Originally Posted by
NichG
As much as I dislike describing tabletop things in terms of story, I do think at least for this gritty/heroic/mythic breakdown, 'story' is the most closely aligned place for it to reside rather than things like 'system' or 'rules' or 'character' or 'setting' or even my usual go-to words for describing a bundled tabletop experience 'game' or 'campaign'.
That's why you can't really cleanly point to a game system or a setting and say 'this is a gritty setting' without someone finding an exception that actually feels like an authentic exception. Because in the end, the setting can be subjectively gritty or mythic from different points of view. Yet its also not inherently the character either. And it depends so much on the level of abstraction used...