What traits of a "dark fantasy" campaign are you (not) interested in?

It depends on what sort of feudalism you're living under. English peasants before the Enclosure Acts, sure. But I'd rather be a factory worker today than a Russian peasant under tsarism. Serfs in Russia were practically slaves.

>Serfs in Russia were practically slaves.
There are always worse alternatives. You could be a peasant in Poland.

Medieval wartimes were a rapefest, user.

If anything, it's glossed over too much.

>Rape has been done to death, fuck anyone who thinks it's a prerequisite for the setting.

"Murder has been done to death"

"Robbing has been done to death"

"Plague has been done to death"

W-what's wrong with Polish peasantry?

If traitors to the king and practitioners of witchcraft aren't being impaled on stakes, adulterers and charlatans aren't being burned with hot oil, and criminals aren't being literally disarmed, I'm not interested.

I'm sorry people keep kicking you out of their groups, user.

Are you retarded? I'm pointing out that user's argument makes nonsense because rape, as well as those crimes are commonplace in medieval times.

I'm running a Dark Ages game right now, and I'm not glossing over about how "human rights" and "personhood" we take for granted in the modern day do not exist.

This, most fantasy settings apply WAY too much 21st century sensibility to it.

You aren't seeing girls get married off at 13, for example, or said girls offering themselves to people.

Serfdom in Russia wasnt introduced until the 16th century.

It's because most of them are written americans, whom think "16 year olds" having sex is paedophilia.

I understand if people want gloss over things, but don't ask me to run "Dark Fantasy" if you don't want to see the logical outcome of a pseudo-medieval society during war.

Three partitions.

Imagine my surprise when I picked up The Last Kingdom, written by a Brit, and saw how much casual rape and sexual violence it contained.

This. It NEVER comes in all male parties. You never do it, you never see it, you never hear about it. But make ONE fucking female character, and suddenly the degenerate rapist NPCs come crawling out of the bushwork.

Treated so badly they were called bydlo (cattle) by their masters?

Even "The Black Company", a series which I liked, and gave a very cool and realistic depiction of a city in siege, glosses over rape as to not make the band of mercenaries unlikeable.

Because God forbid our protagonists share the morals of the society they exist in.

As always, this boils down to: "Did you talk to the GM about the your expectations about the game?"

The inability for players to trust anyone, minor suspicion and always being on your toes around an unfamiliar friendly person is fine, but unless it's built into the story through careless actions of the PC, don't have them be betrayed by literally every single NPC, there needs to be some sort of basic reason other than "Lmao everyone hates each other and wants to fuck each other over"

>"Did you talk to the GM about the your expectations about the game?"
My expectations were the same as they always have been in that group that has been going on for 8+ years - epic high-spirited adventure.

Granted, my character managed to tear out the throat of her would-be rapist(s - the other got shanked) with her goddamn teeth before it was too late, but now she's a killer and things got so fucking dark and savage out of nowhere for no real reason. You never really know people, I guess.

Fiction conforms to modern moral standards because it will be read by people who follow those moral standards.

>as they always have been in that group that has been going on for 8+ years - epic high-spirited adventure.

Then your gm was in the wrong. I wouldn't pull this shit on unsuspecting people.

Oh, I understand the reasons why, mind you.

Rape and torture for the sake of establishing the setting as a dark one, it's cheap as all hell and a good GM shouldn't have to resort to it to squeeze some shock out of their players.

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>Even "The Black Company", a series which I liked, and gave a very cool and realistic depiction of a city in siege, glosses over rape as to not make the band of mercenaries unlikeable.
Have you not actually read the books?
Because rape very much happens.
Its just not described in detail for you to jack off to.

I don't like Dark Fantasy as a whole, but the thing that gets me the most is MUH GRAY MORALITY URRRRR. It's the absolute laziest shit and the only intention behind it is to make the players feel bad when their characters do anything. Help the peasants? Oopsie now they're getting exploited even more and they hate you for it. Kill the bandits? Whoops they were only robbing people to help their starving retarded cripple kids wow what a piece of shit you are. The whole thing just majorly sucks.

>Even "The Black Company", a series which I liked, and gave a very cool and realistic depiction of a city in siege, glosses over rape as to not make the band of mercenaries unlikeable.
>Because God forbid our protagonists share the morals of the society they exist in.
The real crazy shit is that medieval morals allow for some really weird shit.

