D&D General Settings of Hope vs Settings of Despair

[UngainlyTitan]

"I killed the guys that were oppressing you? My source? Me, the guy oppressing you right now? What are you gonna do about it?"

Fine, you win, you are a hardcore cynic, but I refuse to be bounded by the confines of your cynicism.

 

[Maxperson]

I elevator pitched a campaign a while ago based on The Wandering Village, if you’ve played that game. The village of the PCs is on the back of a massive creature created by the dying planet to destroy the cancerous dungeon growths that are killing the planet.

The players asked how they could fix the planet and I said they couldn’t. The planet was dying and all they could do was stave off the inevitable. They noped hard out of the campaign. The idea of a campaign where your actions were essentially futile was far too bleak.

I love the concept but if I pitch it again I have to figure out how to inject hope into the game.

Perhaps they could figure out a way to alter the creature created to destroy the cancerous dungeon growths and make into a creature that changes the cancerous dungeon growths into regenerative beacons. Create enough of them and the world could reverse its downward spiral.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

I almost always do dark settings. Whether it's a story of hope or despair depends on my players and their characters. I don't think the setting is inherently hopeful or in despair.

 

[Staffan]

A truly hopeful setting would need some sort of domain rulership rules or some sort of magical system that analogizes the health of a political entity (who had "21st century Aebrynis reboot" on their bingo card?). It could be done and appended to D&D by a good designer, but it's unlikely to happen and it begs the question of whether or not a new game with its own rules should be built from the ground up for it.

The only game I've seen that really gamifies that kind of stuff is, of all things, Underground. Underground is a sort-of supers game set in the dark future of 2021 where you play gene-modified veteran soldiers who aren't quite right in the head, partially because of trauma from the wars they've seen, and partially because the gene-modification process messes with you. Since you are kind of powerful, and because your therapy probably has instilled a sense of black and white morality in you that matches poorly with the realities of the world, you might want to do something about the sorry state of the world. The game is fairly silent on exactly how you'd do that, but has some suggestions – for example, finding proof of government corruption and publicizing it might give you the opportunity to spend XP to increase the "government purity" score in the affected community, but more or less that kind of thing is left for the GM to decide.

What is interesting, however, is how each community has a number of these scores rating how well-functioning it is in various fields. The cool thing is that if you increase one score, another score will also be increased, while another score is lowered. These parameters are: Wealth, Safety, Government Purity, Quality of Life, Necessities, Education, and Take Home Pay. So your anti-corruption message might have increased the Government Purity score, reducing government corruption. This also increases Take-Home Pay, because people have less need to bribe officials to do their job or staying out of their way. But at the same time, Safety decreases – less police wanting a piece of the pie but also leading to fewer police patrols or something. If you want to increase a parameter without affecting others you need to take more care in doing so, which means you need 3x as many XP to do it.

On a simpler level, you have Mutant Year Zero, where you are trying to build up your small community of mutants into something that can survive and potentially command the nearby region. Your community is rated on four different values: Food, Defense, Culture (which includes how cohesive the community is), and Technology. Each session, PCs get to try to construct various projects that (usually) increases one of these values. This has a more immediate effect than the rules in Underground, but cover fewer aspects of society.

 

[Celebrim]

The One Ring is pretty clear on how you’re fighting to keep the spark of hope alive until the King Returns & etc. You’re not going to defeat Sauron, but you can help ensure there’s a world to come after him.

Tolkien however viewed it even more starkly. While evil's victory could be postponed, even the world that followed the defeat of Sauron was only given a reprieve, like cancer that has gone into remission. Some blush of health might return, but the body would still be weakened compared to before. So much beauty would go out of the world in the fight. The elves leave Middle Earth. Rivendell would stand empty, and fall into disrepair, it's Aman like beauty fading as the magic that preserved it departed. It would cease to be a place of rest and become a place of toil. So too with the wood of Lothlorien, perhaps its trees would die or become common. It's cities would tumble. The remanent of the wood elves would diminish to a dangerous and fey people, seldom to be seen and not grand to encounter. Evil was beaten, but it's works wouldn't ever be fully undone. The world was slowly winding down, each age and blossom of health to fade and to be in some way weaker than the one before. It was beyond the power of anyone in Middle Earth, even the Valar to stop it. Melkor's victory in some sense was assured, even though it wouldn't be a triumph for him either as it would be a world of ash and ruin even he could not enjoy except in spite.

 

[Desdichado]

1) I feel really depressed and unhappy about "recent events".
2) Don't talk about "recent events" in this thread.

Too late! You already did. Seriously; why are there so many threads right now that are covert socio-political threads, that purport not to talk about them, but in reality that's mostly all that they talk about... just without referring to any specific details?

