D&D 5E Existentialist Sword and Sorcery

[Mind of tempest]

The basic idea behind the concept is "why do I continue to keep up with all this nonsense?"
Various existentialist philosophers made a career from pondering this for decades of their lives.
"If my live with all it's troubles is not part of some grand divine plan, or that plan is a bad plan, then why would continued existence be preferable to nonexistence?" In existentialist philosophy "have faith!" is not an accepted answer. A solid reason is demanded to justify enduring the troubles that are part of life. Though having rejected any supposed divine plan or higher power, those reasons have to be subjective. The existential crisis is the desire for a good answer and not having found one yet.
Though admittedly, many existentialist loved to dramatically wallow in their own pitty to get attention as suffering artists.

currently, my answer is that non-esistence is an unknown and it could be infinitely worse and I simply do not know this but that is just fear thus non-satisfactory.
the problem with subjective answers is that not everyone finds them satisfactory.

Grimdark is S&S taken to eleven. Its nihilism without any shred of hope. Even Conan gets his wins, his gold and his women and his glory.

or just a delight in horrible misery which tends to be when it gets dumb or funny.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I never really understood this concept and I am religious. But even if there is no grand plan then who cares. Get up, kiss your wife, come home and play with the kids, watch the game, enjoy the company of your friends, help young people get a good start in life so they can get good jobs and be good neighbors. Even if I wasn’t religious I would want my family and neighbors happy and doing well. So I never really grasped this existentialism and nihilism. Just something I haven’t had to struggle with and I feel sorry for those that do. I don’t know what to say to them
Car broke I can fix it. Need a job. I can fix that if u r capable of hard work. It’s the truly disabled I wish I could help more.

then likely you already fond your answer, I am deeply envious of you.

 

[Scribe]

Grimdark is S&S taken to eleven. Its nihilism without any shred of hope. Even Conan gets his wins, his gold and his women and his glory

Yeah, understood. I mean simply from reading a few of these posts I get the impression that.

1. You don't really change the world, your impact is local.
2. It's about defining yourself, less so again trying to make big setting changes.
3. The world is harsh.
4. There are powers well beyond your ability to ever defeat.

It's not a stretch to me, to then go a bit further to grimdark, which I love without reservation.

 

[Sithlord]

then likely you already fond your answer, I am deeply envious of you.

I don’t understand the question lol

 

[Yora]

Well adjusted, happy exiatentialist just don't tend to go around telling anyone how cruel the world is and that nobody understands their pain. Or writing big books about it.
It's those in big tragic drama mode who get all the attention.

I think it's also no coincidence that Existentialism started showing up at the time that Romanticism began going out of fashion. Those guys had made being Drama Queens their artistic mission statement. Later in the 20th century you get people like Camus and de Bauvoir, who were more fun.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I don’t understand the question lol

you have won the existential struggle and I have not, hence the envy.

Well adjusted, happy exiatentialist just don't tend to go around telling anyone how cruel the world is and that nobody understands their pain. Or writing big books about it.
It's those in big tragic drama mode who get all the attention.

I think it's also no coincidence that Existentialism started showing up at the time that Romanticism began going out of fashion. Those guys had made being Drama Queens their artistic mission statement. Later in the 20th century you get people like Camus and de Bauvoir, who were more fun.

Camus is an absurdist and according to humorist comics has more or less the ideal life.

 

[Steampunkette]

I agree it's a matter of scale, but I'm not sure that is what's keeping S&S from High Fantasy. Plenty of high fantasy has lower-stakes too; the Hobbit is about a dozen dwarves getting their home back from a dragon. That is no more epic than what Conan does on a good day. Further Thorin is no epic hero (a tragic one, but not an epic one) and his reclaiming Misty Mountains from Smaug only helps dwarf-kind for a couple of decades at best. Bilbo returns wealthy and has a few domestic misadventures the story ends. Yet I don't see anyone claiming the Hobbit is S&S, despite the fact that, in the context of LotR, it's very much a zero-sum-gain win for everyone.

Because the Hobbit may be a comparatively smaller story... but.

1) It's a component piece of a bigger tale, a bigger world. Even if Bilbo's adventures never take him to Mt. Doom with Frodo, he sets the groundwork for that event, and the Necromancer that everyone else goes after turns out to be Sauron's Power creeping back into the world.

2) He's carrying the One Ring. Even if his victory over Smaug isn't a massive deal in the history of the world, he's GOT THE ONE RING!

