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The former is always been my problem with zombie apocalypse stories. Assuming there is no way to end said apocalypse or enough people left to rebuild, the Walking Dead style world where you eke out survival amongst the ruins of civilization trying not to be eaten seems miserable. The latter...

That's kinda a good way to hammer down part of my dilemma. How much net empathy should the setting have? A hopeful setting would have generally high empathy, while a despairing world would have lower empathy. That's not to say individuals or even groups would be less empathetic, but that a harsh...

I mean, science-fiction's future can be five minutes from now, but it's always a little farther ahead than we were when we made it. Even if that Future is "what if we cloned dinosaurs" or "what if a zombie plague happens in Las Vegas (would it stay in Vegas?)". Its not all lazer guns and...

I've always looked at fantasy as the "how we got to this point" and sci-fi as "where do we go now" with a healthy dose of optimism (hope) or pessimism (despair). Fantasy+Optimism is the Golden Age trope, Fantasy+Pessimism is the Dark Age tropes. Sci-fi+optimism is futurism (Star Trek)...

I dunno. Go ask @Morrus

I think you two succinctly captured the crisis I'm going through. It feels right now that we are doomed to never escape samsara, we will make things better only to lose the progress and fall back into outdated methods of thought. But then, fantasy (and science-fiction) have always been about...

Setting quirk. They stopped a Dark Lord from taking over a powerful artifact and stopped Azalin from destroying Darkon and escape, but both of those events only foiled those dark lords plans, it didn't destroy them. They even went back to Barovia and found Strahd had returned, thus undoing the...

Enworld has a no politics rule and I'm trying to keep within that boundary. The point isn't isn't about what is actually going on though, suffice to say my opinion of humanity has lowered several points and I'm struggling to decide if I want my next game to reflect what I would want the world to...

Having been a history teacher, I can attest to your point. I think you point I'm looking at is in the notion of creating a world that escapes Dukkha or one that embraces it. It's fantasy, I can create anything. So do I want a world that is worth fighting for or a world where even the noblest...

I want to point out that a hopeful world isn't all sunshine and roses nor is a despairing world all doom and gloom. It's more a starting point than a constant. Hopeful settings have bad people, corruption and societal ills, but they are the exception rather than the rule. Despairing have apathy...

I intentionally left Greyhawk out of the examples because it has a very unique aspect: it's canonically been both types at various points. The classic era (pre FtA) is Despair coded. The 3e era feels more hopeful. When Greyhawk is mentioned in earlier 5e products (Yawning Portal is a good...

I think that was what I was trying to get across. My view on humanity has shifted in the recent past and it's made me wrestle with the fundamental nature people in a D&D setting. D&D has moved towards a generally more positive view of society; species are viewed with equality, acceptance of...

This is a long and somewhat rambling essay. Recent World Events have gotten me thinking about worldbuilding and the nature of D&D settings. Without going into details, I will simply say my view on the state of the world isn't as bright as it was a decade ago. (No further elaboration will be...

Well that's the problem with DMs banning whole books carte blanche. I might not have liked the twilight cleric, but that was no reason to ban the necessary ranger updates, the better summon spells, and the lineage rules. But a lot of DMS toss the infants away with the dirty water.

The Customize Your Lineage rules were a direct response to the race controversy, and. Madame Luna's Tarokka Deck of Souls referring to a halfling Vistani was part of the reaction to Curse of Strahd. Tasha was partially used as the first opportunity to put some of the changes they referenced in...

While I agree that there are some rather low quality (Spelljammer) and higher quality (Strahd) I find most of the books are just that. I also don't think I've seen an RPG company who isn't roughly on par with that. Nor do I feel the quality overall had dropped with editions.

It's pretty amazing that 5e was the best selling edition, let alone RPG, when it only has four years of good books. And in that era theme is still Tome of Foes and the Waterdeep modules.

I mean, right now Enworld is divided into people who champion each edition or half-edition of D&D, two editions of Pathfinder, Level Up, Tales of the Valiant, countless indie games like Shadowdark, and all manner of OSR games. We barely can talk about the game without collapsing into factions...

Eeyore is a downer and a pessimist, but he generally wants the best for his friends. Micah wants WotC to fail so that games he enjoys more will fill the void. That's not a pessimist, that's a polemic.

You're still claiming tyranny of the majority and that your preferences should be catered to. I may want a DM to run Eberron for me instead of Dragonlance, but they have as much obligation to cater to that as a DM running Level Up for you instead of 5.5. if I know 100 DMs and none will run...