D&D General Are the best days of your campaign world ahead or behind?

[BookTenTiger]

I always enjoy the debate about if the "best days" are behind or ahead. Have we surpassed the Golden Age of Television, or is it somewhere in the future? Were the best days of humanity our millennia of hunting and gathering, or is there some utopia awaiting us?

Anyways, this thread is not about those two things.

In your campaign world, are the best days ahead or behind?

I feel like the default assumption in a lot of D&D campaign worlds is that the best days were in the past. The world is filled with ruins of great civilizations, old powerful magics, and ancient creatures trying to recapture or hoard the power they once had.

Is that true for your campaign world?

 

[IvyDragons]

Behind, everyone died when WOTC added 100 years to Faerun.

 

[Lanefan]

Open question.

In some ways the best days - or at least a whole lot of damn good ones - are behind.

In other ways the best days may yet lie ahead; but there's no way to know until they either show up or don't.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Ahead.

The past sucked. Vampire wannabes explodicated the planet, leaving it a death world, then the gods 'saved' a bunch of people from dying worlds and dropped them there without doing the proper research.

The present is a time for science, magic and magical science where the PCs are going to be part of building the bright furture.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Ahead.

My son will inherit my campaign world, including the notes that explain in the in-jokes and which historical characters were previous PCs. Whether he runs games in it or not, takes inspiration from it or not, he will be able to learn all the secrets and remember his dad and the times we played together.

 

[Oofta]

Oops

 

[BookTenTiger]

I love these answers so far!

In my own campaign setting, the best days are definitely ahead. The realm went from Shadowfell to Too Many Monsters to Vampire Queen in pretty quick succession. There was a brief good period before the Queen became a vampire, but since then it's been all oppression and bloodsucking.

We are just about in the endgame of the campaign; hopefully in the epilogue the characters set things to be better in the future!

 

[el-remmen]

I tend to take the approach of the wisest words ever spoken: "And this too shall pass. . ."

 

[Oofta]

Both.

There were golden ages in the past, destroyed by the equivalent of a magical nuclear war leaving behind only ruins and the occasional artifact. Civilization slowly recovered, only to follow cycles of recovery and collapse.

Most recently, an apacolypse was triggered when Loki was released by a lich as part of a plan to destroy the gods in a previous campaign. Civilization is recovering once again, even though the population is a third of what it once was.

So golden ages come and go.

 

[Unwise]

I'm basically running a Robin Hood campaign. The PCs are throwing off the oppressive yokes of their feudal lords. So in their local region things should improve.

A mere 150 years ago, the world had gods and angels walking amongst people, uplifting the virtuous and punishing the wicked. They are all gone now, so civilisations are trying to work out how to live without being told how to. Nobody knows why the gods disappeared. It is a rough time.