Running more mature campaigns

[Yora]

The thread on violence in fantasy campaigns got surprisingly great replies and so I'd like to start a discussion about the wider subject that is currently occupying my mind as a GM and worldbuilder.

Most fantasy campaigns and adventures are more or less variations on "You are deadly warriors and heroically kill monsters and villains who are threatening innocent people". That's often great stuff and has served RPGs very well for the last 40 years and modern fantasy for well over 100.

But these days I don't find myself nearly as thrilled by this idea as I used to. Maybe it's because I'm getting older and more grown up or just because I've been doing it for so long. (Though there's many people around who've been doing it a lot longer and still get a kick out of it.)
I find myself wanting something heavier and more substantial.

When Blue Rose came out in 2005, there was a lot rude jeering. When Lamentations of the Flame Princess appeared in 2010 it was extremely controversial. But times have changed a lot. When the kickstarter for a new edition of Blue Rose was launched last year it got funded within 12 hours and got considerable attention, and LotFP is perhaps the most respected independent label for RPGs these days.
Now you don't have to be a fan of either line of games or might even consider them poor excuses to court controversy, but they are both genuine attempts to explore new directions for RPGs that appeal to people looking for something more mature and mentally more demanding. And a good number of people are certainly responding to that.

I think Blue Rose and LotFP adventures are both very valuable works and important contributions to the widening of the scope for RPGs from the original focus on "adults ages 10 and up". But I wouldn't actually want to play either of them. The standard method used by LotFP and friends to make things more somber is to make everything revolting by employing liberal amounts of gore and torture. Which sometimes does get the job very well done (http://udan-adan.blogspot.de/2015/12/on-horror-and-darkness-in-osr-d.html), but it takes a special kind of players to enjoy it, and especially enjoy it on a regular basis. I tried taking this route with my own worldbuilding and it just doesn't work. It's not a tool for everyone, but rather a very specialized tool for specialized applications.
(With Blue Rose the setting doesn't catch my interest and the first edition lacked in sufficient GM guidance.)

I think there must at least be a few dozen other ways to add more maturity to the average fantasy RPG and many of them with a much wider appeal than gore and demonic torment. I'd really like to hear what other people are thinking about this subject.

[Khedrac]

Oddly enough, I think one of the oldest still active games has this covered - Call of Cthulhu (but it requires a good GM sorry Keeper).

To a certain amount the game can be running around killing monsters - especially with experienced players.
The twist comes when the party ends up killing realtively sane cultists, or worse, innocents who "need to die to save the world".
At this point the characters take a Sanity hit.
The killing may be absolutely necessary, but having to kill humans (i.e. those people one is trying to protect) has a downside in dehumanising the characters. Do this too often as the character becomes an NPC as their santiy reaches zero.

[Geddy2112]

You can add more mature themes to a standard high fantasy RPG, but fantasy RPG's are fantasy for a reason. Most of your D&D high fantasy settings intentionally don't do this kind of thing. There are rarely rules for things like sanity, or tracking mettle over time from exposure to things other than violence, or whatnot. I suggest looking into other systems to get the desired effect.

A lot of the World of Darkness games cover a much more mature set of themes. Vampire the masquerade is geared more towards the social intrigue and manipulations of a fantasy criminal element. Changeling:The lost explores a LOT of what it means to be human and the entire premise is a world of people and players kidnapped and robbed of some of their identity by fey. There are fetches, human fey creations put into their place. Players have to balance becoming more powerful and retaining their humanity. Both downplay overt violence although it still happens.

Some of the less Space Marine porn warhammer RPG's are pretty dark. Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader take place in the grimdark setting of the 40k universe. You get the occasional over the top carnage, but a lot of the grimdark comes from the whole fact that humanity is constantly screwed and that death/destruction on a planetary scale is not all that uncommon.

If you go in the wrong direction trying to add "maturity" you end up with FATAL, which you probably don't want.

Feng Shui is an intentionally less mature game, where the game intentionally becomes a cheesy over the top wuxia action movie.

Through the breach takes place in the Malifaux universe. It is combatcentric, but combats are a bit more dangerous. The setting has evil monsters, but is a lot of political and class warfare between Iron Fisted authoritarian government-companies, heroic magic slinging freedom fighters, miner unions, necromancers, and other lesser factions.

Shadowrun has magic and technology go into the cyberpunk realm, where the ragtag band of misfits from the streets and allies fight against giant dystopian megacorporations and their evil machinations.


Oddly enough, I think one of the oldest still active games has this covered - Call of Cthulhu (but it requires a good GM sorry Keeper).

To a certain amount the game can be running around killing monsters - especially with experienced players.
The twist comes when the party ends up killing realtively sane cultists, or worse, innocents who "need to die to save the world".
At this point the characters take a Sanity hit.
The killing may be absolutely necessary, but having to kill humans (i.e. those people one is trying to protect) has a downside in dehumanising the characters. Do this too often as the character becomes an NPC as their santiy reaches zero.

Second CoC as well.

I think you should just look at other systems, or at least their settings. You can always rob the canon and premise of one system and play with the rules of another. D&D and high fantasy realms are intentionally not supposed to cater to this kind of thing, but zillions of other games and systems are.

[Belac93]

I enjoy more mature games. Actually, for me, its usually either silly or mature (but sometimes both).

[Darth Ultron]

Well ''mature'' can mean a lot of things. Depends what is wanted or needed.

[Efrate]

What exactly are you looking for? Mature as in NC17 plus content, or mature as in hitting on more real world issues like sexism, racism, classism, etc? Both can work in DnD, though it takes a really good group of players to make it work. Do you want more horror? More of oh god why are we doing this? Hard moral choices?

Paranoia, Dark Heresy, Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, and others are out there. Even C. tech, as maligned as it is, ups the squick quite a bit. Heroes of Horror has the full taint rules and using them, especially in conjunction with the corrupt acts and whatnot from FCI and II and BoVD IIRC makes a drastically different game. When you have to weigh each act in the light of what happens to your body and soul it changes the dynamic. You cannot just get back to life if your soul is consigned to the Nine Hells, or you corrupt enough to become abominations, but make sure your players won't just make a new character and kind of hand wave everything.

For the more NC-17 plus stuff, there's always F.A.T.A.L.

Seriously though, don't do F.A.T.A.L.

[AMFV]

Well typically, in the first part, you don't make subject matter more mature simply to be more mature. That winds up with a lot of issues with it. Generally the way to go about having more mature games is by not hand-waving as much of the mature bits, and letting players know beforehand that the game will have a more mature tone. You can certainly include political intrigue, shades of grey, morally tough decisions in a game. But be warned that players may rebel against it, and they certainly won't like it if it's a surprise.

In the second part, it's really a LOT more group dependent than system dependent. You could run a cheese and pretzels V:tM game where you play as Brujah bikers going around drinking and bashing skulls. Or you could play a serious AD&D game where you have to decide if forcing a princess into an arranged marriage is the right thing to do, even though her future king is a horrible violent brute, because it will save the kingdom.

[RazorChain]

I run mature games that don't focus on killing monsters for fun and profit and neither do they focus on saving the world from some BBEG.

Mostly mature games spring from having mature themes. If your games focus on that the PC are adventurers that make their living from getting valuables from monsters that decided to cohabit in an underground structure. Then maybe the players are just happy to kick down doors, kill monsters and get the loot.

