D&D General Settings of Hope vs Settings of Despair

[Gradine]

EDIT: On this note I’m also a big fan of focusing on building hope within smaller communities. Even if the heroes can’t fix the world, they can at least make things better within their own little town, and that’s a good place to start. That creates the implication that other heroes could do the same in their towns. If the success of hope vs despair depends on the dominant strategy within a community, the more communities can have their scales tipped towards hope, the closer we get to maybe someday building a predominantly hopeful world. Even if the heroes don’t live to see the day that comes to pass, they can rest easy knowing they did everything they could to bring it closer to fruition, and entrust the next steps to those who come after.

Community building is such an under-utilized concept in TTRPGs when it have such a strong thematic component to any given campaign

 

[Shiroiken]

I reject the premise, but only because of my preference for Greyhawk. There's plenty of Hope and Despair to be had, but they are not necessarily tied to the OP's notions of good and evil. Most people are not good or evil, but neutral at heart. They care for themselves and loved ones, likely to neither help nor hurt others. Goodly nations rival with other goodly nations as often as evil ones (and evil ones fight amongst themselves as well). It's far more about "us vs. them" than "good vs. evil."

 

[The Firebird]

I prefer settings of Despair with bright spots that the players can make a little bigger. I guess I feel it helps me establish stakes--a setting of Hope can have the problem that many heroes can solve the worlds problems, and then what role is there for the PCs? My goal is to thread the needle between moral ambiguity and moral good--that there is good in the world, and it is worth fighting for, but that most ways of getting there are going to have some real drawbacks for the PCs to weigh.

I'm drawn to literature and art that dwells with this ambiguity. Think Mad Max or The First Law. Or Black Death (2011), Snowpiercer (2013), The Traitor Baru Cormorant, or any Bhansali movie for the deep cuts.

That said, it can be challenging to realize in a game, because success with drawbacks makes the players feel something is being taken away from them. If done clumsily then it can feel like a gotcha. So my DMing approach attempts to build a world that results in these hard choices and to have enough rules for myself to follow, and which the players can see me follow, so that things arise naturally.

For shorter games I'll do a Hope setting. If it's AL night, we've got 4 hours, and Steve is new, then we're going to bash some baddies and go home happy.

 

[Sparky McDibben]

I prefer settings of hope for pretty much any TTRPG. You do almost anything in D&D - there's literal magic, for heaven's sake. Want to start organizing a community? Do it! Want to improve the world around you? Do it! Even when I go play Cyberpunk RED, I don't go full grimdark - I want the PCs to be able to save themselves and the ones they love from a world that doesn't care anymore.

 

[Scribe]

Despair. Shocking I'm sure.

Why?

Because a Setting of Despair puts the emphasis on your deeds. You can fight the system. You can face the Evil. You can rally the people. Your deeds stand out from those who can not, or will not, put their lives on the line.

Its the same issue I have with 'oh yeah I had a normal life, loving parents, a solid plot of land, I just decided to instead risk life and limb in a dank and dark dungeon for the lulz' adventurers. Adventurers are nuts. They are not giving up the homestead because they are well adjusted individuals.

So yeah Despair, 100%.

 

[J-H]

I don't really get the doom'n'gloom about the world some people are having right now, but I too have been wanting more noblebright type stuff in my settings. I'm tired of "evil is winning, it's killed a lot of people, and we can eke out a win amongst the ashes." I think my next campaign is going to have the good guys already in charge and proactively fighting evil, or perhaps doing neutral stuff.

I'm writing up a module/mini-campaign (different from "next campaign"! can't stop writing send help) based on the labors of Hercules. Among the 12 quests are 3 predators (hydra, lion, birds), and SIX (half the total!) related to obtaining or stealing animals (hind, boar, stables, mares, bull, cattle). I know if you go back in history, a lot of cultures have "cattle raids" of one sort or another, but I haven't noticed much of that quest style in modern D&D. Maybe because it doesn't resonate in a modern world of law and order where agriculture is handled by 1% of the population and food insecurity has to do with money instead of weather & vermin? "Steal valuables or technologymagic" is a lot more common instead.

