BtB: The Nasty Bits

In this week's episode of Beyond the Book, we dig into the nasty bits: why a villain has to be genuinely vile before stopping them means anything, why a setting needs real shadows before it feels like a real place, how much ugliness a game can carry before the fun gives out, and why playing the monster at the table doesn't make you one away from it. Along the way we try to draw the line between darkness that gives a story its weight and darkness that's only there to shock. Because the uncomfortable truth is that the games we love are only as good as the things in them we hate.