>when the fictional setting is DARK and TERRIFYING because it has BLOOD and DRUGS and CRIME, and it's implied that fictional characters DIE in a GENOCIDE and the government is a DYSTOPIA
that does sound dark and terrifying.
>>96926164I mean, objectively that is "dark".
>>96926164Yeah that's not very good fiction. That's just now. Boring. You can only consider so many genocides until they become small event blips in the background. Lame.
>>96926190Wanna hear something even more terrifying about the setting? It's called...
>>96926164That's just real life. Anyway OP, played any traditional games recently?
>>96926274Yeah, played HEAT: Pedal to the Medal, just this evening. It's a really fun racing game, I recommend you check it out.
>>96926221Htrae?
>>96926164Who are you quoting?
>>96926164Where I live these things aren't prevalent so they're pretty scary to me.Maybe you can go outside and see it every day so it's normal for you.
>>96926164That's just real life.I'd rather use my free time to make and play games.
>>96926164You forgot>but also RACISM, SEXISM, and TRANS-HATRED are HECKIN NOT ALLOWED, CHUDDERINO!!!
>>96926221TERRA
>>96926221Antichthon?
>>96927178Topkek
This seems like the proper thread to vent a recent discovery of mine (one of which I'm positive isn't unique, but nonetheless):>Hear about people's horror one shots they ran, because they claim to be huge fans of horror>The second anything even remotely horrifying even begins to take place, they start droning on about how it made the table uncomfortable, the content problematic, and nobody liked itI swear to christ is anything pushed past Spirit Halloween tier surface level aesthetic for horror, these so called "horror fans" have a fucking meltdown. We have the term, "safe horny," so there must be an equivalent one for boiler plate "horror fans" that only enjoy the genre like toddlers.
>>96926164Is there something specific you're alluding to here or did you just imagine something and get mad about it again?
>>96928787Nothing specific, more just a pet peeve of mine. To be more exact, I find it annoying how nerds love hyping up fictional settings about how dark and twisted they are, by describing fictional events happening to fictional people in a fictional setting. This particular thread was inspired by a friend of mine, who was hyping up Cyberpunk as a really dark setting, because stuff like rape and mass killings could happen in it. In other words, things that can happen in any other fictional setting if the GM wants it to happen. Moreover, those are things that happen in our world all the time, and they don't make living here an existential terror to most people.
>>96928675safe edgy
>>96926164But they would never ever ever ever do a racism
>>96926164>When the fluffy wish fulfilment magical realm is a fucking lovecraftian inescapeable reality prisonFetishists can be terrifying.
>>96927178That's just Mörk Börg and CY_BORG, Anon.
>>96929124It's cropping up more and more in random games. A Ghastly Affair is one off the top of my head.
>>96929061
>>96926221woah!upboated!
I might be a chaotic evil character who bathes in blood and murders everyone but I WOULD NEVER EVER SAY THE N WORD
>>96928675Safe horror?
>>96929419Safespace horror.
>>96929419>>96929670ComfyX cafe horror. Where is the fine line between safe milquetoast horror and edge mcedgy katana-rape horror?
>Your setting isn't really dark when it resembles the real world... because?As in: what, shit's fucked, so your game has to double down on that? But that's mudcore mentality, that's leading time and again to unintended comedy
>>96928675>Zoomers are retarded, more news at 11!
>>96929061>>96929226>>>/trash/79012515
>>96929226Statblock for tied-up bologna pikachu?
>>96930473It's literally just a conscious sausage in a funny shape.So I guess it has a soul. An inert, semi-living, ensouled piece of unspoiling meat.Sounds like a really good species to breed for soul forging applications.
Pretty sure OP just read a history book or watched some stream of India, Africa and latinoamerica.
>>96926221The planet that the alpha-centaurans dare not utter the name of, home of the bloodthirsty and war-raged, creator of the atomic bomb. Legend has it they wage mock wars for FUN when thigngs become too peaceful. We dare not colonize such a dangerous and barren rock.
>>96930473
>>96930838>3 to 8 delitized PikachuMother of God.
>>96926164>"It's an eldritch goat. You can't help but be unnerved around it. It's got, like, six eyeballs! OoOoOoOoh."
>>96927178Anyone got that Chud Wightmail screencap?
>>96929316>I may be a Lawful Good character but I say it all the time!
>>96930236So in other words, either real world is a dark setting, or "dark" settings should be called realistic.
