Why do people seem obsessed with "gritty" and "realistic" games?

So you're more Nobledark than Grimbright?

Why do that man's eyes look like they're bulging out so much? Is he possessed by some kind of parasite wearing him as a disguise? Or does he just suffer from proptosis?

Are you saying you wouldn't ogle if you bumped into a pair of superheroes?

Your kind of pathetic, you know that? You sound like my nephew, obsessed with trying to come of as mature and act adult, not even realizing that doing so highlights your immaturity. Here's a pro tip, mature people don't give a shit about what's "mature". They aren't trying to act mature, they aren't trying to prove their mature. They are sure in their maturity, so they just don't worry about it.

Because the world is being run by deconstructivists.
Kids these days are being raised to believe that by their very existance they're causing harm to someone else in whatever thirldworldistan non-nation the media has a hard on for this week.

take your (you) and fuck off.

>trying to make gunpowder the 'real' way
Being a forensic ballistics analyst, when the resident /k/ommando in our group tried to make gunpowder to take over the world with his beloved boomsticks, I made sure to be every bit as anal about it as he was, and of course he blew himself up.
He went through nine characters before his last alchemist got shot by a hand cannon that used the much safer and easier to make guncotton. So he gave up on gunpowder and made a wind rifle instead.

I never unsterstood why Players never tried to make guncotton. It's way better, and you can justify it by saying that when trying to make a flask of acid, the Alchemist spillied aqua fortis on his cotton shirt.

Me neither, it's stupid. Air guns and modern crossbows are perfectly within the capabilities of a dwarven/elven ironsmith or a gnome tinkerer. And nitrocelulose is something you may actually find in a curious alchemist's laboratory who wasn't even trying to make guns. But no, the have to go the most esoteric, time consuming and difficult way for their mighty gun.

It's indistinct from the weaboo wanting to forge his superior nippon blade by folding it a billion times when adamantite and orichalcum are avaliable, and dwarves use pattern welding for vanity kitchenware.

Because real life is miserable, and it isn't black and white.

It's much more inspiring to see heroes succeed against the same sort of struggles we face day-to-day, or worse, than it is to see them succeed in a world where success is a given.

It's ironic, but gritty settings are better at inspiring hope. That, despite all the shit, things can still turn out okay. Not perfect maybe, but okay.

>you can have a fleshed out antagonist without a sympathetic reason for being evil.
Tou can't. A good vilain must be a hero in his own eyes - otherwise he'd lack a motication to actually do something big scale.

Yes, but also no.

A man knows what he's doing is wrong when he steals a princess so she can be a bride. He just doesn't care. He wants a bride.

The same man uses his skeleton army he's amassed to take over a town because he wants it. He knows it's wrong, but he wants that town.

He never claims to be a hero, but he can still be fleshed out.

That's not a good villain, though.

That's some petty two-dimensional vilains

while I agree that what you describe is, or at least was for a time a dominant fad, it seems to be falling back with fairly recent uptick in superhero reboots.

I'd be careful with words like "everyone".

because that's what older children think being "adult" means, and since the 50's, older children have controlled a larger portion of the expendable income than any other demographic. Therefore, when trying to make money off of a hobby, appealing specifically to that demographics is what matters.

So that the autists here would have something to whine about.

People are pretty two dimensional.

See, there a drunk guy, he's pissing on your shoes because he though it'd be hilarious.

There's his firend, he's stomping your head because he dropped his beer and you are easy to blame.

You have a really simplistic and shallow view of the world.

Maybe they want to feel miserable, I don't know for sure though.

Just a realistic one, never had any antagonists take their time to deliver a moving exposition about their cruel pasts, the state of society or the necessity for immediate drastic reformation of the economic system.

He is though. Different villains serve different purposes. A character who thinks he's doing the right thing doesn't do things that are blatantly evil unless he can justify it, and the worse the crime, the dumber the justification. Eventually he ends up being so far down his ideology, he becomes a joke.

