I have a simple question for you Veeky Forums

i have a simple question for you Veeky Forums
when does a campaign or character turn from "dark and mature" to "edgy"?
what would you say is the difference between the two?

Are you tearing his fingernails off because he isn't fucking telling you where the kidnapped child is, or are you tearing his fingernails off because it was the first idea for torture that came to mind?

for one campaign, I both created my own and merged some adventures I found online, with all of them being designed for explicitly evil PC's, and turned them into a somewhat coherent story, except I didn't tell the players that they were supposed to be evil. It actually turned out interesting, there was a lot of moral ambiguity. I think that would be the key difference between a mature evil campaign and an edgy one is that the player's don't know/don't believe their actions are evil, or at least aren't performing actions specifically for the purpose of being evil.

I'd say it's purely in how the character is roleplayed.
If your murderer is like Leon the professional and does it all for money but is a decent person behind that it's fine, though dark.
If your murderer kills people because he can't stop himself and it's because he had to kill his own mum dad and puppy as a child because urrrrgh, then it is edgy.

Dark and mature is more implies the players arent evil to me. I.e. ravenloft usually revolves around an evil world with the players trying not to succumb to it would be dark however its all on gm. You can say we are playing ravenloft and then the gm never plays out how depressing the world is and that people are starving then its just a regular game. Mature just means it handles ideals beyond this guy is evil you guys are good. So example a duke is forcing town women to be his mistress however he controls a large army your king needs. So you have to work for the duke even though its not really morally right. Edgy to me just means youre handling situations in a different way out side of a normal situation but i dont have any good examples cause im lame.

Depends on the number of lightsabers, and number of blades per lightsaber.

If you're evil for the sake of being evil, it's generally not mature.

I'd say that the difference is depth and verisimilitude. As a rule, people aren't evil and everything they do has a motivation in some way.

Grimderp and noblebright are effectively the same thing: you have heroes and villains and they're driven by their goodness or badness rather than actual human needs and desires. MLP, Star Wars, and 40k are all variations on this.

Mature means that your characters could easily be real people. Instead of writing a story starting with a plot and then fleshing out the characters, you start with a cast of characters and then let them create the story organically. Conflict in a mature setting comes from miscommunication and flawed perception.

Basically, when you write a villain, ask yourself if he seems more like Hamlet or Darth Vader.

My PTSD'd out war vet tortured some 17 year old kid who tried to raid out food stash with two of his friends in a zombie apocalypse campaign because he wouldn't tell us where his main group was holed up. My guy slowly took away his ability to function in a survival-of-the-fittest world to hit on both physical and psychological points. He broke after losing a pinky and getting a couple toes smashed and a knee hobbled.

This was dark and mature because we had sick elder and children who needed food and medicine. Everyone else were teachers and office workers (besides one Brink's security guard, we lived out of his armored truck.) Everyone just turned a blind eye as this, essentially child, screamed and pleaded for my guy to stop. But no one stopped me despite how abhorrent it was because it was us or them.

However, I regret doing the torture scene because it seemed to signal "gloves off" for the grimdark to everyone else. Soon people were shooting people in the kneecaps and leaving them for zombie bait, or just torturing people to torture. It turned silly and everyone just killed to kill. We ended up nuking the city. The game took place in our own city, the college has a nuclear reactor and is blocks from downtown and pretty much the city center. My guy did a FO3 (before it came out) and walked into the radiation-bathed chamber to shut it down (he was the tank, only one who would survive more than a round in there)

He locked the door and let it explode. His team had become like the team of monster who got him the PTSD in Afghanistan. His last words were "Society can't start like this." before collapsing as I gave everyone a huuuge middle figure for being assholes. Surprise fuckers, Marty's been good the whole time, just in a man bad situation.

>Implying Darth Vader and Hamlet are villains

THIS. THIS is what edgy is. Don't be this.

So you were an edgy cunt and then got mad at the rest of your group for being edgy cunts too?

What a dick you are

Not always, but most of the time when rape comes in does shit go from just dark to very edgy because that is a concept that is hard to handle well for anyone.

Hamlet is debatable, Dark Vader is tragic but definitely a bad guy.

This is something of a complicated issue.