There's a (historic?) story of some Greek?/Baltic? woman who got raped by a Varangian guard during some siege or raid. So he's raping her, and she manages to get her hand on his weapon and fucking kills the dude. You know what his squad mates do? They undress their dead warbuddy, give all his clothes, armour, weapons and warloot to the woman that just killed him while he was raping her, let her go free and they just leave his naked corpse to rot in the sun.

I doubt that there would be modern-day soldiers that would just leave their dead rapist squadmate to rot in the sun while giving the woman that he tried to rape all his gear and clothes.

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>when you have 2699 XP

I said "glosses over". And that I liked it. But neither Croaker nor any named character is ever said to engage in it, because they are effectively our heroes.

I mean, famine, prostitution and plague were described, but rape gets one passing mention in Murgen's musings about Sarie.

also when they defeat those "amazonian guards", Croaker mentions that the men are "having their fun"

Wait, I forgot Sleepy.

True.

>I said "glosses over". And that I liked it. But neither Croaker nor any named character is ever said to engage in it, because they are effectively our heroes.
First book, the company captures an all female unit and then proceeds to rape the lot before killing them.
Croaker mentions that he and most of the older guys got done sooner while the rest of the guys is still at it.

Croaker also states that he tends to gloss over a lot of what the company does.

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I prefer to go balls deep on degeneracy and bigotry to enhance the experience.

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It's a passing mention in the first book, man.

So your problem is the lack of graphic details?

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>GoT
>dark fantasy

>bigotry
I have a big problem with how most GM's try to do medieval bigotry.

>aaaaaagh im a medieval peasant and i hate black people!
Which is completely wrong.
The correct kind of medieval bigotry is
>aaaaaagh im a medieval peasant from swordwood and i fucking hate people from axetown!

Medieval bigotry is like that joke about how the Welsh lost to the English.
>aaaah the english are at our doorstep and they outnumber us 20 to 1!
>should we send a messager to the other welsh villages so they can prepare defenses?
>OH FUCK NO, FUCK THOSE OTHER WELSH FUCKERS! IF WE'RE GONNA LOSE TO THE ENGLISH, I WANT THOSE CUNTS ACROSS THE RIVER TO LOSE TO THE ENGLISH EVEN HARDER!

Speaking of rape, would a greek setting work if the origin was the parties local band of hoplites got steam rolled and then steam rolled by some sort of sacred band of Thebes spin off. I mean if everybody got raped by one of the most prestigious and powerful military regiments at the time wouldn't that be a good campaign hook?

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No.

What I am saying is that it might as well not be there, because it's such a pivotal point in how a character sees the world and people, and it gets a couple of lines in the first novel. It would actually make croaker's disdain from Camp Followers seem less out of left field in the battle against longshadow.

Come to think of it, a lot of characters suffer from informed flaws.

One-eye, foul tempered gangster he could be, is not seen doing much other than illegal booze and fucking granny's.

Also, if the black man is a christian that shit is tight.

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>would a greek setting work
Nope. I can't remember much rape happening in Greek mythology except when Zeus gets involved, homosexual rape is even more rare. Only time man raped a young man he and all his family was cursed by the gods.

Why would Croaker or the other Annalists, take the time to describe every instance of rape for the Company's history?
The instances that do have impact on the story, like that one sorcerer girl, or Sleepy's history of abuse in her family do get mentioned.

That's a good point. If you gloss over the effects of rape, you might as well just throw it in with the general implications of sieges/raids.

Reminder, effects of rape don't have to mean straight up HD 1080p descriptions of rape. We're all adults here. We're not stupid. When you read a book about a city being plundered and the protagonist passes by a temple with a bunch of crying priestesses sitting outside we don't need to be told just what the fuck happened there.

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And he is probably a heretic on top of that. Probably Orthodox or Copt from the East.

Sounds like someone's GM has a fetish.

Usually the pervasive hopelessness that turns it from "grim and gritty" to "unrelentingly grimdark".

The best part about dark fantasy settings is being the hero the people need, slowly earning your foothold against whatever odds get in your way. If all you do is for nothing unless you give up on the central pillar of your ideals and become just as bad as the shit you're fighting, your setting is garbage.