The bigger the evil, the less justified it can be. I could write a paragraph here about why the villain blew up a continent trying to justify the senseless murder, or it could have just been in the way.

tl:dr The bigger the evil, the less justification it can have.

It bugs me that people keep associating realistic with grim and oppressive. It strikes me as needlessly pessemestic and more than a little inaccurate

Eh, someone can be a villain in his own mind as long as he thinks it's for a good reason. A spymaster could easily consider himself a complete monster for what he does but that it's needed for the nation as a whole to stand.

>that's a boring and shallow motivation
>ITS REALISTIC REEEEEEEEEEEEE
You're the reason this thread exists.

never said ree, just stating facts.

Dude, people right now think Trump is killing gays and women for fun.
People are so bored of their easy, meaningless lives they need to make up reasons why they're some sort of "#resist"ance.

>hates on Kenshiro
>posts Akagi, who's just as much of a moralfag

This has to be satire, like Johnathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal".

Wait, he isn't?
But that's why I voted for him/

Simplistic Good vs Evil is for children, yes. Needlessly edgy or nihilistic grey on grey is, however, for teens.

More complex stories about good and evil are top-tier. Confronting the past, striving towards your ideals, pulling others out of their corrupt or apathetic funks, and generally working to improve on things in an imperfect world.

I GM'd some realist shit for a time when I needed to process real life issues. It's a way to get control over things happening to you. It was tedious and unfun so I quickly stopped being a fag forcing gritty realism on my friends who wanted to have fun. Went full retard and GM'd darksiders meets mad max. Good fun was had.

No that's what Pence is doing.

Depends on the group.

My group does heroic shit when the game calls for it. It just happens we love "darker" games like Shadowrun, World of Darkness, and 40k.

D&D is pretty much nonstop heroics tho.

Because of the economy.

Any recommendations?

>like Johnathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal"
You'd almost forget it's satire, given that some pro-choice fags unironically use some of the arguments Swift uses to justify eating Irish babies.

...

Nothing beats being a noblebright character in a grimdark world, prove me wrong.
Don't even bother, you literally can't

There's not that much moral ambiguity in Breaking Bad. Hell, the whole point of the show is that Walter is a piece of shit who chose his pride over ethics. He's a great example of a fleshed out monster though.

Are there really people who play RPGs online? I always thought this was just a meme, like how everyone on /tv/ pretends to be kiss-less virgins.

>pretend

>/tv/ is actually populated by 10/10 bisexual girls with millions of dollars just looking for the love of a good user. Anyone who pretends to not be those things is just roleplaying because that is their favorite hobby.

Still the dumbest screenshot of all time.
There's absolutely no reason to put any alignment on a pedestal like that. The story being captured isn't even an argument for why LG is the best, it's just a statement that it is.
Nobody goes through those steps. The idea is ridicilous. It's not an epiphany that you can play an anti-hero, it's not more freeing to play an anti-hero and it's not an extatic experience to re-discover the straightforward hero.

I do think people that dismiss grit as childish are immature. Grit introduces depth, it's just not the kind of depth you need in every story, least of all zany magical adventure.

>grit introduces depth

whoa so deep

Dio is an excellent example of an unsympathetic but still likable villain. Abused by his alcoholic father does not give someone a free pass to become a vampire and go on a killing spree.

>Nobody goes through those steps.
I literally did.
>I do think people that dismiss grit as childish are immature. Grit introduces depth,
Grit is A way to introduce depth, but not THE way, and it does not guarantee depth either. If storytelling is cooking, then grit chili-powder. Lots of good things have chili-powder. Lots of shit dishes have chili-powder. Chili-powder can improve many dishes. Chili-powder can ruin many dishes. Finally, there are a bunch of insufferable teenage hipsters who insist on drenching fucking everything in chili-powder and /or Sriracha. These people suck.

Eat a bowl of ducks and fuck off back to /co/ you capefaggot.

In his demeanor yes, Walter is a piece of shit who choice pride over ethics, but atleast in his intent, he keeps doing it to help his family and himself.

As well, Jesse Pinkman is also a fairly morally ambigious character.

