Question that probably won't go away.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Is it just me, or do a lot of settings and setting ideas on here seem to have very depressing moods?

[SA]

Particularly mine...

Mine are fatalistic in the darkest possible way.

[Numinous]

Is it just me, or do a lot of settings and setting ideas on here seem to have very depressing moods?

It is my opinion that it isn't just you.  Of course, we would need to define "depressing" and get some numbers for how many settins on the boards here fit the criteria, but I'll leave things like that to someone with a bit more time on their hands.

However, depressing settings are rather common on these boards, largely because it's easy and/or interesting to write about.  Also, "impending doom" is very in-style these days, as far as world-building goes.

You see, if someone writes a world where everyone lives in peace and harmony, and ponies rule everyone and give out free candy, then few people will take it seriously and/or find it interesting.  However, if someone makes a world where humanity is slowly teearing the world apart and committing atrocities more terrible than those found in hell itself...  Well, it might get a few more reads.

Did I answer the question? :P

[SA]

Believe it or not, I actually prefer happy settings where the good guy wins, but I loathe settings where the good guy has the opportunity to win forever.  I wouldn't call myself a "realist" be any stretch (a contemptible term, in my opinion), but I do think myself ultimately a nihilist.

My settings have an air of "we both know we'll all be dead one day, but I'm not the one running from the fact".  The sense of "doom" is, I think, humbling, because it reminds us that the end will come inevitably, be it in an hour or an aeon.

In Antebellum for instance (I'm guessing that setting prompted this thread's creation), the "present" universe is a true paradise.  However, it is a paradise humanity created, but ultimately could not inhabit, and they destroyed themselves before its realisation.  I don't really see the setting as negative or depressing: men had their time (which, I might add, lasted millennia), then were undone, as I believe is inevitable anyway.

Calling that a "bad end" is, to me, simply denying that which follows in the universe's natural course.  It's ultimately a happy ending (at least in the setting's context), just not for us.  Those are my favourite endings.

Doom settings also present interesting themes.  Antebellum was inspired by a very interesting question: when we're all dead, how will we be judged by that which comes after us?  Think of the ending of Spielberg's AI.  It's less of a setting and more of a philosophical musing, but I'd like to see how it works in play...

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Did I answer the question? :P

I suppose.  I just wanted to know if it was only me because I may interpret something more harshly when it comes to negative emotions (such as feel depressed or sad).

You see, if someone writes a world where everyone lives in peace and harmony, and ponies rule everyone and give out free candy, then few people will take it seriously and/or find it interesting.  However, if someone makes a world where humanity is slowly teearing the world apart and committing atrocities more terrible than those found in hell itself...  Well, it might get a few more reads.

I don't expect settings of that saccrine magnatude, but I tend to expect settings with less gratuitous grit.  (And before I get chewed-out, I mean "expect" as "I'm looking for something" not "it has to be this way because I require it to be".)  I acknowledge that there are settings on here that don't have that.  But I haven't seen any settings that seem like they are designed to just go wild and crazy in.

[SA]

You want wild and crazy?  Maybe I should dig out my old "Perfectworld" setting, which is a fairy-tale satire.  It's got a few dark themes, but it's approach is lighthearted.  Kinda like a Rackham interpretation of Brother's Grimm.

No matter what happened, the player's knew that at the end of the day they were the "heroes" of the story.  They could sell the damsel to the dragon and all that meant was that they'd get her sister's hand in marriage instead.  Or maybe hers, if the dragon didn't digest it properly...

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Believe it or not, I actually prefer happy settings where the good guy wins, but I loathe settings where the good guy has the opportunity to win forever.  I wouldn't call myself a "realist" be any stretch (a contemptible term, in my opinion), but I do think myself ultimately a nihilist.

Me too, but I tend to feel that's no reason that the entire setting needs to feel that way.

My settings have an air of "we both know we'll all be dead one day, but I'm not the one running from the fact".  The sense of "doom" is, I think, humbling, because it reminds us that the end will come, be it in an hour or an aeon.

This may, in fact, be where I differ from everyone else: for me "we both know we'll be dead one day" is immediately followed by "of course, your day is today, since that wine you just drank was poisoned".  I don't think approaching doom is humbling at all: it places a feeling of limitations on the consequences of one's actions, and may in fact increase the feelign of worth because there isn't enough time for your actions to be erased.  Whereas a setting that at least seems like it'll be around forever turns me into an infinitely small speck in the vastness of time.