I must admit that I have a harder time running a mature game using certain systems as some of them require you to suspend your disbelief in such a manner that you have to surgically remove your brain.

Of course it is open to dispute what mature is but mostly I focus on a good story with believable characters and motives. It also helps to focus more on shades of grey, the villains don't have to be evil and choices should not always be easy.

My games have less focus on loot and character progression (leveling) but more on character developement, relationships with npcs and how the player characters impact their corner of the world.

[2D8HP]

I'd say that my games feature (when done well) such mature themes as meeting in a tavern. Leaving said tavern to wail on scaly types who occupy underground abodes, collect shiny objects in said underground abodes, avoid bandits who occupy space between underground dwellings and tavern, bring shiny objects to spend in tavern in noble quest for ale and time with hotties.
Also pizza! :smallwink:
When done poorly than there is more of a focus on backstory tragic deals, and badly chosen toppings on said pizza. :smallfrown:

[Yora]

Well ''mature'' can mean a lot of things. Depends what is wanted or needed.
And that's why having a lot of different replies and comments on the subject would be great.


I run mature games that don't focus on killing monsters for fun and profit and neither do they focus on saving the world from some BBEG.
This comes very close to what I consider to be the more immature elements of most standard Fantasy games (and books and movies). The whole idea that deadly violence is fun and being regularly exposed to lethal combat is living the good life. Also the whole unquestioned assumption that everything will return to normal and everyone be happy again if you just kill enough people. This is probably what most people are referring to when using the term "power fantasy".

What I am looking for is campaigns that aknowledge that killing evil people alone is not enough to make the world a better place, and that fights to the death do not qualify as having a good time with friends. Even when the fight is just and the players are thrilled by their accomplishments, I think having at least a small element of morbidity to the whole situation would enhance the game quite a lot.
It doesn't have to be dark or brutal. Darkness and brutality by themselves are neither mature nor immature.

I think one relatively simple but hugely important element that can make a campaign feel much more mature is to acknowledge that killing and causing severe injuries will have consequences. In most fantasy I've come across, pretty much all enemies want to kill the heroes on sight anyway, so you can just kill a few or a lot of them and that doesn't really change anything. They are also completely evil and have no connections or relationships with the general population, so you can kill as many of them as you like and all other people either don't care or will cheer for you.
This leads to the situation that there never is any good reason not to kill all enemies in sight. Maybe try to talk for a minute or two to get some information, but then killing them all when they have no further use. And I find that deeply unsatisfying.
To counteract that, I think a campaign greatly benefits from having NPCs whose goals are opposed to those of the PCs and whose values and behaviors seem objectionable to the players, but who don't actively seek the death of the PCs or do things that would drive the players to attack immediately to prevent a serious crime against someone. NPCs who are rivals, competitors, or just outright unpleasant, but not an immediate threat to anyone. The other thing is that such NPCs should have connections to people who don't really qualify as enemies for the PCs. But they might become enemies if the players kill or injure their friends and relatives. I think at least some of the times when the players chose to use lethal force (or are forced into a situation in which they have no choice), that instance should come back to them later in the form of new enemies who object to what the players did.

Since someone brought up rules and D&D: I don't think this can really work with using an alignment system that identifies NPCs as being objectively evil or not. Even if the players have no means to determine this, it still affects how the GM will treat the more ambiguous enemies (or allies!).

I also always find it very dubious when the players are causing a lot of death and destruction but everyone is fine with it as soon as they show their Hero Badge. I've done it often enough myself, but it's just very implausible that people get away with such things just because they say they are heroes and all the dead guys were villains. But this becomes an even more serious issue when their enemies are people who are not universally seen as evil villains by the rest of the population. Killing a council member or a royal advisor and saying "It's okay, we're heroes" shouldn't work. The players would have to show some really rock solid evidence or extremely trustworthy witnisses to not be accused of murder. And even if the have, the authorities might not care about the villains misdeeds as much as the players do while having a good relationship with them.
Unfortunately I don't really know any good ways to handle the PCs getting arrested or hunted for murder and then getting them out again without their reputation being fully destroyed and them being made outlaws. And having a campaign simply end with all them getting hanged for what wasn't even a major showdown of the adventure would be a huge letdown.

[No-Kill Cleric]

A lot of people beat me to the punch, but I will put emphasis on the party dynamic. In general, well-established groups are comfortable enough with each other on a personal level to tackle these kinds of issues. Its harder to bring people who barely know each other and/or the system and expect them to be comfortable with bigger choices. But some people might respond well to the new crowd and not have to meet their friends expectations. Other groups might never develop the interest or maturity to handle more adult themes.

I suggest trying a short series or a oneshot to see how everyone in your group handles the adult themes, then branch out from there.

[Kriton]

I think I have been running a mature game for a while. The elements that make it more mature are as far as I understand them:

The lack of objective morality
Heavy political intrigue and factional conflict between civilized areas and within them
Reputation tracking with the various political factions that affects how said factions treat the party
High mortality rate for combat and morale mechanics


Something I haven't tried but I'm thinking would be a great setting for a more mature game, would be a Cigilesque planar city, heavy on philosophical themes. Though it seems pretty hard to build or run effectively.

EDIT: Of course resurrection and anything similar is for kids.

[Yora]

I must admit that I have a harder time running a mature game using certain systems as some of them require you to suspend your disbelief in such a manner that you have to surgically remove your brain.


You can add more mature themes to a standard high fantasy RPG, but fantasy RPG's are fantasy for a reason. Most of your D&D high fantasy settings intentionally don't do this kind of thing. There are rarely rules for things like sanity, or tracking mettle over time from exposure to things other than violence, or whatnot. I suggest looking into other systems to get the desired effect.

Do you have any specific examples in mind for rules that help setting a more mature tone or work against it?

Something I quite like it doing reaction rolls for non-story relevant encounters and moral checks. When faced with the task of playing an encounter with creatures or NPCs that have not been further defined, it's always a big temptation to just have them attack the party instead of stalling the game by coming up with background and motivations on the fly. For encounters were the reaction of the other side is not already clear, I find reaction rolls a helpful tool to get the process of creating a background going. If the die tells you they are unfriendly but not eager to start a fight, that's something you can work with, given the identity of the NPCs and the location where they are met. It frees you from having to make that choice where the easiest option would always be to have a fight. You don't need a roll, but I think it's a good reminder to not always take the easy way out.

Morale checks are also not strictly needed and you can always just decide as a GM when the enemies start to retreat from a fight. But when you're not used to do this regularly having a mechanic for it helps to remember that this is something that can happen.
It also helps a lot when you understand what the opposition is trying to accomplish (http://theangrygm.com/four-things-youve-never-heard-of-that-make-encounters-not-suck/) with a fight.

Fear and Sanity rules are something that I view as rather questionable. Using stats and dice to determine when to tell the players "you are now scared" creates a detachment of the players from their characters. The emotional state of the characters is abstracted to mechanics and th player reduced to an outside observer whose own feelings and opinions about the situation don't reflect on the character. With fear probably more so than sanity, I think it's better to have the players declare when their characters are scared of a place or a creature.
And as mentioned earlier, the threats posed by dangerous creatures and situations has to be real. If injury and death can easily be repaired, then the players don't have much reason to think their characters might be afraid of their wellbeing.

[JNAProductions]

I've got a decent chunk of experience with the... Ahem, "mature" side of D&D. The NC-17 stuff.

