We've seen grimdark,noblebright,and nobledark

Apparently not.

I'd sort of say Utopia, the tv series. The style is very colourful, the music is upbeat and the bad guys are genuinely trying to save world. Pretty much all the characters have at least some scrape of humanity. But even with that humanity there is a sense that they are fleeting, anyone can die quickly and unglamoursly. Even with their lives and loves, everyone is just a pawn.

Even all the terror and horrible violence is treated in very brisk, almost playful manor, like it's all one big game. What the characters experience as deep fear, anxiety and confusion becomes a thrilling, high stakes challenge in the context of he show.
Life is cheap, the game continues.

youtube.com/watch?v=IhPTUog6DWc

Dark/Bright isn't "The World" so much as the Aesthetic. Gotham is Dark, and Metropolis is Bright, but either one can be Grim or Noble, depending on the writer.

Right. Therefore grimbright would be retarded murderers running around in a generally decent world. Or as I like to call it, 90% of all campaigns.

>him

>him

Ah, sorry, Phone-posting.

The world is pretty much fucked, but so long as you keep your ambitions in check and don't rock the boat too much, you and your own can carve out a decent chunk of it for yourselves.

>grimbright
You mean tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrapsaccharineWorld?

1984 and 451both have happy endings. youre thinking of brave new world which is still only like mehbright

>1984
>Happy ending
What the fuck are you smoking?

>1984
>happy ending

Man, that aesthetic actually looks really interesting. I might add the series to my to-watch list. Are there any other properties that have that mix of upbeat visuals and music with dark, slightly humorous violence?

>1984

Shitposter extraordinaire.

like a third of the book is just going on about how the society is a powder keg waiting for a spark. the party is doomed to be ripped apart in the streets africa revolt style

also james used doublethink to give a fuck you to be brother as he dies

>like a third of the book is just going on about how the society is a powder keg waiting for a spark. the party is doomed to be ripped apart in the streets africa revolt style

You mean as described in that fake manifesto written by the Party as a honeypot for potential insurrectionists?

no the resistance os something different and is prob fake

they are actually going to end from the proles freaking out from a porn shortage or something and tearing the party apart, literally. its literally constantly talked about and explained in no uncertain terms that the party is incapable of dealing with a prole revolt and that the party is going to end violently sooner rather than later

>1948

Nobledark is a world where things are terrible, but people stand up against the darkness to try and make things better.

Grimbright is essentially a dystopia. Things would be great, (ample resources, helpful technologies, etc.) if not for terrible people constantly trying to screw eachother over to make a quick buck.

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.

>at least I tried

...

Mirror's Edge is an example I've heard a lot.

Grimbright would be "life is shit now and in the immediate future, but there's light at the end of the tunnel." This is to say, human morals and fucky-fuck games are holding us back more than the setting.

Depends on the episode. It's basically Twilight Zone but with a focus on Technology.

Grimbright is the real world, as presented by media.

Fahrenheit 451 could be seen as ultimately positive. The civilization criticized in that novel is about to be destroyed (there's that line about bombs crashing through ceiling TVs), the protagonist discovers that there is a semi-organized resistance movement that attempts to save works of literature by remembering them. It's all a matter of perspective.

...

Real life is grimbright.

That's just regular Utopia tho?

I think the mere fact society is so fucked up it needs armed rebellion to have a chance at fixing itself is still a pretty grim implication.

It's definitely not as gloomy as similar works but it's not a feel-good story by a long shot. Pretty standard for a lot of Bradbury's stuff, honestly.

I don't know. As dark as it is, the book does have an earnest to it's idealism which stops it from truly being a cynical grimdark setting.

Winston is ultimately broken and defeated, but he is never protrayed as wrong or misguided, just powerless.

Nobledark is what happens when you add a glimmer of hope to grimdark, then you get noblebright when hope triumphs, so i guess you get grimbright when things start going to shit again?

In this sense i guess the "default" fantasy setting is grimbright.
As in, the world is a pretty great place, but a terrible evil could change everything.
Like lotr.

No way. It's a huge dystopia that looks all shiny and bright on the surface.

I think Grimbright would feature plenty of gore and violence but everyone takes it in their stride. Death is not a morbid concept and murder is pretty standard fair. People basically accept the horror around them with a smile on their face and a cheery disposition.

I'm sure I've seen it portrayed in plenty of movies but I can't really think of anything at the moment, the best example I've got on the top of my head are the borderlands games.

No you're thinking of Black Mirror. Mirrors Edge was a pretty good first person parkour game.

