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mgshamster
2018-09-17, 11:47 AM
What does it mean for a system to be Gritty?

5e has a Gritty Realism rest option. I've seen several people across a couple different forums elude to the idea that gritty simply means that there's a higher rate of death for PCs. I've even seen one person claim that this isn't true, but never exposed upon it further.

So it got me thinking, what does it mean?

Higher death rate? Less magic? More realism? More "in the dirt"? More logistics? What?

Pleh
2018-09-17, 12:18 PM
The term isn't exclusive to games.

Gritty tends to imply that the protagonists/heroes suffer more and their ultimate victory is less certain. Moreover, it tends to communicate an overwhelming theme or mood of impending doom and not even a flashy or climactic doom. Just a bleak, hopeless, despondent doom in an unsympathetic world.

In RPGs, it tends to mean that Survival aspects of the game are more difficult, enemies more severe (though not necessarily more unusual), and victories more shallow and impermanent.

Grim Portent
2018-09-17, 12:35 PM
In an RPG I'd generally say that grittiness means that food and water matter and are non-trivial to acquire, injuries are hard to heal and can cause substantial penalties, health is generally lower for PC and NPC alike, people are generally pretty close to real world capabilities and rely on equipment to improve their utility and survivability.

By nature this tends to mean death becomes more common, but it's hardly necessary for people to die left right and center.

I'd generally expect stories to be more small scale and less grandiose in nature, things like a band of cowboys hunting an outlaw gang through the desert for example.

Beastrolami
2018-09-17, 01:03 PM
I've always thought gritty meant a focus on realism over story.

For example, the adventurers are traveling down a gravel road. "what's that, you don't have boots, let's find a mechanical effect for 'my feet hurt'".
or: "Oh you got stabbed, that will takes weeks or months to heal, have fun sitting out the next month of combat encounters."

It takes the things which most fantasy rpgs like DnD and Pathfinder ignore for simplicity sake, and add them to the crunch in favor of more narrative elements of game play.

DMThac0
2018-09-17, 01:17 PM
I would also say that it tends to make the mechanical resources of the characters and classes more of a commodity than a tool.

You have 48 hitpoints, you only get short rests during a day and one long rest a week, those HPs are super important now.

You have skills that can only be used once per long rest...you better be absolutely sure you want to use it.

That spell list can be updated once per long rest, make sure you choose the ones that will benefit most.

--

It puts a strain on the mechanics as they're now a much more important aspect now.

Anonymouswizard
2018-09-17, 01:26 PM
To me a gritty RPG is one where combat is risky, injuries can be sticky (but don't have to be, I've seen gritty RPGs that allow nearly-instant healing), with a world more shrouded in grey morality and uncertainty.

Now focusing on gritty rules, I'd say that a truly gritty game needs to ramp up the risk for combat. There are easily available weapons that can take you out (and potentially kill you) in one hit, and that you can't rely on enemies being unskilled with them because there's no such thing as 'encounter building guidelines'. Likely no such thing as 'character balance' as well. Natural healing is likely really slow, although you might be able to boost it to the point where you can potentially recover to full in a single surgical session (don't count on it though). Ideally character resources such as mana are something you have to go out of your way to collect, or are kept at a relatively low level.

It does not mean unfantastical or low power. It also doesn't mean a high death rate, although with risky combat it often goes hand in hand. It also doesn't mean the goals are low scale either, one of my favourite gritty settings has 'unseat a god' as a perfectly acceptable PC goal. It does however mean things like disease, poison, and similar problems can be devestating when they come up.

I don't even think the 'gritty rest' variant in D&D5e counts as gritty. It just changes the frequency of encounters, not the risk of them.

Frozen_Feet
2018-09-17, 01:26 PM
It's a combination of higher difficulty combined with more down to Earth or cynical game content. It's typically identified by contrast.

For example, if the norm is a game where player characters rarely die, resources are plentifull and there's a clearly delineated conflict between good and evil, then a game where player characters are morally grey murderhobos who are liable to die due to random chance is "gritty".

If high fantasy, high magic is the norm, then low fantasy, low magic is "gritty".

So on and so forth.

Johel
2018-09-17, 01:32 PM
The term isn't exclusive to games.

Gritty tends to imply that the protagonists/heroes suffer more and their ultimate victory is less certain. Moreover, it tends to communicate an overwhelming theme or mood of impending doom and not even a flashy or climactic doom. Just a bleak, hopeless, despondent doom in an unsympathetic world.

In RPGs, it tends to mean that Survival aspects of the game are more difficult, enemies more severe (though not necessarily more unusual), and victories more shallow and impermanent.

This.

You aren't a hero well-above the average of the common folk. You are slightly better than most people and not that much better than it makes a difference when facing perils.
You won't be slicing up ogres by the dozen, paring their attacks while smiling smuggly before a climatic battle full of special effects. Instead, you might be lucky to fight a single ogre and to survive to tell the tale, having had to dodge and probably having lost a few comrades.

It's D&D during the first five levels, basically.

halfeye
2018-09-17, 01:53 PM
Grit is a lot of small sharp loose stones.