>It NEVER comes in all male parties.
You don't put "Nastyass man/men harass girl/woman" on your seedy-city-streets random encounter table?

Trying to change things for the better.

When I play a dark fantasy campaign, I usually play someone genre-appropriate: Inquisitor, scumbag mercenary, bandit, corrupt priest, cultist. I think people who play out-of-genre characters are kind of missing the point.

Like, in dark fantasy, you're free to cut loose. Everyone's a scumbag anyway, why not be a scumbag too?

RAPE

>why not be a scumbag too?
Cuz I'm not 17 anymore.

That's not what I am asking for. Look, they are a band of pseudo-evil mercenaries, outright said to be criminals fleeing their homelands in "The Black Company".

Yet no named character is ever described as doing something we, the reader, would find outright disgusting or completely outright evil.

During the siege of Dejagore, the company controlled one third of the city. Prostitution is said to exist.

And yet I'm supposed to think One-Eye, for instance, wouldn't be pimping? He literally steals grain for booze, but he wouldn't try and control the prostitution said to be going on when he was a semi-officer in the black company?

Yes. It is glossed over. They do it so we side with them and empathize with the black company.

It's still a good series, despite it's flaws, but again, it glosses over sexual matters as most american media do.

>Now, torture and crippling psychological horror on the other hand...far more effective.
You make a compelling argument, continue.

>Everyone's a scumbag anyway, why not be a scumbag too?
Because you're made of stronger stuff than that, obviously.

I don't want to be a scumbag. I don't like being a scumbag. Why be a piece of shit when you can be a hero?

Looks like Imperial documentary on the Dark Age of Technology

fuck that! I wanna be a fucking scumbag!

People not acting like people.
>Murder-rapists everywhere
>Every single lord is a petty douchebag
>Muh unfailing prophecy
>OH SHIT A PAPERCUT YOU ARE GONNA DIE FROM INFECTION!
>Peasants are all starving (Because we all know what a great workforce starving people are)
>No one helps anyone out
>Knights are all murder rapists
>Waaaay too much pedophilia
>All religions are inherently evil jesus clones that hate gays

Im too much of a nobledark fag. I like a large looming or incipient threat that is killing or destroying, but the people have to act like people for me to like the story.

Of course there is always room for villains, and "evil" cultures can exist, but if EVERYONE is an ignorant shit covered dirt farmer that becomes a rapist the second they are left alone in a room with someone else gets old.

Damnit I like the everyday heroism of normal people fighting an uphill battle against hard times.

You're the hero in nearly every RPG ever. I mean, it's not bad if you play the villain or a relatively amoral guy once in a while. My favorite PC was a strictly Neutral Evil mercenary, motivated mainly by plunder.

You don't have to be cacklingly evil to play someone who fits right in. All you need to do is to say things like "Well, since we've killed them, we might as well loot them" or "All I'm saying is, we only need one of you to spill the beans, and I'm a busy man."

>Yes. It is glossed over.
No; its not explicitly described because there is no reason to do so.
You know that the Company is mde up of shady characters, you know Croaker tends to gloss over over a lot of the bad things they do.

If you can't puzzle from that that rape and other stuff occurs even when it's not spelled out for you, that's not the books' fault.

>put both of these guys in the same party
>get submissive follower-type players for the rest of the group
>let both the evilfag and moralfag options succeed as long as the players and their characters are competent
>make sure there's at least one situation where each one proves significantly more right than the other, but make it so one can't overwhelmingly out-ideal the other
>watch the party devolve into civil war
Why do I want this.

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See, I really like the pervasive hopelessness of it. It's sort of like Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume (a game that comes to mind) where the protagonist just keeps running into increasingly horrible scenes no matter what he does. The whole point of a dark fantasy setting is that life is cheap.

>An evil Empire that's evil for the sake of being evil

>Why be a piece of shit when you can be a hero?
Because its fucking hard to be a hero.

Haven't gotten laid in a while? Hungry? Might die tomorrow?
There's a farmer over there with food and daughters that you are trying to save from total destruction and the stingy bastard says you can sleep on some mildew covered hay in his barn while he gives you watery turnip soup and acts like he's being the most generous guy in the world.