Plus doom makes all those funny things that people do, which is what I think of as 99% of the fun of life and entertainment, insignificant.  The villain's completely cliché monologue isn't as fun when you've been told "it's all going to be destroyed so nothing matters".  My personal feeling is it doesn't matter anyway, we don't need doom to reinforce it.

In Antebellum for instance (I'm guessing that setting prompted this thread's creation), the "present" universe is a true paradise.  However, it is a paradise humanity created, but ultimately could not inhabit, and they destroyed themselves before its realisation.  I don't really see the setting as negative or depressing: men had their time (which, I might add, lasted millennia), then were undone, as I believe is inevitable anyway.

I like crushing humans dreams a lot, but I felt like Antebellum made it sound like a bad thing.  Whereas I would have seen it as a kind of joke.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

You want wild and crazy?  Maybe I should dig out my old "Perfectworld" setting, which is a fairy-tale satire.  It's got a few dark themes, but it's approach is lighthearted.  Kinda like a Rackham interpretation of Brother's Grimm.

No matter what happened, the player's knew that at the end of the day they were the "heroes" of the story.  They could sell the damsel to the dragon and all that meant was that they'd get her sister's hand in marriage instead.  Or maybe hers, if the dragon didn't digest it properly...

Don't dismiss that approach.  I'm not looking for "Perfectworld", I'm looking for "Perfectworld: Behind the Scenes" where it turns out the dragon kidnapped the princess because they're really eloping (insert your D&D dragon breeding joke here), or after the knight defeats the dragon the dragon has a change of heart and decides to join the knight on his quest to rescue maidens in distress who he then doesn't marry because he'd really like a girl who can take care of herself.  The PCs don't need to win or be heroes, they just have to realize that they are existing in a real world, and real worlds don't play by the rules or give in to clichés.

[SA]

Me too, but I tend to feel that's no reason that the entire setting needs to feel that way.

next day[/i] of their lives, can be as beautiful and affirming as it can be "depressing".

Doom, I think, can cause a reevaluation of what one has.  The very impermanence of the things we love makes them all the more powerful, because one day we will say goodbye.  It's not that it matters less, but that it matters more, and in the end it's not about the inevitability of silence, but the song that comes before.

To put it the way I explained it to a friend: I don't tell stories about death, I tell stories about deifance.

(All this is getting very philosophical...)

[Numinous]

Wow folks, kudos for an intelligent discussion.

Me?  I write worlds about death because I'm miserable, and I like to revel in my sorrow.  No complex philosophical reasoning here at all, just me and the darkness that lives in my soul. :D

[Matt Larkin (author)]

This certainly did spark quite the discussion.  Even dating back to the earliest times, many myths have dark, fatalistic elements.  Most cultures have their own end-of-the-world myth.

I mostly agree with everything that has been said, especially what IoValde said about defiance.

I suppose heroes facing supposedly insurmountable odds can help to show us how they are really heroes.  And people faced with tragedy really show their true character.  There is something deeply moving and profound about tragedy.  It's why a movie that can bring people to tears gets nominated for awards and the slapstick comedies don't (oversimplification, of course, and some comedies do get awards, just not as much as dramas it seems).

I love the darker settings, and tend to go darker myself, for these reasons.  I could enjoy running a Perfect setting like mention SCMP, but any longterm project I have is going to tinted with some grit.

[Lmns Crn]

My pet theory is that a lot of the darkness in contemporary fantasy is a backlash-- deliberate and conscious or otherwise-- against the "Happily Ever After" syndrome that so often seems to rear its ugly head in fantasy literature. Most of us were raised on some highly sanitized fairy tales which served as an introduction to this faux-medieval, swords-and-magic-and-chivalry genre. I suspect that in a way, myself and many others are subconsciously (or overtly!) rebelling against the simplistic and cheerful nature of that sort of story, with an implicit cry of "I can write something more thought provoking, something more mature!"

I also have suspicions that settings often tend toward "depressing" moods, because those moods are an outgrowth and consequence of the inclusion of the dormant tensions that help make an interesting setting for games. Bear in mind that this is a bunch of wild speculation that I have no real way to back up with evidence of any sort. Nevertheless, compare a sample "World of Cheerful Sunshine" and a sample "World of Grim Grittiness," and I suspect you will usually find that the latter example has a lot more hooks upon which a DM can hang plots for a game. Conflict drives gaming (which is about conflict resolution), and a proliferation of conflict tends to create tension and stress within a setting that some people will consider dark and depressing. That's my theory, anyway.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Doom, I think, can cause a reevaluation of what one has.  The very impermanence of the things we love makes them all the more powerful, because one day we will say goodbye.  It's not that it matters less, but that it matters more, and in the end it's not about the inevitability of silence, but the song that comes before.