Wikipedia doesn't acknowledge that, it does mention millstone grit, which is sandstone with bigger particles (i.e. composed of grit).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gritstone

Willie the Duck
2018-09-17, 01:59 PM
In an RPG I'd generally say that grittiness means that food and water matter and are non-trivial to acquire, injuries are hard to heal and can cause substantial penalties, health is generally lower for PC and NPC alike, people are generally pretty close to real world capabilities and rely on equipment to improve their utility and survivability.

By nature this tends to mean death becomes more common, but it's hardly necessary for people to die left right and center.

I'd generally expect stories to be more small scale and less grandiose in nature, things like a band of cowboys hunting an outlaw gang through the desert for example.

Emphasis on the bolded part. Gritty does not have to mean TSR-era 1st level funnel or the like. PCs (even level ones, or even commoners in that world as well) can readily survive in a gritty world. They do it by taking on smaller, more survivable challenges, and usually approach situations with a 'we aren't even going to attempt this unless everything is lining up in our favor' approach. So the body count does not need to increase (dramatically) for something to be gritty, but the scope almost certainly has to be constrained.

Mastikator
2018-09-17, 02:14 PM
A system is gritty when grit is the most important thing in being successful. Where half-arsing is the same as losing and giving up is the same as dying.

Basically it should appear hopeless but if you still keep trying then eventually you do come out on top. Dwarf Fortress and Dark Souls are two shining examples of gritty.

jindra34
2018-09-17, 02:15 PM
Gritty (at least in my mind) tends to bring more realism to resources as people have pointed out. Food and water aren't ever handwave-able, injuries inflict penalties and take a significant time to recover, spells take a while to recover and/or have other associated costs. Gritty slows down play as it makes small mistakes punishing and can make normally punishing mistakes LETHAL. As well as overconfidence.

LordCdrMilitant
2018-09-17, 02:34 PM
Gritty and Realistic generally describe the atmosphere of a campaign and the challenges the party has to face. Notably, gritty and realistic are not synonymous, and need not necessarily appear together.

In a gritty setting, the atmosphere is overall darker and the challenges are generally more mundane and related to the party's continued survival. Expect resource management and encumbrance to be significant elements.

In a "gritty" campaign, the party may be trekking cross-country through the mud carrying 120 pounds of crap, much of which is preserved and lightweight food, and the rest of which is wilderness survival equipment like tents, ropes, sleeping bags, warm coats, etc. The party is cold and suffering from perpetual exhaustion penalties, there's mud in the fighter's armor, the wizard's spell components don't function when wet and are thoroughly soaked after the last stream they forded, and the water has stretched the rogue's bowstring so he can't shoot anything. Everybody is hoping that this expedition will make enough money to pay for food and shelter for the next month. And everyone forgot a change of socks, so they have blisters on their feet and are thoroughly miserable.


It's harder to say what exactly makes a setting realistic, but maintaining probable and predictable consequences for actions and being lower power are generally hallmarks.

In a "realistic" campaign, the fighter can't march in his armor at all, but it's okay because all his stuff is in the horse cart the party brought with for the express purpose of carrying their supplies and equipment, the rogue's bow has to be unstrung when not in use to preserve it's elasticity [it's also in the wagon]. The expedition they're on is sponsored by a wealthy patron interested in treasure and exploration, but that doesn't exempt the party from being invested in it's success, and they've prepared carefully with the funds allocated by their patron to bring adequate food, water, and survival equipment in their wagon, but they actually have conducted significant advance preparation and have what they need with them. However, this being reflective of reality, they probably still forgot a change of socks :smallwink:.

Of course, that's not to say you can't be both realistic and gritty.


I don't generally feel that 5e's Gritty Realism ruleset is particularly gritty or realistic. Simply making rests and encounters more scarce doesn't make it realistic or gritty inherently, it's a matter of the GM to provide the grit and the realism, which can be provided just as well with refreshing your spells and HP at the end of the day as opposed to at the end of the adventure.

There are some things I'd certainly avoid, and one of them is random and sudden death. While dying would certainly be a possibility, it should be because the party failed to bring enough food [in a gritty setting] or made poor tactical decisions that lead to their defeat, not because the navigator had a bad roll and everybody exploded. Neither gritty nor realistic implies that the PC's will have a high body count, it's the cause of death that matters.

Segev
2018-09-17, 03:51 PM
This is subjective and somewhat anecdotal, but when I've seen systems claim or be called "gritty," it usually means that pain lasts longer. I actually don't mean emotional pain, here, though that can be a thing: I mean things like damage, injury, and general inconveniences are more prominent and permanent.

In a "non-gritty" game, one might expect Big Darn Heroes to go charging in, maybe have some nice dramatic injuries, then come out dripping blood and be monologuing by the end of the scene. Next scene, they're riding triumphantly into the sunset (sometimes literally). The heroes feel fresh and ready to go for the next adventure reasonably quickly after the last one, and sometimes even between encounters. Wounds are hit points or otherwise mostly cosmetic, as long as you have at least 1 hp you can act like you're hale and hearty (if a little more likely to take a fatal wound if you're not careful).

Grittier games seem to try to simulate the hazards of wounds better. Healing is less common, or less effective, or both. Injuries impede your actions, and persist for quite some time. PCs heal "human slow" (as some players of Rifts term it, to compare to what supernatural creatures get away with with natural regeneration). Equipment gets damaged, and needs repair or replacement. Repair may not be perfect. Not only is the risk of death potentially higher, but repeated combats usually guarantee it, since the "death spiral" is very real in most of these systems. (The more wounded you are, the worse you perform and the less able to defend yourself you are, so the more damage you're going to take and the less you're going to dish out.)