But as for more mature themes, like pain, suffering, sexism, racism, all that? I could do it. I've touched on it in some campaigns. But... I don't really like to, at least not heavily. D&D and other RPGs are, for me, a way to escape from the humdrum of daily life. Why would I want to be reminded of some of the crappy stuff in the world when playing a larger-than-life hero?

That being said, that's definitely just my opinion. I don't enjoy it, but if you do (and have a group that does) more power to you. Enjoy your mature RPGs.

[Max_Killjoy]

There is also room for a game that's more complex and "grown up" than just "kill them all, take their stuff, gain power doing it", that has room for intrigue, negotiation, compromise, interpersonal relationships, politics, different cultures, etc... without falling into the false dichotomy trap of "well if it's not dealing with things like sexism and racism, if violence isn't shown as terrible and wrong no matter what, if it doesn't dwell on suffering and disease and filth in the ancient/medieval world, then it's just a silly game".

[JNAProductions]

There is also room for a game that's more complex and "grown up" than just "kill them all, take their stuff, gain power doing it", that has room for intrigue, negotiation, compromise, interpersonal relationships, politics, different cultures, etc... without falling into the false dichotomy trap of "well if it's not dealing with things like sexism and racism, if violence isn't shown as terrible and wrong no matter what, if it doesn't dwell on suffering and disease and filth in the ancient/medieval world, then it's just a silly game".

True. I guess I just sorta considered that a given. For years, the games I was in were almost entirely free-form, so we naturally shied away from too much fighting, just because that's dull in free-form.

[Slipperychicken]

This comes very close to what I consider to be the more immature elements of most standard Fantasy games (and books and movies). The whole idea that deadly violence is fun and being regularly exposed to lethal combat is living the good life. Also the whole unquestioned assumption that everything will return to normal and everyone be happy again if you just kill enough people. This is probably what most people are referring to when using the term "power fantasy".

I think that having a game deviate from these ideas is reasonable, but it does blur the lines of the heroic fantasy genre. A core idea is the power fantasy you're talking about, where the players are meant to engage in fantastic violence without being guilt-tripped about what happens next.

I usually find a good bit of introspection can come with representations of defeated enemies and their blood. Instead of taking a token off the map once an enemy is killed, one can leave it on the board with a red mark on the board to represent its blood-spatter. Just realizing how many people the players kill in the average dungeon can be a little humbling. Even just having enemies not immediately die, and instead some of them crying and making unpleasant noises for a few turns before kicking the bucket can help too.

[Yora]

An interesting approach someone mentioned to me is to create pressure on the players not by making their characters powerless but by giving them even more power than they are used to. Once you have the power to really make a big difference, you also gain the risk that mistakes and bad decisions lead to really bad consequences.
In most adventures you can find the worst possible outcome is that nothing changes and the PCs are all dead, but even that is unlikely. The possibility that the wrong decisions might make things a lot worse is quite a change to how the game will progress.
This also benefits from having ambigous NPCs than outright villains. When you decide to take them out you also have to consider what comes after them when the PCs have moved on.

I think that having a game deviate from these ideas is reasonable, but it does blur the lines of the heroic fantasy genre.
Yes. That's the goal of this thread. :smallsmile:

[Efrate]

A few tips now that I have an idea of what yer looking for.

Stay out of the dungeon.

Dont go to a random underground complex of evil critters for murder hobo madness. These places are explicit to things that tend towards total evil. Ol' squidface wants to enslave and/or eat everyone, there is no in game reason ever to let one live, they are purely destructive.

Your antagonists are PHB races and variants, and each have a different societal outlook. The wild elves keep slaves from "weaker" races but they treat them well and they are vital allies in the threat against the antagonistic mountain dwarves who are raiding outlying territories for metals mined from their ancestral mountain home because its there right even though they do not occupy it anymore. Meanwhile a movement of strongheart halflings peacefully forment civil unrest pushing there chaotic idealology and trying to bring about a revolution where overmilitarization and strict caste systems keep the people more or less locked into roles. Even though the majority of the populace barring some disaffected youth and bored gnomish nobility are perfectly happy and live fruitful lives well protected by the largely half orc military.

Something like that can work. The biggest problem is dnd is a combat focused system, and without something to hit the game doesn't model other stuff well as a primary motivator. Consequences for actions should always be a part of dnd but there comes a point where it really is meaningless,especially if the players don't want to be stuck. You may wish to consider E6 so its more RP focused and the handwave of solving everything with a simple spell is not as prevalent. Also keeps most real world style consequences pretty relevant.

[Max_Killjoy]

I think it's been 20+ years since any game I've been in featured a dungeon for its own sake.

[Yora]

Nobody here mentiones D&D third edition or Pathfinder.
But the statement still holds true. Complex rules systems are a hinderance to such campaigns. The more rules and special cases you have, the more the game becomes about mechanical solutions to overcome obstacles. When all you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail. Having fewer rules encourages more out of the box thinking, which a game about consequences and responsibilities really requires.

This (http://udan-adan.blogspot.de/2015/07/on-romantic-fantasy-and-osr-d.html) is a pretty good post related to this.


Ol' squidface wants to enslave and/or eat everyone, there is no in game reason ever to let one live, they are purely destructive.

Your antagonists are PHB races and variants, and each have a different societal outlook.
I wouldn't necessarily say that. It certainly is an option and one with great merit. The reason most LotFP adventures are set in historic times and places is the idea that alien monsters are much weirder when the rest of the world is closer to real Earth. In the same way human conflict will feel more "lifelike" when the parties are close to human.

But conflicts in a fantasy world do not have to be like conflicts that might happen somewhere on Earth. You can als have conflicts that are just as complex but based entirely on fantastic premises. It's less real, but that doesn't have to be a negative thing.
One example would be the mages and templars from Dragon Age. Their conflict is based on the fact that mages can actually become possessed by demons at any time. It's not slander or prejudice, but a fact that the mages don't deny. To address this real threat all mages need to be registered and monitored by the templars, who are trained to fight demons. The real problem lies in that the chance of demon possession increases dramatically when mages are seeking power to escape the templars. Don't guard them and you have some demons running free. Guard them too strictly and you get a lot of demons but most of them will be found and destroyed. And nobody really knows how to properly deal with this situation in a way that serves the common good and is fair. The issue is completely fantastical and there's not really analog to it in our world (war on drugs perhaps?) but it's still a very well done conflict that you can do a lot with. The Krogan question in Mass Effect is similarly constructed.
I think you can have antagonists who are very inhuman, but like humanoid NPCs they need to be complex and ambiguous to work effectively. Eat all humans would not do.

[Honest Tiefling]

Ah...What is Blue Rose? I've heard of it, but I thought it was relatively tame, actually, but I have only read descriptions of it. Is it mature because of the gay/trans thing or something?

I think the basis of using ol' Squidfaces in RPGs or other inhuman horrors is that they are basically an enemy Macguffin to move the plot along and to provide really horrific scenarios. For instance, the idea of mercy-killing or helping people die as themselves really only work in this situation, but the inhuman horror is a backdrop for the human conflict itself. Like Themyrs said better then I, it leads to situations that don't really have a real world analog in our world.

[JoeJ]

Ah...What is Blue Rose? I've heard of it, but I thought it was relatively tame, actually, but I have only read descriptions of it. Is it mature because of the gay/trans thing or something?

I don't know much about Blue Rose, but you can read what the publisher says about it at their web site (http://blueroserpg.com/). Apparently, they recently had a kickstarter for a new edition.

