I don't think I fully agree with the premise. Sure, what PCs do should matter for the purpose of the game, but that's it. There's literally no reason to  elevate that on a metaphysical level if you don't want to. It depends on the flavour of the game. A dark fantasy setting would, as you suggest in the video, confront the players with an impossibility and the absurdity of their existence. That is a valid existential/metaphysical basis for the game, that could provide adequate challenges for the player's to overcome, some, maybe, harsher than most, but there's something to be said for depicting a bleak, nihilistic setting, without making it any less authentic. For example, suppose we set our game during the Reign of Terror in France. That would be an amazingly bleak setting rife with intrigue and opportunities for players to actually maybe create some hopeful situations.

Again, I'm not saying there can't be a metaphysical basis supporting the player's actions (I'm actually playing in a game like that right now), but I don't think the metaphysics are a metric for authenticity or for determining the significance of the player's actions. Quite the contrary, the significance of PC's actions is measured by much more banal means, namely simple cause and effect. That's not even dependent on the setting, it's just consistent story-telling. Their actions should have consequences. If they act badly, the world should react accordingly. If they act well, their actions should be recognised by some, but there should still maybe be some detractors who want to tear them down for it. Keeping things on a more local level, I think, would help make characters and scenarios more memorable for players, and they'd have a better overview of their influence.

So yeah, all in all, it really depends on what kind of setting you want to create, and in what kind of mindset civilization is at the moment the game starts. It could be in a decaying phase, like the Fall of Rome, or the French Revolution, where things are looking rather bleak, or it could be in its prime, in which case things may seem hopeful and meaningful than they otherwise might. Something like that. Personally I prefer settings that tend toward the darker side of things as they seem to engender more more drama and intrigue, and I think a lot of people would agree with me there, even if I will admit that, going down that path, it's a great challenge to overcome the temptation to go full grimdark and completely dehumanise the setting.

Just my two cents. Hope that all makes sense.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on December 01, 2022, 01:57:53 PM

Quote from: Spinachcat on December 01, 2022, 01:24:44 AM
Although, Ravenloft has the same issues, but I don't see the same complaints about that setting.

   Really? One of the biggest complaints I saw in my time as a Ravenloft fan was that nothing you could do could make an impact, because the darklords were essentially invincible.

Worse, even if you defeat a darklord, it doesn't necessarily improve the world at all because the Dark Powers immediately appoint another darklord to replace them. (At least, that's what they've done in other cases.)

I have more problems with Ravenloft than I do with Call of Cthulhu, because of this. It's one thing if what you do *eventually* doesn't matter after decades or centuries. It's another thing if your immediate accomplishment (like defeating a darklord) are immediately undone by forces actively working against you.

I'd add to this that the Ravenloft domain modules are heavily railroaded, often with a sequence of scenes from one to the next. I don't have anything against gothic horror as a genre, but specifically the Demi-plane of Dread and its rules seem intended to frustrate.

As I understand it, the concept of Law and Chaos in Warhammer is heavily influenced (some people even say plagiarized) by the works of Michael Moorcock, save that the Warhammer multiverse lacks the idea of an Eternal Champion who exists to balance the warring forces and prevent either from overtaking the world. That said, I never got the impression that the triumph of chaos was presumed to be inevitable in either the Old World or 40K settings. They're grim settings to be sure, but in both cases the forces of order have some pretty extreme powers on their side as well.

Even if the triumph of Chaos is inevitable in the setting, I think the Pundit might be conflating existentialism with nihilism. I'm not a philosophy professor, but as I understand it, nihilism looks on the inevitability of entropy and ultimate meaninglessness and decides nothing matters. Existentialism looks on the same and decides that it is just a better reason to make the most of the finite stretch of space-time that a human being is given. The nihilistic outlook on Warhammer would be to look on the encroach of chaos and just give into it. My reading of the setting is more that the heroism of the protagonists is in the act of preserving all the benefits of order --law, art, love, family, tradition, etc.-- even if just for another day.

Also, if you think siding with Chaos is the smart move in Warhammer, your understanding of the setting is very different from mine. Even a brief human existence is probably preferable to being possessed by a demon that eventually bursts out of you in a shower of blood and tentacles.

EDIT: I seem to keep bringing this topic up, but it keeps being relevant. For a setting that I would argue might be genuinely nihilistic in its metaphysics, you could look at the Dark Souls games. The world of those games is caught in an apparently infinite cycle of Fire and Dark, with each game taking place in the waning days of an age of Fire. At the end of each game, the player is given the option of either prolonging the Age of Fire, or letting it die out and give way to the Age of Dark. Fire appears to be the producer of civilization and the higher arts and learnings, but inevitably leads to decay and stagnation. Dark offers the promise of a rebirth into an unknown future, but is obliquely hinted at as having the potential to produce an even more dismal fate for the universe. The overall theme is one of ultimate futility. The Dark Age could mean the end of decay and suffering, but it could also mean the end of achievement and heroism. It could also mean the beginning of another temporary age with inevitably decays and starts the cycle over again. Most fans think that going with the Dark route is the "good ending", but the games never directly reveal which answer is correct, and personally I think the fan bias towards Dark is a reflection of the postmodernist tendency to assume that change is always good.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on December 01, 2022, 09:56:26 AM
If I may be permitted the egotistical indulgence of quoting myself ...

