Why Grey Morality & Gritty Realism FAIL
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- Опубліковано 18 вер 2024
- Time and time again I see campaigns advertising these two concepts, Grey Morality & Gritty Realism. It seems like people have forgotten how to show restraint when dealing with these aspects within the tabletop hobby. I'm tired of it!
I have a player who has often said that he doesn't like heroic games where the players have to save something and would like to play in a morally grey campaign.
When I had a campaign where my players were driven by personal goals and worked for a criminal organization (while trying to get out of said organization), he'd just have his character sit home alone and question why the others kept involving him in their quests.
I think there's a strong misconception on how to use these concepts in Tabletop unfortunately and because it's so prevalent it even affects how the players engage with it. Sounds like he wasn't sure what he wanted lol
Witcher games and books did a good job of grey morality. Geralt isn't always perfect, but we know his goals and beliefs are good and worth rooting for. The rest of the world is believably human too, even if it is a flawed and at times a very cruel place.
Geralt is a great example of a truly heroic, "good" character who still fits in his gritty and dark world
While I like gritty realism in my fantasy books, when it comes to games I would much rather play a game that's more fun and where I can be full on chaotic good.
"Grey morality" is just the default, especially if your players are new and murder hobo-y.
Not me though, my Arms Dealer PC was Morally Silver. Basically Han Solo in New Hope.
Yeah, I'm more so critiquing the usage by DMs than anything.
@TrillTheDM You're right, though. It's cool if untrustworthiness is the point.
Like a Social Navigation Game (NPCs have specific motivations and, for these, will betray others at a whim);
A Crime mystery thriller (every suspect is plausibly suspicious and has reason to lie);
Or some kind of no man's wasteland - be it wartorn, apocalyptic or untamed (where tragedy is common, allies are necessary but betrayal is expected).
Otherwise or when poorly executed, it's just unrewarding. If every situation has no right answers, then all decisions are arbitrary. If a moral dilemma has an obvious answer, then you've wasted your Grey morality. If you're doing Grey for its own sake, you're creating a world apathetic to the players and which they can't attach themselves to.
I left a campaign earlier this year because after 1 year of playing we've yet to fully experience a full win from our accomplishments. everything we did something good, a literal god decided to come and belittle us. And then we got denied downtime with the dm only saying he wanted to keep the story going...
i had to nutshell this for someone..
"there is a thin line between misery porn and grimdark, the key element is hope... and its very nuanced. bitter sweet conclusions are you ally in this, clever retorts, sacrifice... dont just kill everyone and go "its dark"."
As a DM, I like to use morally grey characters sparsely, to contrast with other characters. The big bad is evil because of the backstory and whatever, but he is evil, he chooses evil and is undeniably the villain. The heroes and their allies choose to be just and fair and all those virtues. The morally grey fence on the fringe of a village hit by famine is somewhere in between. The contrast empowers the narrative and highlights the moral choices the players are making throughout the campaign.
Similarly, gritty realism has its place. Its a fantasy world, not history, there's ways to worldbuild that don't make your whole world a game-of-thrones-esque DARK ages adventure, but you can have some parts have elements of that. The lands under the vampire counts feel a lot more grim than the elven forests. Contrast is king, it makes things, people and places more memorable to the players and encourages exploration.
The best example of grey morality for me is Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Everyone in both sides of the conflict feels correct and heroic. So when you have two main characters trying to kill each other in close quarters it'd be a huge loss and a huge win no matter who ends up on top.
It's a more optimistic way of having a world without clear lines,
I very much prefer a lighter gameplay, with fun and chaotic energy into the world. I feel that in a lighter gameplay I am actually freer to create a more complex character infused with more humor and with interesting traits, whereas in a gritty / grim setting there's more falling back on cliché edgy characters.