It's often termed "gritty realism" because usually, the grit of the sucktitude of taking damage is meant to be a better simulation of the consequences of real combat. Whether it really IS more realistic is somewhat subjective, and depends heavily on what players think is being modeled. But that's usually what it's going for.

Ironically, a lot of grimdark settings benefit from a less gritty design, because the grim darkness of the dark and grim setting derives more grimness from the dark depression of fully-capable heroes not being able to change the darkness of the grim world despite their awesome might.

Darth Ultron
2018-09-17, 06:03 PM
Gritty for an RPG is much more a style of play that is more ''hard fun".

Some basics:

1.Absolute GM Power and Control: The GM can do anything, anytime. If the game has GM controls or limits they are utterly ignored. And, the game has no Players whining and crying to force homebrew or social rules that are anti-GM. For example, the game has no silly ''player agency" or a ''gentilmans agreement".

Use the Unliked Rules: Often, the rules say X, but all players and some GMs ''don't like" that rule....so it is simply ignored. But in the gritty game, such rules are used. For D&D encumbrance, spell components, and food/drink are good examples.

Limited Supplies: The characters all have limited supplies of most everything, often including food, water, ammunition, material components, and more. There is none of the 'happy play style' of ''just say your character has whatever stuff".

Note keeping: Along with the above one, the Players, and much less so the GM, must keep track of supplies.

Acquiring Supplies: The characters have to spend at least some game time acquiring supplies.

No Easy Shopping: Supplies are a bit on the rare side. Stores and shops are few and far between. The Magic Shop likely does not exist in most places.

Lasting Damage: To both characters and equipment. Things get damaged, and there is no easy fix. Leading to:

Character Death and Equipment Destruction: Things have hit points, and once they are lost the charater dies or the item is destroyed.

No Special Item Protections: Anything can be a target for being stolen, lost or destroyed. Even if the item is a very special item that will ''ruin'' playing the character. For example, an archer can loose his bow or a wizard can loose their spellbook.

No Silver Platters: The players must actively do things and figure out things, the GM won't give away anything for free. If the characters encounter a locked door, and the players can't figure out a way to open it, then the door will just stay locked, as the GM won't just ''suddenly help the stuck players".

No 'Take Backs': If a player says a character does an action, even if something bad happens to the character, there is no altering game reality to take back or undo it: It Stands.

Playing Attention: As the above makes clear, a player must pay attention in the game all the time. Should a player do something annoying like ''play around on their phone", then while distracted has their character do something dumb that harms or even kills the character, then that event happens..no matter how much the player cries about how important their stupid phone usage was.




For 5E, the Gritty Realism rest option removes the silly video game like 'save point rest' in the basic 5E rules. By the rules, a short rest is only an hour long. So a character can attack a monster and wound it, skulk way for a joke of an hour and heal, then come back in an hour an five minutes and finish of the monster. Even the basic long rest in 5E is a joke, as characters can get in a fight at 8 am for a couple minutes, sulk away and long rest, and then come back at 6 pm fully rested and attack again.

The Gritty Realism rest option in 5E extends the short rest to 8 hours and the long rest to 7 days. So that is 1/3 of a day for a short rest, and a whole week for a long rest.

So, after a tough fight or several tough fights where the characters use things and take wounds, they have to withdraw and rest for a week. In a basic 5E game, it's just a couple hours and the characters can jump right back into the fight!

comk59
2018-09-17, 07:40 PM
What does it mean for a system to be Gritty?

5e has a Gritty Realism rest option. I've seen several people across a couple different forums elude to the idea that gritty simply means that there's a higher rate of death for PCs. I've even seen one person claim that this isn't true, but never exposed upon it further.

So it got me thinking, what does it mean?

Higher death rate? Less magic? More realism? More "in the dirt"? More logistics? What?

Whenever I advertise a campaign as gritty, and someone asks me what I mean by that, I usually clarify by saying that victories are hard-fought and bittersweet. To me at least, it's less about it being realistic and more about the protagonists having to give something up to win, whether that be their health, their possessions, or even their humanity (it usually winds up being the last one, to be honest).

Pleh
2018-09-18, 05:56 AM
Gritty for an RPG is much more a style of play that is more ''hard fun".

Some basics:

1.Absolute GM Power and Control: The GM can do anything, anytime. If the game has GM controls or limits they are utterly ignored. And, the game has no Players whining and crying to force homebrew or social rules that are anti-GM. For example, the game has no silly ''player agency" or a ''gentilmans agreement".

No, you can play this way for non gritty games and you can avoid playing this way in a gritty game.

Players actually have MORE Agency when you make them responsible for encumbrance, equipment, etc. Now they have agency in how they acquire and maintain their supplies.

And none of this touches the Gentleman's Agreement. In either a gritty or non gritty game, you can lie to and betray your fellow players or abstain from doing so.

It's just completely unrelated to the topic. Gritty is a term that describes how the Characters interact with the World they are in and has nothing to do with how the Players interact with each other.

A great Gritty game will have very high Player Agency and a solid Gentleman's Agreement.

