Young Wizards - how dark is too grim for an RPG?

The Game Room
1

Recently, I’ve been working on an RPG called Young Wizards. As it now stands, it’s just a free product, but I’m curious to see how grimdark people might want it. I know we have gamers and former gamers here.

Right now, the thing comes across as an eclectic balance between the early Harry Potters and World of Darkness. There’s all kinds of nasty creatures, and wizards aren’t very nice. But then of course, there’s a split between how society turns out and how people actually get along in it (the nicest wizards probably ignore any cousins who don’t have magical talents and treat many intelligent beings rather cavalierly).

On the one hand, this can’t be like Harry Potter. There’s more than one menace out there, and wizards aren’t the heroes - to some, they’re the villains! On the other hand, wizards are the player heroes, and need to be able to see themselves as imperfect but good. They are, after all, in a prime position to stop the bad guys of whatever stripe from various evil plots.

Right now, I’m thinking of pushing it two ways. First, wizards might not always treat everyone else well, but among themselves they’re fair and generous (excepting evil wizards, but that’s a whole 'nother story). Second, they do keep the peace and mostly manage to keep dangerous magic from harming mundanes. Any other suggestions? Or alternatively, how dark would you like to see the game?

Any reccs that I imitate Warhammer 40K, but remove all the light-hearted fluff, will be respected for what it’s worth. (In the Grim Darkness of a magical private school, there is only WAR. And youthful crushes on the God-Emperor-Wizard of Man.)

2

Why does it have to have any forced grimdark at all?

I’m a fan of the Harry Potter motif–there is grimdark in the world, but being a imperfect character means you can have human flaws rather than wizard-supremacy ones.

I’d be more apt to play it if it allowed for a significant amount of sunshine–the grimdark market is pretty saturated.

3

Why would they, though? That’s the thing…if you had magical powers what would be in it for anyone who has them to treat other, non-magical humans (or sentient beings) fairly or stop bad guys from doing bad things? My guess is it would be like the colonial days of mankind, when the power of the gun gave the people who had them such a huge advantage over folks who didn’t have them that they ran rampant over everyone who didn’t have guns, or even those who had them but weren’t as powerful. So, you’d have a byzantine maze of alliances, with those who don’t have magic being on the low end of the totem pole and run roughshod over. You’d need to find some sort of counter-balancing force…some weakness that the non-magical could exploit, if they could figure out the weakness. If left to their own devices I think that people would exploit their advantage…it wouldn’t be ‘evil’, it would just be humans being, well, human.

I wouldn’t go with the noble ‘fair and generous’ thingy towards each other…again, IMHO, think in terms of the colonial period. France and England, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain. They weren’t ‘fair and generous’ towards each other…they simply respected each others power, but clashed as often as not. And I wouldn’t go with the whole good verse evil thing…again, for my part I’d put it in terms of humans being human (or, if you are going to have other races, figure out what is ‘rational’ for your alternative races and have them act broadly in terms of their own natures). My guess is that the humans wouldn’t keep the peace unless there was some reason for them to keep it…and then it would be a wary cold war type peace, with perhaps proxy wars on the sidelines if the big players were too wary to get into things directly. That’s the way the real world works, and whether we are talking about magic powers or folks who have advanced technology or don’t have advanced technology it makes little difference…human nature is what it is.

I’d make it as dark and real and human history is, just not in cliched ‘good’ verse ‘evil’ terms. Most of humanity and human history is really shades of gray…though it WOULD be interesting to put in something like the Nazi or USSR empires. People who did things that they thought were rational or at least they had some sort of excuse or rationale for, but who were viewed as ‘evil’ by people who’s worldview was different. You could play on different races that way…perhaps what one race would find ‘evil’ another race thinks of as perfectly rational or acceptable.

-XT

4

My games always tend to be set in worlds with black and grey mortality, so the more grimdark the better. But xtisme’s advice is good. Don’t purposefully go out of your way to make the setting as awful as possible. Simply making it “realistic” will result in a really fucked up setting because, well, people are fucked up.

5

Ok, backing up. I may have given the wrong impression. Things aren’t ideal - but the way it’s written now, they’re not terrible, either.

Wizards are human. Humans are intelligent. Intelligent beings (short of semi-omniscient greater beings) have biases, interests, and blind spots, and those are probably related to the things they don’t want to see.

Wizards aren’t evil as a group. And yes, to a degree they are colonial, or at least poewrful and parochial. But yes, their power is also limited. All the world’s wizards together amount to a single small mundane city. On top of keeping dragons from flying loose and placating giants and elves. And a few other magic-using humans, such as Witch-Hunters and Invokers, can push back against wizards.

In fact, all of these groups have dangerous abilities. Wizards have the most flexibility by far, and the ability to basically live their lives on magic alone. Some of the magical creatures do like and respect them. Some tolerate wizard leadership, and still others keep to themselves. Nobody’s evil, but everyone sees the world from their own eyes.

Wizards aren’t all corrupt, but it’s hard to be perfectly evenhanded when you’re the top dog and have been for the last eon. Wizards simply view this as the natural order of things, right or wrong. At its best, there’s a code of noblesse oblige, hence the generosity and honor. At its worst, it trends into callous exploitation.

So right now, as the text stands, they rule most magical creatures, or at least effectively control them. Though not all-powerful, wizards have the ability to enforce the most important rules of their society on most. The intent here is to make wizards potential heroes or villains, as well as having room for tragic villaims, extremist villains, and just plain evil villains. Likewise, there’s room for player characters to make an impact on the game world by supporting things they like, and having “villains” who are more petty than wicked.

In fact, partof this is because these things were in Harry Potter. basically, if the game didn’t have room for Draco Malfoy, then I’d be hard-pressed to say what it’s for. And if you have Draco Malfoys about, you have to acknowledge that their views are common enough to cause harm, even if they don’t completely dominate.

6

I’m not sure what you’re asking, if anything.

7

How dark would you like it. Totally a personal question. Explain in any way you like.