10 Reasons Why Some Gamers Love "Grimdark" Settings 

You are playing with ancient powers you do not understand!!!

10sec later: Dune. Hell yeah. For me it was the opposite way around though. I had been deep into 40k, when older friends kept bringing up Dune. Only took me about 10 years to look into it and after falling in love with it, I felt a bit betrayed by how much of it proved to have been the “inspiration” for the better aspects of 40k lore.

Oh man, you bring up a lot of interesting aspects. I’ve only played one or two games of Symbaroum, but I have all of the books, adore the mood and art and overall like it a lot more than the forgotten realms. It’s not only dark and ominous, but it also brings back a lot of mystery. Similar to my other love, 2e Dark Sun. Every creature has a refreshing twist and poses a proper threat to the characters. There is exploration to be done and something is always at stake. 5e fails to do that without a lot of gm-fiat. That being said I’m afraid Symbaroum’s greatest weakness is its awesome, yet very prescriptive epic campaign/story. But I have yet to read it and inform/confirm my expectations. Do you know Degenesis? (Another rpg I have barely managed to play, yet had to buy into completely.) Originally a german rpg, that described itself as primal punk and takes an analog to jungian archetypes into consideration, when creating characters. (You seem to share my (professional?) fascination for the psyche, so maybe that’s as much of selling point for you as it was for me.) The art style is probably the most overproduced in the whole market, because one of the founders is a comic artist, who worked on Marvel stuff and the likes. The game system is probably not as good as the art, but the setting is a post-post-apocalyptic beauty that reminds me of a more earthy Fallout. The rpg has sadly been discontinued a few years ago, but company is still alive and the setting is going to be revitalized by a boardgame crowdfunding very soon.

GrimJim has a quite critical review of the game, that still serves to showcase it, I guess, but if you look for the producer’s channel (six more vodka), you will find a few significantly more enticing nuggets of lore. The prophet Jehammed’s messages or something like that. Regarding the general allure of grimdark fiction I agree with you pretty much entirely. Without having given it a lot of conscious consideration, I’d just give slightly differently nuanced explanations. For me it’s a lot about the representation of the human condition and the verisimilitude that results from it. A whimsical utopia is nice for an occasional change, but call me cynical, it’s unfortunately not believable in the long run. As you insinuated we are or at least have been lucky enough to have been born into a time and place, where we were able to ignore the more fundamental layers of our needs (according to Maslow), because everything was provided for us for the most part, even if we weren’t born into considerable wealth by local standards. Yet the supposed civility of the “civilised” societies is easily proven to be but a thin veil by history in general and recent events in particular. Not entirely unlike in the 41. millennium chaos lurks right behind that immaterial veil. I guess engaging with an exaggeration of the bleak reality of entropy in a self-exploratory, no stakes roleplaying context can have many effects, that could warrant more of an essay than this is turning into already. More or less boldly facing insurmountable challenges and possibly prevailing against all odds and despite immeasurable suffering can be uplifting. Plus, as you hinted to and at least by proxy, it seems to satisfy our subconscious desire for a tangible or actionable and all-encompassing purpose beyond the hedonistic treadmill of consumerism. Your example of the preparations for meditation lessons, was perfectly picked irony. Maybe owning a Kia Sorento, to whose existence I was entirely oblivious until you mentioned it and I happened to be stuck in traffic behind one at exactly that moment, could make me more mindful.

grim dark is more about the "no good way out and no good guys" where as in post-nuclear there can be hope and maybe the world is rebuilding. Grim dark has no positiv way out, only a less shitier way maybe and its how the characters choose to life in these grim dark times and .. how long they can life.

Yes. Many - maybe even most - grimdark settings are post-apocalyptic in some way, in both fantasy and sf.

It's not quite that nothing is worth fighting for. If anything that fact that winning is very far from sure makes the worthiness of the cause all the more vital.

100% the relief that I’m not there is a huge generator of gratitude and compassion and RELIEF!

@@amanisalone This makes perfect sense, one the other end, sometimes looking at solar punk makes me sad because I wish we were there

I’m going to try!!

I know, I hate that no matter what when I let YT just cycle to the next channel after @mrbones40k or @pancreasnetwork or @amberking, it inevitably loops around to imperial iterator or whatever and I have to listen to David Attenborough saying "the adepta sororitas are basically like fully dedicated to the emperor of mankind"

I hope you consider the hobby - and I def consider duo play to be a in the solo play family!

@@amanisalone i am starting a Whitebox campaign, i am going to be playing as a full party of 4 characters

Awesome. You are so right.

And that, it why playing Grimdark Future from Onepage rules using models from any range, second hand or home printed rocks so hard. If you like the lore, you can port that in easy.