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Another thread I have been reading, Is Pathfinder too dark? has been some really interesting reading. The consensus seems to be that Pathfinder is not too dark for the most part.
However, that got me to wondering. What is too dark?
Where is the line? What would you do if they crossed that line? Just how far can Paizo go before it is too far?
For myself, I do not know what would be too far. The only things I can think of would be to pull real world politics religion and opinions into the setting. Murder, cannibalism, sex, drugs all I can deal with. I think there would be a tingling in the back of my neck if spousal or child abuse or rape came in, but it would make me hate a BBEG even more. It would not be off limits, but it would have to be extremely well done and handled carefully and with purpose.
Please no fights, keep it nice. Remember these are just opinions. I am not proposing Paizo take it to the limits. I am just curious what the limits are.
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<snip>However, that got me to wondering. What is too dark?
Where is the line? What would you do if they crossed that line? Just how far can Paizo go before it is too far?
<snip> I think there would be a tingling in the back of my neck if spousal or child abuse or rape came in, but it would make me hate a BBEG even more. It would not be off limits, but it would have to be extremely well done and handled carefully and with purpose.
That's about it, if it came to rape, I would glaze over it in the description, maybe just mention it enough to let the party know how bad the situation is. But I wouldn't condemn anyone for it, as long as it wasn't driven down my throat, like in many new movies.
cheers
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I don't have a problem with the bad guys being "dark", but I'm not crazy about having a module forcing the PCs to collaborate/co-operate with evil folks, or having a module which tricks the PCs into committing evil acts (e.g. "Ha ha! Those goblins you slaughtered were really a bunch of schoolchildren under an illusion!").
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Well this comes down to the old "Community Standards" argument - what's too dark in one group isn't anywhere near the line in another.
I think alot of it will have to do with how much emotional investment a player has in his character and in NPCs. So even for me, "too dark" can vary. For example, in another thread some of us were discussing how to force PCs into making an agonizing choice over which NPC to save from death. If I were just playing the game with light RPing and mostly viewing the events as puzzles and general plot, the horrible hostage situation we came up with - and I was part of it - wouldn't bother me.
But, if I had extreme emotional investment in my PC and his relationships with the NPCs, spent a great deal of effort RPing - to the point where the game was more like a novel I was a part of and not just a game anymore - that situation would really bother me. I thought about this as that thread went on - it started to really disturb me the more I immersed myself into the scenario, imagining what I'd do as a player.
So in short, my line moves. I would judge any scenario on a case by case basis. For many I'm sure this is an issue of personal morals and distaste. I can understand that viewpoint. But mine is that this is a fantasy world where just about anything can happen and there is plenty of pure evil out there to go around. That comes with the territory of the game. I like gritty and dark as a personal preference - and I do have a line - but where that is really depends on the type of campaign I'm involved in.
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To me, it's not so much which of these "dark" subject matters are included, as why/how they're included.
For example, rape. If rape is an assumed part of the setting, and is part of an NPC's background, okay. If rape is depicted on-screen, not-okay. If rape is something that could conceivably become an obvious element for a PC, not-okay. (Not in a published product, that is - if the DM and player are okay with adding that on their own, that's a different thing.)
If the dark elements of the story or setting are there in order to create an interesting atmosphere in which the PCs get to be heroes, okay. But it crosses the line if it gets to the point where:
1) The PCs can't be "heroes" because no matter what they do, bad things always result. (The earlier Darkmoon Vale stuff ventured way too far in this direction, in my opinion, so I stopped reading Darkmoon-Vale-associated products.)
2) The "dark" elements are presented in a smarmy or self-indulgent fashion, rather than as a backdrop. In most Pathfinder products, the presentation is very matter-of-fact. In a few places (e.g. Hook Mountain Massacre, but moreso the editorial introduction to that particular issue of Pathfinder) there's more of a gleeful little-boy enthusiasm for the grotesque. I believe it's that attitude, more than the dark elements themselves, that triggered the strong negative reaction some people have had.
