Question: What makes a setting "dark"?

[Xavier Onassiss]

Something Tasha said in the discussion thread on D&D 5E raised an interesting question for me, regarding "dark" SF settings.

So if I want to play SciFi again. I'll have to make my own setting like you did. Which does remind me that I do need to buy your book. Terracide sounds a bit darker than I like to run, but it's always good to read other people's stuff.

We had also been discussing Traveller: the New Era, and it sounded like Tasha had run that setting for at least a few games. TNE was far and away the "darkest" of any version of Traveller, and this got me thinking about dark settings in general, and dark SF settings in particular. Would Terracide be considered darker than TNE? If so, or if not, what's the criteria for a setting's darkness?

More generally, I'd like to know what the Hero forum thinks:

What makes a science fiction setting "dark"?

And what makes one setting "darker" than another? (Is it the outlook, campaign theme, a function of body count, or just the background color scheme?)

Bonus question: How dark is too dark? (if there is such a thing)

[Nolgroth]

I consider anything that has the premise of holocaust, dark. Settings where the deck is so stacked against the protagonists that there is little room for hope. I believe that the premise of Terracide (the destruction of Earth and survival of only a fragment of humanity) makes for dark overtones to say the least.

The recent reboot of Battlestar Galactica is a perfect example of dark. The series starts out with the near genocidal assault against the protagonists. The series then goes on to strip every single character's humanity away from them. While it is doing this, every possible resource that the survivors of the holocaust discover is somehow taken away from them. By the (hokey and contrived) ending, NOT ONE of the protagonists are anybody worth knowing. Of course, other franchises may also be dark. Maybe dismal fits the BSG reboot better.

And what makes one setting "darker" than another?

Outlook I think is the biggest factor. For instance, the destruction of Earth can be the springboard for many different types of campaigns. There is the one where a ragtag fleet desperately tries to survive, while also trying to hold on to what defines them as human. That's dark. Or you could have a campaign where there is a core group of off-world humans and the characters strive to unite bands of roving humans so that there is still a large population base. Still dark, but not so much. Then there is the option that humanity has spread so far out into space and has so many colonies that the destruction of the home world, while a tragedy, does not place the fate of humanity under some great Sword of Damocles, with rats nibbling on the string. Some dark moments but how the campaign is presented from there, defines the relative darkness of the setting.

Body count has nothing to do with darkness. I've seen some pretty over the top adventures that had massive body counts.

Bonus Answer: When the players stop having fun because they see no point in striving to make things better.

[Ninja-Bear]

I agree with Nolgroth on outlook. Have you ever looked at Warhammer 40k? I read a couple of books and I got the feeling by then end that even the "good" guys are a bunch of @#$%^@! The triology espcapes me right now but the author did a good job of conveying the idea that the Imperium is horrible but the do the horrible because the alternative is worse. That to me is dark.

[IndianaJoe3]

What makes a science fiction setting "dark"?

I'd say it's a lack of heroism, more than anything else. The inability of characters to achieve their goals would also be a factor.

And what makes one setting "darker" than another? (Is it the outlook, campaign theme, a function of body count, or just the background color scheme?)

Well, it's kind of a sliding scale. The less opportunity the characters have to be heroic, the darker the setting is. If the characters are punished for trying to achieve their goals or be heroic, then it is a very dark setting.

[Greywind]

Lack of lights?

[Cygnia]

Lack of hope or even a chance to do ANYTHING good/decent.

[Derek Hiemforth]

My thoughts mirror some of what has been said above. Though I would differentiate slightly between a dark setting and a dark campaign. Because I think you can have non-dark campaigns in at least some dark settings, and dark campaigns in almost any non-dark setting.

For me, "darkness" in a setting or campaign can be an inability to have any lasting positive effect in the world, a lack of admirable characters, or some combination of both. For example, if the PCs in a post-apoc game rescue a family from a band of wasteland raiders, but that family is then just killed a couple of days later by a mutant sand worm, that's "dark" to me. Likewise, if they rescue the family, and that night the family poisons the PCs, steals all their stuff, and disappears with their pet, that's "dark." That doesn't necessarily mean that all campaigns must be about crusading do-gooders, else they're "dark." But if you can't help anyone, or if there's no one worth helping... that's dark.

For settings specifically, If there has been some sort of apocalyptic event in the backstory, how recent that event was also colors how dark it is for me. For example, a setting where the zombie apocalypse happened three months ago, "feels" darker, because everyone lived through it, and remembers how it used to be. But in a setting like Thundarr the Barbarian, where the apocalyptic event happened long, long ago, it just feels more like backdrop scenery...

[Manic Typist]

I'd say one potential indicator is the moral evaluations executed within the fictional world.

If something that we would consider morally repugnant or reprehensible, EVEN considering the situation/normal caveats to morality under exceptional circumstances, is seen as morally permissible or even laudable by the characters, that's dark. Perhaps doubly so if we find ourselves agreeing (hopefully reluctantly!).

So, essentially, if really extreme means are still justified by their ends.