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on November 15, 2021, 06:10:23 PM
IMO, the main difference between Lovecraft and modern online progressivism is that one believes in the meaninglessness of the universe and the eventual extinction or transformation of humanity into inhuman, amoral, immortal creatures. Lovecraft, by contrast, didn't think that was a good thing.

Only if I'm permitted to quote you in return.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on December 01, 2022, 11:22:44 AM
I forget the originator of the version of that same idea that I like, and paraphrasing somewhat:  "Nietzche looked into the abyss and recoiled in horror.  Then his fans came along after and gleefully leaped into it."

Oooh that's a good one too.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on December 01, 2022, 11:33:02 AM
it's the pure unapologetic Evil nature of Ravenloft as a world that in itself proves the existence and meaning of Good within that world. The dread of meaninglessness is, to some extent, a luxury angst that only those who aren't fighting to survive every day can afford.

I wish we had more philosophically objective discussions like this.

Quote from: jhkim on December 01, 2022, 04:55:22 PM

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on December 01, 2022, 01:57:53 PM

Quote from: Spinachcat on December 01, 2022, 01:24:44 AM
Although, Ravenloft has the same issues, but I don't see the same complaints about that setting.

   Really? One of the biggest complaints I saw in my time as a Ravenloft fan was that nothing you could do could make an impact, because the darklords were essentially invincible.

Worse, even if you defeat a darklord, it doesn't necessarily improve the world at all because the Dark Powers immediately appoint another darklord to replace them. (At least, that's what they've done in other cases.)

Then clearly the campaigns aren't scaled big enough, IMHO. The Dark Lords should be minibosses (starting 1/3 to 1/2 way up whatever leveling schema you're using) and taking out the Dark Powers themselves (the upper 10% of the leveling schema) should be the endgame.

If it were me then the ultimate manifestation should be a great black dragon spewing green fire (if Ravenloft can riff off classic movie horror monsters, then I can riff off classic movie fairy tales for my finale) because D&D demands a final boss dragon wielding "all the powers of Hell" after which the nightmare ends and the land/people are restored. Alternately, Chernabog.

I think having a nihilistic setting pretty much turns the game into fighting the big bad or else everything is lost. And most people here like sandboxing, so they won't like it, because it's railroady. Same thing as that other video Pundit made about campaigns needing people not stories. Or that one about making history for your campaign and not putting any plot in your history. If you write a plot it will usually be about fighting the big bad and lead to railroading again.

Quote from: ForgottenF on December 01, 2022, 09:20:27 PM
As I understand it, the concept of Law and Chaos in Warhammer is heavily influenced (some people even say plagiarized) by the works of Michael Moorcock, save that the Warhammer multiverse lacks the idea of an Eternal Champion who exists to balance the warring forces and prevent either from overtaking the world. That said, I never got the impression that the triumph of chaos was presumed to be inevitable in either the Old World or 40K settings. ....

It may not have been spelled out explicitly in the lore, but it was the common (and correct*) interpretation by a lot of the Warhammer RPG player base, and GW confirmed things when they killed off the Warhammer Fantasy setting with their WFB campaigns. Even then it took two attempts!

First they did their Storm of Chaos campaign for WFB. Which was intended to be this big showdown between Order and Chaos to really "shake up" the setting with some carnage from the forces of Chaos, but they fucked up.

They thought it would be really cool to let WFB tournament results determine the direction of the 'storyline'...

Chaos kept getting their asses kicked. Evidently they didn't even get a foothold in the Empire, so GW bumped the battlelines/timelines handing Chaos "wins" so that they could have the big confrontation in Middenheim that they wanted. And even then Chaos was still basically getting their asses kicked... So GW said 'fuck it', they stepped in and said "Ok Chaos attacked, was repelled *insert plot shenanigans here* And the status quo is maintained." And then retconned that all of that never happened in their next lore/edition update.

GW learned their lesson, so when they did their End Times WFB campaign they didn't allow any of this 'lets let tournament results decide the outcome' nonsense. Fuck that, they needed to sell new models. (Largely because in the past few editions of WFB they had done a lot to alienate a large portion of their player base and drive down sales.)  End Times campaign summary: Chaos wins, everyone dies, the world ends.

Now they have 'Age of Sigmar', which most of the older WFB fans consider to be both fake and gay. It has gone over so well that they are reimagining WFB with a 'Warhammer: The Old World' release... Having a metaplot for their wargame was also stupid, but that is another discussion.

