What is the bleakest and most depressing RPG game you've come across that doesn't enter silly grimdark territory? As in, a setting that doesn't bludgeon the reader with gore, sexual violence or edgy themes but is infused with the creeping realization that nobody can be saved.
>>98802169SLA Industries?
>>98802169Real Life
>RPG gameCyberpunk 2020, or rather cyberpunk games in general.
>>98802169
>>98802169Probably that gimmick one where you're tunneling/traveling through the underground fleeing the undoing of all of creation.
>>98802169The Curse of Strahd adventure campaign for D&D 5E and of course its amended special edition version that corrects problematic language, portrayals, and ideas
Xas Irkalla
>>98802169Red Markets. The gameplay just continually beats you down as every little mistake you make eats away at your resources. It is a blast, but god damn.
>>98802169Kult
what's the appeal of bleak settings?
>>98802715Getting kicked in the teeth but refusing to quit.
>>98802680this is the true jumpchain experience
>>98802715It's escapism from first world problems. People like to imagine having actual problems for a change.
>>98802715It can be quite the pressure reliever if you're suffering from bouts of depression, believe it or not.
>>98802680>Kult Kult is grimdark and edgy as fuck. I ran it. Its like grimdark edgy CoC with Gnosticism and hell raiser instead of fishmen. They were literally trying to out goth WoD. >>98802173lol for the same group as the guy who bought a copy of this. Its about reality tv cyberpunk psychic celebrity serial killers with jackolantern heads working for an anime villain named Mr. Grins. That's before you even get to the real story
>>98802715Being a hero who makes it a little less bleak.
>>98802169Black Sun Deathcrawl.
>>98803190is that the one where like you just keep digging underground
Endure could get pretty bleak, the death spiral is pretty realistic tho.
>>98802169If you play Twilight 2000 with the right group it can be fucking bleak, I played many moons ago with a GM who was a 74A, he played up the horror of the Exchange and the fact that we were in fact in the post-nuclear apocalypse and not everyone had finished dying yet.Really drove home the motivation to get the fuck out of Eastern Europe and the GM kept insinuating that it was just a short amount of time before the Soviets would come streaming out of their bunkers to wipe us all out (obviously if you know the Twilight 2000 metaplot that was unlikely to happen but most of us (and more importantly our characters) didn't know that.
>>98803010What's the real story? The game just has some mini missions and that's it.
>>98804557TLDR: The entire world of progress was created by teaching a scottish schitzo how to love and then taking everything away from him while overdosing him on drugs. Slayer and Bitterness are both fractures of the scottish mind while Intruder is what remains. Basically all the problems within the World of Progress exist because the average scotsman is clinically insane.
>>98804690What the fuck? That's the most generic 90s artsy ending possible.
>>98804699Yeah iirc it was considered trash at the time as well, they never finished the story so they released the world bible.I vaguely remember someone saying the reboot abandons the idea but I was never really a fan of the SLA game line.
>>98802169I've always felt that Delta Green was more bleak than your regular Call of Cthulhu setting.
>>98802169I'm surprised no one has brought up Wraith yet. That one is the only thing I can think of that has mechanics explicitly designed to depress your character. Like yes there are darker settings then ghost land or whatever, but having another player sitting next to you trying to convince your character that life is not worth living is probably the most grim form of play I've encountered.
>>98802715>motivation to try and make it less bleak, or failing that at least inspire hope in others>escapism (suddenly your IRL problems feel more manageable)
>>98804741That's because nobody has ever played Wraith.
>>98803554Yeah, it's a setting in which the sun becomes evil and light causes agony, and everyone it touches becomes cursed and is immortal until they lose hope, so they can only dig down endlessly to try to escape their suffering.It doesn't even really seem playable desu it's mostly interesting because it does such a good job establishing itself as the worst possible scenario with no hope whatsoever in as few words as possible.
>>98802715Surviving then thriving, beating the odds and becoming John Human, champion of Mankind.
>>98802517This.
>>98802169Ocean Game.
>>98802169>What is the bleakest and most depressing>that doesn't enter silly grimdark... so which one do you want, you dumb fuck?Because by your definition, CP2020 is qualified, and so is Forgotten Realms.What sort of AI crap thread is this even supposed to be?
>>98806325Retard.
>>98802715Nothing.There is no appeal at allt. Pole who had to weather through the late 90s and early 00s edgefest of pic related
>>98802824Explains why it was so big in post-commie countries... oh, wait!