They're a bunch of Batman/Watchmen loving twats, that's what.

As a connoisseur of analogies, and the crafter of the "Anime is like DVDs" analogy, I applaud your work.
Kudos.

>Veeky Forums is actually populated by just one very, very drunk Finn arguing with himself. Anyone who pretends otherwise is just more drunk than usual, less drunk than usual, or role-playing because that is their favorite hobby.

>It seems like stories in RPG's can no longer be about larger than life heroes and fantastical villains.
That's literally almost entirely all that D&D 5e is, though. The system doesn't really support anything else very well. It's best for settings with WoW-tier levels of high magic. If you try to use 5e to run a game set in a gritty, low magic setting, it will fall short of other systems more suited to those themes. Judging by the popularity of 5e, I wouldn't quite say that everyone is looking for gritty, low magic games. If that were the case, systems like Fantasy Craft, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and Symbaroum would be more popular, but they're not.

Unfortunately people try to force gritty low magic campaigns in 5E, 5E is popular due to brand image

Read it again.
OP was not speaking of high/low magic.
Fair point otherwise though.

Fpbp

You know, people use GoT as some primary example of this ideology but George made full use of the alignment chart. On one end you have guys like Ned and Jon Snow and on the other end SOBs like Joffrey and Ramsey and The Mountain. In total contrast to dumb statements like this

I feel a dose of gritty realism keeps a game on the rails.

You get dickery and murderhoboing because there are no consequences and murderhoboing is an efficient way to play the game. But those things are deterimental to actual role playing and story telling.

You'll find there's less dickery with NPCs if the cruel hand of realism is there to punish PCs for being ridiculous.

No one is going to spit on the duke if that gets them sentenced to be hung by the neck until dead. If you have a complete rascal in your group, give them an out one time, like the Duke offering them a pardon for the dipshit in question if they'll perform a task for him under the table. I guarantee one of two things will happen:
1) They won't do it a second time, and will reign themselves in a bit
2) They'll put so much effort into successfully carrying out dickery that it will go from random dickery to actual story event material.

I dunno, man. If a setting's gritty, you can just go "You know, I don't even have to PRETEND to be a good guy. I can just do whatever."

That's very freeing.

Low fantasy and low magic are tied to "gritty, down-to-earth" themes in most cases. I concede that they are not one and the same, though.

I don't think you need to have gritty realism in order to have something as simple as consequences.

The PC harasses a random lady on the street. Turna out she's a witch and turns him into a frog, or makes it so his hands turn intangible at inconvenient moments.

Just because theres consequences for the bad things players do doesn't mean they just get clubbed to death by guards and then thrown on a corpse pile

A mix kind of works. For instance, our DM has an urban fantasy game where the PCs are all monster-hunting Christian knights. The thing is, the PCs are fanatical zealots raised by secret societies. They have the ultimate sanction.

Like, by another name, the PCs are religious fundamentalists who lead terror cells. It doesn't mean they're not heroic, but it also means they kill people and they do so without blinking.

While that's true, I never said anything like 'kill them with guards if they step out of line." My example was extreme in both the action done and the consequences thereof.

But what you suggest is the exact opposite of my entire theory of DMing.

What you suggest is rewriting the world to punish a player for their actions.

>haha that woman is actually a witch and curses you!

meanwhile I merely play out what would happen, no changes involved, if someone essentially assaulted a member of nobility.

If I used at your based example, PC harasses a random lady, I'd have news of harassing the woman spread through town and have people start treating the PCs like bad customers, maybe upcharge them on basic stuff and do small folksy stuff to let them know they're not wanted around these parts.

I wouldn't have the fucking guard show up and shatter skulls.

But consequences should flow NATURALLY from actions. Not random DM Fiat punishment.

So they're ISIS?

According to who? The genocide is one of the biggest evils on the face of the planet, and the perpetrators didn't have a hard time justifying it to themselves at all.

They're more like the Knights Templar, or the Illuminati.

They lack imagination.

