Livin'! After MIDNIGHT! d20 Campaign Setting

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Lousy pun of a title aside, anyone here a fan of the d20 OGL setting/system, Midnight, by Fantasy Flight?

I personally find it a delightfully dark setting that makes the lights that are the PCs shine that much brighter.

[Alzrius]

I'm a pretty big fan of the setting. I quite like how it's pretty well explicitly stated that the PCs can't achieve any sort of real, lasting victory against the BBEG of the campaign - he's essentially Sauron with no One Ring to act as a weakness.

Some people find that to be a downer; "why play a game where you know you're going to lose?" I hear them ask.

To me, that question misses the point. Heroes are heroic (again, to me) because they struggle uphill; they know that losing is - as Dr. Strangelove said - not only possible, but likely. To them, winning may be necessary, in terms of giving up not being an option, but it's improbable. Heroes don't operate under the notion that we, the audience, have about stories requiring that heroes win in order to fulfill our expectations of narrative structure - to them, it's probably going to end badly.

I enjoy Midnight because it doesn't let that grim expectation of loss be subverted, at least not at the highest levels of good vs. evil in the campaign world. You can make a difference on a local level, but at the end of the day evil is going to win. It's quite literally a foregone conclusion.

That, to me, makes the heroes of the realm even more heroic, because they know that there's no real victory to be had by fighting...and then they fight anyway. With nothing to gain and everything to lose, along with no specter of hope (which, again, is what we the audience project onto them in our certainty that good must triumph over evil), they still go and do the right thing, even when it costs them everything.

The setting is called Midnight because it presents a pitch-black world of evil that never moves towards the dawn. As Archpaladin Zousha said, light shines much brighter against such a background.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I tried introducing the setting to some of my friends, but it was clear that they weren't interested. One guy basically stated that his goal if we played was to become so powerful in individual combat that any legates or orcs sent after him would die by his hand. He's never liked the idea of something he can't defeat in combat, and I told him point-blank that to achieve some kind of lasting victory would be nothing short of an epic character's work, and even then, the epic character WOULD die (there's no real other outcome for attacking Theros Obsidia's mirror).

[Drejk]

Great world, great mood.

The problem is that lots of action appealing to players are in fact helping the enemy. My players decided to torture legate after freeing themselves. Never came to their mind that each hatred-driven action only adds to the power of Izrador, who is, among the others, the god of hatred - tormenting and killing in hatred where nothing less than savory sacrifice for The Shadows of The North.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Hmmm...that's a good point. On the other hand, that's a puny sacrifice compared to the magic sucking mirrors. That's the big focus, right?

I'd really like to get to know this setting better by playing in it.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

So...anybody else like this setting?

[carmachu]

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

So...anybody else like this setting?

Yes. It reminds me a bit of darksun in so much that evil is winning/won......dragon kings, owning a city/world etc....

Looks like fun. But it takes a special group to play it.