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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6076062" data-attributes="member: 42582">For me, at least, part of what makes 4e work so well is that the default world is defined very strongly in thematic/trope terms - gods, primordials, Dawn War, a pending Dusk War, etc - but in terms of geography and historical detail is very light. That made it easy for me to use a different map for my game - the map from the old B/X module Night's Dark Terror - while using the 4e core setting holus bolus (I just ignore the - in my view reasonably ignorable - Fallcrest chapter of the DMG).Too much detailed definition makes scene-framing play hard on the GM's side, because you run out of the narrative room to move that scene-framing play depends upon.Personally I don't see the problem here. The proportion of superheroes with tragic backstories probably exceeds the proportion of tragic backstories in the general population. It goes with the genre territory.I mean, each of those "rare" PCs is unique in their own gameworld. (Unless you run a lot of PCs through the same world.) So while they may not be rare at the metagame level - as a trope - they are rare within their fiction. I mean, as far as my gameworld is concerned, the PC drow who worships Corellon and is part of a secret society aimed at undoing the sundering of the elves may be the only "good" (well, unaligned) drow in existence.</blockquote>