Reality is Veeky Forums are predominately straight white male games. The gritty and reslistic theme is for white men who are subconsciously preparing for the race war. They take no enjoyment in faggot high fantasy weeboo bullshit like the sodomites and degenerates do. They yearn for challenge and a hard life. The model world deprives them of this, so in RPGs they develop ideas on different situations.

That is why MYFAROG despite its rules is hugely popular, fat virgin neck beard weeboo cuck types hate it due to what it is and straight white men realise this and are attracted to it.

...

>it's okay to murder people by the thousands as long as it's not racially motivated

Because races =/= individuals, fucking hell.

Well, it depends on whether the DM is willing to cater to your character or not. It's about making a character that fits well into the particular campaign
>stop a mugging
>get jumped by the entire gang later

or

>mug someone
>get fucked by knights errant
are both scenarios which might happen when you just made a wrong character.

Still miss the ultra-pragmatic villain of the week Ahriman who accidentally turned all of his faction into mindless automatons and went "well fuck, worked beyond expectations" and proceeded to ruthlessly exploit them in the pursuit of godhood.

Instead of the rewrite who went "Reeee" and acts like a guilt-ridden four year old.

>Hall mark of maturity
>This is a post on a Korean BBQ forum in 2017

The problem is GoT makes evil the only option to survive. People like Joffrey and The Mountain get to die in gilded coffins while the noble heroes get their families killed due to being too nice.

Or This is the Policr where being the ruthless tough on crime cop gets you a bullet.

I think it is less wanting gritty/realistic and more people being sick of so many GMs making sure no one ever dies, even fudging rolls to keep people alive.

If you're in a position where you can make guncotton for use in weapons then you're probably also able to produce nitroglycerin for same, and thereby basic compositions of smokeless propellant. The problem is obtaining the acids you need in sufficiently concentrated form.

Important thing is actually related to damage.

How do you figure out how much damage a gun does if you don't use a realistic standard for damage. If the PC's are normalish dudes, and the have like 50 to 100 HP while a gun does 1d6 damage, how does that make any sense when they're shot in the back of the head.

Because the only way to have fun is with grittiness and realistic.

This is exactly why Marvel is better than DC.

DC = LOL GODS XD

It's literally a universe made by "that kid", where every hero gets the upper hand whenever he pleases because they are all gods with infinite power.

Meanwhile marvel goes for the realistic ground based approach of "mutants", and while there are a few reality destroyers like Scarlet, the meat of the universe doesn't center around literal memegods. Its about realism, like The Punisher.

/enough said

>noblebright character
0/10 see me after class

Yes, but Christian.

>implying the Knights Templar weren't their age's equivalent of Isis, only Christian.
Also, the Bovarian Illuminati were anti-religious.

>If the PC's are normalish dudes, and the have like 50 to 100 HP while a sword does 1d6 damage, how does that make any sense when they're stabbed in the back of the head.

It's not only guns, user, - it's all weapons. HP represents a mix of toughness, luck, and knowing how to minimize or power through a wound as cinematically appropriate.

HP is Stamina.

Sure he shot you, but you had to spend (-50HP) to dogde it.

Only the final hit counts, its the one that brings you down.

That picture always makes me feel happy

The greater good does not a good character make. It's a shit concept for babies.

>The greater good
THE GREATER GOOD

It really grinds my gears when I hear people claim shit like Lord of the rings is "boring" because it's just straight up good vs evil.

Like bitch fuck off your entire genre was created from the scraps Tolkien left for you. Show some respect nigga.

Lord of the rings is fucking trash. Generic memeshit.

You are like the dude that gets angry because people shit on Mario.
>b-but he saved the industry!
No one gives a fuck, Mario is trash and didn't create anything interesting, much like Lord of the Rings.

Warhammer deserves all the praise Lord of the Rings gets.

LotR is generic trash.

I believe it's called "edgy".

It's from teenage game of thrones faggots who think "everything is just perspective man, like that bad guy isn't really bad, we should try to understand him, let shades of grey"

...

Why even call it hitpoints then? Just rename it to "fate points" or something.