[Tasha]

While I was running in the Darkest Version of the Traveller Universe. I choose to play in the Late New Era. Where most of the Virused Ships had been used up in various wars etc. Space was pretty quiet and people had started to put stuff back together. I thought that my campaign was pretty bright. They found a pocket of dysfunctional civilization. Once they fixed the problems with that world, they then were supposed to go out and Find stuff for their new home and also to make friends. It was a campaign that was supposed to be very optimistic in it's outlook. Dunno if we got things to the point where the players saw that.

You could run the 3rd Imperium era of Traveller pretty darkly. Esp if you emphasized the bureaucracy and nobility abusing their power. Which is a legitimate way to play that era. I liked the Late TNE period as it is a time where most of space is a frontier. There are worlds pulling themselves back to being starfaring after being stomped first by the Rebellion, then by the AI Virus controlled Fleets of ships.

[Xavier Onassiss]

While I was running in the Darkest Version of the Traveller Universe. I choose to play in the Late New Era. Where most of the Virused Ships had been used up in various wars etc. Space was pretty quiet and people had started to put stuff back together. I thought that my campaign was pretty bright. They found a pocket of dysfunctional civilization. Once they fixed the problems with that world, they then were supposed to go out and Find stuff for their new home and also to make friends. It was a campaign that was supposed to be very optimistic in it's outlook. Dunno if we got things to the point where the players saw that.

You could run the 3rd Imperium era of Traveller pretty darkly. Esp if you emphasized the bureaucracy and nobility abusing their power. Which is a legitimate way to play that era. I liked the Late TNE period as it is a time where most of space is a frontier. There are worlds pulling themselves back to being starfaring after being stomped first by the Rebellion, then by the AI Virus controlled Fleets of ships.

I think what I missed before, and what you and several others previously have made clear, is that dark settings and dark campaigns aren't the same thing, and aren't considered dark for the same reason. I wanted to clarify this, and get a sense of the forum's thinking on the subject, because I frequently get questions about my own work, and I'd like to be "on the same page" as everyone else when I'm discussing it.

Regarding Terracide, it is definitely a very dark setting, in that humanity's home system has been utterly destroyed. Worse still, something like 99% of the human race still lived there; nearly 10 billion are dead -- and only 100 million survivors are scattered across 50 or more light years of space. All the extra-solar colonies are intact, but not all of them are self-sufficient. This is not unlike the situation in TNE (on a much smaller scale), so it's got a similarly dark background.

OTOH, the tone of a Terracide campaign is entirely up to its GM; will everything that's left of mankind's works come crashing down in the wake of Terra's destruction no matter what the PCs do? Or can they find a way to protect some part of the civilization which still remains?

The game I'm currently running is "guardedly optimistic"; the players are attempting to cobble together a "micro-state" on a nearly-abandoned space habitat, with a coalition of squatters, corsairs and believers in the cause. It's too early to tell if it's going to work -- the Powers That Be are just beginning to realize what's going on, after five game sessions.

So far, so good.

[Lawnmower Boy]

I consider anything that has the premise of holocaust, dark. Settings where the deck is so stacked against the protagonists that there is little room for hope. I believe that the premise of Terracide (the destruction of Earth and survival of only a fragment of humanity) makes for dark overtones to say the least.

The recent reboot of Battlestar Galactica is a perfect example of dark. The series starts out with the near genocidal assault against the protagonists. The series then goes on to strip every single character's humanity away from them. While it is doing this, every possible resource that the survivors of the holocaust discover is somehow taken away from them. By the (hokey and contrived) ending, NOT ONE of the protagonists are anybody worth knowing. Of course, other franchises may also be dark. Maybe dismal fits the BSG reboot better.

Outlook I think is the biggest factor. For instance, the destruction of Earth can be the springboard for many different types of campaigns. There is the one where a ragtag fleet desperately tries to survive, while also trying to hold on to what defines them as human. That's dark. Or you could have a campaign where there is a core group of off-world humans and the characters strive to unite bands of roving humans so that there is still a large population base. Still dark, but not so much. Then there is the option that humanity has spread so far out into space and has so many colonies that the destruction of the home world, while a tragedy, does not place the fate of humanity under some great Sword of Damocles, with rats nibbling on the string. Some dark moments but how the campaign is presented from there, defines the relative darkness of the setting.

Body count has nothing to do with darkness. I've seen some pretty over the top adventures that had massive body counts.

Bonus Answer: When the players stop having fun because they see no point in striving to make things better.

Although this has the potential to devolve into a pro/anti-BSG thread, the question of what makes BSG (2005) "dark," which I agree that it is, is an interesting point of departure.

First of all, it is clearly not intrinsic to the setting. BSG (1979) was not dark. The Star Trek: Enterprise tribute episode was not dark. The reasons are not far to seek; BSG (1980) turns the villains into clowns and doesn't dwell on either the horrifying trauma in the background of the characters or the relentless stress they may be under. There's not even any on-screen grieving, never mind survivor's guilt-driven suicidal ideation and worse. Starting from that point, it's hard to be pessimistic about the final outcome of the series. Commander Adama correctly believes in the existence of Earth, and, when found, there is no way that a bunch of clowns like the Cylons will be able to destroy it.

