D&D 5E Existentialist Sword and Sorcery

[theCourier]

I feel like Jack Vance's Dying Earth comes into play here as well. The setting and the way people act in the stories gives this tone of fatalism and madness in a world that won't be around for too much longer.

"They were gay, these people of waning Earth, feverishly merry, for infinite night was close at hand, when the red sun should finally flicker and go black."

Scientist-wizards searching for the means to create life, adventurers stumbling onto the remains of ruined civilizations, all cool things to incorporate in a setting I think.

 

[Steampunkette]

I feel like Jack Vance's Dying Earth comes into play here as well. The setting and the way people act in the stories gives this tone of fatalism and madness in a world that won't be around for too much longer.

"They were gay, these people of waning Earth, feverishly merry, for infinite night was close at hand, when the red sun should finally flicker and go black."

Scientist-wizards searching for the means to create life, adventurers stumbling onto the remains of ruined civilizations, all cool things to incorporate in a setting I think.

As well it should!

Jack Vance was directly inspired by some of the same authors that inspired Howard and Lovecraft, Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Borroughs. What I would consider "High Steampunk" in the narrative, rather than aesthetic, sense at least.

But he was also inspired by the Pulp Fiction of Weird Tales, which is where both Lovecraft and Howard's work was published before later being brought into collections.

His novel Dragon Masters is -very- John Carter, wherein the technologically limited humans of a distant world fight of alien invasion from much more advanced peoples and ultimately save their world. Well. Most of it, at least! The main character even contemplates traveling to Earth (After capturing the alien spaceship) to see if it really exists, but tosses aside the tiny globe into a pile of rocks and chooses, instead, to remain the leader of his people.

He makes the active decision not to become a new person in a pretty cool twist on expectations in that one!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

sorry, didn’t see the mod note.

 

[Steampunkette]

That's not a mod note, that's an author note. OP that is.

Just don't wanna have the thread go into that direction and get pruned for politics and whatever.

 

[Alzrius]

That's not a mod note, that's an author note. OP that is.

It's okay to use red text for those here?

 

[Steampunkette]

It's okay to use red text for those here?

I wanted it to stand out.

I'll edit it to be more clear.

 

[Weiley31]

Set phasers to maximum camp.

 

[Blue Orange]

One of the things I think it was the revised 2e DMG pointed out is that ruined civilizations explain why all there's this treasure lying around in ruins for the PCs to get. A loose nuke escaping from the collapse of the Soviet Union is a little more believable than one from the USA in that era. Similarly, you'd expect a staff of wizardry in a society that hadn't fallen to be under heavy guard, probably owned by the chief wizard or the magical academy or something.

As for the existentialist angle...I hadn't heard that before. I keep imagining Garcin, Estelle, and Inez rolling Charisma checks to annoy each other. "Baator is...other people!" Seems like you could do this in any setting, though. The Realms can't be much fun for the average peasant, what with weird cataclysms happening every time there's a new edition. Civilization's fallen in Dragonlance a few times.

Heck, you could even have the characters find out that their entire existence is determined by a bunch of beings playing a game, and that all their vicissitudes are nothing more than a bunch of dice rolls. That would seem pretty existentialist to me.

 

[Yora]

Existentialism isn't all doom and gloom. It's really about finding a way out of Nihilism and bringing joy back into a meaningless world.

"I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."
-- Queen of the Black Coast

 

[Steampunkette]

Existentialism isn't all doom and gloom. It's really about finding a way out of Nihilism and bringing joy back into a meaningless world.

You are very right!

How we handle our existentialist crises is what makes our life go in whatever direction it winds up going after those points. Whether we collapse into a sense of abject despair knowing that all of our decisions are ultimately meaningless in a form of paralytic nihilism, or we turn our lives in a different direction, often inwardly to recognize the inherent worth of ourselves against the backdrop of our lives as a structure for personal meaning.

Others flock to religion, seeking an external source of positivity and meaning to the chaos of life and death. And in a fantasy world they can be be assured that that religion is accurate!

And in the case of the Queen of the Black Coast, as you just referenced, hedonism is a marvelous escape from existential crisis! People fling themselves into their lives, into foods when they wish, sex with whom they care for, and no further consideration given toward anything. Which when done on a societal level... hits Robert E Howard's existential corruption through civilization!

When you turn from the person that you were into the person that you will be and lose some important aspect of the true self in the rampant decay into decadence. Because even Conan, with the jeweled crown of Aquilonia weighing heavy upon a troubled brow, is not immune to losing himself and all that he was.