Do you not realise that if somehow enough of the entirety of oceania a 3rd of the planet revolted it would only lead to the other two nations genociding them to avoid it sparking revolts in their own lands? Unless the whole world revolted at the same time the rebels would simply be nuked out of existence and covered up. The happiest possible ending to 1984 is that the 3 factions go nuclear and do such utter damage to eachother the few hundred thousand alive on earth are able to start fresh.

In fairness to him, don't forget that there IS canonically a happy ending to 1984. No, really. It's entirely an implied thing, I believe specifically via the appendix, but it's one that suggests that shockingly, it all ended up at least okay. Which is a strange place to put a happy ending but at least there is one.

Just watched the pilot on youtube. I thik I'm in love with this series.

The book goes on at length about how revolution must be started by the middle class.
That's why they control them and basically leave the proles alone.

There is a comma between grim and dark.
They're used to describe the exact same thing not two aspects of the setting.

Only in some parts of world. Some other parts are grimdark or nobledark. Noblebright never existed anywhere though even if many people have claimed their culture is like that.

First part (eg. grim) refers to the people and second part (eg. dark) refers to setting.

Basically grimbright is setting where people are assholes, but world is a bright happy place. Typical example is a utopia with a horrible secrets. Although many such stories might actually be more like nobledark or even noblebright in execution. True grimbright is extremely rare thing to see in fiction.

Also, nobledark is the best because grimdark is for edgy assholes, noblebright is lawful stupid and grimbright is fantasy for bitter old men who have lost their humanity.

The biggest shame is Channel 4 canned it after the second season when it was made for three, so the plot gets left hanging and completely unresolved.

>Fahrenheit 451
>It should be burned
Kek

Fuck dude no way :(. Me and my friends just agreed apoun it as our weekly mr robot placeholder. Well, thank you for introducing me to it anyway, May you find many good series yourself. Any semi-official ending rumour?

>90% of all campaigns
Just stop playing with edgy (pre)teens seriously.

>Grimbright
That's pretty much Berserk after the Falcon event.

You're all fucktards.

The Grim/Noble part refers to how much agency characters have - how much they can change their world.

The Bright/Dark part refers to how bleak the setting is.

Therefore, GrimBright means that the setting isn't that bad to live in, or is even a great place, but there's not much you can do to change it - nothing you do matters. Examples include Sandman, The Sims, most Tycoon games, Eclipse Phase, most of Zeus' flings with mortals (from the gods' perspective). I'm gonna dump a better explanation in a sec.

>The Sims, most Tycoon games, most of Zeus' flings with mortals (from the gods' perspective)
What the fuck are you even talking about?

1/?

Grim/Noble asks whether there are heroes that exist, may appear to change the world for good or ill. A noble setting isn't one where everyone is good, more like one where people are active : In a grim world, no matter what you do, an individual can't secure more than an individual victory, if even that, because the rest of the world is too big/scared/powerless/selfish to act upon his impulse. A noble world is one where the action of a single hero can change the world, and a single big villain can fuck it all up : there are important people, who are so either by birth, rank or sheer willpower, and every single one of these people MATTER. 40k is grim(dark) because it is static : your SM chapter may save planets for a living, yet the stars won't even notice they exist. In much the same way, Sandman (Neil Gaiman's) is grim(bright) : no matter how incredible the things Dream gets to experience are, he is ultimately trapped by the static nature of his existence and that of his companions : he could do anything, and it would all be for nothing. All victories are individual, and usually temporary, affairs. Something like Morrowind or Berserk is noble (bright and dark, respectively) because it is about one man forcing destiny's hand and changing the world.

somehow i understood this perfectly until someone pointed out how it made no sense

Sounds good otherwise, but this part seems to not work out very well:
>The Grim/Noble part refers to how much agency characters have - how much they can change their world.

I mean, what about settings that have villainous protagonist(s) who change things for worse? You really can't call settings like that noble despite characters having ability to change the world.

Sure you can, they can just change things for the worse, or present a credible threat that has to (and can) be surmounted. Or the PCs can just change things for the worse.

Noble/Grim doesn't have anything to do with the protagonists' morality, only their agency.