When Telltale Games was asked about their Tales of the Borderlands title that was soon to be released, they explained how in The Walking Dead games they made that the players had been given a ton of options, but that none of them were things the players ever really wanted. By contrast, Tales of the Borderlands was a treasure hunt, so they were going to make just as many options, but make the player choose between a bunch of options they DO want to take.

This demonstrates that player agency is independent of grit level. You don't get a bigger variance on the grit to fantasy spectrum than Walking Dead vs Borderlands, but both games hallmark the importance of player decisions (and the agency which allows it).


Lasting Damage: To both characters and equipment. Things get damaged, and there is no easy fix. Leading to:

Character Death and Equipment Destruction: Things have hit points, and once they are lost the charater dies or the item is destroyed.

This is part of why most people have said, "low magic." Magic healing, repair, and ressurection tend to neuter this element of gritty games. About the only way to include these magics without losing grit is to make them ludicrously expensive (and not necessarily in a financial way).


No 'Take Backs': If a player says a character does an action, even if something bad happens to the character, there is no altering game reality to take back or undo it: It Stands.

Playing Attention: As the above makes clear, a player must pay attention in the game all the time. Should a player do something annoying like ''play around on their phone", then while distracted has their character do something dumb that harms or even kills the character, then that event happens..no matter how much the player cries about how important their stupid phone usage was.

Again, it's about the characters in a bleak and hopeless world. It has nothing to do with the players themselves and playing a gritty game isn't ACTUALLY license to be a jerk. The players should be having fun even if their characters aren't. If your players are being rude by not engaging with the game, try speaking to them. Maybe your game is just less interesting than it seemed in your head.

Kaptin Keen
2018-09-18, 06:23 AM
It's simple, really:

Non-gritty: Heroes are good, villains are evil, most people are well off, moral grey zones really aren't all that grey.
Gritty: Heroes are morally flexible, villains are generally good people driven to desperate measures, most people wear hand-me-downs and steal food, moral grey zones aren't really zones, because most things are grey.

CharonsHelper
2018-09-18, 06:40 AM
I'm surprised that no one has brought up The Witcher as an archetypical example of gritty fantasy.

Dark tone, shades of grey morality (often picking between the lesser of two evils), and bad things happening outside of the heroes' control. Bonus points for a background of the horrors of war, discrimination, and/or common victimization of the peasantry.

But really - I think that it's the setting more than the system which determines whether or not a game feels gritty, though obviously a gritty setting won't work if the mechanics put the PCs at superhero power levels.

mgshamster
2018-09-18, 07:32 AM
This is part of why most people have said, "low magic." Magic healing, repair, and ressurection tend to neuter this element of gritty games. About the only way to include these magics without losing grit is to make them ludicrously expensive (and not necessarily in a financial way).

In one game I play, they solved this by introducing a "Healing Rate." The rate at which you heal is equal to 1/4 your total HP. Healing magic always heals in increments of the healing rate. Likewise, a single night's rest heals your healing rate.

So it can take one person up to four days or four different spells (which is quite a bit) to heal from non-permanent wounds.

The system also has options for broken bones and the like which take longer to heal. HP is really only for superficial wounds.

Not disagreeing with you, just sharing another option. :)

Anonymouswizard
2018-09-18, 09:27 AM
I'm surprised that no one has brought up The Witcher as an archetypical example of gritty fantasy.

Dark tone, shades of grey morality (often picking between the lesser of two evils), and bad things happening outside of the heroes' control. Bonus points for a background of the horrors of war, discrimination, and/or common victimization of the peasantry.

But really - I think that it's the setting more than the system which determines whether or not a game feels gritty, though obviously a gritty setting won't work if the mechanics put the PCs at superhero power levels.

While I don't have much personal experience with The Witcher, I think it has to do with the fact we've focused more on concepts than examples.


In one game I play, they solved this by introducing a "Healing Rate." The rate at which you heal is equal to 1/4 your total HP. Healing magic always heals in increments of the healing rate. Likewise, a single night's rest heals your healing rate.

So it can take one person up to four days or four different spells (which is quite a bit) to heal from non-permanent wounds.

The system also has options for broken bones and the like which take longer to heal. HP is really only for superficial wounds.

Not disagreeing with you, just sharing another option. :)

This sounds like 4e's Healing Surges, which were a great mechanic. 5e's hit dice are a massive downgrade in comparison.

Now you can have fast healing in a gritty game, but it won't be easy, and it likely won't be safe. One of my favourite examples is Unknown Armies, where a single surgery session can restore the skill resul in Wounds (the game uses a percenticle mechanic and basic total HP of 50, so this can be a lot or all of your Wounds easily) up to one below fully healed, but it runs the risk of stopping you from getting your natural healing for the day or even causing damage (and the characters in UA aren't likely to be going to a proper hospital, so you can easily be eating a penalty of thirty to fourty percentiles due to unsanitary conditions, improper tools, and not as much time as you'd like). Now magick can make this easier, a few Adept schools can do healing (such as Epideromancy), as can a couple of Avatar archetypes (and a few more can give a bonus to your roll in the right circumstances if not directly related). It's one of the few gritty worlds I've seen to get away with including a clean and easy ressurection power as well, because it's given hard limits (must be used within twenty four hours of death, only works once per person), and requires hitting 90% skill in an archetype with an annoying taboo (i.e. it's not that popular and a PC with it at high level is likely in high demand in-setting).