[Honest Tiefling]

I don't know much about Blue Rose, but you can read what the publisher says about it at their web site (http://blueroserpg.com/). Apparently, they recently had a kickstarter for a new edition.

They're talking about sexism and gay marriage, concepts that now get covered in children's books. I'm going to lean to yes, the gay marriage is the only reason it is listed as mature.

It lists teen fantasy novels as a reference for crying out loud!

[Spore]

I expect our Vampire v20 game to involve fetish bars, human trafficking, domestic violence, prostitution, murder, unholy rituals and similarly controversial topics. And with the exception of human trafficking and rituals those things already happened in the first two sessions.

[Yora]

They're talking about sexism and gay marriage, concepts that now get covered in children's books. I'm going to lean to yes, the gay marriage is the only reason it is listed as mature.

It lists teen fantasy novels as a reference for crying out loud!

They are indeed pursuing an "interesting" form of marketing their product. One I personally don't like, but that's their decision. It does indeed look a lot like gay teen romance novel stuff. But hey, any publicity is good publicity?

The design goals as described by the people who make it are somewhat different though, or at least more complex. The setting is a utopian kingdom surrounded by chaos and the players play as kind of police officers who are tasked with finding evil and corruption that has taken root and take care of it in ways that restores peace and order. Quite a lot like Jedi actually, or at least as they are described, not as they are shown. The important point is that you can't simply exterminate evil. You have to find the root of the conflict and solve it in a way that restores peace, not crushing anyone who is dissatisfied.
I believe the utopian setting and gender politics are meant to primarily show the players why their job is so important. It's an idealized place that can only exist when it's constantly defended against corruption. Though I am with a lot of people who think the implementation had not been done well. It looks really heavy handed and overly simplistic, at least if you don't dig very deeply into it. I very much appreciate the effort in taking fantasy RPGs beyond dungeon crawling and villain destroying, but I think this approach doesn't have much of a broad appeal.

[Honest Tiefling]

Well that makes far more sense. I somewhat agree that most companies have to use any publicity they can, but that blurb posted earlier didn't really mention anything about reformation or diplomacy. I do appreciate that the game exists for that reason, however.

It does make me wonder how often people don't like the approach Blue Rose has taken, but want some social stuff in with their Happy Fun Time Combat game. Many games I've seen or played (Pathfinder, Vampire the Noun, and Dungeon Hearts and Dungeon World to name a few) always seem to flirt with the idea of either 'isms' or trying to understand evil rather then just whack it on the head. I wonder if a lot of people are more interested in worlds where both exist, not just talking to your enemy.

[AMFV]

This comes very close to what I consider to be the more immature elements of most standard Fantasy games (and books and movies). The whole idea that deadly violence is fun and being regularly exposed to lethal combat is living the good life. Also the whole unquestioned assumption that everything will return to normal and everyone be happy again if you just kill enough people. This is probably what most people are referring to when using the term "power fantasy".


Well there's certainly some aspect of it there. But I would say that the killing isn't what makes it so much a power fantasy as the presence of elements that those participating in the power fantasy can easily triumph over. I don't think you have many fantasies that amount to "kill a sufficient number of people" for many people. Generally what you have in roleplaying games is a situation where killing or violence might not be considered particularly unusual. After all, if your occupation is raiding trapped tombs filled with undead, there's going to be a goodly bit of fighting in your life.



What I am looking for is campaigns that aknowledge that killing evil people alone is not enough to make the world a better place, and that fights to the death do not qualify as having a good time with friends. Even when the fight is just and the players are thrilled by their accomplishments, I think having at least a small element of morbidity to the whole situation would enhance the game quite a lot.
It doesn't have to be dark or brutal. Darkness and brutality by themselves are neither mature nor immature.

I think one relatively simple but hugely important element that can make a campaign feel much more mature is to acknowledge that killing and causing severe injuries will have consequences. In most fantasy I've come across, pretty much all enemies want to kill the heroes on sight anyway, so you can just kill a few or a lot of them and that doesn't really change anything. They are also completely evil and have no connections or relationships with the general population, so you can kill as many of them as you like and all other people either don't care or will cheer for you.


The one thing you really have to be careful of, is pushing the pendulum too far in the other direction. It's one thing to say "violence is treated too lightly" but not all violence is inherently as heavy as other violence. Not all violence, in battle, is morbid. I think that what you're looking for could be better handled by a wartime type fantasy game. You'd have the people on the friendly side who cheer for the heroes, and are fond of them, but the general populace on the other side would have some severe problems.

Or even by having some people support one side and some people the other. That way you're not just creating a fantasy where the players are basically the villains, but one where there's moral ambiguity. If the players are soldiers for the Empire, then maybe they could see how the Insurgent Rebel Forces are fighting for their home, but the also see them attacking civilians and committing war crimes.



This leads to the situation that there never is any good reason not to kill all enemies in sight. Maybe try to talk for a minute or two to get some information, but then killing them all when they have no further use. And I find that deeply unsatisfying.
To counteract that, I think a campaign greatly benefits from having NPCs whose goals are opposed to those of the PCs and whose values and behaviors seem objectionable to the players, but who don't actively seek the death of the PCs or do things that would drive the players to attack immediately to prevent a serious crime against someone. NPCs who are rivals, competitors, or just outright unpleasant, but not an immediate threat to anyone. The other thing is that such NPCs should have connections to people who don't really qualify as enemies for the PCs. But they might become enemies if the players kill or injure their friends and relatives. I think at least some of the times when the players chose to use lethal force (or are forced into a situation in which they have no choice), that instance should come back to them later in the form of new enemies who object to what the players did.


That's certainly reasonable, but I don't think that's necessarily a sign of a more mature game. I would say that's a typical level of game maturity.



I also always find it very dubious when the players are causing a lot of death and destruction but everyone is fine with it as soon as they show their Hero Badge. I've done it often enough myself, but it's just very implausible that people get away with such things just because they say they are heroes and all the dead guys were villains. But this becomes an even more serious issue when their enemies are people who are not universally seen as evil villains by the rest of the population. Killing a council member or a royal advisor and saying "It's okay, we're heroes" shouldn't work. The players would have to show some really rock solid evidence or extremely trustworthy witnisses to not be accused of murder. And even if the have, the authorities might not care about the villains misdeeds as much as the players do while having a good relationship with them.
Unfortunately I don't really know any good ways to handle the PCs getting arrested or hunted for murder and then getting them out again without their reputation being fully destroyed and them being made outlaws. And having a campaign simply end with all them getting hanged for what wasn't even a major showdown of the adventure would be a huge letdown.

Well the best way to combat this is by having the populace split down the sides. Instead of making the PCs into monsters you give their actions some context. Yes, Strahd needed killed, but his household staff are now unemployed and unhappy, and now there's a power vacuum in Barovia, which many people aren't happy with. Generally I've never played in a game where the PCs "got away with things for being heroes," In fact I don't think I've even heard of such a game, if the players kill councilmembers or civilians, they'd best have a REALLY good reason, in almost every game.

Like you're talking beer and pretzels games to such an absurdist level that I've not ever seen it.

[Yora]

Really? Never got to fight assassins in the street or had a big battle in the thieves guild and then had the guards show up and ask the meaning of all those corpses? Or fighting your way to freedom after the corrupt sheriff had you thrown into prison for investigating his dealings with slavers?

Things like these are happening in our games all the time. (But it's okay because the guards will believe the explanations of the players and let them go.)

