Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Derren" data-source="post: 3856620" data-attributes="member: 2518">It depends on how you define recently. During the cold war era heroes were mostly perfect individuals who battle against evil. Just look at some media from that time. After the 80s the heroes in the culture became gradually less perfect. Perfect heroes were regarded as boring and they needed a dark secret to become interesting again.Also the "For the greater good" thinking became much more widespread in media. To rescue someone it is ok to "break some bones". 24 displays this probably best. Also look at the differences between the old Battlestar Galactica and the new one. Or Lost. And while I haven't seen the latest Bond movie I heard that Bond also got back to his "roots" as government assasine and not gentlemen spy.All that shows that dark heroes are currently "in".  You see the trend that heroes need to have dark secrets and that you can consort with evil beings to stop a greater evil is relatively new in the mass media and D&D is not different. Just look at the paladin class. In the past paladins were shining knights and compared to today not many questioned how paladins have to behave themselves. But today more and more players are dissatisfied with paladins because they are too restricting with their "no evil" code.And saying that design decisions in D&D are not made to give what the people currently want (in this case dark heroes) is nonsense. D&D is still a product that has to sell so it gets changed to what the people want. The evolution of the drow a probably the best example of this.</blockquote>

Verification