I tend not to let recent events have much impact on my gaming, but I do occasionally have themes that come from what's going on, although not too overt. I think I had Dolores Umbridge gas-lighting "for your own good" execrable villains more than normal the last 4-5 years or so, for instance, but I think that not only is that theme played out, but it's no longer relevant anyway. It helps that with my current group, after relocating, I actually have no idea what their political or social beliefs are anyway, so I'm much less likely to think it's a good idea to make even veiled references to them. Current events are rarely timeless themes that people don't think aren't cringe a year or two later anyway.

In any case, hope vs despair aren't really themes that I have much interest in, because my life isn't defined by my emotional reactions to current events. That said, I tend to lean much more into the almost but not quite grimdark horror type games anyway. Like you think you're playing D&D, but it's really Call of Cthulhu after all.

 

[Maxperson]

"I killed the guys that were oppressing you? My source? Me, the guy oppressing you right now? What are you gonna do about it?"

 

[M.L. Martin]

Tolkien however viewed it even more starkly. While evil's victory could be postponed, even the world that followed the defeat of Sauron was only given a reprieve, like cancer that has gone into remission. Some blush of health might return, but the body would still be weakened compared to before. So much beauty would go out of the world in the fight. The elves leave Middle Earth. Rivendell would stand empty, and fall into disrepair, it's Aman like beauty fading as the magic that preserved it departed. It would cease to be a place of rest and become a place of toil. So too with the wood of Lothlorien, perhaps its trees would die or become common. It's cities would tumble. The remanent of the wood elves would diminish to a dangerous and fey people, seldom to be seen and not grand to encounter. Evil was beaten, but it's works wouldn't ever be fully undone. The world was slowly winding down, each age and blossom of health to fade and to be in some way weaker than the one before. It was beyond the power of anyone in Middle Earth, even the Valar to stop it. Melkor's victory in some sense was assured, even though it wouldn't be a triumph for him either as it would be a world of ash and ruin even he could not enjoy except in spite.

Not quite, but Tolkien looked for that ultimate triumph as both originating in and ending beyond the circles of the world. Cf. the "Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth" in Morgoth's Ring, and what it points to ... and why I consider Middle-Earth one of the only fantasy settings with true hope.

D&D's cosmology, unfortunately, with its Supremacy of Neutrality and lack of providence or final judgment, makes hope hard to find if you're looking beyond the immediate, and can make Good look foolish. Look at the hoops the Book of Exalted Deeds has to jump through to avoid 'ends justify the means' thinking in a cosmos where Good and Evil are equivalent poles and powers.

 

[Celebrim]

Not quite, but Tolkien looked for that ultimate triumph as both originating in and ending beyond the circles of the world. Cf. the "Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth" in Morgoth's Ring, and what it points to ... and why I consider Middle-Earth one of the only fantasy settings with true hope.

There is only so much I can say.

 

[Remathilis]

1) I feel really depressed and unhappy about "recent events".
2) Don't talk about "recent events" in this thread.

Too late! You already did. Seriously; why are there so many threads right now that are covert socio-political threads, that purport not to talk about them, but in reality that's mostly all that they talk about... just without referring to any specific details?

Enworld has a no politics rule and I'm trying to keep within that boundary. The point isn't isn't about what is actually going on though, suffice to say my opinion of humanity has lowered several points and I'm struggling to decide if I want my next game to reflect what I would want the world to be like or how I actually feel it is.

If that is too vague for you, feel free to move on.

I tend not to let recent events have much impact on my gaming, but I do occasionally have themes that come from what's going on, although not too overt. I think I had Dolores Umbridge gas-lighting "for your own good" execrable villains more than normal the last 4-5 years or so, for instance, but I think that not only is that theme played out, but it's no longer relevant anyway. It helps that with my current group, after relocating, I actually have no idea what their political or social beliefs are anyway, so I'm much less likely to think it's a good idea to make even veiled references to them. Current events are rarely timeless themes that people don't think aren't cringe a year or two later anyway.

There are lots of things that have come about that unfortunately feel timeless. The rise of authoritarianism. Wars of conquest. Genocide. Oligarchs oppressing the masses. Corruption of the ruling order and the rise in inequality and bigotry. I mean, I could be describing the plot of the Star Wars Saga, but it also hits a little closer to home these days.

In any case, hope vs despair aren't really themes that I have much interest in, because my life isn't defined by my emotional reactions to current events. That said, I tend to lean much more into the almost but not quite grimdark horror type games anyway. Like you think you're playing D&D, but it's really Call of Cthulhu after all.

I just finished my Ravenloft campaign where while the PCs did much to stem the tide of darkness, but still the best they got was status quo. Things didn't get any better, but they also didn't get as bad as they could have.