His individual tale may be smaller scale, but it's the same story.

Grimdark is S&S taken to eleven. Its nihilism without any shred of hope. Even Conan gets his wins, his gold and his women and his glory.

Midnight is a Grimdark High Fantasy setting. It's LotR only Izrador (a name meant to sound like Isildur) wins and takes over the world as the single Evil God with all the other gods on the other side of a barrier that keeps them from interfering.

It's actually a pretty great Grimdark setting, but it is decidedly not S&S.

There's also Grim Hollow which, honestly, is pretty amazing, really. It's very Grimdark but so high fantasy it isn't funny at the same time! Your character can grow in an alternate path called a Transformation. Your options are Fiend, Aberrant Horror, Lich, Lycanthrope, Seraph, and Vampire. You get all the benefits and penalties of your Transformation at Tier 1, but after that you only gain 1 benefit and 1 penalty from each advancing tier.

It also introduces Bloodmagic that has a casting cost in addition to the normal spell slot of your Hit Dice. A Number of Hit Dice equal to the spell's level that absolutely limits how many "Sangromancy" spells you can cast in a day separate from your spellslots. And these spells are -worth- it.

It's honestly pretty baller!

 

[Flamestrike]

Lovecraft was a pioneer of existentialist writing.

I mean his protagonists are usually men of science and reason, that examine the universe, and determine (or slowly find out) that nothing matters, their lives are insignificant, nothing lasts forever, and nothing has any meaning.

In the face of this cosmic insignificance, the realization slowly drives them insane.

That's the very definition of existentialist dread. The realization that nothing we do matters, that nothing lasts forever, and that nothing we do has any meaning.

Rick and Morty also deal with this exact same phenomena in many episodes. Rick has embraced the existentialist position to the extreme, but Morty on the other hand has found a way around it in that he holds on to things that (to him) have meaning:


''Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everyone is going to die... Now lets go watch some TV.''

Ones options to combat existential dread are to either accept some lie (God/s exist and that's our purpose), make up some subjective purpose that makes sense to yourself (family, career, travel etc) but is also a lie, or accept the reality of the futility of everything and that nothing you do will ever matter, and like Lovecrafts protagonists, slowly go insane.

Most people choose option 1 (God/s). I sometimes wish I could as well, but I'm still mired in option 3 (dread) and desperately searching for a lie I can tell myself (option 2) to give my own life purpose.

 

[Steampunkette]

I like your thoughts, here... but 3 is actually 3 -and- 4 together.

So you've got the big External Meaning as option 1. There's a God, or Gods, or Writer, or Programmer, or SOMETHING out there that gives life meaning because our life holds meaning in some measure to them, even if we're just labrats on Earth 22-31Q.

You've got the small Internal Meaning as option 2. Family/Friends/Work/Dog/Vacation/Whatever becomes your meaning for existence. It's a meaning that is entirely subjective and if that keeps you going, cool.

And then Option 3 is Acceptance. I know my live will never matter in a cosmic sense. I know my life will never matter on a global sense. I know that most people in the same town I live in probably won't know or care the day I die, and there will be nothing beyond that moment for me or anyone around me. And that's okay. That's how it's always been and how it will always be. I'm not special. I don't need to be. I'll just live my life while I'm here and that'll be it.

THEN comes Option 4. Acceptance of the CONCEPT but not acceptance of the Reality. Knowing that nothing matters one slides further into depressive states and nihilistic ennui, searching for the Lie that works best for them, and slowly going insane because of the stress of knowing that their life will end and that the stress they're under will hasten that end. Because when you -know- that it's all lies you can't ever -truly- believe them. You can fake it, feign it, for a day or two, maybe a month, a year. But that creeping knowledge that the world is just one infinitesimal uncaring part of a much grander uncaring machine which one can never affect in any meaningful way just tears those lies apart and invites madness.


Lovecraft could never reach Option 3. He got stuck on Option 4 and couldn't -imagine- someone finding option 3. At peace with the frailty and finite nature of existence. That's why all his protagonists went mad when they were confronted by the truth of reality. Slowly, inevitably, with all lies revealed, they succumbed to that nihilistic ennui and collapsed into lunacy.

 

[Flamestrike]

Lovecraft could never reach Option 3. He got stuck on Option 4 and couldn't -imagine- someone finding option 3.

He's far from alone there.

Im in the same boat.