 

[Charlaquin]

A hopeful world is a good world you must defend against becoming bad. A despairing world is one where it has already fallen and you must fight to make it better. I'm just not sure which one I am up for.

Ah, ok, this context helps clarify your question a lot! Given these definitions, I have a rather strong preference for what you’d call a despairing world. I can certainly understand wanting your D&D to be more of an escape from the despair of our real world and therefore favoring a hopeful world. But, for me, there is far more value in the catharsis found in a crappy world you can make better than there is in the fantasy of a just world you need to fight to keep just.

 

[Charlaquin]

I don't really get the doom'n'gloom about the world some people are having right now,

Not to get too political, but a lot of us are very literally having our human rights taken away right now. If you’re not feeling the doom and gloom, you’re one of the lucky few. Me, I naively made the decision around this time last year to wait until after tax season to get my legal name changed, and now I’m stuck needing to keep using it on all federal documents for at least the next four years; longer if the current administration is successful in suppressing enough votes by that time to stay in power despite their absurd unpopularity among the national populace. And that’s frankly the LEAST of my concerns vis a vis my human rights. And I am in a MUCH better place than most, since I’m in my 30s, look white, am average weight, and could still pass as a man if I really needed to.

 

[zakael19]

Over the last year-ish I've been playing two games focused around community building/sustainment as the fulcrum of play: Stonetop and Songs for the Dusk. The latter is a post-post collapse/apocalyptic setting (Think: Destiny 2), but one where many of the institutions lean towards power-seeking / expansionism. Not like comic book evil (mostly), but definitely some parallels of our current time. The players are essential to a smaller community in this place, and depending on where they situate themselves will have the option to push back against an expansionist empire by bringing fractured areas together; do counter-espionage (or espionage); smuggle needed goods and people around; or just go get stuck into ancient tech and compete with weapons makers and such. I'd say it leans towards your hopeful world - it assumes that most people are good and you need to defend it from getting bad.

Stonetop is a little different. It's perhaps a bit despairing in that the World's End is a bare points of light(ish) setting full of ancient and current darkness, and the larger settlements are a) a wretched hive of scum and villainy and b) a town teetering on a precipice. Your home village, the entire reason you're adventuring, is different. It's a Good Place, full of mostly Good People, but fragile - a bad harvest or ancient evil away from extinction. And the people aren't perfect. So teh question it asks of the players is: "will you be able to see your home survive and perhaps thrive? Or will it dwindle away."

Both of these already highly resonated with me before things declined, and now even more so. I have lost some ability to run villains with too much parallel to current events (I had started a Blades in teh Dark game which is very much a despairing world with the idea of the players doing a bit of a rebellion act but lost the desire to run the totalitarian factions ramping up oppression the setting is geared towards). So my latest games have been a bit more simple classic "the evil person wants to be a bit OTT evil" for some distance.

 

[The Firebird]

I'm writing up a module/mini-campaign (different from "next campaign"! can't stop writing send help) based on the labors of Hercules. Among the 12 quests are 3 predators (hydra, lion, birds), and SIX (half the total!) related to obtaining or stealing animals (hind, boar, stables, mares, bull, cattle). I know if you go back in history, a lot of cultures have "cattle raids" of one sort or another, but I haven't noticed much of that quest style in modern D&D. Maybe because it doesn't resonate in a modern world of law and order where agriculture is handled by 1% of the population and food insecurity has to do with money instead of weather & vermin? "Steal valuables or technologymagic" is a lot more common instead.

I find this really fascinating. The past is a foreign country, and the bronze age and iron ages aren't just different but deeply weird in what they value. And often disturbing in their moral values. Anyway I also like works that take these differences seriously and I think I'd have fun with a campaign that played with this.