>>96933699
>>96935198Gross. No.Whenever someone tries to make edgy settings and calls everything realistic I can't help but roll my eyes.They're pessimistic settings but like all pessimists the authors believe they're realists.
>>96926164What's your version of dark OP? Slavery being commonplace? Under age sex trafficking? Political corruption? Cannibalism? Brutal rape? Straight white people still being a majority? A Harrison Bergeron-style future where people aren't allowed to be good looking or smart? What is it?
>>96936743Responding on OP's behalf here. I would say in my world, dark would be something like having to torture a man helping local goblins while also babysitting his totally innocent child in the next room. Shitty example, but let me explain:>Man is caught giving info to goblins>You capture him in the act>If you don't get a confession, a merchant will die>He's tough to crack>His baby stumbles in when no one is looking>You have to select someone to watch the kid while the others literally beat their father>Do you do permanent damage?>Do you kill the man to send a message after?>Do you threaten the kid to get him to talk?>How far will you take things.Examples like that, where players can get to "Evil" actions and have to decide where they draw their own moral lines. I feel like that is darker than any descriptive paragraph about a "Disgusting, Evil, False Hydra with Weird teeth and a smile with a picture to help sell it." I'm talking literally players realizing that they actually are evil in their hearts no matter how much good they intend to do.
>>96936848But I /want/ to threaten to burn his hands and feet with my torch.
>>96936940That's not dark, that's just cringe. Go be a theatre kid with the improv group until they kick you out for being a weird fuck.
>>96937055You're boring, anon.
>>96936743OP here. To be entirely honest, I don't tend to find fictional setting as being "dark" in general, simply due to the fact they're fiction. "Bad things happening in lore" is not enough to make me shit my pants and lose my hope to the grim darkness of the setting, because they're nothing but window dressing. "Bad things happening in a game to a character" is also not enough to make me emotionally invested, because even that can be played off in a humorous or light-hearted fashion, and be forgotten once the game or session ends. I suppose what >>96936848 wrote is the closest how I'd describe something feeling dark, which is presenting a situation in a very genuine fashion that may be able to strike a chord with the player and linger on beyond the game as a disturbing and emotionally heavy feeling. However, I fully realize that this is ultimately a subjective opinion, and what's dark to some, isn't to others. My initial intentions with the post were more intended to just take a riff at nerds liking to hype up different settings as dark and edgy, talking about them like the fictional events happening in them were as serious as they would be in real life.
>>96930247rent free
>>96936743not OP but I think dark is more of an overall tone than specific actions since, for example children die in both Dragon ball and Threads but you could definitely say that one is a fuck of a lot darker than the other
>>96936626That's because pessimism is correct.
>>96937862Okay Eeyore
>>96936743Not OP, but when I stumbled upon >>96930394, I decided to add the Affini as an antagonist into my setting.The setting also has a species that hijacked the afterlife and implanted the nature of war into every dead soul in order to test them in a trial of millenia-long combat to find fodder for reincarnation into their warrior caste.Is that dark?
>>96926164Alright then, r/Iamveryintelligent, what is a legitimately DARK and TERRIFYING fictional setting?>inb4 uhm literally NONE of them, real men think ALL fiction is for sissy babies!
>>96938298I would consider anything where death is followed by eternal suffering with no salvation to be pretty fucking dark. Especially if people know for a fact about this fate and have a way of zero-summing their way into prolonged life. The kind of struggle that ensues from the existential horror of crabs in the eternal torment bucket makes for a horrifying setting.Also, for some reason, many doujinshi tagged as Orgasm Denial tend to be incredibly disturbing hell worlds.
>>96938321>Also, for some reason, many doujinshi tagged as Orgasm Denial tend to be incredibly disturbing hell worlds.Fuck, I know exactly what you're talking about. God, Japan is weird.
>>96928675They seem to be mascot horror fans.
>>96926164But do people who aren't black say "nigger" in it?>>96936743Absence of light and good, ugliness.The witcher, where there are literal monsters but the terrorized peasants are also narrow minded, out of shape wife-beating yokels, and the wives cheat and are also ugly but their adultery partners have MAGIC syphilis>>96938298Fiction cannot be dark because now matter how grim and dark and terrifying it is, it's only fiction, a book, a game that you can close and put back on the shelf.Grand guignol.
My games are rated PG-13.Why? Because I don't want to narrate excessive, depressive realism shit. That's real life we are escaping from. Andor is not Star Wars.
>>96938806Absolutely not, it's dark, but it doesn't give excuses for racism!