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I can't see that question having any sort of objective answer. It's all subjective tastes.
For me, some of the gorier parts of Pathfinder are too dark for my groups. We're not offended or anything like that. We just have a certain play style, and some of the Pathfinder material has been too dark for that play style. So I just edit it out when we game.
I seriously doubt Paizo would ever go so far that I would be actually offended. So the only real questions I have are more on how useful the adventures are to my games:
-- If I edit out the stuff that's too much for my groups, is there enough usable material left to justify the price? (So far, the usable has definitely outweighed the unusable for me.)
-- Can I even edit out the stuff that's too much for my groups without overhauling most of the plot? (For this reason, I'll probably never run Hook Mountain Massacre. It's a fine adventure and all, but most of what sets it apart is exactly the kind of stuff I'd edit out unfortunately. And I use Paizo adventures because I don't often have time to do major re-writes. So if it requires a lot of changes, I'll just never run it.)
-- Is the gore and darkness getting too monotonous? Variety is good.
-- Does the gore serve the story, or has Paizo jumped the shark and publishes gore just to publish gore? (I certainly don't see this ever happening, but other favorite publishers of mine have jumped the shark that badly - especially after staff changes.)
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I can't see that question having any sort of objective answer. It's all subjective tastes.
yes you are exactly right. Which is why I emphasized it's all opinion. No right answers at all.
And ya know I was thinking a little. Abuse and rape would not bother in me in the game like I said. But I was never raped. Someone with that in their real life history would likely not have a positive reaction to it appearing in any way shape or form in a published game. Likewise with abuse. Even if it were off stage.
So I am really thinking these areas are on the off limits list.
And in regards to Roleplaying having an effect on what is off limits, that reminded me about a game I ran a LONG time ago. A player had a fan who followed him around everywhere. Eventually she gained enough experience to become an adventurer herself. She fawned over him and drove him nuts. So one day he takes advantage of her attention. The result is she becomes pregnant. He goes nuts and is royally pissed at me. He decides to do "the right thing" and marries her. Out of character he wants me to get rid of her as she is "cramping his style." So a few sessions later I have the party ambushed and a crossbow is aimed at him. She jumps in the way and takes the bolt. He turns and finds her dying. The attackers are dispatched. He goes to his wife and I have her look in his eyes and say "I love you. Our son would have been brave and strong like you." And she dies. He just sat there and was depressed and pissed at me. The session ended there as we couldn't get him to play any more. Actually it was weeks before we played again.
I think that game crossed that movable line just a bit for him.
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-- Can I even edit out the stuff that's too much for my groups without overhauling most of the plot? (For this reason, I'll probably never run Hook Mountain Massacre. It's a fine adventure and all, but most of what sets it apart is exactly the kind of stuff I'd edit out unfortunately. And I use Paizo adventures because I don't often have time to do major re-writes. So if it requires a lot of changes, I'll just never run it.)
ya know, you can still run it as it is. Just leave out the more descriptive text. Just take a highlighter over parts you don't want to include. Just make them Ogres instead of
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What is too dark?
When you can't see the light anymore.
To be less flip, when it's so dark, there's no room for heroism or hope or the promise of a better day, when even the people you are saving seem like they're undeserving of another day of life and everything seems hopeless.
But it's also subjective. Vampire, where the protagonists and predators and villains and betrayers all, isn't 'too dark' for me. Wraith, where you start out dead and things only get worse, isn't 'too dark' for me. Call of Cthulhu, where your character may die in a futile fight with something he can't even touch, and even the survivors will go mad, having had zero impact on the eldritch horrors that may not have even noticed their brush with the PCs, isn't 'too dark' for me.
Zombie apocalypse games *are* 'too dark' for me. Yuk.
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I can't see that question having any sort of objective answer. It's all subjective tastes.yes you are exactly right. Which is why I emphasized it's all opinion. No right answers at all.