I'm going to bring up another thing now. A lot of grittier games put a big focus on mental health, and tend to make it a downward spiral. Either that losing Sanity makes losing Sanity easier or make gaining insanity impossible to avoid.

Pleh
2018-09-18, 09:33 AM
In one game I play, they solved this by introducing a "Healing Rate." The rate at which you heal is equal to 1/4 your total HP. Healing magic always heals in increments of the healing rate. Likewise, a single night's rest heals your healing rate.

So it can take one person up to four days or four different spells (which is quite a bit) to heal from non-permanent wounds.

The system also has options for broken bones and the like which take longer to heal. HP is really only for superficial wounds.

Not disagreeing with you, just sharing another option. :)

That reminds me that resurrection can be a thing in gritty games, too. Dark Souls had an infinite respawn mechanic, but somehow that was never really a comforting fact. It was useful, but you never wanted to have to use it, because the cost was terrible.

Darth Ultron
2018-09-18, 09:40 AM
Again, it's about the characters in a bleak and hopeless world. It has nothing to do with the players themselves and playing a gritty game isn't ACTUALLY license to be a jerk. The players should be having fun even if their characters aren't. If your players are being rude by not engaging with the game, try speaking to them. Maybe your game is just less interesting than it seemed in your head.

I think your mixing Gritty with the Bleak and Hopeless world.

Nothing about the Gritty game is ''bleak and hopeless", it is just Hard Fun. And nothing about it is a DM ''being a jerk".

Gritty Hard Fun: Character Azon has 20 arrows, after they shoot 20 arrows they can't shoot any more unless they find more arrows(and nothing like a quiver of infinite arrows exists).

Typical Game:Wozers character Azon is super coolz, lets just say he has infinite arrows so he can be super collz all the time...and keeping track of stuff is so lame and boring.

Gritty Hard Fun: Player-"My lone character armed with a club charges the six hill giants" (player rolls, DM rolls, all out battle for a minute) DM: "And your character is hit five times, and dies"

Typical Game: Player-"My lone character armed with a club charges the six hill giants" DM-"Oh, five of the giants just sit back and watch...and you get surprise and auto win initiative on the one giant fighting you. Player-"Coolz! I make my two full attacks at the end of my charge, then make a five foot step and makes two more full attacks!" DM-"you kill the one giant!"

Some players do enjoy and have fun in a game where they have to put in some effort and think in order to do things in the game world.

The typical player, even more so in 5E, knows they have ''all ready succeeded" and they are just in the game to see how they succeeded.



This is part of why most people have said, "low magic." Magic healing, repair, and ressurection tend to neuter this element of gritty games. About the only way to include these magics without losing grit is to make them ludicrously expensive (and not necessarily in a financial way).


Again, there is a bit of cross over...but a Gritty Game is not automatically a low magic game. Both 1E and 2E D&D, have Gritty magic, for example. So, using both systems you can have a very, very, very high magic game...but still have it be very Gritty.

At any level of magic, a Gritty game will typically have a spellcaster that runs out of spells...and that has to be active in the game for something like 16 hours. So, when the wizard runs out of spells, they must do the Classic D&D bit of ''stay in the back the throw rocks".

Gritty has no silly ''15 minute day", where they players, even more so the ones with spellcaster characters, whine and complain if they can't go 'nova' in every single combat encounter, so they demand to rest after every encounter or two and hit the 'reset' button to make their special characters 100% again.

Knaight
2018-09-18, 10:27 AM
This is very much a pithy and incomplete definition, but:

Gritty systems focus on the everyday difficulties of people in situations of hardship.

A lot of the rest falls out from there. Things like encumbrance tracking, slower healing, etc. are all everyday problems, less abstracted by the systems because they're more likely to be a focal point. Moral greyness is implied because navigating that is itself a hardship compared to navigating a black and white world, and because everyday difficulties routinely involve trying to be a good person when there are difficulties to that. The absence of resurrection is implied because the threat of death at varying distances is very much an everyday hardship, and one mitigated by resurrection. The list goes on.

That said, none of those are actually necessary, and it's likely that you'll see some but not all (partially because of the admitted cop out of "the list goes on"). That's fine - the definition doesn't actually require any of them, for all that they tend to fall out.

Segev
2018-09-18, 10:35 AM
I sometimes wonder, Darth Ultron, if you're posting the way you do in order to discredit the positions you take. The mix of "GM has to be a tyrant or the game sucks because the players are worse tyrants" with sometimes-decent points seems to serve to undermine the decent points by association, discouraging examination of them.

For instance, I do agree with you that there's a significant difference between "gritty" games and "bleak" worlds. But that difference is not related to whether the GM just lets the players win all the time, as suggested in your "Typical Game" examples (which are not, in my experience, typical of ANY games, even ones which are decidedly non-gritty and heavy on the high adventure and awesome action).

You are right that grittier games will tend to track item usage more closely. It is not exclusive to gritty games, but it is a fairly hefty requirement for them; resource management is an important part of what makes for grit in a game.

What makes a game "gritty" is the sense that recovery is not quick or easy. This doesn't have to be about grimness, darkness, or bleakness. It just means that there are important resources that must be shepherded because, once they're gone, it's a very long slog to regain them. Not all resources must be this way for a game to be gritty, but some must. Usually health-related, because grit is often a component of the combat system.

