Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism/Tabletop Games: Difference between revisions

** 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 [[Always Chaotic Evil|Always Evil]]. It is at this point that the DM notes that the plurality of 'evil' races in the monster manual are, in fact, not ''Always'' Evil, and that [[Knight Templar|killing innocents is an evil act...]]

* ''[[The World of Darkness]]'' series, both [[Old World of Darkness|Old]] and [[New World of Darkness|New]], sits heavily on the cynical side. Given that its premise is that it is the real world but [[Darker and Edgier]] that's not really surprising. One of the uniting themes of all of the WoD games is the grinding down of idealism into a nub of cynical apathy. Practically every idealist that the books talk about either ends up broken and empty or destroyed by their beliefs. While a lot of characters still claim a certain sense of commitment to a cause or ideological faction, the focus on violence as a means to solve problems as well as any number of forms of mind control and reality distortion means that they are going to become pragmatic if they want to keep showing up.

* 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.