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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ruleslawyer" data-source="post: 3308161" data-attributes="member: 1757">Not necessarily. The books provide the narrative source material for the DM to communicate the setting's elements and mood to the players. I think mmadsen's point about credible expectations is exactly correct. (In fact, I seem to end up mentioning it on every MN thread...)While I appreciate the dark mood of CoC games and dark fantasy settings like Midnight, I don't really like the *futility* element of the latter: Not because it doesn't conform to historical precedent or certain literary archetypes, but because, IMHO, it's likely to burn out *players* pretty quickly. CoC usually makes for very exciting gaming: Even though one could argue that the greater metaplot signals the futility of mankind's achievements in the face of the Great Old Ones' eternal existence, the day-to-day reality of CoC is that of the bustling, modern world, and investigators get to either score seemingly lasting victories or get devoured messily, either of which are exciting options. Midnight, OTOH, seems a bit pointless not because the PCs can't beat Izrador, but because the very way it's set up to play "as written" defeats not only victory, but heroic achievement. One can too easily end up with the bitter stench of a DM's power trip gone wrong. Now, I happen to think that MN does a very nice job of setting up the PCs to fail *because, when they do win, the players will be genuinely elated and surprised.*Incidentally, this is not to say that the PCs have to defeat Izrador. After all, countless TV shows and comic books have run on the theory of indefinite crisis. Does Batman ever clean up Gotham City completely? Do the Gilligan's Island people ever find a way home? The PCs could "end" a campaign having scored minor victories, but not ended the Shadow's domination. But that doesn't mean that the world has to be worse off than it was before the campaign started; otherwise, what's the point?Incidentally, I envisioned the "Earendil option" as the natural resolution of an MN campaign the moment I cracked the book. What I ended up going with (or would have, except that the campaign terminated early when the PCs kicked it), was the following:The PCs eventually, either by destroying the Izradis Zordrafin Corith or defeating the Night Kings (yes, they would need to be epic level by this point!), score a temporary victory over the Shadow; but it is only a matter of time before he'll return, and Aryth seems none the less doomed. So, the PCs use the time they've bought by their victory to breach the barriers around Aryth and travel to the realm of the other Gods. However, the Gods refuse to undo the Sundering; the barrier around Aryth acts as Izrador's prison, and the Gods are unwilling to unleash this evil upon the rest of the universe. They return the sorrowful PCs to their world. However, the PCs receive a clue as to how to deal with their problem: The Gods mention (perhaps intentionally) that the only way to destroy Izrador is to unmake Aryth. The PCs figure out that they can end the sorrow of Midnight... by destroying the world and making it anew. So they find a way to do this, perhaps involving alien magic or some artifact they find in the Realms Beyond.Spoiler:[spoiler]Of course, then Dawnforge ended up being written this way. Funny, hm?[/spoiler]</blockquote>

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