Hyper-Gratuitousness in Fiction and TTRPGs

I like Berserk and I liken my interest in its gratuitous violent imagery and dark themes as the literary horror-enthusiasts equivalent to adrenaline seeking behavior. Adrenaline junkies do not want to be in real danger because they can get hurt, but they want the sensation of it. They seek the sensation of it in a safe way. Similarly, I as a Berserk reader don't want to be a butcher. I have a passing interest in the macabre, but I don't want to work in a museum of horrors.

In case you don't know, Berserk is a long running manga (comic) that has been adapted into an anime multiple times. It's a dark fantasy about a man who kills demons with a massive sword. It is firmly in the seinen genre. Seinen means "young men", not boys. Its target audience is adults with male interests. It has mature themes; it has some nudity and lots of violence. It's horror. Some of the horror is very mundane; for example, the evil deeds of regular men include torture and various cruelties. Some of the horror is more cosmic. For example, the setting has a generic western religion like Christianity, but the religion is false within the setting. The god in Berserk is indifferent to human suffering, and there is no heaven. Further, God is responsible for the presence and empowerment of man-eating demons who's physical might far exceeds ordinary men. This is dark stuff.

One of my favorite parts is when they introduce Farnese. She's a young noble woman who was assigned to this symbolic position as a leader in an army that answers directly to the setting's equivalent of the Vatican. The story slowly reveals that she's a pyromaniac because they used to burn witches alive outside her bedroom window when she was a little girl and so now, she has a cruelty-streak because of it. As an adult, she thinks she understands God's divine order for the world - then she meets the hero who's perpetually stalked by things that should be an abomination to that divine order. This is tantamount to forbidden knowledge, and encountering demons causes her to go temporarily mad and lose her faith. I consider loss of faith a form of cosmic horror in a way that loss of a hand is body horror. It's interesting. There also may or may not also be a scene where she grinds her groin on the hero's sword which is neither here nor there. Don't worry about it.

The point is there's a lot of complex and inappropriate stuff in this series. Before you judge me, let me explain. Given all this wild stuff, it's done artistically. That is to say, there's artistry in the choices made for when and where and how to depict this stuff. It doesn't show nudity for its own sake. It's not used to please the audience. It doesn't show gore for the sake of it. It shows these things with an intent of evoking a sensation in the audience. Some scenes are intended to be disturbing or sickening. If doesn't show blood and gore insipidly, it's precise. There's a scene for instance where the hero stabs a very attractive, naked villainess thought the stomach and she derives sexual pleasure from this. It mixes the sensations of horror and sexual thrill. The result is a weird sickening sensation that you feel in your gut. This is why I liken the horror of Berserk to adrenaline seeking behavior. Berserk does the sensation of horror like skydiving does the sensation of adrenaline.

Like I said, the series does this with precision. It picks its moments. It does not indulge. If every panel had something horrifying, you would become desensitized and it would lose its effectiveness. There are quiet contemplative moments where characters sit around a fire and talk about their dreams. Real life years and years of content later, some of those characters get eaten alive and it's shocking. So, in summary, I read Berserk for this artistic use of this subject matter, not the (over) indulgence of it.

Now, would I put this subject matter explicitly in my TTRPGs like Dungeons & Dragons? The answer is a firm no. Why? Because I know that it's not for everyone. Also, even I would probably be uncomfortable. That said, I refuse to overly sterilize or over sanitize my setting as I believe this is infantilization and kitsch. I would be happy to say that some of these darker things exist in my setting, because their absence would be conspicuous. By conspicuously absent, I mean it would be distracting and immersion breaking if something wasn't present. In other words, how can you believe there is danger in the world if the world is too nice and safe? Therefore, some of it exists implicitly in the setting. Let me use a very safe metaphor to illustrate my point. Puppies die. When I say puppies die, this is code (or a euphemism) for any horrible thing you might imagine. Implicit means yes, there are puppies that die in the setting, but we don't need to show puppies die. Sometimes, it's good enough to hint that puppies die off-screen. We don't need to indulge in puppies dying, but they do. 