2/4
Now, a bright world is one full of opportunity, of wondrous sights to behold. It doesn't mean that it has to be MLP, it can be dangerous, but your first instinct when looking at a new location should be awe and wonder : people may adventure to save the world, but they leave town with a smile upon their face, eager to see what comes next. The shadow of Risk is largely erased by the glint of Adventure. In a bright world, it's quite possible for people to go on adventure just for the hell of it, since the journey is it's own reward. Resurrection, or at least means to heal grave injuries, are usually accessible, to counterbalance the fact that the risks out there are real. A dark world is one where life sucks, and usually not long : whether it be because of demon overlords 'nids or even the lack of water, everyone in this story may die, and they die for good. If you lose an arm, you play a cripple. In the extreme cases, even when you win a fight, your career is over (gangrene etc…). That means that, even though people may be ready to help (noble), people will need a good reason to do so, since stepping out of line is so dangerous.

Except that in Morrowind player doesn't have any real agency to change the world. He/she is just pawn of ancient conspiracies and plays them out by the book. It's more like grimbright setting or even grimdark depending whether you want to focus on brighter or darker aspects as it has plenty of both.

In all of these settings, wondrous things happen and the world isn't all that bad, but the protagonists can't do anything to change the status quo. There's no win or lose condition in the Sims or Tycoon games (outside of certain scenarios IIRC), nor do Hellenic gods really change how the world works in the long run when they do things with mortals.

3/4

40k is (grim)dark because, no matter where you go, there is only war, and heroism's only reward is usually a notch on a gun or a corpse in a trench. No matter who you are, most of the galaxy probably wants you dead, and staying home today is the best choice you can make. Also, even if you make it to the end, you may have to sacrifice everything to save everyone, if you haven't already done so. Berserk is (noble)dark because, while there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel, it takes men and women of insane willpower to get there : no matter whether you are big or small, even when you have nothing, the only thing that may save the world is that will in you that says "go on !" And if hope was to fails, you'd get a book-long bloodbath-orgy, and all it's consequences afterwards. Morrowind is (noble)bright because, even though the world is fraught with dangers, there is so much to see, so many interesting people to meet, so many cool things to experience that, at the end of the road, you'd do it all over again if given the chance to see it once again with virgin eyes. Sandman is (grim)bright because the incredible vistas and interesting people are all that can distract Dream from the dullness of his existence. He will tire of them all, but even him has to admit that he saw some cool shit. Also, notice how the relative freedom from consequences (people can get somewhat rezzed/healed/characters don't die much), a bright trait, reinforces the futility of the struggle in a grim world.

>Ayn Rand
>him
>reluctantly

(checked)
Agreed; the examples I'm copypasting aren't all accurate, but the definitions work, at least.

4/4

In short, grimdark and noblebright worlds both exist, and both are interesting to play in. So do grimbright (those are quite weird, I admit) and nobledark (my favorite : victory is so much sweeter when you have to fight for it). Every type allows for evil and struggles to exist, and for stories to be told. Evil can even triumph : it's less of a matter of who wins, and more of a matter of tone. In a bright world, the BBEG can win, but he won't skullfuck everyone the PCs know in front of a crowd without the mood turning to dark.

Based on what?
Grim, dark future is just two descriptive words for the universe of 40k.
They aren't two aspects it's just pleonasm like saying tuna fish or free gift.

Forgot Demolition Man! I bet you don't even know how to use the three seashells, either.

I now get it, but words grim/noble still feel strange to me in that in context. Sure, "noble" as a word can mean also nobility (who have greater agency than most people) and nobility has no fixed morality, but "grim" is pretty much just grim, it's not a synonym to static at all. I get the feel here that we might need to invent some new words to make this classification work better since (atleast to me) this feels more like we're just trying to put sense into already retarded system that was originally made to classify traditional straightforward fantasy settings like most of D&D, 40k, Star Wars etc.

The proof is here: That Guys have the intelligence of a trilobite.

Could you consider Fallout's Pre-War America to be a "Grim-Bright" setting?

I would and I'd also consider IRL fifties America as grimbright.

I feel like people play up how murderhobo-y campaigns and adventurers are as hyperbole and as a sort of joke.

>Grimbright
Bioshock Infinite?

True, but it's hard to know if one is just joking because such people do exist in real life. Campaigns where you have Edge McEdgelord and his edgy buddies running around literally murdering every NPC just to take their stuff, torturing and raping commoners for fun and even founding child brothels can really happen in real life, but it's a good thing they're fairly rare if you avoid things like roll20.

In reality, it's not even grim.
>Oh my god, XIXth century people have XIXth century sensibilities! That's so oppressive!

No, they are early 20th century people and their sensibilities are wildly inaccurate at that.

Grimbright would be the polar opposite of Nobledark.