Hear me out: I built a morally grey tabletop RPG fairy tale setting where the idea of absolute good and absolute evil exists, where mothers tell their children about the legendary virtuous King Victor and his twelve heroic Paladin Knights defeated the nine evil hag sorceresses and thus saved the world from their cruelty, thus inspiring children growing up--including the player characters--to be like King Victor and his Paladins.
However, as these "nine evil sorceresses" returned with a vengeance and the player characters have to step up and be the new heroes of their age, they learn that in reality it's not as black and white as they were taught. As they dig deeper into the past, they discover that Victor and his Paladins weren't as virtuous as the stories claim they were, and the "evil" sorceresses aren't actually all that evil, they have in fact very legitimate grievances.
However, what I hope to achieve here is not to demoralize the players and make them feel like nothing matters. Instead, I want them to rise above the moral greyness and actually be the heroes they thought Victor and his Paladins were.
King Victor and his twelve Paladins made mistakes, and its up to the player characters to make sure those mistakes aren't repeated.
Edit: in case it wasn't obvious, I loosely based King Victor and his twelve Paladin Knights on our world's King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and I based my story on what I experienced when I believed King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table to be heroes of epic virtue, only the then later actually read the Lancelot-Grail Cycle and discover that the Knights of the Round Table were actually rather flawed characters with sometimes dubious morality.
I think morally grey vs morally complex is an interesting dichotomy. I love this video because I didn’t agree with all of your opinions, but I in the end agree with your premise.
My one addendum, I think the best characters/worlds are the ones that have flawed character, striving for virtues, in a world of complex struggles. And that shit is far from easy to hit just right.
(Ps, could we get a list of the films shown? There’s a ton here I want to see, and don’t know where to start!)
I agree, hopefully that came across in the video!
Films used : Marketa Lazarova, Flesh + Blood, GoT clip, LOTR, The Northman, Watchmen, Conan the Barbarian, and a couple clips from The Punisher series.
Liked, subbed, and subscribed. You've given me something that I thought I had lost forever: hope. Through your verbose criticisms of roleplaying games, I no longer want to kill myself. You see, I walked in on my wife a few years ago getting drilled by a neighbor called Mastadon. He was a retired NFL linebacker, Google tells the full tale. Anyway, after drowning in the bottom of a bottle for the last thousand days, I found your channel. I am saved. Thank YOU, brother.
Me: This is a survival game where holy magic has been broken (and is an end goal to win the campaign, to recontact the gods), and I expect you to track arrows and rations and how you're carrying things.
The Players: Ah, yes gritty realism where we will all suffer!
Me: That's... not what I said. I just expect you to track resources....
The Players: I expect to die of cholera or dysentery.
Me: .....
I tried to pitch games like LOTFP but nobody wants to play that. In VTM it was just easier to play because I would just react to the situation. Because the players more want to be terrible people. I see that more at tables more often are players who want to play these gritty characters but don't want to be called out on it. They want the immersion without the consequences of actions.
@@jayteepodcast Yeah that's definitely something I've seen as well. Realpolitik without any of the consequences that naturally come from playing that way. I agree that most people don't want harsh gritty realistic experiences, that's more of a DM issue I believe.
Gritty realism doesn't equal cynicism and autofail.
It's just a "difficulty setting" that makes player choices much more meaningful if done right.
Heroism shines much brighter when you aren't a bulletproof superhero, and actually have to risk severe social consequences or even death.
Peasant child thanking you for saving his mother can be more powerful than some deity making you the king of the world.
Gameplay wise, it makes skills like first aid, scouting and stealth more meaningful, as frontal assault usually is a bad choice.
Same deal with gray morality, it doesn't preclude existence of white and black morality. Take WFRP as example: lots of gray area. yet it's still ultimately a fight of light vs dark.