Maturity is about personal responsibility. Many places in the real world suck, and many of them suck to such a degree that making them not suck is all but impossible due to either untenable resource spread or the actions or apathy of the very people who could do something to make them not suck. But it's possible for the lives of the people living in those sucky places suck a little less than they would otherwise. Like, if a city's entire police force is corrupt save for two or three good cops, you could make the argument that those good cops hitting the streets every day and night doesn't really matter in the scheme of things. But I bet it matters a whole lot to the people they protect and serve without prejudice or discrimination, who would otherwise be denied peace and justice by a system who ignores everyone who doesn't have the resources to grease the wheels. Sometimes just knowing that someone, somewhere is doing what they can to keep the world from falling out from under you is huge.

Admitting that the difference between 0 and 1 is sometimes as large as the gulf between 1 and infinity is what makes a campaign or character mature instead of edgy. Saying that saving a person who will probably just die tomorrow instead of today doesn't really matter and you shouldn't have done anything in the first place is edgy. Saying that saving someone who will probably just die tomorrow instead of today is still worth it because today matters is mature, because being able to think "today matters" is part of what separates and adult mindset from a child mindset. Today could either suck because doing something was too hard for you, or not suck because you made the effort to make it not suck. And even if it still sucks, knowing that it would've sucked worse had you done nothing can give you the strength to do it even better tomorrow.

Righy, because rape is the worst kind of evil imaginable. It's much more twisted and evil than murder and torture, after all someone had sex and they didn't want to.

is this sarcasm?

...

What do you think, genius.

It becomes edgy when the actions of characters aren't motivated by actual human desires and thoughts, but instead the player's desire to be dark, usually one-upping someone else being dark.

Dark and mature is when the hero is a just man in an unjust universe

edgy is when the hero is a fucking manchild that acts entitled to his childish tantrums because REEEEEEE-asons

Not really. What my character did was outside of his morals but something he convinced himself had to be done--the people that raided us were bad people (wont go into how I know, but it was explicit.) The nuke came in almost a whole irl year later, when the city had been secured of undead but two factions (ours and another) ruled two halves of the city and were warring. The grimdark had affected the leadership (us) and the whole culture of the society, turning it into something resembling Anarchy with a ruling councel to make broad rules and deal with the military. The whole situation developed naturally, as the military tactics my pc helped teach were used for defeating enemies, then civilians on the other side (or our own side). My pc had come to blows with several other PCs when they did evil shit (grimdark scientist infected pregnant woman's fetus to see what would happen, grimdark party face cuckolded several dozen men and had them killed when confronted.) My pc was religious and viewed the two sides as Saddam and Gomorrah toward the end. They had to be smote.

>not knowing when to quit
>an adult mindset

Who do you think you're fooling, user?

No, it's because it's just more difficult to do properly, as user said. Death and murder are very easy things to portray compared to the more psychological damage of rape and it can very easily come off as being either over dramatic or not dramatic enough.

My personnal view on this is pretty much the same as with anything else: it depends on how you do it.
For me, being edgy is being "bad" or "cool-evil" for the sake purpose of itself. You could equate it to being "lolrandomevil".

Example: My character has killed someone while drinking drunk.
Question: What does this traumatic event bring to your character?
Answer: If there is some genuine progression of your character based on what happened then it's mature. If it's just to bring free drama, it's edgy.

How to fight that: Before you do anything that could be contentious, ask yourself what it will bring to your character.

P.S: This also applies to any part of any character. A character that is "Cool for the sake of cool" is called a mary-sue because it has no characterization beyond "Yeah I'm awesome.".

Yes your feelings can be really hurt when someone puts a penis in you and you didn't want a penis in you. It's the worst most traumatic thing possible, rapists are just sick, awful human beings I mean how could they do something like put their penis in someone without permission

>I tortured a teenager for trying to steal food

No, you've got more edges than a Swiss Army knife.

THIS. This is edgy.

when people start having fun doing evil acts like torture and murder.

If your players aren't giggling school girls than you have either, a group of psychopaths or good players

either way win/win

Dark and mature characters can still be the butt of jokes, and usually still maintain some sort of decency to at least some character, trait or ideal. Edgy characters are more nilistic and less principled, wanting chaos for no real explored reason.

Guess for me it's lawful evil versus chaotic evil.

