genre. For supers definitely PG-13. The Boys is an alright show but I wouldn't want to play that in a supers game. But if I'm playing Conan then having limbs severed and heads crushed is part of the show, but even in this it never has to have a long or detailed, grisly description.

Also depends on the group, but if I was a player in the game where the DM described the overtly detailed description of the family mutilated by Orcs I'd think that DM has his screws loose and needs some help. At that point the game stopped being a game and now the DM is just saying crap to be disgusting.

There is a fine line between being suspenseful and being gross. I'll never play games like Kult: Divinity Lost because it's like Hellraiser and I don't like Hellraiser.

I'm much more of a Into the Badlands, Netflix Daredevil and The Witcher type of person for the level of action to gore ratio. Lots of action... people getting their ass kicked... Bodies broken, bruised, sliced up, things like that... And while some of these have scary monsters in them, there isn't that much gore. Gore for gore sake just ruins things.