This is also why it's often tied to "realism." It isn't inherently so, but the first thing most people note about action-adventure games and fiction is how quickly and easily the heroes recover from injury. Whether explained in-setting or just hand-waved, that is "unrealistic" compared to how the consequences of injury go in people's real experience. Thus, making one's health or uninjured status a resource that takes significant time to recover is both realistic and gritty, making it easy to conflate the two.

But the biggest thing, if not the only thing, that really defines how gritty a game is is that resource management, and the necessity that it poses a challenge on top of the overt encounter-to-encounter threats. That attrition is a real issue, rather than something which is mostly dealt with by taking a decent rest.

Willie the Duck
2018-09-18, 10:39 AM
Typical Game:Wozers character Azon is super coolz, lets just say he has infinite arrows so he can be super collz all the time...and keeping track of stuff is so lame and boring.
...
Typical Game: Player-"My lone character armed with a club charges the six hill giants" DM-"Oh, five of the giants just sit back and watch...and you get surprise and auto win initiative on the one giant fighting you. Player-"Coolz! I make my two full attacks at the end of my charge, then make a five foot step and makes two more full attacks!" DM-"you kill the one giant!"

Some players do enjoy and have fun in a game where they have to put in some effort and think in order to do things in the game world.

The typical player, even more so in 5E, knows they have ''all ready succeeded" and they are just in the game to see how they succeeded.

Barring some outside source, we both only have our own anecdotal experience, and I realize that you were making a contrast with gritty play, but I hope your view of typical D&D play isn't accurate.

Telok
2018-09-18, 10:44 AM
What characterizes a game on the grungy end of the gritty/glittery axis usually, in my experience, comes down to resources, tactics, and repercussions.

You track and conserve resources because you can run out, they don't easily or automatically replenish, and it matters. Mages may run out of magic, the party may run out of torches in a dungeon, water in a desert, ammo, sacks for carrying loot, hit points or wounds. But it's not just 'can run out' it includes not being able to trivially replenish resources. It takes more than 15 minutes or an hour to heal all your wounds, magic/spells don't come back automatically after you sleep, you don't get to retcon sacks into your inventory, enemies don't always have the ammo you like to use.

Tactics matter more, and make more of a difference. Having lots of armor and hit points is either harder to achieve or matters less because an ambush can still kill you. Friendly fire is lethal, not just a minor nuisance.

Repercussions refers to a lack of consequences for player actions more than anything. Jumping off a 300 foot high tower 'because it's the fastest way down and can't kill me' isn't done. Using fire magic in a forest is not done because forest fires are not fun to be in. This extends beyond the physical though, acting like a drunken boor or trying to intimidate everyone results in people not liking you.

Pleh
2018-09-18, 11:01 AM
I think your mixing Gritty with the Bleak and Hopeless world.

Nothing about the Gritty game is ''bleak and hopeless", it is just Hard Fun. And nothing about it is a DM ''being a jerk".

Punishing players in game for out of game behavior is pretty jerkish. You can instead simply talk to the player and resolve the behavior outside of the game. That has nothing to do with gritty realism or bleak campaign settings.

To generate "Hard Fun," the difficulty of success is increased. When probability of success is decreased, hope for success is also reduced. When hope for success is minimized, it creates a bleak and despondent atmosphere.

Gritty and Bleak aren't totally interchangeable, but they are intrinsically related. Similar to thermodynamics equations like the Ideal Gas Law; Pressure isn't totally dependent on Volume, but neither is it totally independent of it. Simply changing one will cause the other to change, but you can constrain the system so that changing one will not affect the other. But you must constrain the system or else changing one will absolutely change the other.

Look up the definition of Gritty online. All the metaphorical definitions (which are the only ones we're concerned with here) speak of Pluckiness. It's about taking up a courageous position in the face of overwhelming adversity. When adversity is great and chance of success is low, hope (at least, rational hope and not blind faith) will also be low.

Hopelessness and Grit are closely related and often one is used to enhance the presence of the other. You're right that they aren't the same, but players that expect a Gritty Game aren't expecting ONLY an increase in difficulty. It's also a shift in tone for the game's story. Since Protagonists are expected to die, you have to brace yourself for tragic loss, which is a rather hopeless prospect.

It really has more to do with the characters than the players.


Gritty Hard Fun: Character Azon has 20 arrows, after they shoot 20 arrows they can't shoot any more unless they find more arrows(and nothing like a quiver of infinite arrows exists).

Typical Game:Wozers character Azon is super coolz, lets just say he has infinite arrows so he can be super collz all the time...and keeping track of stuff is so lame and boring.

Gritty Hard Fun: Player-"My lone character armed with a club charges the six hill giants" (player rolls, DM rolls, all out battle for a minute) DM: "And your character is hit five times, and dies"

Typical Game: Player-"My lone character armed with a club charges the six hill giants" DM-"Oh, five of the giants just sit back and watch...and you get surprise and auto win initiative on the one giant fighting you. Player-"Coolz! I make my two full attacks at the end of my charge, then make a five foot step and makes two more full attacks!" DM-"you kill the one giant!"

Depicting the opposing position in a strawman doesn't much support your position. Yes, the grit of a game is enhanced by players keeping track of their resources. That alone doesn't make the game Gritty, just Grittier.