Again, another place to point out difference: for me, doom tells me I'm half-worthless.  I have only two results from any action: it makes me feel good right now, or it impacts on something in the future that I can look ahead and see and again it makes me feel good.  Insert doom and half the point of my existence is gone because there is that looming specter threatening to cut off my future.

Now I know that things end.  What do I do about it?  I ignore it.  "What?! :huh: " you say, "You think that it'll go away if you don't acknowledge it?" (Or maybe you don't say that, it's just the reaction I normally get when I say that to people.)  No, I ignore it so that it won't crush me.  Doom for other people may counterbalance their natural feelings of immortality; doom for me simply adds to my feeling that there's just nothing interesting.  You say that doom helps you appreciate things more because they are going to end.  To me, that's a load of four-letter words.  I appreciate things irreguardless of outside forces.  Doom not only does not make me apprecaite things more, but makes me appreciate things less because there is always the feeling of "Why bother?".

But I don't necessarily ignore doom all the time: I look forward to it.  Complete non-existence, for one.  No nothing.  People seem to be afraid of that: they are afraid that death means the end of sensation.  Me, I'm looking forward to it: no more loud noises, bright lights, hot and cold, dryness and wetness, emotions, thoughts.  Like being asleep without dreams, and I hate dreams.  I'm not in a hurry to get there, I just don't know what people are so worried about.

To put it the way I explained it to a friend: I don't tell stories about death, I tell stories about deifance.

Really?  I write stories about death: thats all the universe is, a mass of decaying junk.  Things break, and what's funny is people thinking that the breaking isn't suppoed to happen.

(All this is getting very philosophical...)

Sure, why not?

[Captain Obvious]

I'll think up a longer one later, but for mow, my short answer is that the settings are meant for a dark game. It involves mass-slaughter as the central motif, and so either has to be fairly dark, or else take on a bleakly humourous tone, or else be downright cheery (which i would find more disturbing). in fact the ease that PC's kill even other humanoids is kind of frightening. I would prefer a darker gme where the players actually roleplay how hard it would be to kill all their foes, or if they don't then role play the fact that their characters are either emotionless or psychotic.

[DeeL]

I have a book to recommend to the attention of my fellow posters.  It is entitled Finite and Infinite Games, by James Carse.  It is essentially a treatise on the application of simple games theory to philosophical questions - although it has been out of print for some time, it is well worth the search through the local library (or Amazon, or Ebay).  

The basic premise is that there are generally 2 kinds of games that people can play, finite games and infinite games.  The 2 types are alike in one important way - they require volition.  Whoever is compelled to play cannot properly be a player.  Other than this, they stand in sharp contrast - finite games are played to win, infinite games are played with the object of assuring continued play.  Finite games are serious and theatrical, infinite games are dramatic but filled with laughter.  Finite players play for titles, infinite players have only their names.  Finite games are played within boundaries, whereas infinite players play  with boundaries.  

The point of playing an infinite game lies in starting something you will not live to finish; since an infinite game cannot be permitted to end, death as a boundary must be taken into infinite play - death may end an individuals experience, but it cannot end the game.

Hence the pertinence of this book to this thread - a theme of doom is depressing only to the extent of its completion.  If even a remnant of a culture remains  after it's destruction, the people who left it behind are still in play, in a sense.  The generations of people who erected Stonehenge are utterly forgotten, but the edifice they left behind continues to inspire with its implication of what people can do when they commit the strength of their bodies and their lives to something whose conclusion they don't have to see.  

Whether a setting is 'doom oriented' or not should really be up to the players.  That's why I don't much care for Ravenloft and other such 'horror-only' settings - I can run a horror game, or go through one, with perfect pleasurable fear, precisely because even if the heroes die or emerge horrifically scarred, there remains the implication that they have stood between horror and something that has value - an order of existence that has a chance to end with poignance and acceptance rather than yet another frantic flailing against unrushing death.  

I can appreciate settings where the heroes challenge is fearsome and outrageously overwhelming - I don't much care for settings where everyone is walking wounded, and the only eternal verity is evil.  That's the distinction I draw, for what it's worth.