*Warhammer Fantasy was always was about Chaos eventually winning. The whole set-up with the warp gates, chaos wastes, inevitable corruption, Chaos always slowly gaining ground... There is just no way for the forces of Law to defeat it, it's inherent in the settings lore.

Quote from: jan paparazzi on December 02, 2022, 12:32:14 PM
I think having a nihilistic setting pretty much turns the game into fighting the big bad or else everything is lost. And most people here like sandboxing, so they won't like it, because it's railroady. Same thing as that other video Pundit made about campaigns needing people not stories. Or that one about making history for your campaign and not putting any plot in your history. If you write a plot it will usually be about fighting the big bad and lead to railroading again.

There are many Call of Cthulhu games that are railroaded, but then, there are many games in any system that are railroaded.

I've played and run in plenty of non-railroaded Call of Cthulhu games, though. The PCs can and did lose on a number of occasions, and the result was that bad things happened. If they won, though, people were saved. Nihilist doesn't mean apocalyptic. Nihilist means that the cosmology doesn't have benevolent gods that will come and save things. The world just is what it is. When people die, they are just gone.

One of my longest-running CoC characters ended up becoming a devout Catholic. He saw all sorts of horrors, and they got him unhinged at times, but he held onto his faith that these were the End Times - and that after all the chaos and destruction, God would raise up the souls of the virtuous. Seeing horrors or people killed or being told otherwise didn't change his faith. He just considered it a test. As a player, I knew that wasn't the cosmology of the world, but it also made for an interesting character.

We do live in an uncaring universe, where humans are an unimportant and meaningless species among many, on a worthless speck of a planet. So extrapolating that to a roleplaying setting has always been easy to me   

But I'm neither a nihilist, nor a misanthrope. I consider human meaning to be something we create ourselves, be it love, faith, art, or exploring the universe. The very act of deciding we're going to do something, then doing it, is our meaning, and reason to exist.

Burning the old book, and keeping the gate shut for another 100 years is a big win from our POV. It may be the equivalent of a child pulling the covers over its head, but we like the covers thank you very much.

I've likewise never had a problem finding the heroism in Warhammer 40k. Yes the Imperium are an awful, oppressive regime; but the alternative is death or an eternity of horror. Pushing back the darkness, living another day, these are victories are poignant as any Marvel MCU "we stopped the beam in the sky from destroying the Milky Way Galaxy!"

Quote from: Jaeger on December 02, 2022, 01:56:54 PMNow they have 'Age of Sigmar', which most of the older WFB fans consider to be both fake and gay.

I can confirm.

Quote from: jhkim on December 02, 2022, 04:30:31 PM

Quote from: jan paparazzi on December 02, 2022, 12:32:14 PM
I think having a nihilistic setting pretty much turns the game into fighting the big bad or else everything is lost. And most people here like sandboxing, so they won't like it, because it's railroady. Same thing as that other video Pundit made about campaigns needing people not stories. Or that one about making history for your campaign and not putting any plot in your history. If you write a plot it will usually be about fighting the big bad and lead to railroading again.

There are many Call of Cthulhu games that are railroaded, but then, there are many games in any system that are railroaded.

I've played and run in plenty of non-railroaded Call of Cthulhu games, though. The PCs can and did lose on a number of occasions, and the result was that bad things happened. If they won, though, people were saved. Nihilist doesn't mean apocalyptic. Nihilist means that the cosmology doesn't have benevolent gods that will come and save things. The world just is what it is. When people die, they are just gone.

I was making a lot of comparisons between a number of other Pundit video's. Let me be a little bit clearer. He is calling it nihilistic. I would call it the big bad, because for example in Warhammer there are the forces of Chaos who are coming and if you don't try to stop it, it will destroy everything. Well, I don't really like that type of campaign, because it forces the player's hand. I want them going around the world doing all kinds of things. Whatever the hell they want.

Quote from: jan paparazzi on December 04, 2022, 06:20:55 PMI was making a lot of comparisons between a number of other Pundit video's. Let me be a little bit clearer. He is calling it nihilistic. I would call it the big bad, because for example in Warhammer there are the forces of Chaos who are coming and if you don't try to stop it, it will destroy everything. Well, I don't really like that type of campaign, because it forces the player's hand. I want them going around the world doing all kinds of things. Whatever the hell they want.

That's why when I run WFRP 2nd ed, I set it in the 1st ed timeline. So they players can enjoy the richness of the setting, rather than scrap with Chaos remnants in ruined cities.

Derailing a little, but in some of the previous pundit video about running long campaign's he mentioned having a timeline with some events. I was wondering if he made a general timeline for the whole world or several regional timelines? I assume those events eventually become current events and could be enaged by the players or just happening around them. I generally use timelines per region. For example some galaxy quadrant is plagued by increasing pirate attacks untill that is getting under control again.