And ya know I was thinking a little. Abuse and rape would not bother in me in the game like I said. But I was never raped. Someone with that in their real life history would likely not have a positive reaction to it appearing in any way shape or form in a published game. Likewise with abuse. Even if it were off stage.
So I am really thinking these areas are on the off limits list.
And in regards to Roleplaying having an effect on what is off limits, that reminded me about a game I ran a LONG time ago. A player had a fan who followed him around everywhere. Eventually she gained enough experience to become an adventurer herself. She fawned over him and drove him nuts. So one day he takes advantage of her attention. The result is she becomes pregnant. He goes nuts and is royally pissed at me. He decides to do "the right thing" and marries her. Out of character he wants me to get rid of her as she is "cramping his style." So a few sessions later I have the party ambushed and a crossbow is aimed at him. She jumps in the way and takes the bolt. He turns and finds her dying. The attackers are dispatched. He goes to his wife and I have her look in his eyes and say "I love you. Our son would have been brave and strong like you." And she dies. He just sat there and was depressed and pissed at me. The session ended there as we couldn't get him to play any more. Actually it was weeks before we played again.
I think that game crossed that movable line just a bit for him.
That...that story made me tear up a little. I half want to make that guy into the BBEG of our current campaign...*sniff* especailly seeing as how often that sort of thing happens IRL to people I know (up to the taking a crossbow bolt for them).
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What is too dark?When you can't see the light anymore.
To be less flip, when it's so dark, there's no room for heroism or hope or the promise of a better day, when even the people you are saving seem like they're undeserving of another day of life and everything seems hopeless.
But it's also subjective. Vampire, where the protagonists and predators and villains and betrayers all, isn't 'too dark' for me. Wraith, where you start out dead and things only get worse, isn't 'too dark' for me. Call of Cthulhu, where your character may die in a futile fight with something he can't even touch, and even the survivors will go mad, having had zero impact on the eldritch horrors that may not have even noticed their brush with the PCs, isn't 'too dark' for me.
Zombie apocalypse games *are* 'too dark' for me. Yuk.
I once ran a short lived game, that I think died because it was too dark. The premise was the Ilithid had won and taken over the world. The PC races were slaves and food for the Ilithids in the skyscraper cities, kept naked in pens like pigs and cattle and occasionaly used for servants.
The premise was the PCs join an underground trying to over throw the Mind Flayers. But they had to beware as an Ilithid could easily read the mind of a co-conspirator and learn of the plots and simply eat everone's brains.
They managed to escape and sought safety in the wilderness where they had to find clothing and others of like mind, while avoiding the Ilithid hunting parties. Think Logan's Run with a twist there.
Eventually the players just gave up and we moved on as they didn't feel they could overcome the Ilithid who kept finding one or two of them and snaking on fresh brains. Had about a kill a game.
Too dark and too brutal.
-- Is the gore and darkness getting too monotonous? Variety is good.
To me this is the main challenge I've had with Paizo thus far. I wouldn't say anything in Paizo is too dark, necessarily, but I can see it getting old. I read all of RotRL and didn't have a problem with it. I felt like the gory nasty parts are just a part of the adventure and Paizo making a declaration that they are going to make these APs truly for adults.
However, I started reading CoCT and the very first major encounter involves confronting a Fa-gin type character that the adventure describes as feeding orphans to his pet alligator. In that same encounter the PCs find a severed head that has been dead for weeks.
Now, this certainly makes for an awful villian, but part of me felt like this was just more of the same kind of gore and cruelty and I wanted something a little different. I haven't read the rest of CoCT (but I plan to) so I don't know how the rest of it goes. These gory aspects of the adventure aren't going to make or break my enjoyment of the AP, but at the same time I feel that one can create a memorable villain without no holds bar cruelty.
In fact some of the most memorable villains have some kind of conscience, if limited or twisted.