>>96939868You are right.Forcing the local populace to harbor man-eating monstrosities from the abyss and disregard their own finely honed instincts that tell them to GTFO, is the only way to make it truly dark.It would be racist/speciest/xenophobic to protect your children from being alone with the flesh-melting monstrosities that have a penchant for torturing people randomly.
>>96938846Andor is more Star Wars than the infantile og films are.
>>96938846Hey remember how in the first Star Wars movie we saw an entire family wiped out and their adopted son found their still steaming corpses.Tell me again about excessive, depressive realism shit?
>>96941875Then the protag learned about prophetical magic that saved the universe from evil itself.Depressive realism does not have hope. I don't get why tankies love it so much.
>>96941935>I don't get why tankies love it so much.You implying I'm a tankie? If so, watch your whore mouth.Tankies love it because they want you demoralized and eager for any solution, even if that's nesting down under the pendulous bollocks of the state as they rest them on your forehead.I meanwhile like darkness because it makes the light shine all the brighter in comparison.
>>96936525I want to see a game where these two fight and it's Sonic Adventure 2 style where you play both sides
>>96941829Original trilogy isn't infantile, it just chooses not to dwell on the horrors as commentary into itself like modern slop media does>oh no I killed a guy, oh my gods our actions have consequences, fuck let's ruminate on them for half or more of the runtimeLuke has a gun and intends to shoot tusken raiders in the face before his family is burnt alive and old ben permanently disfigures or kills a guy over nothing seconds before buying an overpriced uber off the planet
>>96941829>>96942063The original is a story about a bunch of morons running after an actually competent princess.Luke wants an adventure, Han Solo wants money and Obi Wan sacrifices himself for spritual enlightenment, weil Leah is withstanding torture and working on her escape.When Luke and crew reach her, she's absolutely incredulous at everyone's incompetence and that's something that continues for most of the movie.Narratively, it was a comedy.But emotionally, it had gravitas. It was a fantasy story with space ships. Before morons started treating it like Sci-Fi and adding notions of scientific progress and technological logistics, it was a setting full of wondrous devices that came from somewhere unknown, crafted by unknown means and following unexplainable rules.I miss magical Star Wars.
>>96938280Was this inspired by Norse mythology?
>>96928675Shouldn't that be a sign that you're far too tolerant of the horrific?
>>96929162aww I was going to get CY for my little brother's christmas too. Any alternatives?
>>96926164>mfw the existential horror setting has a government that justifies its high tax rates with public expenditure in the service of the people, but public services are incompetently financed, disproportionately benefit the political class and/or only serve as a means to buy votes for the next election >this leads to an ever increasing national debt that nobody wants to pay back, so every generation kicks the can down the road until eventually and inevitably the whole system collapses under its own weight, leading to mass poverty among the government-dependent like the elderly, the disabled and the chronically lazy
>>96943552Anyone using the word "problematic" to describe experiences is obviously worth avoiding
>>96937305>>96929003Your friend is kinda retarded but so are you because Cyberpunk™ IS dark in both senses you've mentioned. The setting was designed with all the most morally corrosive elements of city-living and technology in mind. Acting altruistically costs you, whether it be money, opportunity, personal endangerment, or all three.
>>96926164Rape? "No, that's too far"
>>96926221let me zoom in
>>96926164But the villains would never EVER do a hecking racism or misgender
>>96926164>It's heavily implied that the evil empire is racist>the evil empire's leadership is just as diverse as the rebels
>>96944609OP is upset that rpgs don't include real life unsimulated ass-rape, or something.
>>96943097No, I just really hated XCOM 2 when I tried it and built a setting for a turn-based tactics game around my hatred.
>>96943718
>>96944902There's different kinds of rape depending on how serious (edgy) or not the author wants to make it.
>>96946285Hatred might not be a wise motivation to create something, but it certainly is a based one. I'll check it out.
>>96944609>Acting altruistically costs you, whether it be money, opportunity, personal endangerment, or all threeThat's something that can happen in any possible setting. I get what you mean, but I don't find that especially compelling to make something "dark" even in the sense that I meant. Altruism, by definition, is an unselfish act that will inevitably cost me. Losing stuff in a rpg is a hindrance, and mostly just affects my gameplay. "Do I want to lose 500 bucks to give this NPC money for a cancer surgery", is not really a question. If I don't want to lose 500 bucks, I can justify it by my PC being corrupt. If I want to give 500 bucks, I can justify it by my PC being morally righteous. After all, it's a game, and if the GM is nice enough, I might make it all back by the next session. A hindrance isn't dark, it's annoying.