It feels as though the game design often undermines the difficulty of achieving anything within these aspects of play (Gritty Realism/Grey Morality/Grim Dark). Lawful Stupid was a thing, especially when it became conflated with "this is your character's personality" and not a moral compass. The use of these three is also undermined when a game design is over-reliant on so-called game balance; not all conflicts are symmetrical. Lately, I've been hearing an increased usage of the phrase "Meaningful Choice" combined with "Meaningful stakes." This, too, gets undermined by design and in favor of avoiding character death, plot armor, or even just a bias toward a style of play. Adventure gaming, killing monsters, gaining experience, taking their shit, and leveling up are not served well by forays into moral quandaries and quagmires. It seems to me that the previous parts of my comment, along with what you are discussing in the video, all get undermined when most of the game advice and discussion becomes embroiled in "what's fun." Has this led to a general player maximum becoming, "It's ok when bad things happen to the NPCs, but not my character or their possessions?" You can have meaningful choices with meaningful stakes when the extent of playing with those parameters is meaningfully accepted, even within a gritty, realistic, morally grey, or grim and dark world. But there's always a but, right? When the default is set asymmetrically, the sunk costs of "building a character" and plot armor are set so that "the player character is special," where are we left to derive any meaning for anything within the game?
Thanks for the videos, by the way. As a recent subscriber, I appreciate the expressions you've developed over time.
I absolutely agree. Certainly a lot of things are undermined by different aspects of the game. I think partly why people take such extremes when trying to include things like Grey Morality or gritty realism is largely because of a misinterpretation or maybe even miscommunication from the game itself on how to run.
I feel like intuitively many people assume a sort of adversarial relationship between DM & player because otherwise we'd be on the "same side" so I must be adversarial in my position in order to create "meaning". Those more idk maybe insecure might think then that everything should be difficult so that everything is meaningful. Then you have the side that rejects it outright. We're all just here to play a game and to be adversarial at all is undermining the experience.
It's tough! Lol the "what's fun" and imo the "what's fair" crowd has certainly had a major influence in the hobby's trend.
Appreciate the kind words and interesting thoughts!
@@TrillTheDM, you're welcome. It's become rare for a creator to express an opinion and not feel attacked or trolled in these "modernized" RPG waters. Even in the first documentary on D&D, Tracy Hickman lamented a lack of what could be done through the experience of playing an RPG. Keep asking questions and posting; you've got a sound POV that is needed these days.
Game of Thrones and The Witcher are so annoyingly tragic that it dessencitized me to tragedy. Thus it was just a "things always go wrong" fetish game.
You articulated your points pretty well...
Thumbs down!
That point about moral grayness and complexity being different rocks. Well done!
I find that epic fantasy settings tend to have a throughline morality, with factions and individuals with moral complexity.
So many good points. Having a religion thats generally aiming to be good but has a few corrupt priests is more interesting than a faction of priests whose goal is to screw over the party every way they can. Or whose actions occasionally result in one or two factions that are harmed in some way or whose goals tend to run counter to them (but not every action).
Once you have a few factions like that, a smaller faction which a specific goal that does not incorporate morality can be interesting.
Its really only interesting if done in moderation, which you said multiple times… so well done!
On the subject of grey morality: if the entire in game world is one shade of grey then yes: that's boringlend leads to uninspired game play.
However, I believe that when people say they want morally grey, they really mean "morally ambiguous". This is less that the whole game world is one shade of grey, or absolute black and white. This is the idea that the world's elements, factions, governments, and powers are on a moral spectrum. Planescape captures this quite well, in my opinion. Several factions that range from lawful to chaotic but can be anywhere between good and evil. They are driven by different philosophies, but the inherent good or evil comes down to the faction members themselves.
By putting the PCs into a world where there are several different shades and layers of morality, you present to them a world that is much more nuanced. Granted, this means the DM has to actually cover the whole spectrum of morality, from absolute good (which could include zealots) to absolute evil (probably cultists). What makes this interesting, and what many DMs fail to capture, is how rationalizing their morality can be a factions biggest flaw.
