If Your Character Has An Edge, They Also Need a Point

Every one of us, as a gamer, has gone through an edgy phase. Whether it was because we read Frank Miller's work on Batman, or we had an abiding love of the Punisher, or we'd just seen Watchman and loved Rorschach as a character, we tried to bring some of that into our games. There is a reason, after all, that the Marquis de Edge is the first entry on my list The 5 Eye-Rolling Rogues You Meet in Your Gaming Career.

Two edges, but you still need a point.

However, there is a little piece of nuance that I think we often forget when it comes to the discussion of so-called "edgy" or "grim" characters. It's that, much like the media that inspired them, the really successful ones have a point they're trying to make. It's only when that point is absent that the concept falls apart, or starts moving into unintentional parody territory.

So I thought I'd talk about that this week.

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The Iron Age of Comics, And Edgy Characters

If you weren't a big fan of comics in the 1990s, then you might have missed the Edgining, or the Grimming of the medium in the wake of both The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen by Frank Miller and Alan Moore respectively. The former comic took the character of Batman to a new level, as an aging Bruce Wayne comes out of retirement to fight a new breed of criminal with progressively harsher and more demented tactics (most of which got spliced into Batman V. Superman). This culminates in a fight with Superman, Bruce faking his own death, and then training a new generation of Batmen to continue the fight for him. Watchmen was originally going to use a bunch of characters that had been acquired by DC Comics as a deconstruction of the superhero genre, essentially showing the sorts of damaged people and fractured psyches that would exist behind the mask, but DC wouldn't go for it so Moore made his own thinly-veiled versions of those characters as an extra layer of middle finger.

Case in point.

These comics had a massive impact on the medium, going to unique places as they explored the genre of superheroes in ways that hadn't been done before. They acted as the counterpoint to heroic narratives, and showed an underlying bleakness that resonated with readers in a profound way.

What happened next is what always happens next... the tide of imitators began to crash upon the shores.

If you dig through the 90s, you'll find a small ocean of content trying to capture the lightning in a bottle of the foundational titles. Characters like Cable and Deadpool are good examples, but so are the stories of Spawn. Characters who already existed, like the Punisher and Wolverine, were taken to ever bleaker, darker storylines they hadn't been allowed to be a part of before. It seemed like every writer and every artist was chasing that high mark Miller and Moore had laid down, each in their own way.

Some of these tonal imitations were pretty good. The re-invention of Daredevil into a tortured soul trying to balance his more violent desires for vengeance (and giving us the whole Man Without Fear arc) is an example of when this worked. But a lot of titles and stories just devolved into nihilism and brutality, filling pages with empty spectacle that sort of pretended it was trying to be about something, but never really got beyond the belt pouches, bullets, and blood.

What This Has To Do With RPGs

Art doesn't happen in a vacuum, and the explosion of grim, dark, and edgy content that lasted from the late 80s to the early 90s had a pretty notable effect on RPGs as well (not the least of which was the surging popularity of the World of Darkness, which is still with us today). And while there have been plenty of unique settings and games that use grim or edgy content as a vehicle for exploring deeper issues, or to act as a counterpoint to prevailing narratives in storytelling, there are also a lot of games that were just edgy for the sake of being edgy.

Sort of a tabletop version of how Dark Souls gave us deep, impactful worldbuilding, grim storytelling, and an utterly unique challenge and atmosphere, and that spawned an entire genre of imitators, many of whom captured the look but missed the point.

Die, die, die again... but is it a statement on the futility of heroism? Or just punishment?

So what does this have to do with players, and even GMs, who are looking to explore those sharper edges of morality? Those characters and games where adjectives like bleak, grim, or dark apply? Well, it means that you need to have more than just the surface-level aesthetics in order for someone to take what you're doing seriously, and for it to have an impact on the table.

Sometimes that means you're planning an arc for the character, and there's a story you're trying to tell. For instance, if you have a character who's driven primarily by hatred, or vengeance, is this a story about how hollow that victory can be, and the sort of monster it can turn you into despite what you tell yourself? Is it about trying to turn the character off of that path, to give them a bigger cause, to teach them to trust again, and to give them friends and an adopted family to help them heal? Is it about losing your grip on being that better person, and slipping back down into wrath and hatred? Because if you've seen Berserk, that's what happens for our protagonist over the years of serving with the same mercenary company... and let's not forget Guts was found wailing as a baby beneath his mother's hanged body, raised by a brutal "knight" who abused him in every way, and he knew nothing but violence and bloodshed until the Band of the Hawk taught him how to be a person.

That's Mörk Borg level dark, right there.

