Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Paul Farquhar" data-source="post: 9737488" data-attributes="member: 6906155">On Hope vs. Grimdark: In Game of Thrones, trying to do the right right thing and make the world better often, rather than just failing, actually made things worse for people. Perhaps more apropos to early D&D, Elric had this happen to him a lot. In D&D, this takes the form of "gotcha" decisions, were the DM gives the players no good choices, and it generally considered bad form.Now, when Dark Sun was originally written, settings were just described as is, without giving much consideration as to how they would be used in play. However, the biggest inspiration for Dark Sun is clearly John Carter of Mars, which pushes the genre into Planetary Romance rather than Swords and Sorcery. Carter is certainly a more heroic figure than Conan.Now, if the players are going to be good guys, how will they react to templars and defilers joining the party? I suspect the outcome will be an outbreak of PvP. I would be inclined (assuming a heroic game) to make these monsters to be fought, not something you can play as. I would have defiling as something PCs can choose to do though - even heroes can be tempted by expediency.As an aside, does anyone else suspect that the biggest initial backlash against Nu-Dark Sun will be focused on the Art?</blockquote>