Edit: Above I was talking about an Oliver Twist character that uses orphans for his crimes - but the name was censored for some reason. I'm putting a dash in it and hopefully it will show up.
I once ran a short lived game, that I think died because it was too dark. The premise was the Ilithid had won and taken over the world. The PC races were slaves and food for the Ilithids in the skyscraper cities, kept naked in pens like pigs and cattle and occasionaly used for servants.The premise was the PCs join an underground trying to over throw the Mind Flayers. But they had to beware as an Ilithid could easily read the mind of a co-conspirator and learn of the plots and simply eat everone's brains.
They managed to escape and sought safety in the wilderness where they had to find clothing and others of like mind, while avoiding the Ilithid hunting parties. Think Logan's Run with a twist there.
Eventually the players just gave up and we moved on as they didn't feel they could overcome the Ilithid who kept finding one or two of them and snaking on fresh brains. Had about a kill a game.
Too dark and too brutal.
I like this premise. I really like the *idea* of the mind flayers taking over, but yeah, REALLY hard. But, that idea really appeals to me if say, you reverse the roles of humans and orcs (or ogres...). Orcs have been on top for a long long time, they're a fairly intelligent and organized race - the humans have been held captive as slaves for generations.
That, to me, might just be about right...neat idea. Basically anything less powerful than mind flayers. :)
I think alot of it will have to do with how much emotional investment a player has in his character and in NPCs. So even for me, "too dark" can vary. For example, in another thread some of us were discussing how to force PCs into making an agonizing choice over which NPC to save from death. If I were just playing the game with light RPing and mostly viewing the events as puzzles and general plot, the horrible hostage situation we came up with - and I was part of it - wouldn't bother me.
But, if I had extreme emotional investment in my PC and his relationships with the NPCs, spent a great deal of effort RPing - to the point where the game was more like a novel I was a part of and not just a game anymore - that situation would really bother me. I thought about this as that thread went on - it started to really disturb me the more I immersed myself into the scenario, imagining what I'd do as a player.
This.
In our current campaign, I could cope more easily with my own character's death than with the deaths of some of our NPCs, I think. In part, that's because the campaign has focused heavily on building relationships amongst the PCs and NPCs, and partly because my character has developed as someone who feels a tremendous sense of responsibility for her entire crew (she's the captain of a ship). Losing a member of her crew sends her into quite the tailspin, especially if she sees it as preventable. Having one of her senior crew members (an NPC, but a very well-developed one) die in what appeared to be a copycat killing modeled after a previous string of serial killings-- apparently to frame our other PC for the murder-- came very close to topping out my tolerance for 'darkness'. Had I not remembered that we had a scroll of raise dead the DM forgot about that allowed us to bring the NPC back, I think it very well may have been a character-breaking event for her, coming on top of a long string of other psychologically traumatic occurrences.
On the other hand, I happily played a Battletech campaign where an entire planet full of innocent people got nuked, including, as far as we knew at the time, my character's husband. And where another of the PCs got captured by enemy forces and tortured to the point where he was on the edge of insanity-- and missing a few limbs. None of that felt 'too dark' at the time, because the characters were different and the RP chemistry was different.
It all depends on context, as with most things in gaming, in my experience.
I think it boils down to what is the tolerance of the gaming group. Know the players and the GM's. Be upfront at the beginning of any campaign on how dark it's going to be. Also, it goes back to the previous posts that the darkness needs to be relevant to the story.
I'd say our games run a strong PG-13. The darker elements happen off camera and left to the imaginations of the players.
The real question becomes, "How dark is too dark for published content" - since that has to sort of appeal to a wider base. Perhaps modules/paths could be rated in terms of darkness, or have recommendations on what to omit (so that you know it won't affect the overall story).
I think the bottom line is that a game is supposed to be FUN. If it's too [insert your own adjective here, i.e., dark, depressing, scary, creepy, brutal, etc.] to be fun, then you're players are all going to be "too busy" to play anymore. Make it fun, and they'll keep coming back for more.
