D&D General Settings of Hope vs Settings of Despair

[Hussar]

Terry Pratchett tends to have fantasy where things are slowly getting better.

Love Pratchett, but Pratchett, while written in fantasy, is far, far more satire than actual fantasy.

You are, of course, right that exceptions exist. But, that's the problem. They're the exceptions. Fantasy is inherently nostalgic. It has to be. It's a romanticization of the past, which is virtually always based on the idea that the further back into the past you go, the better things are. And that things are almost always better in the past than they are now and the best you can ever do is restore the status quo.

It is "Return of the King" after all. Not, "Return of the Constitutionally Elected Monarch complete with freely elected representation". Doesn't quite roll off the tongue.

 

[SableWyvern]

Settings of Despair that my players must turn into Settings of Hope has been my bread and butter for years and I don't see that changing any time soon.

Yeah, the part of the OP that didn't really match my experience is the idea the a Setting of Despair generally defaults to the notion that long term change for the better is impossible. Even if that is true in the source fiction for a particular genre, it's not typically the way I'd run an RPG. Maybe the PCs don't actually make a wonderful long-term change but, if they don't, in my games it won't generally be because it was always impossible and never worth trying.

 

[zakael19]

I definitely see most canon Settings of Despair as per OP not having a ton of space for PCs to fundamentally alter the path the place is on. At best you might hope to escape back to somewhere better or a temporary improvement of the status quo. Some examples that come to mind are Blade's Doskvol (retiring with ill-gotten wealth is about the best win there; the Empire isn't really set up to be something a crew is going to contend with); the previously mentioned Tolkien setting stuff (in The One Ring, you're trying to keep the light alive in the hope that something will come in the future to truly fight the Shadow); Dungeons of Drakkenheim

Spoiler: spoilers

has no good option, the campaign explicitly says "this is essentially unwinnable and all attempts to contain the warpstone delerium will eventually fail"

.

It's all very Dark Souls-y.

 

[Celebrim]

Fantasy is inherently nostalgic. It has to be. It's a romanticization of the past,

All three of those things are false. You are just showing you stopped reading fantasy mostly with Tolkien and his imitators. Fantasy isn't inherently set in the past - Star Wars, Dune, and Tales of the Ketty Jay for example. It's not inherently nostalgic - read Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence. It's certainly a romanticization of the past as there are plenty of dark fantasies, though we tend to call some of them "horror" if they have magic and such, they are just fantasies.

It is "Return of the King" after all. Not, "Return of the Constitutionally Elected Monarch complete with freely elected representation". Doesn't quite roll off the tongue.

Well, Tolkien meaning Aragorn to be a type of Christ doesn't and invoking Messianic prophesies in his world building doesn't necessarily mean that Tolkien is saying Constitutional Monarchy is a bad thing. If you are mostly reading Tolkien as someone who thinks everything is political, then you are rather missing the point.

 

[Hussar]

Dune

Dune is very much not fantasy. LIke, at all.

If you are mostly reading Tolkien as someone who thinks everything is political, then you are rather missing the point.

If you are reading something and thinking it is not political, I'd say right back atcha.

Or, maybe you could, instead of being very condescending and presumptuous, actually engage in conversation? Just a thought.

 

[J-H]

Dune is very much not fantasy. LIke, at all.

Dune falls under what I would define as "science fantasy," as it borrows elements from science fiction ("What if...?", other worlds, space travel) as well as fantasy (magic BS mental powers, ancestral memories that are entire personalities, and prescience which, on my recent rereading of the first 3 books, came across as a bunch of pretentious nonsense now that I'm not a teenager).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Dune is very much not fantasy. LIke, at all.

It's full of space magic.

is far, far more satire than actual fantasy.

There is no rule that says something cannot be both satire and fantasy. Nor is there any rule requiring fantasy to be nostalgic.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Have you tried the coin flip trick? Heads or Tails it and if you’re disappointed by the outcome you know you actually wanted it the other way.

Personally I think I fall on the hope side of things, even if the world i might make may be a setting that’s harsh and full of danger the people in it would still be fundamentally good, pulling together to survive against the world.

...not quite sure what of what i said that deserved a laugh react here...

 

[Frozen_Heart]

I'm not sure how this reflects on me, but I've always preferred to play in more grimdark settings, as well as settings with less civilisation and magic than what's expected by the DnD 'default'.

I think this is partly why the default themes of DnD have been less and less interesting to me over time, as each edition makes things a bit brigther, a bit more high magic, and a bit more cosmopolitan and developed.

I suspect that this ultimately comes from being introduced to DnD via Warhammer and Lord of the Rings.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

My view on humanity has shifted in the recent past and it's made me wrestle with the fundamental nature people in a D&D setting.

I think this is exactly where I am right now. I used to think that maybe humanity was inherently at least neutral, with the average persons good nature being dominant over any evil they had. Sure there was bad individuals who would set things back, but over time things would keep slowly improving. Two steps forward, one step back.

But now I'm starting to wonder, maybe we are inherently the bad guys? Maybe our darker natures will always win out, and every bit of progress we ever make is doomed to be torn down again and again.