A Dark Path

D&D and its sibling game Pathfinder are, basically, heroic fantasy games.  They're not the games I would instinctively look at for running a dark fantasy campaign.  I'd be going for something like Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, or maybe one of the newer arrivals like Symbaroum.  But that doesn't mean you can't use them for dark fantasy.

Our current Pathfinder campaign is doing it pretty well.  Here's what I think is making it work.

1. Player buy-in

This is absolutely crucial.  If you've been following my game write-ups you might have noticed that the characters created by the Thursday group can be a bit...wacky.  However, with this game the GM was up front that he wanted to run a dark and gritty game and we've made characters to fit in with that.

2. The right setting

There's nothing wrong with the nice temperate biome where Standard Fantasyland appears to exist, but things just don't feel that dark when you've got the glory of Fantasy New Zealand spread out in front of you.

Our current campaign takes place in a region that's a mix of boreal forest and tundra.  The cold is constant, and snow can be as big a threat as any monster - bigger, even, because you can shoot a wolf but you can't kill the weather.  Our people are foragers, and we value the Greenwood where we make our home as much as any god.

This doesn't come up much from a mechanical point of view.  Our characters are mostly human, all from the same tribe, and know how to survive in harsh conditions.  Only in extreme circumstances are we making rolls for survival.  But the narrative threat of freezing or starving is constantly there.

3. A formidable threat

Death isn't scary.  Death is an inherent part of Pathfinder.  Characters die, you make a new one and carry on.

You know what's scary?  A monster you can't fight.

As the saying goes, if it has stats you can kill it.  But at the level this thing is at, we might as well be up against Cthulhu, and anyway, being killed by it is the least of our concerns.  What matters is the corrupting effect it's having on the inhabitants of the Greenwood.

War is threatened from multiple sides, and if it happens it will be devastating.  Our homelands ravaged, our way of life destroyed.  Entire tribes, including our own, could be completely wiped out.  One of the city lords is pushing for war, and right now he's winning.  Killing him won't help - at best someone else will take his place, and at worst we'll be blamed and the war will happen faster and be our fault.  When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die, but he's a master player and we don't even know the rules.  How in the world are we going to stop him?

We might be amazing at taking down appropriately levelled monsters, but in the face of the current situation we are small and weak.

4. Loss of control.

Characters are very accustomed to having their bodies damaged.  The same can't be said for their minds.  It's one thing to fight a monster, but quite another when the monster is possessing you and forcing you to hurt your friends and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

We encountered some kind of ghost that was able to possess one of us and take control.  I'm not sure who had it worse; the one who critcally failed and could only watch helplessly as the ghost puppeted their body around, or the one who merely failed and could fight back each round - but still failed every time.

We all lived.  But that came at a price.

Losing hit points isn't scary.  Helplessness is.  Whether on the small scale, with the ghostly possession, or on the large scale with the monster we can't fight and the politics we can't stop.  This Pathfinder campaign is darker than any game of WFRP I've played, because between the players and the GM, we're playing it that way.