I don't have a problem with the bad guys being "dark", but I'm not crazy about having a module forcing the PCs to collaborate/co-operate with evil folks, or having a module which tricks the PCs into committing evil acts (e.g. "Ha ha! Those goblins you slaughtered were really a bunch of schoolchildren under an illusion!").
Ah cause the mass murder of sentient creatures, is so morally unabigous in the first place isn't it.
I think an interesting adventure would be one where a group of good-aligned PCs (preferably with a paladin) have to enter a tomb that contains a powerful artifact that can be used to prevent a great evil. The catch being that the tomb is guarded by Lawful Good fanatics including celestials) sworn to prevent the items removal from the tomb. The oppossing goals of the two "good guy" groups could create some great friction and role-playing.
Because you can't get much darker than when good must fight good to defeat evil.
I think an interesting adventure would be one where a group of good-aligned PCs (preferably with a paladin) have to enter a tomb that contains a powerful artifact that can be used to prevent a great evil. The catch being that the tomb is guarded by Lawful Good fanatics including celestials) sworn to prevent the items removal from the tomb. The oppossing goals of the two "good guy" groups could create some great friction and role-playing.
Because you can't get much darker than when good must fight good to defeat evil.
Try watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 5 or (briefly) Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade or (briefly) The Mummy.
O
All of which are great inspirations. Some of which were on my mind when I wrote the above post.
Ok, newsflash: half-orcs are not the result of true love
Neither were half-elves on some campaign settings, like Dragonlance
And thats OGL, not Pathfinder
I really can't imagine anyone complaining about anything else if they ignore the obvious
I think this not only depends on the player group, but on the individual players. Some players want their characters to experience adversity, others do not. I notice that the longer I DM, the more I tailor parts of the story to individual characters. Some are easily shocked, some are almost never shocked.
So I think it is the DM who decides what to put in an adventure.
I would play the pathfinder adventure paths with one of my two groups, but not with the second group. They would not appreciate it.
I think alot of it will have to do with how much emotional investment a player has in his character and in NPCs.
That.
I can handle anything as long as it isn't abusive to the people I care about.
I remember one game where my character's wife was abducted. If it had been a background story wife, I could have handled it, but the relationship had evolved during the game. It was like someone had personally assaulted me when this fictional 'wife' was taken.
On the whole I can handle any amount of 'dark' descriptions, but I'm not a good yard stick. I usually watch horror movies for laughs (ok...not movies like 'saw' which I do not consider horror, but just gross.)
Some would say that the Harry Potter series is pretty dark fantasy, particularly towards the end of the series (heck by book 3 with the description of the dementors.) Yet, I know many a parent that reads the stories to their kids. Then there are the Grim Fairy Tales. There are some twisted tales.
People have issues drawing all sorts of lines. Hence why they compare it to other media to give a comparison...such as more LotR and less Pan's Labyrinth....or more Hills have Eyes and less Saw.
Another line I frequently hear is that of Heroes. That the players want to be heroes. It usually is mentioned in connection to dark settings and they are usually thinking about LotR heroes. However when I think of heroes I think of the Ancient Greek Heroes whose meaning is performing tasks beyond the keen of mortal man. There is no alignment associated with that description of Heroes. Even modern fantasy uses that description such as Harry Potter in the Sorcerer's Stone when Olivander says he expects great things from Harry because of the wand (brother of Voldemort's) that chose him. In the greek sense Harry and Voldemort would both me heroes because they do things beyond the keen of the normal.
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-- Is the gore and darkness getting too monotonous? Variety is good.
This is something that the companion to CotCT really kind of hammered home for me. Every single background trait was indicative of a *horribly* dark past, and while I get that they were meant to have the characters connected to the bad-guy, it still felt a bit too monotonous to me. Second Darkness, on the other hand, had a much 'lighter' series of Background Traits, and I was thankful for that.