>>98804753>Escapism from bleak reality is to make yourself also trapped in a bleak fantasy and powerlessnessExplain yourself, other than "I actually meant 'I am so mind-broken, my games reflect that, too'"
>>98806331That's your fault for being polish.
>>98802169Wraith: the Oblivion
>>98806345These days places like britain and america have more third world problems than most of eastern europe does.
>>98807450do you have a single fact to back that up
>>98807533https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migration_ratehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_ratehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_inequality
>>98807623i'm not gonna read that
>>98807450... and that explains playing misery porn... how, exactly?Also: the US was always a third world shithole with first world infrastructure, they just didn't fix it for past 50 years
>>98807623Call us when water stops running in a tap or food becomes a luxury
>>98807720Northern Canada says hi.
>>98806331Looks fun. Someone go play this instead of me.
>>98807720pretty sure your electricity and internet would give out before that, so nobody could call you then
>>98806353I literally explained it in the post you replied to: if your problems in the setting are notably worse than your IRL ones, then your IRL problems will feel more manageable by comparison.
>>98802177>Look at oil prices>Roll for sanity loss
>>98802169World of Darkness
>>98807767Friendly reminder African shitholes have e-commerce and first-world cellphone coverage, but have no running water or actual electric grid, because building a single fucking tower in a middle of nowhere is way easier than building long-range infrastructure, you dipshit
>>98807757>Wilderness where neither of those things was there in the first place is an example of the crisis>>98809328>I already set up a strawman, I won't explain anythingMy advice: seek help
>>98809704>Wilderness where neither of those things was there in the first place is an example of the crisis>turns out africa isn't 3rd world /tg/ the most pseud of all the boards.
>>98810035>Here is my deliberate misinterpretation of statementsYeah, ebin strawman, dude
>>98810103So are reservations with water and food issues not 3rd world?
Kingdom Death can be real edgy and alot of cheesecake models, but it really does a fantastic job of a rogue like struggle to survive. You essentially play as gods trying to navigate a settlment on a daemon world and the only light source is your lantern.
>>98802169I think the bleakest setting which isn't outright edgy is Vermis.The backstory is something to the effect of (a lot of this is implied rather than stated), the world used to be in a golden age with benevolent gods protecting mankind. One of the gods beheaded another god to try to prevent some horrible fate he saw in a prophesy (never explained but likely the exact fate the world is presently in right now), but the beheaded god came back and beheaded his killer in return. Long story short, all the gods are now dead or in a diminished half-dead state, and the followers of the gods have decided it is their holy mission to offer heads to their god to restore his power, either their own heads or those of others, acting as lone wolf serial killers. Most people are just outright godless.This godless world is basically low-key cursed, slowly dying, the lands having lost their vitality, births are rare, and even the monsters are in decline, at one point you see this goblin village and they are all feeble and elderly and pose 0 actual threat. The world isn't in a state of apocalypse or panic, but more like in a global emotional depression. Almost everyone knows the world is dying and has already given up and decided it isn't worth saving, with the exception of the holy serial killers convinced they'll be the one to offer the "right" head to restore their god and save the world. The few generally sane and sympathetic people who do have a mission aren't on a mission to save the world, but are usually on a journey that is deeply personal, like a mother on a journey to find her missing child stolen by witches (almost certainly dead), or a knight on a quest to commit suicide and offer his head in a holy site. For the most part, it's a world on its deathbed that has already made peace with it.
>>98804779I have, but it requires mature and much better players than your average RPG, plus it WILL drag you through your own emotional baggage, which is not something everyone likes to do often.
>>98806325The OP post is the single easiest iq test in the world and you somehow botched it anon.
>>98802478Black sun deathcrawl
>>98802715For me it's the fact that retarded GMs/writers don't take me out of it.
>>98802169Unironically Mörk Borg. Like if you play the original, not one of the hacks, not anything altered, just as is. There's no more bleaker setting. You're all just prolonging the inevitable, and no one seems like they deserve even that.
>>98802515>its amended special edition version that corrects problematic language, portrayals, and ideas>It's realHoly shit how is anyone still buying WOTC products.
>>98816533I know this is a retarded shitpost response but... it's a game module for DnD. You still need to use DnD.to play it.
>>98815289Based Borger
>>98807687>>98807720>anti-white commie asks for a source>completly disregards it even though its even from their favorite website wikipediaAnd this my friends is why you don't bother talking to these fucking animals anymore.
>>98802169My Diary Desu: The RPG
Changeling: the Dreaming.
>>98825856How? It sounds like a hippie game.