You know what else makes a game Grittier? Themes of desperation.

"You have a quiver of infinite arrows, but the monster is immune to piercing damage."

"You slay the one giant at the top of the hill and the others run away in terror as an Eldritch Horror emerges from the shadows to investigate the noisy conflict."


Some players do enjoy and have fun in a game where they have to put in some effort and think in order to do things in the game world.

The typical player, even more so in 5E, knows they have ''all ready succeeded" and they are just in the game to see how they succeeded.

Gritty isn't about having a chance to fail. It's about having a huge probability to fail with an uncertain, but exceedingly small chance for success. It's about courage in the face of insurmountable odds. The reason for adding granularity (which is what you reference about High Magic Grit) is to add yet another threat to the characters from which failure can suddenly strike.

And non gritty games don't necessarily preclude failure, they tend to focus on different kinds of failure. Instead of dying a miserable, horrific fate in a small, dark cave where you can't even see what is eating you, failure tends to mean you retreat to the exit of the cave and must continue your journey without the cave's prizes.

Gritty tends to mean "you must beat this quest to keep your livelihood for another season and you must do so without overlooking any of the resource management requirements along the way."

Non Gritty tends to mean, "if you want to impose your will upon this story and change its trajectory, you'll have to succeed in some manner against this quest. Otherwise, go on about your business."

In Gritty, you must succeed to survive. In Non Gritty, Survival only comes into question when you pursue a dangerous course of action and failure can mean you didn't stop the bad guy.

Segev
2018-09-18, 11:08 AM
In Gritty, you must succeed to survive. In Non Gritty, Survival only comes into question when you pursue a dangerous course of action and failure can mean you didn't stop the bad guy.

I disagree with a lot of what you said, but there is a grain of truth in this. Gritty games will have survival be something you need to fight for. They need not be bleak or hopeless or even super-tense about it, but attention to detail (appropriately enough for something using the word "grit") is important. The fight doesn't always have to be hard, or even risky, but it's always there. You always are scrambling to keep ahead on the resource curve, even if the scramble is not always difficult.

Making that scramble be ever-difficult leads to a bleaker game, which is fine. That tends more towards "survival horror," even without the supernatural or psychological thriller angles usually associated with horror.

Oregon Trail is, at its core, survival horror abstracted enough to be frustrating and sometimes funny. It is also very gritty.

The reason gritty games often LOOK like you always have a hard fight to survive is that the "easy" parts are more abstracted because they're boring. The downtime where your job is stable, your income keeps ahead of your outflow, and you're not fighting monsters that want to kill you, is the part that's skipped over.

The difference between gritty and gritty-and-bleak is whether that downtime exists, and you get to have a sense of achievement of stability for a time in your PCs' lives before the next hardship befalls them.

Knaight
2018-09-18, 11:26 AM
In Gritty, you must succeed to survive. In Non Gritty, Survival only comes into question when you pursue a dangerous course of action and failure can mean you didn't stop the bad guy.


I disagree with a lot of what you said, but there is a grain of truth in this. Gritty games will have survival be something you need to fight for. They need not be bleak or hopeless or even super-tense about it, but attention to detail (appropriately enough for something using the word "grit") is important.

This gets back to my pithy definition of the everyday difficulties of people undergoing hardship - struggling to just survive, day after day, is exactly that. With that said I wouldn't say that survival necessarily needs to be something to fight for to make a game gritty. Take a hypothetical game about the poor in Dickensian England, where death isn't necessarily on the table but ending up in a debtors prison for the rest of your life is, and more than that it's a real struggle to not end up in said debtors prison. That could easily be gritty, but it's not technically about survival per se.

halfeye
2018-09-18, 12:32 PM
This gets back to my pithy definition of the everyday difficulties of people undergoing hardship - struggling to just survive, day after day, is exactly that. With that said I wouldn't say that survival necessarily needs to be something to fight for to make a game gritty. Take a hypothetical game about the poor in Dickensian England, where death isn't necessarily on the table but ending up in a debtors prison for the rest of your life is, and more than that it's a real struggle to not end up in said debtors prison. That could easily be gritty, but it's not technically about survival per se.

In Dickensian England, debtor's prison was for the (ex) rich, the poor didn't have the money to get into debt.

Knaight
2018-09-18, 12:41 PM
In Dickensian England, debtor's prison was for the (ex) rich, the poor didn't have the money to get into debt.

I'd contest this a bit, but the example isn't the point - a company town working on company scrip and work-debt structures can be used instead here. Point is, there are options other than death compatible with gritty games.

Grim Portent
2018-09-18, 12:51 PM
A dickensian workhouse would be a pretty good alternative to death for example. Things were pretty vile.

Nifft
2018-09-18, 01:19 PM
Hmm.

Gritty to me means:
- Logistics are not hand-waved.
- Details matter, and can kill your character.
- NPCs are looking out for themselves by default. Your PCs can profit from this, or be hampered by it.
- Good or Evil won't win because of inherent moral qualities. Rather, victory comes from better strategy, or better insight, or even just dumb luck.