[AMFV]

Really? Never got to fight assassins in the street or had a big battle in the thieves guild and then had the guards show up and ask the meaning of all those corpses? Or fighting your way to freedom after the corrupt sheriff had you thrown into prison for investigating his dealings with slavers?

Things like these are happening in our games all the time. (But it's okay because the guards will believe the explanations of the players and let them go.)

Well the difference is that in most games, at least most of the ones I've played in. The guards would start considering throwing you into prison after the second time you left bodies on the street. The first time without a good explanation. Fighting your way to freedom is also likely to lead to a lot of problem areas as well.

I think the thing is that in most of your games "The PCs are believed because they're heroes" is a default stance, but I don't think that typically is. Normally when the PCs leave a lot of bodies, they'd best have a very good way to explain it.

[Darth Ultron]

Unfortunately I don't really know any good ways to handle the PCs getting arrested or hunted for murder and then getting them out again without their reputation being fully destroyed and them being made outlaws. And having a campaign simply end with all them getting hanged for what wasn't even a major showdown of the adventure would be a huge letdown.

The easy way is to not have a good society. Have an evil society that does not care about murder. Or a corrupt good society that lets murder slide.

It is also possible to give the PC's a ''license to kill'' or other legal authority to ''take extreme actions''. Or the shadowy group that ''sets them free''. And on the more ''crime'' side, they might have ''crooked lawyers'' or such that can get them out of anything.

And there is always the keystone cops...cops so bad that they will never catch the PC's or always let them escape.

[cobaltstarfire]

The most "mature" game I ever played was a Role Master Game.

Though I think it was a combination of the GM and just how deadly combat is in Role Master can be. NPC's and PC's alike weren't exactly happy to just jump straight into combat.


Though I can't place my finger on what about it made it more "mature". There wasn't really any treasure hunting (or even treasure to be had for that matter), and there wasn't any obvious BBEG for a long time, though there were some pretty heinous baddies. (best example that sticks in my mind is one organization that was very anti-magic, who hung magic users off their walls, didn't matter their age, or even if they were healers who kept self regenerating over and over and over...we were able to save that last one at least, but he was damaged for life).

There were also funny or happy in character moments, but I don't think that took away from the "maturity" at all. It was just a reminder that they were human, and that most of the NPC's we dealt with, even the ones who were quite terrible in our characters eyes were also humans with needs/wants/fears/ect.

I don't think we ever even really covered anything especially "heavy" other than maybe mortality and racism in terms of the folks who feared magic of all kinds. (it was a world where magic was relatively new, and the fear was understandable, there were some spells my character only ever cast once and never again after seeing their effects). As well as huge gulfs in culture when dealing with the Wolf People. Some of the characters had children towards the end of the campaign, and that certainly made things tense on occasion when stuff did get especially dangerous.

By the end of that campaign we had traveled a great distance in many directions, looped back a few times, made new allies, forged trade routes ect, but also ended up stopping the awakening of a very large and evil dragon (mostly due to very good luck...Role Master crits are very deadly...), liberated a city being run by some pretty nasty people, and learned a little bit about all the magical creatures that were starting to wake up and re-enter the world. So I guess we ended up kind of being heroic, but not in the traditional sense?

I dunno if that really helps at all, but it definitely would qualify as one of the more "mature" games I played.

[2D8HP]

The easy way is to not have a good society. Have an evil society that does not care about murder. Or a corrupt good society that lets murder slide. Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar one of the prime "inspirations" of D&D.
I've got a decent chunk of experience with the... Ahem, "mature" side of D&D. The NC-17 stuff.

But as for more mature themes, like pain, suffering, sexism, racism, all that? I could do it. I've touched on it in some campaigns. But... I don't really like to, at least not heavily. D&D and other RPGs are, for me, a way to escape from the humdrum of daily life. Why would I want to be reminded of some of the crappy stuff in the world when playing a larger-than-life hero?

That being said, that's definitely just my opinion. I don't enjoy it, but if you do (and have a group that does) more power to you. Enjoy your mature RPGs.
There is also room for a game that's more complex and "grown up" than just "kill them all, take their stuff, gain power doing it", that has room for intrigue, negotiation, compromise, interpersonal relationships, politics, different cultures, etc... without falling into the false dichotomy trap of "well if it's not dealing with things like sexism and racism, if violence isn't shown as terrible and wrong no matter what, if it doesn't dwell on suffering and disease and filth in the ancient/medieval world, then it's just a silly game".O.K. one of my most miserable RPG sessions for me was at DunDraCon in 1980 (I was 12) where I was trying to play a "barbarian" (Conan like) Fighter and everyone else ("adults" and older teens) were playing Magic Users (Wizards are Jerks!) and the setting was a completly surreal "Monty Python meets Lewis Carrol", and I would have been grateful for something more 'serious".
But almost as miserable have been some Cyberpunk "grim", "gritty", and "mature" sessions I played in the early 1990's. I just don't see the point. Unless you live in some sort of utopia (Canada?), we can walk out of our front doors to explore those "themes"! What's the attraction?

[Kite474]

Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar one of the prime "inspirations" of D&D.O.K. one of my most miserable RPG sessions for me was at DunDraCon in 1980 (I was 12) where I was trying to play a "barbarian" (Conan like) Fighter and everyone else ("adults" and older teens) were playing Magic Users (Wizards are Jerks!) and the setting was a completly surreal "Monty Python meets Lewis Carrol", and I would have been grateful for something more 'serious".
But almost as miserable have been some Cyberpunk "grim", "gritty", and "mature" sessions I played in the early 1990's. I just don't see the point. Unless you live in some sort of utopia (Canada?), we can walk out of our front doors to explore those "themes"! What's the attraction?

Same attraction as mature themes in novels, Tv shows, Books etc. Because It lets one tell stories about them. Many a great stories are about the harshness of the world, the folly of man, and so much more. Plus the best kind of stories are the ones where everyone and everything is explored warts and all.

In short. Because it makes for really great stories and lets you explore narrative outside of "Kill it then take its stuff"

[goto124]

I usually find a good bit of introspection can come with representations of defeated enemies and their blood. Instead of taking a token off the map once an enemy is killed, one can leave it on the board with a red mark on the board to represent its blood-spatter. Just realizing how many people the players kill in the average dungeon can be a little humbling. Even just having enemies not immediately die, and instead some of them crying and making unpleasant noises for a few turns before kicking the bucket can help too.

Computer games do this to let their players revel in gore and violence. I think the effect might just be the exact opposite of what you're looking for :smalltongue:

[Yora]

The easy way is to not have a good society. Have an evil society that does not care about murder. Or a corrupt good society that lets murder slide.

It is also possible to give the PC's a ''license to kill'' or other legal authority to ''take extreme actions''. Or the shadowy group that ''sets them free''. And on the more ''crime'' side, they might have ''crooked lawyers'' or such that can get them out of anything.

And there is always the keystone cops...cops so bad that they will never catch the PC's or always let them escape.

Yes, those are the easy ways. I think they let you avoid the problem instead of dealing with it. But I think it's a quite interesting problem that would be worth going deeper into. But yeah, I don't really have any good ideas how.

