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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aurondarklord" data-source="post: 6044407" data-attributes="member: 6667464">Hmmm...."in on the joke" is not quite what I meant...I don't think planescape is inherently as cynical a setting as you make it out.  It certainly CAN BE, I mean, it's a product of the 90s, THE age of the dark and gritty anti-hero.  If you want to run planescape as a John Constantine-esque world where the great powers of good and evil are having a laugh at the expense of mortals, or playing some game with each other and using us as the pieces, you can do that, and the world can support it well.  And in fact, in such a world, a player can choose to have their paladin in on the joke...or to have their paladin on a quest to smack some sense into the corrupt and decadent Heavens and make them get back into the fight!But planescape doesn't inherently HAVE TO be a world like that.  It works equally well as a setting where both good and evil have recognized that if they go to all out war, neither can win, they'll destroy the cosmos in the process of fighting over it and nobody wants that, so under the threat of mutually assured destruction, they've hammered out various agreements and exist in a state of cold war.  The powers of good are still just as good as they've ever been, but in their humility and devotion to protecting mortals, they deem the cost of defeating the powers of evil too great, and have taken these lesser measures instead.  And while the paladin may have to come off his high horse and occasionally deal with someone who makes his skin crawl, he can still pursue righteous ends and not look at all foolish or naive, so long as he does it in an intelligent way.I will definitely agree that you can have a world so dark, so cynical, and so soul-crushing that a paladin just doesn't work as a concept, at least unless you're intentionally playing him as a deluded fool.  But I also don't think that the world need be so anvil-droppingly moralistic that a good person is impervious to harm simply because they're good for the paladin to work.  I think there can be a middle ground.  I think the paladin can work as an archetype in any world where good CAN win, not necessarily where it WILL win, or at least is impossible to harm by the romantic definition of harm.  I also, tying the conversation back to Sir Cedric, don't believe you have to play the archetype to play the class.  Cedric is definitely not the archetype, and that's not what Shilsen is asking, but rather whether the different archetype that Cedric embodies is also allowed under the specifically laid out rules of the class.As for the broader question of the role of the DM...I think it depends on the group.  Sometimes you can give the players more freedom than others.  Some groups of players will take that freedom and run with it and create something great...other groups will end up with total chaos at the table and the players all mad at each other.  Sometimes the DM needs to act as the referee to make sure the world retains some degree of narrative integrity despite philosophical or personality differences among the players, and sometimes that forces the DM to wade into questions of how morality works in the setting.  Especially as you get to higher levels and the Gods and their agents are more likely to appear in person, because the DM will be the one running them.  I'm not saying the DM should be a tyrant who acts totally without player input and forces all their characters to think how he thinks, of course not, but sometimes he has to step in and make judgement calls.</blockquote>

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