Segev
2018-09-18, 01:41 PM
This gets back to my pithy definition of the everyday difficulties of people undergoing hardship - struggling to just survive, day after day, is exactly that. With that said I wouldn't say that survival necessarily needs to be something to fight for to make a game gritty. Take a hypothetical game about the poor in Dickensian England, where death isn't necessarily on the table but ending up in a debtors prison for the rest of your life is, and more than that it's a real struggle to not end up in said debtors prison. That could easily be gritty, but it's not technically about survival per se.
"Survival" in a literal sense may be too strong a word, but "maintaining my standard of living at an acceptable level" becomes similar in importance and scope. "How will I live if I lose my hovel!?" "Where is my next meal coming from!?"

As long as you're not quite to the level of "first world problems," it's probably good enough for what I was aiming at.

Hmm.

Gritty to me means:
- Logistics are not hand-waved.
- Details matter, and can kill your character.
- NPCs are looking out for themselves by default. Your PCs can profit from this, or be hampered by it.
- Good or Evil won't win because of inherent moral qualities. Rather, victory comes from better strategy, or better insight, or even just dumb luck.
These seem like a reasonable set of criteria.

Yora
2018-09-18, 02:00 PM
Just seeing the title, my first instinctive reflex was "gritty = gory".

kyoryu
2018-09-18, 02:14 PM
It means something different to anyone, which is why I get kind of annoyed when people ask for a "gritty" recommendation - just by that word, I don't know enough to give them an actual recommendation.

To me, gritty means pain. It means the characters can suffer setbacks, injuries, etc. Victory does not usually come without cost. Arguably, heroes in a "gritty" setting (to me) are defined by the costs they are willing to pay to succeed.

It also generally implies more "human-level" exploits, vs. superheroic. But that's an implies, and I could certainly see a high-powered, but "gritty" game.

Darth Ultron
2018-09-18, 03:56 PM
I sometimes wonder, Darth Ultron, if you're posting the way you do in order to discredit the positions you take. The mix of "GM has to be a tyrant or the game sucks because the players are worse tyrants" with sometimes-decent points seems to serve to undermine the decent points by association, discouraging examination of them.

I'm sure you are just misreading or misunderstanding my posts.



For instance, I do agree with you that there's a significant difference between "gritty" games and "bleak" worlds. But that difference is not related to whether the GM just lets the players win all the time, as suggested in your "Typical Game" examples (which are not, in my experience, typical of ANY games, even ones which are decidedly non-gritty and heavy on the high adventure and awesome action).

'Bleak' and 'Gritty' can and often be combined, but they no more go together then ''silly cartoon game'' and ''high optimization game", though you can combine those also.

Bleak is a world 'lacking vegetation and exposed to the elements.' A world like Dark Sun, or an setting like a desert or cold region. Gritty can be done anywhere, a jungle, forest or urban area. Or Bleak is 'without hope or encouragement; depressing; dreary', but again, this has nothing to do with gritty.



This is also why it's often tied to "realism."

It is often compare to the most unrealistic things around: Comics, Movies and most of all Video Game. Far and above Video Games stand as the huge bad example of unreality. Just 'push a button' and refill that health bar!


Punishing players in game for out of game behavior is pretty jerkish. You can instead simply talk to the player and resolve the behavior outside of the game. That has nothing to do with gritty realism or bleak campaign settings.

I can agree here, but I'm not sure where you saw me type anything about ''punishing behavior''. If it's my best friend or if the biggest jerk ever, my game will still be gritty for them both.



To generate "Hard Fun," the difficulty of success is increased. When probability of success is decreased, hope for success is also reduced. When hope for success is minimized, it creates a bleak and despondent atmosphere.

This is true only of the already bleak, defeatist type people. The type of person who will get all say and upset when their fictional character in a game can't do something like open a door. A more normal person can accept the Hard Fun, and let the good times roll.




Hopelessness and Grit are closely related and often one is used to enhance the presence of the other. You're right that they aren't the same, but players that expect a Gritty Game aren't expecting ONLY an increase in difficulty. It's also a shift in tone for the game's story. Since Protagonists are expected to die, you have to brace yourself for tragic loss, which is a rather hopeless prospect.

It's true ''many'' people want a mixed Gritty and Bleak game. Just as it is true ''many" people want a ''Silly" and "Optimized" game. Not everyone, just ''many".



Depicting the opposing position in a strawman doesn't much support your position. Yes, the grit of a game is enhanced by players keeping track of their resources. That alone doesn't make the game Gritty, just Grittier.

It is just one thing on my list.



Gritty isn't about having a chance to fail. It's about having a huge probability to fail with an uncertain, but exceedingly small chance for success. It's about courage in the face of insurmountable odds. The reason for adding granularity (which is what you reference about High Magic Grit) is to add yet another threat to the characters from which failure can suddenly strike.

Except now your drifting to more of a ''Uphill Battle" type game. And that is a whole other game type. And ''Uphill Battle" game can be mixed with ''Gritty", but it does not have to me. And you can very well do a ''Silly Optimized" type game that has to face "Silly insurmountable Optimized" odds, that is in no way 'bleak or gritty'(DM: 100 super orcs attack! Player:"Oh nos, I cleave through them all!" DM:"And then you see 100 super duper orcs!"

Xuc Xac
2018-09-18, 08:23 PM
I'm sure you are just misreading or misunderstanding my posts.

If one person interprets your posts differently than you intended, they might have read them incorrectly. When almost everyone agrees with that interpretation, you're probably writing them incorrectly.