A new interesting idea came to me yesterday. There's always the stories of mean GMs who have every person in your character backstory murdered or taken hostage. Annoying the players for a cheap thrill is garbage, but I think giving characters backstories that will become important in the campaign later might actually be a very useful too.
Someone once told of a campaign that started with "The high priest who is also the regent has thrown you into prision and you are going to be beheaded tomorrow morning. How did you get in this situation?" It's the somewhat cliched start of "you all wake up in a cell", but I think it's actually pretty briliant to get the campaign started and the players invested into the story. And it allows the players to choose how their characters will be caught up in events. One player could come up with a story about a big plot that had all the men of the PCs family assassinated and the women and children send into slavery, while another could just pick a case of mistaken identity and not having any previous history with the villain. As a player, you are choosing how personal you want it to be.
More generally speaking, I really like the idea of having players create one or two troubles in the characters' past that exist entirely for the purpose of the GM causing them problems at some point in the campaign. Someone looking for revenge, a relative who has gone missing, a debt with dubious people, whatever the players come up with. But it's made clear to the players from the outset that this will be used against them when the GM sees an opportune moment (which probably will be a very inconvenient one for the players). Not a spiteful surprise, but something that the players are signing up for. Players who rather would not have something tough and troubling can simply pick something easy and uncomplicated. Players who want to go all in can come up with something really heavy and troubling for their character.

[Florian]

Just my 2 copper pieces.

I think it is pretty easy to mistake a "mature" game with "mature" content. Grimdark or PG17 in itself doesn´t change anything. "Hard choices" don´t either, as that is just intellectual/emotional interplay.

Rather, I think a huge part of "mature" gaming is stripping away the whole rationalization and dealing with things as they are.

Using certain rules can enhance that, but they´re not strictly necessary.

[goto124]

Annoying the players for a cheap thrill is garbage, but I think giving characters backstories that will become important in the campaign later might actually be a very useful tool.

The backstory could even be useful to the PC. For example, a sister who sends packages of food every once a while. Or 5e's Backgrounds.

Player-GM cooperation is important for backstories.

[RazorChain]

And that's why having a lot of different replies and comments on the subject would be great.


This comes very close to what I consider to be the more immature elements of most standard Fantasy games (and books and movies). The whole idea that deadly violence is fun and being regularly exposed to lethal combat is living the good life. Also the whole unquestioned assumption that everything will return to normal and everyone be happy again if you just kill enough people. This is probably what most people are referring to when using the term "power fantasy".

What I am looking for is campaigns that aknowledge that killing evil people alone is not enough to make the world a better place, and that fights to the death do not qualify as having a good time with friends. Even when the fight is just and the players are thrilled by their accomplishments, I think having at least a small element of morbidity to the whole situation would enhance the game quite a lot.
It doesn't have to be dark or brutal. Darkness and brutality by themselves are neither mature nor immature.

I think one relatively simple but hugely important element that can make a campaign feel much more mature is to acknowledge that killing and causing severe injuries will have consequences. In most fantasy I've come across, pretty much all enemies want to kill the heroes on sight anyway, so you can just kill a few or a lot of them and that doesn't really change anything. They are also completely evil and have no connections or relationships with the general population, so you can kill as many of them as you like and all other people either don't care or will cheer for you.
This leads to the situation that there never is any good reason not to kill all enemies in sight. Maybe try to talk for a minute or two to get some information, but then killing them all when they have no further use. And I find that deeply unsatisfying.
To counteract that, I think a campaign greatly benefits from having NPCs whose goals are opposed to those of the PCs and whose values and behaviors seem objectionable to the players, but who don't actively seek the death of the PCs or do things that would drive the players to attack immediately to prevent a serious crime against someone. NPCs who are rivals, competitors, or just outright unpleasant, but not an immediate threat to anyone. The other thing is that such NPCs should have connections to people who don't really qualify as enemies for the PCs. But they might become enemies if the players kill or injure their friends and relatives. I think at least some of the times when the players chose to use lethal force (or are forced into a situation in which they have no choice), that instance should come back to them later in the form of new enemies who object to what the players did.

Since someone brought up rules and D&D: I don't think this can really work with using an alignment system that identifies NPCs as being objectively evil or not. Even if the players have no means to determine this, it still affects how the GM will treat the more ambiguous enemies (or allies!).

I also always find it very dubious when the players are causing a lot of death and destruction but everyone is fine with it as soon as they show their Hero Badge. I've done it often enough myself, but it's just very implausible that people get away with such things just because they say they are heroes and all the dead guys were villains. But this becomes an even more serious issue when their enemies are people who are not universally seen as evil villains by the rest of the population. Killing a council member or a royal advisor and saying "It's okay, we're heroes" shouldn't work. The players would have to show some really rock solid evidence or extremely trustworthy witnisses to not be accused of murder. And even if the have, the authorities might not care about the villains misdeeds as much as the players do while having a good relationship with them.
Unfortunately I don't really know any good ways to handle the PCs getting arrested or hunted for murder and then getting them out again without their reputation being fully destroyed and them being made outlaws. And having a campaign simply end with all them getting hanged for what wasn't even a major showdown of the adventure would be a huge letdown.


I'm just going to tell you how I do things.

First on violence.
I don't run games using DnD because it doesn't suit my needs. I'm not saying it is a bad system it just doesn't suit my GMing style. Mostly these days I use Gurps but I have used plethora of other systems during my gaming "career". Gurps is deadly, has amputations, stunning, crippling injuries and a lot less power creeping compared to for example DnD. Combat is a serious affair and if people aren't careful they can be taken out of a fight in one good blow, but you are more likely to be incapacitated than die. I use descriptive combat...those injuries hurt. Crippling injuries are severed tendons, cuts into muscles that make the limb useless or broken bones. Luckily the players have access to magical healing which reduces the time to heal but crippling injuries still take days or weeks to heal (rather than months)

This also means that the players approach situations differently because of how combat works. Also because of a lot less power creeping (let's face it at certain point in DnD the players become superheroes and then almost godlike) the players just don't go killing everything that stands in their path. When the city guard shows up with a dozen men because the players decided to murder hobo their problems then they can't just laugh them off because the PC's are level 12 and those city guards should realistically be level 1 or 2 at most. This also means you don't have to level scale encounters because you are taking a more realistic approach to the gaming world. City guards are just city guards and at some point the players might just laugh off a dozen off them but that isn't happening anytime soon and even then there is danger involved fighting them and these are the same city guards at the start of the campaign and the end of the campaign (of course there are always some variations to stats or a competent captain leading them). The city guards aren't suddenly lvl 10 now to be a challenge to the PC's because they were level 2 the last time the PC's made trouble.

Now the players can leg it, be brought in or fight but the city guards aren't going to be just a trivial obstacle because the players have become superheroes with lots of shiny magical gadgets. Also the players do not have a huge HP barrier that keeps them warm, cozy and safe.

Also people or monster don't always fight to the death, they might run away or plead for mercy. Looking at the scene of battle after combat doesn't mean that everything is dead, there might be the groans of the dying, people pleading for help. This helps to set the tone for the seriousness of combat and let it sink in that combat has consequences. When somebody asks for mercy to see his unborn son, he becomes harder to kill. When the orc tribe has women and children they don't seem as fun targets then.


The World and Setting

Most players expect realistic result to their actions, that is until they learn otherwise. If you take a guy from the street and explain rpg to him, give him a figthter with a sword he expects that if he hits somebody in the head with a sword they die or are badly injured. You can't jump 15 feet up the air...not even Michael Jordan, you have almost zero chance of surviving a 100 feet fall onto rocks. This people know from the real world, now if I tell you that you are playing a superhero game then things change drastically, the only people who can oppose superheroes are supervillains. This is why most of the general population in DnD doesn't matter unless they are a superhero like you or a supervillain, the others are just shrubs. The point is when people come with realistic expectations that the gaming world works like our world then they will approach the game differently.

