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* ''[[
* ''[[Warhammer
** Then again this is only the impression we get from the outside looking in, where we know just how alarmingly terrible the vast majority of the galaxy is. From the inside various factions it is a different story. In no particular order:
*** For the average Imperial citizen, their experience of life can be truly anywhere on the scale. Some of them genuinely are peasants who toil away and expire completely unnoticed unless they don't pay their taxes or get drafted. On other worlds the experience of life is much more idealistic with freer access to technology and a genuine middle class. Of course they are likely to be idealistic about bringing the light of the Emperor to the whole galaxy, but they do genuinely believe that they and their government is doing the right thing by suppressing discord and killing enemies. The leaders of the Imperium are certainly very cynical, but they alone truely know the scope of the threats humanity faces and bear the weight of the terrible sacrifices needed to preserve it.
*** The Eldar are definitely cynics from a traditional point of view, who believe absolutely in putting millions of humans in between them and the bad guys. But then again this is a certain form of idealism. Many eldar characters have been self-sacrificing and are committed to their goals and philosophies.
*** The Tau by contrast are genuine idealists, and certainly in their original characterization they were doing the right thing, with hints that there was some greater purpose in their actions (forming a 'good' empire that could stand against Chaos and Tyranids), although that has been muddied a bit since then.
*** The Chaos forces again can be anywhere on the scale. Some of them are cynics who were attracted to Chaos because they wanted the power it offers, while others genuinely believe that the Chaos gods are the ''true'' gods of the universe. Anyone who begins to feel the Imperium is a bad thing invariably is said to have ''fallen to chaos'' even if they never worshiped the bad gods. All kinds of rebellions and heresies have had genuinely good motivations get portrayed as being Chaos inspired, or ends up calling on the only people in galaxy who will help a rebel in need.
*** Most of the other factions have motivations that are too weird to really put them anywhere on this scale. [[We Have Reserves]] is certainly invoked by all of them, but Orks and Tyranids just make more guys and both have a gestalt connection, while Necrons self-repair. The Necrons alone could arguably called cynical (The Deceiver anyway) but then again they also have their own motivations and they stick to them.
* "Legions of Steel", relatively short-lived co-traveller to 40k, has a relatively idealistic take on Humanity who guardedly unite to fight against a world/race/galactic threat. Meanwhile, the rest of the galaxy is a mixed bag.
*** The "Sahara Incident" presents some interesting questions. The rules of engagement - in fact one of the founding premises of global co-operation - is that uplift, high-tech, powered infantry units are never to be used on Earth itself. Another (yet another?) genocide breaks out in Africa, close to a powered infantry base. A rogue lieutenant musters his troop to put at stop to it. The global president, armed only with a a copy of the global charter and a dainish (it was early in the morning) talks the lieutenant down while a multinational, conventional force can be put together and deployed to end the carnage.
** The Fantasians are fascist, racists and all sorts of others things, but the point is made that the party and the people are not synonomous.
** The Galactics and Black Empire are Machievallian although each has idealistic factions within it.
* ''[[Dungeons
** And that's not going into the actual published campaign settings, from the idealistic heroism of [[Points of Light]] or the deeply cynical survivalism of [[Dark Sun]].
** The Book of Exalted Deeds, by the way, goes straight to the Idealistic end using that special Monk ability that lets you jump as far as you want. It has a ''[[Heel Face Turn|reformed]] [[Eldritch Abomination|mind]] [[Lawful Evil|flayer]]''.
** Bear in mind, hanging out at the extreme idealistic end is the ''entire point of that book''. At the other end, there are books like the Book Of Vile Darkness and Elder Evils.
** Speaking of sourcebooks and cynical end, Lords of Madness is worth mentioning. To sum it up: In the past the (previous) universe was ruled by [[Eldritch Abomination]], and in the future it will inevitably be ruled by [[Eldritch Abomination]]. Slave-taker [[Eldritch Abomination]] travel the outer space, and there is a whole dimension full of leech-like mind-controlling parasitic [[Eldritch Abomination]].
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** The sourcebook "A Magical Medieval Society" applies someone's medieval history degree to D&D by pointing out that magic would make life more pleasant in the areas of medicine, sanitation, and construction. So D&D's magic concepts applied to reality would count as a fairly idealistic setting as medieval worlds go.
** It might be worthwhile to remember that, per the rules, in previous editions characters motivating their slaughter with 'I'm Good, they are Evil!' are committing [[Fantastic Racism]] (a non-good thing) unless it is warranted, IE, unless the races they are killing are [[
* ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'', at least in the RPG incarnation, is a gleeful [[Deconstruction]] of ''[[Dungeons
* ''[[
* It is safe enough to say for the sake of the [[Forever War|Endless Warfare]], all Tabletops have to be naturally cynical in nature to perpertuate eternal conflict.
* ''Rym'' leans hard to the cynical side, what with multiple apocalypses, genocidal alien necromancers, and an empire pretty much devoted to enslaving and exploiting everyone else. And in the middle of all this is a tropical island chain of [[Purity Sue]] otter-people. [[Author Appeal]] comes to mind.
* ''[[World Tree RPG]]'' manages to avoid either end, with [[Fantastic Racism]] and a [[Schizo-Tech]] level of civilization that's constantly in danger of monster attack and [[Eldritch Abomination]] invasion, yet is portrayed as fairly pleasant for the main races most of the time.
* Pathfinder's default setting of Golarion leans towards cynicism in the current timeline -- one of the gods died a century ago (after he was about to make his big [[Hope Spot|second coming]]), prophecy no longer properly works, the remnants of one powerful empire is now openly ruled by devils while another is on the verge of collapse. Most of the explicitly 'good' nations are either isolationist or too focused on containing/combatting a specific threat to make the world better. However, from a meta perspective, this cynicism serves a purpose: once, when someone on the Paizo message boards commented on how many of the more powerful nations are evil, one of the developers said something to the extent of "Gee, one would almost think the world might need some [[Player Characters|heroes]] to come save it."
* ''[[
* ''[[Exalted]]'' is an interesting case in that its position on this scale has shifted considerably within one edition. Early 2nd edition was hugely cynical; later 2nd edition is significantly less so (although the exact degree [[Depending
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