It's nice to have some character backgrounds that aren't orphans, abused children and / or drug addicts, for some variety. :)
AT LAST!!!
I can't help but practice necromancy on this thread. I was really haunted by this story...
And in regards to Roleplaying having an effect on what is off limits, that reminded me about a game I ran a LONG time ago. A player had a fan who followed him around everywhere. Eventually she gained enough experience to become an adventurer herself. She fawned over him and drove him nuts. So one day he takes advantage of her attention. The result is she becomes pregnant. He goes nuts and is royally pissed at me. He decides to do "the right thing" and marries her. Out of character he wants me to get rid of her as she is "cramping his style." So a few sessions later I have the party ambushed and a crossbow is aimed at him. She jumps in the way and takes the bolt. He turns and finds her dying. The attackers are dispatched. He goes to his wife and I have her look in his eyes and say "I love you. Our son would have been brave and strong like you." And she dies. He just sat there and was depressed and pissed at me. The session ended there as we couldn't get him to play any more. Actually it was weeks before we played again.
...for a long time, but I couldn't find it. 10 months later, I asked on another thread where to find this story, but no one answered. Perhaps no one else could find it either.
That...that story made me tear up a little. I half want to make that guy into the BBEG of our current campaign...
I don't. I wish I could write a novel with that character as one of the heroes. He would, of course, be a FLAWED hero, haunted for the rest of his life by the woman who sacrificed herself and her baby for him. He would never forget her, no matter how he tried. He would constantly wish that he had treated her better, when she had still been alive and he had had the chance. Now, he can do nothing for her but bring flowers to her grave, and strive to be a better person than he had been.
Dark? Psssshht, no. Even in the Worldwound, everything is all green and glowy. Light is everywhere.
Now, grimness, on the other hand...
I would like to see some darker modules and other things from Pathfinder.
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I am generally sickened when a module/Adventure Path includes child murder that is going on in real time, and that the PCs cannot do anything to stop.
I really did not like the way The Carrion Crown Adventure Path was written because:
It really angered me on a deep, emotional level and I had to put the AP down after reading it.
I realize I can tweak things around to either not include it, or to make it so the PCs are able to get there in time, but still, I found it way too dark for me.
Louis it's not real, it's fantasy so why would that upset you? C'mon it's a game and if you can't handle it you shouldn't be playing the game.
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Louis it's not real, it's fantasy so why would that upset you? C'mon it's a game and if you can't handle it you shouldn't be playing the game.
I know that it is not real. But, then, that is kind of a cop-out. The reason this thread was created was to ask what we find too disturbing to play in our RPGs.
To draw an analogy, if you saw someone white-faced and crying after having just watched something along the lines of "Schindler's List," would you also tell them that it was all make-believe with actors and special effects and nothing to be upset about at all? I doubt it. We can be deeply affected by things that are not real, and I do not think it does anyone any favors to trivialize their feelings on the matter, or to say something along the lines of "Hey, if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen."
I generally have an iron constitution when it comes to facing other topics and situations (both real and fantasy) that most other people find disturbing. But that does not mean some things cannot upset me, and child murder is at the top of that relatively short list.
That having been said, I am not saying that Paizo should have changed that particular part of the Adventure Path story. The Carrion Crown AP is perfectly good Adventure Path. I just did not like that particular part, and I do not care to use it if and when I run that Adventure Path because I find it upsetting.
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It's always a good idea to have a conversation about tone with a group, before play and occasionally touch on it during play. It helps to balance darkness with a touch of levity or wackiness.
The story of Burnt Offerings is incredibly dark but people don't usually complain too much about it because much of it is relegated to the background and the interactables are those whacky, crazy goblins!
Catharsis is another way of balancing darkness. I'm running a Skull & Shackles game,
If something is making a player uncomfortable, gloss over it, or retcon it. Pay attention to body language during those scenes and after a game just privately check in with each player to ensure they're okay with everything.