If you're the Game Master, though, it's equally important to ask what the purpose of the grim/edgy game is. Are you doing a deconstruction of a traditional fantasy tropes, the way Watchmen dissected the superhero? Are you attempting to make a game feel like it has higher stakes by increasing the difficulty and lethality to keep players on their toes, and/or to make things like running in shirtless, sword swinging something that is more likely to get them killed? Are you using the level-based system of power to make comments on hierarchies, personal achievements, or other aspects of a world?

To be clear, you don't have to be going deep and metaphorical with an edgy setting or character concept for it to still be valid. Maybe it just appeals to you in an aesthetic sense, you're more comfortable in that particular archetype, or it's something you haven't really gotten a chance to play. But it is important to do that as an active choice, rather than because you defaulted to it without questioning motives, desires, goals, etc.

And the more edge a character, setting, or campaign has, the easier it's going to be to swallow if there is a point to all of it. Because edge just for edge's own sake can get really tiring really quickly.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Fluff post!

For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio. Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my alley cat thriller Marked Territory, it's sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my recent short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

"Edgy" Games Require Trust

There are some players out there who like simple, cut-and-dry games. They like to be heroes, doing heroic things... or maybe just adventurers doing whatever comes their way that they can make a profit off of. But there are some gamers who like to push the envelope when it comes to subject matter. People who like to descend the dark staircase into the taboo, the wicked, and the macabre.

Those kinds of games aren't for everyone. However, if you expect people to play them with you, then you need to establish some kind of trust with your group. Otherwise you're not going to get anywhere.

Open yourself up to the knife. Trust me.

Maturity Applies To The Players and Storyteller, Too

We're all adults here (or, at least, we like to think that we are), so I'm going to use a metaphor to make a point. Stick with me, this will make sense by the time we get to the other side.

A standard RPG is like having normal, conventional sex. Maybe you were awkward your first time, you weren't really sure what all the bits involved did, but you were having fun and you wanted to keep doing it. Then you figured out how it worked, what you were good at, and what you could bring to the game.

Edgy games, though, are more like a BDSM encounter. They tend to be darker, and seen as more taboo. They cater to a very specific kind of play style, and include elements that you usually won't find in conventional games (psychological trauma, more brutal depictions of violence, sexual themes... you know, 18+ kinds of stuff). The most important way that these more mature, adult games are like BDSM though is that you need to open up to the potential of the story in order for it to actually affect you... and to do that, you have to trust the people you're playing with.

Without trust, this whole thing falls apart.

Take Vampire: The Masquerade, for example. The game has a Humanity tracker, which is actively affected by your actions, and how you struggle to maintain being the person you were while filled with animalistic hungers. The game often deals with the loss of self, with the struggle of the human mind to cope with the idea of infinity, as well as the sheer body horror that comes with having your skin warped, bones restructured, and your form remade by an angry Tzimisce.

That's far from the only example, either. One of the central themes of Werewolf: The Apocalypse is the balance of trying to turn Rage into a weapon against your enemies, and to avoid it splashing onto your friends and loved ones. And if you lose control of that Rage, you might truly turn into a monster; brutalizing those you care about, and in some circumstances feeling compelled to dismember them, eat them, or to sexually assault them (in case you think I'm making that up, it's in the Thrall of the Wyrm section for Metis characters). Changeling: The Lost deals with the question of identity and losing your grip on reality as you witness (and sometimes commit) atrocities, and try to find your place in a world you know is a half-truth at best, and an outright lie at worst.

My point is, there are a lot of games with dark themes, horrible subject matter, and which are meant to dig around in the bleaker parts of the human psyche. That's not a flaw... that's the feature! And even games that aren't expressly meant to touch those darker places can still be made to do so. Drow cities in Dungeons and Dragons, the existence of dark gods like Zon-Kuthon and his cults in Pathfinder... you get the idea.

However, you can think of these games as the collars, the whips, the paddles, and all the other accessories that come with a BDSM-style session. They're the most visible part of the play that's going on, but too often people mistake them for the play itself; as with any good tabletop game, the play is going on inside your mind. In order to have the proper experience, you need to open yourself up to it. Play along, in other words. That means making yourself vulnerable to the experience, because without allowing it to get inside you and affect you, you're missing out on what it's supposed to do. At that point it's just words, dice, numbers, and a whole lot of empty wind.

What's Trust Got To Do With It?

It's a common misconception that if you put a crop into someone's hands that you want them to beat you with it. Sometimes you just want the threat of it looming over you as a potential for punishment. Maybe you want to be teased with it, but not actually hit. Or maybe you want a sharp strike, but just enough to sting, and not enough to do any permanent damage.

Ugh, guy, are we still talking about roleplaying that actually involves dice?

