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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Firebird" data-source="post: 9781861" data-attributes="member: 7015803">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.</blockquote>