In my games, my players can either take these factions at face value, or decide for themselves if a faction is truly good or evil. The key here is that there is still a measure of what is good or evil, but it challenges their assumptions.
Morally ambiguous characters arent lazy and are incredibly rewarding once you factor in character development. Many players I see these days have a 2d character, which is basically a catch phrase with a sword and a bad accent.
Its the flaws of a character, and their inner struggle, that is what makes them interesting. If someone was perfect, then they are boring.
A character that is young and morally ambiguous will have to face this decision at some point. Are they ok with commiting evil acts in exchange for gold or power, or will the have to take a stand?
This kind of character development is what makes the morally ambiguous character interesting. Unfortunately, most players and especially DMs, never get past that first character concept, and so the character remains stagnant.
Gritty realism is hard to implement. Drama needs tension, and the quickest way to that is to ramp up the gritty realism, butthis is a huge mistake.
I learned early on that when people say "realism" what they mean is "immersion". Going to hard into realism destroys gameplay, and trying to ramp up tension by making it gritty is a mistake. I understand that in DND in particular it is exceptionally difficult to bring tension to the game where the PCs are basically superheros. Its a huge factor in DM burnout.
The solution though isnt yo get gritty. The solution is to make their decisions matter, with plausible consequences. Monsters should be scary and at times running out of ammunition or water should be a thing, IF thats the tone for that campaign. Instead of gritty realism, instead id agree with the idea of emotional realism. This circles back to the moral ambiguity: if a Pc decides their values and morality and act accordingly, what is the emotional impact of dealing with the fallout?
It takes time to develop this skill as a DM. Putting Pcs into a morally complex world means that thet have to make a stand. the difference is that you still need a definition of "good" vs "evil". If that is done correctly,it will lead to some remarkable gameplay.
At least, thats been my experience so far
i also feel that grey morality is taking over too much, mostly after the success of Game of Thrones.
I appreciate the video, but I don't think I agree with your overall assessment on each end of your overall thesis. And I don't mean in the tone, but more in the overall idea. For some settings, to have a compelling narrative, immersive tone and overall enjoyable game, you have to employ exactly what you say (World of Darkness comes to mind.) for the necessary effect to feel like what people imagine the world to be. That's not to say you can't have characters with absolute values, but it's going to be a gradient and not a checkerboard. For the realism, I understand what you're implying, but having characters count every ration, every coin, and really think about putting their lives in risky situations can often activate the necessary pre-conditions of some alignments and gameplay elements. It for instance makes some characters more mercenary and pragmatic, good characters will still want to do good things, but it has a cost to constantly sacrifice especially in light of an apathetic population, it makes sense to sometimes steal, or intimidate, if the setting doesn't have these elements it puts the players in a morally dubious position even if their alignment is good.
Delta Green, Alien, Twilight 2000, Runequest, Paranoia, WFRP, LotFP the list goes on.
Those system work pretty darn well, despite having gray morality and grittiness in spades.
So no, the point of this video is invalid.
It's inept gamemastership and usage of inappropriate tools that causes it to fail, not the concept in itself.
I always wanted to make a game with heroic and virtues characters between good and evil but in the end my players murdered everyone around. Yeah we played Warhammer fantasy which is gray af but still they always gravited towards chaos.
A very nuanced take!
This was excellent. Thank you for this.
@@Tora58 Appreciate the kind words and glad you enjoyed.
What movie were your clips from towards the beginning? It looks cool.
Reclaim the fairy tale.
@@DuelingDragonAdventures Damn straight
nah i liek gritty realism tbh
ok fine you cooked Descently enought. But i'm kinda already doing everything you saying on my games tbh. i feel like this video is just venting after a bad campaign tbh, most gritty realistic campaigns are fine
Fail? Such a loud capslock for such a wrong statement, lmao. You might be tired of whatever, but the only thing that fails is you, it seems. Either in making grey morality campaigns, or in showing restraint about your "tiredness" of them.