Even Star Wars, a franchise considered to be intended for children, has torture, sexy dancers, war, slavery, murder, dismemberment, brother-on-sister kisses, use of deadly poisons, no bras in space, and off-screen youngling slaying. In conclusion, we're not doing gore-fest, but you do need to pick moments in fiction to absolutely splatter someone.

Human-Centric Settings (No Monster PCs)

Here's the real reason for wanting a human-centric setting. Personal taste. This article is not about convincing you to agree because I don't expect to be able to. Persuasion doesn't work like that. This article is about giving you the perspective of people who don't want monsters as player races, among other features of generic fantasy. It's not about the right or wrong way to have fun; it's about why I can't have fun the same way you can.

Let's start with the strongest point before I peter out at the end. Monsters are not people; they're monsters. When you humanize the monsters by making them a player-race or by making them equal or similar to humans in mind or spirit, they cease to feel like monsters. I want monsters to be the things that go bump in the night. They are the things that hunt us. They lurk off the edges of the map. If you can play a monster (i.e. kobolt or goblin or half-orc player character), then monsters aren't monstrous; They're just exotic people. It trivializes what it means to be a monster. I want my fantasy monsters to resemble the monsters of the horror genre. You can't have a setting where monsters can be both monsters like in a horror genre but also exotic people like in modern kitchen-sink high fantasy. The exception is if you want to reestablish what is considered a "normal" race, but for me, this exception still spoils monsters because there is this imaginary line that distinguishes humans from monsters, and every exception blurs that line and diminishes the certainty of the distinction.

Second, it's about tone. Modern D&D feels like playing A Very Muppet Fantasy. I've heard and read criticisms that refer to 5e D&D as kitchen-sink fantasy because, like the kitchen sink, there's a little bit of everything. It lacks cohesion and consistency, like macaroni and glue on the Mona Lisa. There isn't a regard of how things fit or consideration for whether it belongs there or not, and the audience has to adjust their suspension of disbelief to accommodate it. In the last 5e gaming group I was in, I felt like Eddie Valiant in the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but I would have rather felt like a character in Lord of the Rings or Berserk. In case you don't know, Eddie was the straight man in the sense of a straight-man silly-man dynamic, among a cast of silly-men. My experience with 5e is that the monsters as player races make the game feel cartoony. The cartoony-ness spoils the tone I would like. I didn't like it. It wasn't to my taste.

Speaking of tone, what is it? It's the mood or atmosphere. Think about the difference at a kid's birthday party vs a party for adults with depression. They have different moods. Some things don't mix. You shouldn't mix Lord of the Rings with Rick and Morty, for instance. The tone of Rick and Morty spoils the tone of Lord of the Rings. Tonally, they don't mix. Generic fantasy permits you to mix Peanut Butter and Pepperoni (I call it peanut-pepper butter-oni) and dip it in olive oil. One thing spoils the other thing.

Don't be insulted but kitchen-sink fantasy is plebeian fantasy because it is fantasy for everyone without discerning taste and people who don't know about the craft of acting or drama or of history. It tries to satisfy as many people as it can all at the same time. It's generic as opposed to specific. By generic, I mean it is "of the genre" in the broadest sense of the word genre, permitting everything under the fantasy category; but by specific fantasy I mean something curated and intended to create a more specific aesthetic, sensation, mood, theme, and style. Specific fantasy appeals to a narrower audience, not necessarily an audience with superior tastes but with specific tastes.

The definition of fantasy as a genre is "fiction plus magic or supernatural elements". That's it. Nothing about what kind of magic stuff or how much of it. So, imagine fantasy as a dial or slider. At the lowest setting of 1, you might get something like Liar, Liar with Jim Carry where a boy makes a wish on a birthday cake so that his dad can't lie. Crank it up to 2 and you might get Legend of King Arthur, where the quantity of magical elements is few and uncommon. There's one magic sword, one wizard, one lady of the lake, and one holy relic to find. There are no dragons and no potions of gaseous form. At the highest setting of 10, you might get Baldur's Gate 3 where you start off on an illithid spaceship and end up visiting hell, and one of your companions is a half-elf vampire. It's a mess and I don't like it.