The crop, in this case, is a metaphor. For example, say you're playing a Werewolf game, and to increase the dramatic tension you have a kinfolk partner who's your responsibility (kinfolk, for those not in the know, are normal people related to lines of werewolves, so they aren't affected by their presence the same way other humans are). Maybe the two of you even have children. Now do you, as a player, want your character's family to be at-risk, but not really harmed (a driving threat, but something you can prevent fairly easily), do you want them to be in danger (the potential for something bad to happen to them that will be tough to avoid), or do you want that sensitive spot to be lashed (your spouse is killed or crippled, or your children kidnapped, etc., etc.)?

These are the sorts of questions the person running this game should be asking. Just because someone wants to play a more "mature" game with darker themes, that doesn't necessarily mean they want you to strap them up on St. Jacob's Cross and go whole hog on them. You need to judge what your players want, what they don't want, and you need to discuss areas that are off-limits.

Just because you're all right with implied torture and some psychological distress being part of the game, that doesn't mean you're down with literally having your character flayed and made into an amputee when you get captured by a villain. There are degrees of awfulness (or "maturity" as I guess we'll continue to call it), and you can think of it like a hot sauce scale at a wing restaurant. Just because a player wanted something with a little spice, that doesn't mean the next order should be spiked with the Atomic Tongue Melter just because they were enjoying the heat from the Mildly Dark sauce you gave them.

If Players Don't Trust You, They Won't Open Up

If you can't get your players to trust you, they aren't going to engage with the game you're running. For darker themes to work, players have to be participating. Not just present and taking actions, but allowing it to wash over them. It's like a horror movie; if you're only half paying attention, you don't really care, and you take out your cellphone anytime the angry cello starts threatening to eat you, then it's not going to affect you. Even if it's a visceral, horrifying experience to some people, if you're not engaging it's just a mildly upsetting piece of background noise.

"You can feel your bones break as he... Brandon, are you even listening?"

The same thing happens if you handle the mature elements of your game poorly. To go back to our example, if your players hand you a crop, and you immediately start beating them with it without a lead-in, a discussion of what's okay, and what isn't, then it is very likely that all you're going to do is ruin their fun. This is especially true if you just start hammering on red buttons to purposefully try to get a reaction out of a player. If someone tells you not to push something, don't push it. You have other tools to work with as a storyteller.

And if something does go wrong, and you end up introducing an element that upsets a player? You stop the game, apologize to them, and assure them that it's okay. You make sure they know you take their concerns seriously, and that you respect them as a part of your table. What you do not do is shrug your shoulders and say, "Well, that's the rules. Why did you show up to play this game if a little bit of blood/trauma was going to make you cry?"

The storyteller is not the antagonist, and shouldn't make it their goal to upset their players. Because they're not here to be upset. Scared, maybe. Tense, sure. On edge, definitely. But the goal of these games is the same as their more conventional cousins; to tell a story that everyone at the table enjoys. If people at your table are not enjoying your story (or even just the way you're telling that story), then it's on you to fix it.

If your players aren't having fun, they aren't going to stick around and keep playing. And if they don't trust you to handle that crop, they aren't going to make themselves vulnerable to it. As soon as that happens, you can't affect them anymore, and the whole thing just falls apart.

How Do You Get Players To Trust You?

I've had my share of experiences at the head of more mature-themed games, and there are some things I did right, and some things I did wrong. So I'll end this article out with some tips that I'd recommend taking to heart to help prevent unnecessary awkwardness and problems at the table.

- Put Together a Character Creation Document: These things are lifesavers when it comes to getting a complete look at a PC, and you can ask right on the form what your players' no-go topics are, which ones they're lukewarm about, and which ones are absolutely okay. Provide a list of examples (torture, sexual assault, gore, traumatic events, children being killed, etc.) and pay close attention to the results. More about these at 10 Questions To Put On Your Character Creation Document.

- Communicate: Reach out to your players, and talk with them about the content of your game, and their characters. Ask them the sorts of directions they want to go with their backstories, and provide examples. Be pointed (so, your PC's dad is missing; do you want him to come back, do you want him to be dead, do you want him to be a villain... what are you thinking?), but don't just give the game away entirely.

- Give Some Warning: In the groups I've been in, it's considered good form to let the group know, "Hey, the chance of your character dying tonight is a serious one. Gird yourselves, we're getting serious!" The same thing should apply if you're going to unusually dark places. Let your players get into the proper mindset, and make sure they're down for that sort of content that night. Because they might be having an off night, or just one where they aren't ready for that fast ball. It's better to know that before the game starts than to realize it in the middle of your scene.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. Hopefully you enjoyed, and if you've used run these kinds of games before, leave us a comment to let us know what worked for you!

For more of my work, check out my Vocal and Gamers archives, and stop by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio. Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!