This goes for everything. If the bad guys are just cardboard cutout bad then the players will treat them like that. They are evil, evil must be killed and nobody cares we kill them because they are evil. Well for starters nobody considers themselves evil, most people have different values, goals and motives. Heck different cultures have different values. A thing considered evil in one culture isn't in another. Even different religions have different values. So why are orcs evil again? Or vampires? Or whatever? Who stuffs all their valuables into dungeons and why do monsters congregate there? If you killed the orcs in the room and barred the door why are the random encounter owlbears knocking on the door? Are they visiting the orcs for a cup of tea? Why did the warrior pay 30 lbs (1500gp) of gold for his 50 lbs plate mail? When the premise of the game is ridiculous then you have a hard time doing something that is not light hearted or follows the ridiculous premise. Like a cringe worthy b movie trying to explore some mature themes or trying to be thought provoking.

So a believable setting, believable motives helps a lot. This doesn't mean it can't be fantastic with gryffon riders and dragons and wizards, IT JUST DOES HAVE TO MAKE SENSE.


Consequences

If you murder people and somebody sees you then you expect the cops to come running and they will hunt you down. If you kill some of them they will use even more resources to get you. You can't just tell them that you are a hero and the people you killed you perceived as evil and they will back off, then the premise just becomes ridiculous. The players then have to use other methods to overcome their obstacles, they can't just kill them. This gives you better chance to setup "bad guys" that hide behind status, wealth, respect or position of power. This promotes intelligent play and social play instead of just combat resolutions. Consequences also make the world feel alive, I recommend that you milk consequences for all their worth.

Story
As the players won't just on a mindless killing spree or lazily exploring a hexogonal map hoping they stumble upon something fun to do then I suggest you come up with some plots that center around the characters or not...it doesn't matter as long they engage in a meaningful and fun activity. Put plots in their way, have the npc's be plotting their nefarious, meaningful plots that make sense and hope the PC's wish to get entangled. I use player backstories a lot for inspiration. Some players say "Backstories bleh....don't want none of it". Well the exit is this way into the murder hobo dungeon power fantasy that you might as well play on your computer place. To have a good believable setting you must understand that your PC's don't exist in vacuum...everybody has a story even though it is a humble one. Everybody knows somebody as well, they have family, friends, acquaintances, rivals and enemies....yes even when you are Raven GrimDark and your family got slaughtered by evil and now you're out for vengeance.

Themes
Who cares....racism, religion or whatever. Doesn't really matter unless you want to explore a particular subject.

[Yora]

Crippling injuries are severed tendons, cuts into muscles that make the limb useless or broken bones. Luckily the players have access to magical healing which reduces the time to heal but crippling injuries still take days or weeks to heal (rather than months)
I really like this. If there is no resurrection, death as the only consequence of defeat is quite harsh. At the same time, not having to worry about getting hit if you're feeling confident that you won't die against an enemy makes combat look like a decent option. Giving characters long lasting but not permanent penalties for getting injured would change these things quite a bit. It goes a bit into the aspect of resource management but on a much longer scale then the next opportunity to rest.


Most players expect realistic result to their actions, that is until they learn otherwise. If you take a guy from the street and explain rpg to him, give him a figthter with a sword he expects that if he hits somebody in the head with a sword they die or are badly injured. You can't jump 15 feet up the air...not even Michael Jordan, you have almost zero chance of surviving a 100 feet fall onto rocks. This people know from the real world, now if I tell you that you are playing a superhero game then things change drastically, the only people who can oppose superheroes are supervillains. This is why most of the general population in DnD doesn't matter unless they are a superhero like you or a supervillain, the others are just shrubs. The point is when people come with realistic expectations that the gaming world works like our world then they will approach the game differently.

This is a very good point you're making here. It's quite similar to the argument for using historical settings so that anything that is unnatural becomes stranger and unusual. You could say the closer the rules and the narrative stays to reality, the more the players will rely on their personal understanding of dealing with conflicts and overcoming obstacles instead of repeating fiction tropes. It sends the message to the players that the game world will react to their actions similar to reality and not according to genre conventions. By having a world that is closer to reality the players also have assurance that assumptions they make about the world will probably be true. If you have a gonzo setting players are very limited in their ability to gain understanding of a situation and plan ahead because nothing can be assumed before it's confirmed by the GM. When you have only a small number of facts about the setting you have only a very limited ability to make connections you can use to your advantage. The more you know about the setting the more you have to work with.

This does not mean that settings should not be fantastical. But they need to be fantastical in a predictable way. Even when, to use the cliched expression, it's predictably unpredictable. Players would probably benefit greatly from having some clear indication when they can trust their intuition based on reality and when they can't.
One of the major aspects of my setting are spirits and the Spiritworld, which are both defined by being characterized as very erratic, chaotic, and unpredictable to mortals. I think campaigns in this setting would benefit greatly from having clear markers that tell the players when they are dealing with spirits. A strong indicator that in this particular situation they can no longer rely on conventional wisdom. If the border between grounded realism and fantastical unpredictability is too blurry, nothing can be taken for granted anymore and planning ahead becomes more like gambling on an outcome than trusting on an accurate understanding of the situation.

[Steampunkette]

Are you looking for more mature or to better model realistic violence?

These are two different things.

A child's story involves hunting for a princess and a dragon, to rescue the former from the latter. A mature game questions the society which commodifies women, particularly those of noble blood, to the extent that they are property to be sacrificed rather than people in command of their own lives.

A child's story of horror involves a cartoonishly evil vampire biting people and raising an army of the dead. A mature version of the same explores the myths of vampires and distills them to their true nature through understanding of the implications of a family so terrified of a man that they desecrate his corpse to avoid his return and continued violent abuse up to and including killing if his beloved does not kowtow to his domination.

Mounting realistic models of violence are great, but they don't make a story any more mature. Just more violent.

[RazorChain]

I really like this. If there is no resurrection, death as the only consequence of defeat is quite harsh. At the same time, not having to worry about getting hit if you're feeling confident that you won't die against an enemy makes combat look like a decent option. Giving characters long lasting but not permanent penalties for getting injured would change these things quite a bit. It goes a bit into the aspect of resource management but on a much longer scale then the next opportunity to rest.

Well most of the time the PC's don't get killed but incapacitated. Resurrection makes combat trivial as you can't die unless it's a TPK. Crippling and injuries means you usually don't have a reset button when you just rest. Also combat encounters become fewer, when the PC's bust into a forbidden tomb there might just be a couple of combat encounters instead of maze of rooms containing more and more combat. This shifts the focus on why the PC's were busting into the tomb in the first place.

[Yora]

I wouldn't go into too much detail with the combat rules either. Making the wounds more gruesome adds rather little by itself. What I think matters the most is the expected outcome of a fight. Deciding whether to fight, retreat, or surrender is always the most important decision point about a fight scene for me. The actual action part is often not particularly interesting or entertaining because you just hope the dice fall well but have very little meaningful decisions to make. (I often skip action scenes when rewatching movies by myself.)