Expectations are the hardest thing to establish for an TTRPG, and I think kitchen-sink fantasy makes this more challenging because not there's too many options. If I invite you to play in a game with me, I have no idea what your experience with fantasy is, and I have no idea what kind of fantasy you like. This is why D&D classically had an Appendix N which referred you to the works of fiction that inspired D&D.  If I tell you I'm running a low fantasy game, are you thinking that it's fantasy with the slider on a low setting, or are you thinking it's low fantasy as in the sub-genre low fantasy which has a more specific definition than fantasy. If I tell you I'm running a game using 5e D&D, then I think your expectations might immediately go to Baldur's Gate 3 even if I tell you "LOW, LOW fantasy". Are you thinking about a fantasy equivalent of the Marvel Avengers? Are you thinking about Adventure Time? Are you hoping for a western or a gangster movie? Appendix N may help you narrow people's expectations down.

Now let's break the fantasy elements down into their own sliders. Fantasy is a slider, magic is a slider, monsters is a slider. Lord of the Rings is high fantasy because it is set in its own fantastic, non-Earth setting with its own history and mythos, but on the magic slider it's low because only wizards can do magic and there's like five of them. Furthermore, on the monster slider, there might be a massive army of orcs, but the variety of monsters is limited; you can't put a 300-page monster manual together based on the monsters of Lord of the Rings, so, let's say it's in the middle. Lord of the Rings has epic stakes: the fate of Middle Earth. That's usually a feature of high fantasy. With low fantasy, the stakes tend to be more grounded. In Conan the Barbarian for example, the stakes are very local.

The last thing I want to give you is the concept of a hypothetical master checklist of all fantasy concepts. I'll call it the master fantasy checklist. It's got everything on there from magic wands that shoot jets of colored light to dragon shouts to magic gemstones made of condensed ether that let you cast spells to sticking bits of metal in your tummy and getting powers based on the type of metal. When you define your specific setting, you check off items include it in the setting. Let's say if you check off 75% or more of the boxes, that's kitchen sink territory. This is because the list is so massive. If you check off 10% or less, that's focused, specific, or niche. It likely qualifies as a dedicated subgenre. If you check off 30% - 49% (meaning you're excluding more than half of the list), that's a curated Variety Fantasy. I think you should aim for Variety Fantasy on any regular day. Less is more and keep it simple stupid are axiomatic; you might believe that getting rid of excess (bloat) leads to greater satisfaction, or you may believe that restrictions breed creativity. Maybe you agree?

Real vs Fantasy: Druids

Found this on the internet (might have been from Blizzard of all places) and thought it needed to be saved somewhere for future reference:

"Fantasy druids are depicted as wise, nature-bound mystics who can shapeshift and/or commune with nature. They are mediators between the natural world and the human realm, embodying a balance between destruction and renewal.

Real druids were high-ranking priestly classes in ancient Celtic cultures, known for their roles as legal authorities, adjudicators, lore keepers, medical professionals, and political advisors. They were also responsible for maintaining sacred groves and ritual sites, and their knowledge was often passed down orally due to their doctrine against writing."

The reason why this is valuable to me is because the portrayal of the druid by D&D players is generally nonsensical. Every D&D player who's been a druid plays them like a recluse or madman who lives in the woods and doesn't care about anything except their trees. The druid player learns that the villain is about to sacrifice a baby to summon a demon, and they ask, "but are they a threat to my forest?" They're missing the depth of the fantasy druid and they're missing the function of a real druid. They're playing their character like a joke character, or they use their class as an excuse to be weird.

At the end of the day, all fantasy classes that specialize in magic are the same except for flavor. Near as I can tell, there are two types of druids: Either Wizard or Cleric who has taken on a druid subclass or variant class. Some people suggest a cleric with a wizard spell list. The kind that exists in your setting is the kind that makes sense for your setting. The wizard-druid is a sort of a sage-like magic-user who specializes in nature. They use divination to translate the mysterious will of nature for the benefit of man. The cleric-druid is a wiseman and priest of a nature religion who takes makes sense of world and spirituality for the benefit people in their tribe or clan. An evil druid is someone who worships the destructive forces of nature and sabotages mankind. The D&D druid player shapeshifts into a dog, acts like Scooby-Doo, and ruins the mood of a scene.