You killed twelve people on the ride over here much tougher than this farmer and you are pissed off because its cold and rainy and he acts like he's too good to put you under his roof. IN FACT he is treating you like an animal leaving you out here to catch a cold.

Tell me how good and gracious most people would be in that situation

>movie that did it right

You know, maybe your PCs just don't understand why the Empire is being evil. Like, you guys are dirt-grubbing mercenaries, or a heavily armed band of greed-crazed looters. Who the fuck cares why Empire A is fighting Empire B? None of you can even spell the names of the factions.

It's...freeing.

>Dying of infection from every minor cut, scrape, bug bite, whatever.
Fucking this, its like everyone thinks people didn't know that infections could kill.

While they didn't know exactly why infections killed, they were smart enough to clean the wound with water or alcohol.

>Muh dark and tragic backstory
Yeah, its become a cheap way to generate drama points for your character to "overcome" despite it not affecting the character at all until convenient.

Alright, I'm done with this. No one asked for it to be described.

I'm saying that if it's glossed over to the point it doesn't figure in the story it might as well not be in the story.

Famine, prostitution and fucking murder are said to be present, but rape needs to be disguised and barely alluded in the narrative when the character would not have done so if not for the audience's sensibilities.

That is a fact.

>Turnips and Tax Policies

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but GRRM never actually talks about fiscal policies in the books...

I don't agree. If all that shit goes down, it should be pretty clear that rape is happening. Like, if women are captured alive, there's no need to describe the rape in loving detail, but it should be obvious that they're going to have a very bad night.

In our dark fantasy campaign, we were cautioned that the alchemist we were escort shouldn't be taken alive. When we were about to be overwhelmed, my PC promptly stabbed her in the throat to save her from an even more horrific fate.

>that one manlet trying to fit in

>Evil
Depends on your definition.
My homebrew has two "Evil empires" that are heavily expansionist. One of them practices heavily enforced eugenics and the other an incredibly strict legal code.

Both believe they are improving the human condition, sacrificing a few now to save countless later. The fact of the matter is that the people in their empires that conform are happy and healthy, but those outside are horrified by their practices.

I hate to fall on the "I get enough of that in real life" argument but seriously, if I wanted to look at an endless chain of picking the lesser of two evils and having it wind up more horrible than I thought I'd think about my career in my free time.

>The whole point of a dark fantasy setting is that life is cheap.
That attitude is what makes it fun for me to subvert it, though. There's no fun playing the virtuous hero in a world where that's accepted, natural and normal. If I fail, a thousand Ted the Paladins are ready to take over. If I'm not there, there's whole religious organizations of people who will be. The only time my hero makes any difference in those worlds is because of happenstance; I was the one there at the right place and the right time, and if it was someone else it'd be the same outcome.

In a world where people abandon the core ideals I affiliate with good, even a small victory where the foundation of my moral code stands strong is meaningful. Every life saved is a thousand times more valuable simply because nobody else is willing to sacrifice effort to save it.

You don't gotta be a beacon of honor and upstanding character. Murdering the assassin in his bed is still an act of greater good. Beheading the enemy and using it to send a message is the means, and the end of making the world better is the end that justifies it.

Playing a morally upstanding Machievellian (you know, like Michiavelli) in a shithole world that doesn't deserve you just feels RIGHT, you get me?

Should take his own goddamn advice, then.

would you become a monster to save your land from a greater monster?

> When we were about to be overwhelmed, my PC promptly stabbed her in the throat to save her from an even more horrific fate.

So what happened to the rest of the party?

>There's a farmer over there with food and daughters that you are trying to save from total destruction and the stingy bastard says you can sleep on some mildew covered hay in his barn while he gives you watery turnip soup and acts like he's being the most generous guy in the world.
Fuck that guy. Break into his house and eat all his bacon.

Turk rule would have probably been btter than the bojars.

I dunno, it just feels contrarian. I'm probably a bit jaded on RPGs, but I never play contrarian characters. They feel kind of overdone.

Yes holy shit how is this even a question?

Because if you let the greater monster win then there is no one left to morally posture at you after you save their lives.

See? Rape was present and wasn't described in minutiae.

It wasn't just aluded, or treated as a special sort of evil. It was a fact of life.

I don't understand why we are arguing if you get my point.