Oh, and the more black and red you have as clothing, the more likely you're just edgy.

Wow, just WOW

Are you seriously apologizing for rapists you fucking monster?

Don't you know that they had sex with someone who didn't want to have sex also?

You're fucked in the head, buddy.

Go back to Tumblr, you easily-triggered numale.

Let Waiting for the Trade break it down for you.

>I regret doing the torture scene because it seemed to signal "gloves off" for the grimdark to everyone else.

That's the thing about a RPG. The idea is that you dip that deep and then back off and it's just a signal for how desperate things are. An author controls all the characters and can enforce that, so that it's one lapse in an otherwise good group.

But in an RPG, people learn by example and start trying to escalate and one-up each other.

Hamlet's a great example. But when the story is being written as it goes by multiple authors each of whom see their character as the star, then it quickly escalates to Richard III.

The former can crack a joke in good spirits at times, the latter takes itself way too seriously and goes over the top with cheap attempts at shock (like Ramsey in GoT)

Now here's a good example of the distinction. Mature and dark vs Edgy: when the dark event happens for a narrative purpose and its moral dimensions are explored, then that's mature*.

When the event happens gratuitously, for its own intrinsic value as something salacious, then it's "edgy" in the pejorative sense.

So you could have a rape scene. If it emphasizes the sexual release of the attacker (or victim), or presents it as something titillating, then it's edgy. If the rape is presented as a crime, if it's from the victim's perspective as a bad thing that happened to him, or from the attacker's perspective as crossing a moral line-- ie if the rape has some point to it besides wanting an excuse to show a rape to the audience, then it's mature rather than edgy.

These lines are hard to draw because it's a spectrum. There's no easy dividing line. And because edgy exploitation fiction tends to try to have at least a thin veneer of masquerading as "mature" to justify what they include.

It's lampooned in Spinal Tap. When asked by a feminist reporter about the album cover for their new LP "Smell the Glove", they respond by lamely trying to claim that it's because "we're making fun of that sort of thing".
* Not necessarily well-done, but falls into the "mature" category.

Contrast those scenes with the ones from the books. In the books, it's mostly retrospective internal monologue from Theon Greyjoy that avoids being gratuitous. Ramsay is surrounded by psychopaths who are afraid of him (but more afraid of his father). The emphasis is on Theon's suffering and its effects on his character, while establishing Ramsay as firmly evil in GRRM's "black-and-gray" morality spectrum. It also gives the reader the sense that, as horrible as his crimes were, Theon's paid in full for them and so can have a redemption arc.

In the show, he's got sexy torture-wenches and you see every loving weird game they play. Often with hot naked chicks added for extra titillation. They're not just willing, they're eager to play out the torture-porn scenes. Thrilling music helps set the emotional tone. No real morality tale here. Here the audience (or at least some of it) will identify with Ramsay.

If the TV show had wanted to do that as mature rather than edgy, they'd have dropped theon from the cast for a year. Then brought him back after it was all over (with a few flashbacks to add emotional punch). Showing enough to horrify the audience but not dwelling on it-- and not making it cheaper by over-exposing the audience as they did. The scene's framing would have cahgned as well-- more horrible, putting the audience more into sympathy with Theon and de-emphasizing Ramsay.

I unironically hope you get raped.

And then I hope every therapist you go to tells you to suck it up, all it was was sex.

>when does a campaign or character turn from "dark and mature" to "edgy"?
When I don't like it
>what would you say is the difference between the two?
When I don't like it

All depends on the execution. Out-and-out edgy characters can be more entertaining and enjoyable than a supposed dark and mature one, even if they hit everything in the checklist for one.

If it would get rejected from 40k for being too grimdark and ridiculous, it's probably edgy.

Dude, you could have not posted. Now everyone knows you are a rapist.

Pretty immediately. You're sitting around a table, rolling dice while you play a game with your buddies about dragons and lasers and shit.

Come on. If you were shooting for "dark and mature" in the first place, then you were being edgy. There isn't a difference. Believing that there is a "dark and mature" vibe to be attained is a pretty good indication you're an edgelord.

Hamlet's a villain? I thought he was just avenging his Dad! Everyone else was collateral damage, and it usually wasn't even his fault.

Well, except Ophelia's entire family.