The Stakes of Grimdark
Meaning in misery
After publishing my recommendations (a list of modules and systems I like a lot), I’ve been asked why I enjoy bleak game worlds. I was also recently introduced to the idea that grimdark is somehow ‘stakeless’, that because things are already so messed up and significant world-change isn’t possible, there are no stakes. I respectfully disagree, and I’m going to tell you why.
This is partly on my mind since I’m deep in the midst of working on a huge grimdark adventure right now, INKVEIN, my ~250 page MÖRK BORG megadungeon caving nightmare which is coming to BackerKit in Spring. Sign up for launch notification to get your hands on the quickstart guide.
Let’s be real. Plenty of folks play grimdark stuff because they find its gritty horribleness fun, they aren’t here for the stakes of the characters and their surroundings (which is cool too). But some of us gravitate towards the genre for different reasons, we take it ‘seriously’ (like the 14 year-old emos we are at heart).
Grimdark has stakes, just of a different kind to the sort that the hero’s journey establishes and that a lot of western fantasy literature relies on.
It isn’t about conquering the external world, it’s about who you are, and testing your identity under terrible circumstances.
Inkvein cares about this and reinforces it by having rules for how the dungeon corrupts you. The dungeon changes who you are.
External vs. internal conflict
The stakes of grimdark aren’t about the exterior world and trying to conquer it. It can’t be conquered. The stakes are about you (the character) and your inner world, the inner worlds of others, the conflicts between those inner worlds, and all of them tangling with an exterior world that is going to chew you up.
Playing grimdark ‘seriously’ can be tough. You’re taking dark internal character conflict seriously, with a backdrop of awful stuff. You have to reconcile with your character having a decent chance of biting the dust at any moment.
It’s high investment, high risk roleplaying, and actively reflects the structure of the fictional themes. You invest in the character, despite the significant chance of losing them, just as your character is trying to achieve something, despite high chances of failure.
Choices
Taking action in a grimdark world doesn’t cause the positive change that fulfils a hero’s journey. That absence is the whole point. You might affect some change on a smaller level, maybe even larger change at a huge cost. But the choices a character makes are themselves the point, not what they objectively achieve. It leads to characters making interesting choices. What if they:
Decide to try to cure a diseased peasant despite the world being fucked.
Grasp for a sinister power in the deluded hopes of a better life.
Choose to let the corruption that is ruining the world seep into their mind, hoping it will spare them a little longer (just like you can in Inkvein).
These are choices that speak to hope, delusion, and desperation. They speak magnitudes about a character, what they do despite the state of the world.
Hazy morality
The point of making the world broken and messy is that choices have to stand on their own two feet. We don’t have highly structured in-world morality to handhold our decisions. The choices we make are difficult, truly ours, and speak to the internal conflicts of a character: who they really are.
Why do we bother?
The classic question of “why are we bothering to try to do anything in this horrible place?” to some is a prompt for disengagement. For others, it’s a challenge.
Why does the warrior historian continue to explore a hellscape that is going to fade into nothingness? Why do they care for the disappearing history of a doomed world? Their knowledge is soon to fade, with their death and the destruction of their records. Their pursuit of it almost certainly will hasten their death.
So why?
Because they believe it worth doing. They believe it is the best way to spend what time they have left. And that conjures a titanic strength of character, that they haven’t simply laid down and waited for the end.
Perhaps continuing their pursuit soothes them. Maybe they secretly (and foolishly) hope to find an answer to the ruin that besets the world. Do they think that the best use of their time is to learn the stories of past, honouring what the world was and not fearing what it will become? Or maybe they are working for a demon who would hurt them in ways they don’t dare consider if they drop the ball.
That makes for a fascinating characters with ironclad motives and conflicts.
Wrap up
It’s not for everyone, but I think there’s a misconception that grimdark is without stakes or that it’s only ever bathing in misery for funsies. For some of us at least, it’s a unique field of play to explore the human condition. If that sounds cool to you, check out Inkvein, it’s going to be full of miserable goodness.
Grimdark is my blood type, so I don't need anyone to defend it, but I love your perspective of characters surviving within it because the act itself gives them purpose.
I also tend to think of grimdark characters as surviving despite, in defiance of, the world around them. It's all falling into the Eye of Terror, but we're not going to make it easy for them, goddamn it. Cadia Stands.
There may not be hope in that, but there's humanity and courage.
Interesting post!
Grimdark really brings the focus on the party and what the party does with its limited resources. In my view, Grimdark encompasses a time in the world between two eras of peace and goodness, to put it in black and white terms.
It is neither pre-collapse nor post-collapse. Corruption and degeneration have set into all things that have accumulated power, not only the evil cult or the savage monster tribes, but all things. In classic D&D, it could mean that the Church of Law has become desolate, where its dogma has become more important than upholding Law, which drives people to find comfort in Chaos. So cities are filled with squalor, smugglers, bandits and outlaws are a normal functioning part of society, and no higher authority can make any positive difference. People are trying to ride out the storm.
That at least makes Grimdark for me so interesting, it is not that the PCs can't make a difference, but more or less that even if they can stabilise a little bit of the world. The wider world is still moving on a downward trend until it can recover.