>>96926164Fiction should have murder and genocide but it should never ever ever ever ever have rape in it or something
>>96926164What are you talking about dude? Dude, what are you talking about? Dude, what? Was this in your game? What setting dude?
>>96947056Nah, just don't needlessly cringe people with edgy uber dark shit for the sole purpose of being gross.
>>96929061>>When the fluffy wish fulfilment magical realm is a fucking lovecraftian inescapeable reality prisonIt's not inescapable, you just aren't going to want to LEAVE!
>>96926164just like real world!!!
>>96947056and they should never say the N-word or disrespect LGBTQ folx!
>>96943552Fiction is a vehicle that is useful to explore topics that are...distasteful in the real world. Just because someone likes too see something in fiction does NOT mean that they will be desensitized too it in the real world. If they are then they already had something wrong with hem too begin with. Come on dude were getting into the same territory as "video games make people violent" and "Hentai will turn you into a pedo/rapist" type of mental retardation here.
>>96926221Oith...
>>96926203But what about... turbogenocide! Ohhhhh you see that shit. Edgy, motherfucker. Queen of DMs in the house, bitch. Fetch my crooooown.
>>96956953>"Hentai will turn you into a pedo/rapist" type of mental retardation here.I am giving good odds you have used AI to generate pictures of a baby being raped.
So do you guys ever just.. you know.. fuck around in a fun magical world. Like, I just want to get off work on friday and spend a few hours riding a dinosaur to go get its eggs from the goblin king and laugh along while my DM does a bad impression of David Bowie.
>>96958692Yeah I play maid rpg sometimes.
>>96958645You gonna actually give an argument or are you just gonna screech about how something is bad and shouldn't exist just because you think it's gross like every other person that want's to censor art?
>>96943675No you weren't.
>I can't believe the GM made us kill Horgrombliss the Rabbit Wizard, this shit is just too dark man. Because we killed him, the entire race of Manabeasts got killed in a genocide. Sure, we never met any manabeasts, but that still makes it way too dark, man!>At least there was no non-consensual sex.
>>96961725Okay?
>>96958808>How Maid rpg DECONSTRUCTS trpgs
>>96958645How much are you projecting here?
>>96943675Cyberpunk RED.
>>96967250That was my first choice but Cy was cheaper. I don't trust Red not to be a book chasing 5e players.
>>96970729I won't pretend RED is perfect or cheap but at least it's an actual game instead of an art project.
>>96926164>and it's implied that fictional characters DIE in a GENOCIDEI would be concerned if real people were genocided by fictional settings
>>96970940Ok, I should elaborate instead of throwing a quip like a jackass.Cy Bork is hard to use because of the intentionally illegible layout meaning it's not a good tool when you run the game at a table. It's very nice to read for your own amusement, but you want something straightforward when you play with other people.RED has enough rules framework, different character options to last for several campaigns, while Cy may be easy to play, but also shallow. I don't think I've ever seen another cyberpunk genre game with so much gear and chrome variety as RED, besides Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun and out of those RED is the most newbie friendly.
>>96970940I get the impression both are coffee table books of a different flavor
>>96970997My brother has never really played a TTRPG but he's a big fan of 2077.I'm personally a fan of easy to play and "shallow" systems because I am very pro GM fiat and I think they are better for new GMs because they are not trying to sell you extra books every other page. My worry with RED is that it's a "modern" system in that its not systems driven but rules driven and then he feels like he has an incomplete game in his hands and he won't be compelled to actually give it a go.And yeah, Borg games have atrocious layouts, I was aware, although I did hear Cy_Borg was one of the few that can actually be played.He's very likely to pour over a CPR book because of the lore anyway, but I would like to heighten his chances of running it.
>>96961324Bruh, you pretend to be a 13 year old girl in roblox chatrooms. You aren't capable of taking a moral high ground, pedophile.
>>96973765meds. now.
>>96971064In this case, don't get RED. Or should I say, don't get the Corebook.Get the CEMK: Cyberpunk Edgerunners Mission Kit. It's a starter kit that uses RED's rules framework but a bit simpler, it adds quickhacking, guns from the video game, premade PCs, and an adventure module set in the 2070's.It also has some lore dump about the characters from the anime.And it's still better to use in practice than Cy which looks intriguing but it's just bothersome in play.
