How do you not get depressed by dark settings?

[Higgs Boson]

I personally think that dark settings have an appeal to players that want to be the great hero, as if they can win against nearly all odds or such, they become one of the greatest champions in the history in that world. Personally, i like them because its fun to think "...Hmmm...i wonder what that conversation would have been like if we were all drunk/crazy halflings with chainsaws were running around/everyone was naked"

[Elflord274]

The dark setting gives more appeal to a great hero but you can't have to dark or it's a little off balance

[SDragon]

Playing devil's advocate (heh...), I can understand how some might see "inconsiderably marginal hope" as still being "hope"; If you're going for a very David/Goliath-esque setting, that just might be a possible option.

That's not my personal preference in the settings I make (even in Fiendspawn, Good and Evil are on more-or-less equal footing), and I probably wouldn't care for playing in such a setting, but that doesn't mean it's completely without value.

[MBene]

This post may be rushed, due to the fact that I have to dash off to class in like, five:

I don't get depressed by dark settings due to my general disaffected nature from most things. It's the same way that I don't get scared or frightened when reading murder/mystery or thriller novels.  There are only a very, very, few times I've been genuinely disturbed at something, the most recent was me falling asleep ontop of Lovecraft's Dunwhich Horror or my religious-astral jaunt unwillingly out of my body, but we'll not go into that.

I agree that the term "dark" gets thrown around way too much, but what else is there to use?  Its a catch all term for people (read: Dark Age, however mis-applied such a term is) and is overused, just as much as goodness and other such reasons.  I agree with my fellow posters who wrote before, saying that dark settings give the PCs something greater to fight against, leading to a greater feeling of accomplishment if they succeed.  I prefer the type of game used in the Call of Cthulhu game setting where you may stop one small group of the cult from performing a nefarious deed, but that cult is hidden, out there, and has been forever.  You may have stopped them from sacrificing Sally and raising Yog-Sothoth or Yig, or Dagon, etc to the Prime, but that doesn't mean they'll try to do it again, and this time you may not have the capability to stop them.

Its the small victories that give you hope in such a game.  I like to incorporate a lot of smaller corruption into my own setting, which I've labeled "The Darkening Lands".  However, its not darkening as a horrorific, depressing thing, but as a fact that the world suffers a cyclical trend of constant civilization growth and then inevitable decay, due to the machinations of certain forces I am still yet-unaware of.  I would love to make it more dangerous, more depressing, more realisitic, but I don't know if my DMing style could support such a thing.

But back to the main topic, the real reason why I don't get depressed is because of what I'm exposed to every day through my faith.  You lot may feel that its silly or some such, and that's fine, but I know its true and that's what matters.  If only I could capture THAT feeling in my game.  :P

Righto, ta.