You probably can have a game at superhero power level that has a strong emphasis on consequences and responsibility of action. But you need to be clear about what the players can expect to be the consequences of their actions and whatever rules system you're using, it needs to match and reflect that. When the narrative logic says you can't do something but the rules say that you'd have a really good chance if you would attempt it, the game becomes a lot less predictable in how things work. And that reduces the ability to make meaningful decisions.

To me, hope and doubt is a very important part of "the heroic exprience". The fear that you might have made a terrible mistake but it would have been disastrous if you had done nothing is very central to what I consider a mature tone in adventures. That's what makes decisions hard. If the options you have to choose from are clearly good or bad, it's not a hard choice. If you have little ability to predict the conseqences of your choice, it's also not hard. You could just flip a coin and see what happens.
The game world and its people need to have consistency to make meaningful decisions. And by keeping things closer to reality it becomes a much easier job to keep this consistency and to have players understand how people behave.

[Cespenar]

There's absolutely no limit of the game system on the maturity of the game. You don't need special systems to address this and that, you just need the proper GM and players.

An example for the point: I won't name names, but a GM of mine ran a freakin' Naruto d20 game to such a point that he and one other player were depressed enough to drop the game altogether. And the issue was not gratuitous gore or sex as well, it was just a combination of harsh realities and a possible excess of empathy with a key NPC who was being victimized.

Good enough writing can give any effect in any game, even if the system is one as absurd as Naruto d20.

[Yora]

Getting back to the squidheads. How would you say can worldbuilding make a difference?

Perhaps one of the most important things would be to not have objectively always chaotic evil humanoids. Even if it's a game system that doesn't have alignment. People within the setting having prejudices of this kind are alright and can even be a good addition to the world (though it's easy to end up with strawman racists), but I don't think it can be an objective fact as far as the game is concerned. The leadership of a group can easily be evil, and even all their warriors might be caught up in the hateful propaganda. But a race where every member is irredeemably evil just makes no sense and exists only for the purpose of killing lots of enemies with no repercussions.

[Max_Killjoy]

Getting back to the squidheads. How would you say can worldbuilding make a difference?

Perhaps one of the most important things would be to not have objectively always chaotic evil humanoids. Even if it's a game system that doesn't have alignment. People within the setting having prejudices of this kind are alright and can even be a good addition to the world (though it's easy to end up with strawman racists), but I don't think it can be an objective fact as far as the game is concerned. The leadership of a group can easily be evil, and even all their warriors might be caught up in the hateful propaganda. But a race where every member is irredeemably evil just makes no sense and exists only for the purpose of killing lots of enemies with no repercussions.

Without any alignment system at all, you can still have a species that's inherently inimacle and adversarial to others -- if the squidheads need to eat the brains of intelligent individuals to survive, then there's little or no room for "live and let live" or compromise, it's always going to be a hostile or domineering relationship. Other intelligent species are going to view squidheads as "evil" because the squidheads keep trying to do bad things to them -- kidnap, kill, eat, etc.

[Geddy2112]

Do you have any specific examples in mind for rules that help setting a more mature tone or work against it?

A couple quick examples
Less mature-In Feng Shui, the scenery is supposed to be intentionally vague to allow for on the fly over the top gimmicks. So that if your player wants to matrix style wall run and dive behind a table, they can do this kind of thing without a check. If they want to push a cart full of food across the restaurant and knock the enemy into a tank full of lobsters, these items appear the moment the player needs them. Another wants to use said lobsters as a weapon? Absolutely. The game is not only combat oriented, but it has rules that intentionally create, exploit, and spam every action movie trope around.

More mature- Changeling: The Lost has a system called Wyrd, and you have between 1 and 10. 0 being a normal human and 10 being something akin to true fey. All changelings have at least 1, as they were manipulated at the hands of the fey. Players acquire wyrd through exposure to fey things, using excessive magic/fey power, or some other things. While you can roughly translate wyrd=power, the more you have, the less human you are. Characters with high Wyrd are more capable of using magic and other powers, and gain certain resistances. However, the power warps the mind and characters with a high Wyrd often have difficulty determining what is real and what is in their heads. A lot of the adventures are based around what it means to be human, and balancing your fey/humanity. Some players choose to reject humanity and become powerful beings, others fight to regain the humanity they lost at the hands of the fey.

[Stan]

For me, mature (in terms of moving away from cartoonish good guys killing stuff) means

1. Less monolithic entities. All X are Y situations are too simply for complex themes. It's ok to have all demons are evil. But I wouldn't go there for most mortal races. Think of them like modern countries, the government is not the people. Drow are ruled by power hungry priests and feuding noble houses but that mindset doesn't have to apply to everyone under that domain. "Good guy" countries shouldn't be perfect either. Luckily, 5e has toned down alignment to the point that it's no longer built into the mechanics so it's easier to use descriptively or drop altogether.

2. Plots that allow room for options. Saving the world plots all feel the same to me - kill the super powerful villain or everyone dies (which is why I'm not that thrilled with many published adventures). Details of tactics will vary but this sets up a railroad to the overall plot as the consequences are so severe that there's no questioning the path. I'd rather have complexity and uncertainty.

3. Actions have consequences. A few above had said that dungeons are bad for this and they often are, especially ones where every room is unconnected to anything else in the world with no carry over.

[2D8HP]

Yora,
From your posts at this forum, (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?483894)
and your wonderful blog, (http://spriggans-den.com/?page_id=38
)
what it seems that your looking for is:
1) A bronze age swords and sorcery setting.
2) A non-"Vancian" magic system.
3) Deadlier combat.
4) A break with the D&D XP/level system.
5) Yet is still "old school".
All of that really seems to me like:1978 Runequest (http://www.chaosium.com/runequest-2nd-edition-pdf/)!
So why are you going to use B/X D&D again?
You may someday come back to D&D, (http://www.chrispramas.com/2008/03/seven-stages-of-gygax.html) but it looks like time to leave it for now.

[Rainbownaga]

I don't think having a culture that at least appears to be "always evil" is that unrealistic at all.

If Orcs are culturally raiders, then they will always be perceived as Evil because of the people being raped and pillaged won't see the finer points of their culture.

In some ways, it's the modern first world egalitarian morality system that is the most out of place.

[Stan]

You may someday come back to D&D, (http://www.chrispramas.com/2008/03/seven-stages-of-gygax.html) but it looks like time to leave it for now.

Thank you for that.

[Yora]

So why are you going to use B/X D&D again?
Because it's small. You can get all the rules on 10 pages and create stats for a new creature in half a minute. Barbarians of Lemuria is similar, but I like class levels more than point buy. It's quicker and easier.

[Kriton]

I don't think having a culture that at least appears to be "always evil" is that unrealistic at all.

If Orcs are culturally raiders, then they will always be perceived as Evil because of the people being raped and pillaged won't see the finer points of their culture.

In some ways, it's the modern first world egalitarian morality system that is the most out of place.

If that's the case why not have them be humans?

Hell, why not have them be ugly humans? A different race (of humans) from the one the PCs belong to. If they are just orcs doing their thing the players are more likely to fall into the unabashed orcslaying fun that DnD was designed to accommodate.

[Yora]

Prejudice is a great worldbuilding element, since it's something that fuels conflicts and keeps them going. It's what makes the soldiers fight even when the goals of their leaders don't really affect them.
But the thing with prejudices is that they are very distorted images of the other side. There's always more than that to your opponents and even when the actions of a prominent group are unjustified, they still have legitimate grievances and needs.

But if you say the other side is just evil you don't really have a conflict. You just have an excuse for fight scenes.