Nobledark presents a pretty shit world, but where the characters can through nobility, decency, and heroics potentially make it... slightly less shit? If you can really fix things it's more noblebright so I guess it's more that they retain their positive, human aspects in the face of the darkness of the universe, and fleeting, individual scale victories are generally possible because Nobledark works, by their nature, have a bit more hope than Grimdark.

So then Grimbright is a good world with bad characters? aka the shiny end of Dystopia? mentions Demolition Man and I could get behind that. But in other ways I feel like that's more of a surface read and that outside of visual media a literal, physical brightness does not xbright make.

So I'd probably consider a Grimbright setting to be one in which the world is... honestly a pretty good place. It doesn't have a super ton of systemic problems and you'd probably enjoy living there as an 'average citizen'. But it's kept that way by the torment and suffering of a select few, who are probably the main characters. mentions Madoka and this is more what I'd see, though more the first few episodes or the world created in the finale of the series. The world is a fairly good place, and most people seem to be doing pretty fine. But Magical Girls are running around protecting everyone from threats they don't even know about and, while they all got a wish to make reality a little happier and more full of hope, the rest of their existence is to be spent isolated from mankind and battling horrible monsters until either they die in battle or become overwhelmed by the pain and despair of their life and meet a worse end still. isn't a bad assessment (and is an epic repeating numeral), I just place the caveat that the insidious something shouldn't be effecting the population. Yet.

Patrician Taste.

Barney the Dinosaur, Teletubbies, the list goes on.

It's perfectly common.

Bright, rich world that's filled with assholes.

They lost contact with the rest of humanity in XIXth century and are therefore XIXth century people for all practical purposes.

They've been on the damn airship for less than ten years.

Launched in 1893, the game takes place in 1912.

> Implying the other 3 factions really exist

>constant wars
>plagues
>food shortages
>shadow government runs everything
>even worse outside of the US where there's totalitarian governments everywhere and everything shortages

Hell no. It's grimdark. Once you get into the post apocalypse era, you can argue it becomes nobledark, but nuclear war was inevitable - all of the pre-war geniuses (and hell, most people in general) knew that and made plans on what to do after the dust settled.

So grimbright is basically cyberpunk.

1984 is grimdark to a fucking te man, literally nothing good is left at the end of the book, julia and winston are forcibly seperated and will probably be murdered, winston starts to love his slavery, o brien's a fraud, nothing is solved, and some of the last chapters include cheery details like "imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever."
you're a fucking idiot.

Depends, there are plenty of food shortage-war enabling-life is worth nothing cyberpunk settings, it's just that most of them have some form of technological advancement that makes it seem alright like cheap free food and good drugs.

It doesn't need to be.

>ctrl+f "brave new world"
>1 post
Are you fucks serious? That's the epitome of grimbright. Everything is awesome and perfect, yet people find reasons to nitpick everything, and they specifically go out of their way to find the shittiest parts of civilization out of some weird "noble savage" ideology.

Anyways, The Redeemer from spawn is how I picture grimbright, but I guess SMT: Strange Journey does grimbright and nobledark pretty well in tandem. I always associate grimbright with post-humanity, and losing what intrinsically makes us human, in order to join with some sort of assimilating hivemind.

right above your post m8

It was posted as a picture.

>4 minutes too late
Just fuck my shit up senpai.

I love the shit out that book, but I feel bad about anyone who had to read it in school. There's no better way to make a child hate literature than by forcing them to read it.

It's particularly poignant because I live in canada, and there's this whole revisionist attitude where we need to incorporate "green" attitudes into our day-to-day lives, because natives lived together with nature, so we should be able to as well. In my opinion, I live in ungodly frozen tundra and anyone who had to survive winter without central heating was incredibly unfortunate. Gas has gone up like $1 per gallon (20 cents per liter) because of some ass backwards carbon tax targeted towards consumers.

I don't think he was refering to time when war was had practically started (ie. resource wars that caused those shortages), but rather back when Fallout's America was more like 50s America of real life mixed with super SCIENCE that was imagined by old times SF authors.

And yes, US was totalitarian dystopia with dark secrets. That's exactly why it's GRIMbright.

there's nothing bright about fallout

The world is ripe for adventure, but it is also an extremely dangerous place. Victory only comes to those with immense willpower. Kinda like Berserk.

>Berserk
>Grimbright
Nigga, the main character's love interest got turbo demon mind-raped in front of him by his best friend, like twice. Every single person Guts has ever known will inevitably die in some horrible way. Maybe golden-age arc with the whole "working class becoming nobility" theme, but definitely not anything recent.