Tone is something that needs to be calibrated often. Be a collaborator with your players to find the band of enjoyment.
I think an element of darkness is a part of what makes roleplaying in a violent fantasy world (which Pathfinder almost invariably is, unless you're playing it like a mercantilism sim...) interesting for players and fun. Our society has moved past everything having to have some kind of moral, and our fantasy reflects that.
Read Joe Abercrombie's novels. One of his main characters is a torture victim, but he remains one of my favorite protagonists in any book I've read precisely because a darker past makes his present and future more interesting.
I'm just starting a Jade Regent campaign, and one of my players (my dad, in fact) is playing a neutral halfling necromancer with the Rescued campaign trait. To explain his character's motivation he created a backstory in which on this particular character's way back to one of the large cities in the area his caravan was attacked. Before he went unconscious he saw his wife being taken away by goblins and, as a sort of "mutant trigger" he channeled negative energy, passing out but inadvertently killing his wife in the process. Now his quest--and reason for being a neutral necromancer--is to figure out how to bring his wife back, no strings attached, so that he can be with her again.
Just that little bit of edge or darkness makes his character a thousand times more compelling. On the topic of how much darkness is too much, or how grim can grim get before it's too much I agree with people above me; it all depends on what you and your players are comfortable with. Find your lowest common denominator and have that be your cap. I know for me (I've been an ER orderly for three years) I can handle just about any amount of gore or mutilation or whatever. Violence towards people in a fantasy is fine with me; it's fiction, it's whatever. I don't necessarily like it, and it can get distasteful quick, but it doesn't bother me. What does bother me, though, is violence towards animals. If I had an adventure path tell me to send characters to an evil circus where they mutilated harmless animals for sport I'd just have to skip it or change it. Sarah McLoughlan commercials just kill me.
And in regards to Roleplaying having an effect on what is off limits, that reminded me about a game I ran a LONG time ago. A player had a fan who followed him around everywhere. Eventually she gained enough experience to become an adventurer herself. She fawned over him and drove him nuts. So one day he takes advantage of her attention. The result is she becomes pregnant. He goes nuts and is royally pissed at me. He decides to do "the right thing" and marries her. Out of character he wants me to get rid of her as she is "cramping his style." So a few sessions later I have the party ambushed and a crossbow is aimed at him. She jumps in the way and takes the bolt. He turns and finds her dying. The attackers are dispatched. He goes to his wife and I have her look in his eyes and say "I love you. Our son would have been brave and strong like you." And she dies. He just sat there and was depressed and pissed at me. The session ended there as we couldn't get him to play any more. Actually it was weeks before we played again.
The first thing I felt when I read this was sadness, that is truly tragic. Then I thought, that stupid woman, she isn't just responsible for herself anymore, she had a duty to protect her unborn child, one which she failed. If she hadn't been with child and wanted to sacrifice her life for her beloved, that is fine, but that all goes out the window when you have a life growing inside you. (and yes, I know shes not real, and the DM did it to kind of teach the guy a lesson, but thats where my mind went)
The last thing I thought was...where the hell was the party cleric with a healing spell? :P
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Much as beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, so is darkness. The level of darkness is entirely dependent on what the players as a whole are comfortable with. I know people who flinch at the idea of a scratch and others who can sit there and yawn while I tell them about how a barbarian horde has raped, pillaged, and burned a village in exhausting detail that would make even the more sturdy people squirm. It's all a matter of perspective.
As for Golarion in general...meh. I've seen worse. Paizo certainly doesn't flinch away from the bad parts of life, and it doesn't romanticize the setting as some others do. So, basically, it's not a place Sansa Stark would live very long, but it isn't bad enough that most people would object. MOST. Not all. In other words, ask your players beforehand. Make a gametable agreement. Whatever. Draw the line in the sand yourself, then move on.