By way of example:
Champions campaign. The good guys are confronting the Big Bad in a hostage situation. Megaton is a known psycho and serial killer, and his particular power is an enormous point blank eruption of energy; Human Bomb-like, if you will. He has this sweet little blonde seven year old girl securely under his hand.
Anyway, the PCs negotiate to save the girl and the other hostages, and Megaton lets them go, finally starting to shove the little girl at them, saying "And here, you can have her too ..."
*** BOOM ***
... and Megaton vaporizes the tyke's head, the gushing torso stump flailing towards the party, splattering their costumes with gore. He's smiling like a Cheshire Cat as he finishes his sentence "... what's left of her. I recommend cutting her up for bouillon." * POOF * Big Bad teleports out.
The press and police are freaking out, the other kids are screaming, the girl's mother is howling ... and the players are all hissing, out loud, their faces contorted with fury.
The old ultraviolence, if used rarely and judiciously, sure packs a wallop.
===============
Next General Player Hissing moment.
Here I had, for lack of a better term, an all-evil group; not just an edgy one, plain old full of predators. An old player was free on the all-evil night and wanted to come back to the campaign ... playing her old goody-two-shoes elven minstrel. So I thought about it some, and here's what I came up with: the elf's sister is a wild psi talent, was kidnapped, and ranged Laurelin from about a thousand miles away with a psychic "Helphelphelp!" Laurelin hires the blackguards to help.
Anyway, they follow the trail to a small time slaver in a port town, a genial old duffer who admits to buying Lindel from a kidnap ring, then reselling her to a caravan trader headed into the barbarian outback. Only then with a few mugs in him he cheerfully said how he'd never had himself an elf virgin before, recounted in obscene detail about the many times he and his men had raped her before selling her off, and finished up with ruminating about how she was probably the sex toy for the entire barbarian tribe by now. Hey, didja hear dat them Wolf Tribe warriors are hung as long as me forearm? 'Tis true, mates, I seen 'em meself!
Now having issues about rape in RPGs, I had never in any of the players' memories (nor, indeed, in the dozen years I'd GMed up to that point) thrown it in as an explicit element. Well, they were doing the hissing thing, and Laura herself was a fine shade of purple. They kidnapped the slaver later on that night, and for about 45 minutes of game time tortured the hell out of the fellow, leaving the still-living husk on the wharfside for his friends to find in the morning.
They seemed well satisfied in their retribution, and more was to come ...
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