NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="nightwyrm" data-source="post: 4974248" data-attributes="member: 75542">I don't think it's necessary that players don't want dark and gritty and loves happy funland. What players want is for their actions to make a difference to the world. What they want is for their characters to matter. I don't think any PC would object to starting a game in grimdark deathland ruled by vampire overlords as long as they get the chance to kill the overlords/liberate the people/become vampire overlords themselves. What PCs want to do is to be able to eventually say "I changed the world", no matter whether they changed it for the better or the worse. That is something that most of us in the real world could never say and what I think is one of the greatest attraction of playing RPG.  What happens too often in "dark" or "realistic" settings is that it would end up having the PCs ultimately not mattering in the world. PCs defeat evil overlord A and make way for overlord B. They defeat overlord B only to find out they were all pawns in overlord C's plan. They save the princess from overlord C only to have her die of the plague unleashed by overlord D. What happens is that the PCs end up becoming just another cog in the machine instead of being masters of their own story. At worse, the game turns into a <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShootTheShaggyDog" target="_blank">shoot the shaggy dog story</a>. Now, I'm not saying that all "dark and gritty" settings always ends up this way. I'm just pointing out that it's a very easy trap to fall into when everything is GRIMDARK. On the other hand, the characteristics of a "dark and gritty" world can be very attractive for a DM. The ever present darkness is a great source for conflict and plot. It's much easier for the DM to threaten the PCs in such a world. Where the PCs are limited in their ability to change the world, the DM has a much easier time generating formidable antagonists.  When the DM has set up a "dark and gritty" world that he likes, he often wants to keep it that way and is reluctant to have it changed by the PCs. A characteristic of D&G is that it stays D&G, which means that there is a certain static-ness in the setting, thus implying a limit to the PCs' ability to changed the world.  DMs may want a world where status-quo is king since it's easier to make adventures in such a world, while the PCs wants to advance and increase their influence in the world.</blockquote>

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