In the Enterprise episode, we have no such certainties. In fact, the enemies out-think the heroes and are in the process of exterminating the last remnants of the human race when a character's suicide (not just ideation this time!) resets the timeline. Or, rather, the one certainty that we have is the reset. Inasmuch as BSG (2005) ends with just such a reset, however flawed and undermined by the epilogue, we've no grounds to blame the setting and story for making it "dark."

It comes back, to my mind, to the characterisation. That the members of the "rag-tag" fleet be pretty extravagantly flawed individuals isn't just real story telling. It is also a pretty realistic reflection of how people act under the sustained stress of the circumstances. I can sure tell you that it spoke to me as I worked endless closing managing shifts and wondered if I'd ever have a life. Anyone else go there in the last decade? I know that "overworked" is no longer the standard flavour of our discontent, but it was like that recently.

At the same time, Nolgroth's claim that none of the main characters were worth knowing by the end of the series seems to me an exaggeration. On the contrary, we were presented with a secondary plot arc that pretty much hit us over the head with a "This Way to the Future" sign. It's interesting that this sub-plot was a second thought driven by fan reaction to the mini-series and problematic for the direction of the series in that it required resigning Tammoh Penniket, and thus necessarily giving the "hope" sub-plot a fairly small amount of screen time. That being said, the convergence between this sub-plot and the emerging vision of the series meant that we were in the odd situation of having a sub-plot usurp the series, without it being possible for the sub-plot to be promoted to main plot. Thus we got an odd situation in which the developmental arc of the main characters --Adama's family, their partners, and immediate retainers-- was more-or-less irrelevant to the plot. And it got worse when another set of secondary characters managed to wiggle their way into pretty much the same place in the heart of viewers. The BSG pitch as refined: "Watch BSG. See Tigh and Helo and their circles learn and grow towards the final resolution of the series. In what time we have left over after we check in on Baltar, Starbuck and Apollo's latest hijinks!"

And because these were also fascinating, well-played characters, we got a lot of stories out of Baltar, Starbuck and Apollo. We ended up hating them, but we got a lot of stories out of them. And in the end they turned out to be angels or something.

So: the religious elements of the story. Are they just there to make many of us a little uncomfortable? No. They're also a way of writing one's way out of self-imposed corners. Sure, they imply a scarier theodicy than the most bloodthirsty bits of the Old Testament. "Okay, I exterminated 25 billion Colonists and pretty much did for the Cylons, too. But it's all good, because it ended up getting a couple people where they needed to be. Now stop complaining and take these commandments down: 'Thou shalt always take finger painting seriously...' Yes, yes, I am serious. Do you want to be My prophet, or not?" But they're, like, spiritual. And deep and stuff.

So: to come back to the point, I don't think that it's either the body count or the setting that make BSG (2005) "dark." At any given moment, the story may seem dark because people are making tough, and sometimes wrong choices, but if you follow the story through the lens of the subplots to which I've referred, you have a forward arc of character development and steady human gains. In the nature of episodic story telling, we may wonder if the series might have done the same with the Adama circle had it not found its optimistic focus in secondary characters, but that's a moot question now.

So "darkness" is so far not an attribute of stories lacking attractive characters, nor of a resolutely pessimistic setting. It's more of a stylistic choice, in which people face tough choices and sometimes make the wrong one. If it's a crime to prefer that to the silliness of, say, BSG (1979), it's a crime that most viewers participated in.

With this dubious insight as my spring board, I'm going to move on to Kirkman's Walking Dead. Here we have post-apocalyptic zombie fiction. Kirkman's claim is, however, that the zombies are a background feature. What's important to the ongoing plot is the way that the background influences the human cast. It's a zombie apocalypse, but the problem, as ever, is people.

It's an attractive premise, but content free. You can write, and probably someone has written, somewhere, an Archie story set in a zombie apocalypse, in which the point of the story is the good old love triangle. But with zombies! That, of course, is not the story that Kirkman writes. His story is about how approximately one in ten human beings is criminally deranged to a cover-of-the-New-York-Post level, and how the only way that the protagonists can deal with this is by making horrible, wrenching moral choices. Because zombies.

Here, I see basically two aspects of the premise that have been illegitimately jiggered to generate the kind of plots that Kirkman wants to write. The first is that the zombies remain as problematic as ever as a plot device. No logical extrapolation of what actual zombies might or might not be able to do is allowed, because this would rule out a priori their forcing the kind of plot moment that Kirkman wants to write. Second, Kirkman assumes that human beings are horrible, and then writes plots where the only way to deal with the horrible people is to do horrible things to them. Then he smirks and, in effect, says, "Hey, that's how the world is. I didn't make it up. I just put zombies in it and let my characters do what people do. Which is murder each other to death. As people do."

In the final iteration of this theme, we get settings like Warhammer 40k, where everything is horrible all the time, because the alternative is even worse. This isn't even a premise, IMHO. It's an excuse for horror porn. To each his own, I guess, but, for my part, no thanks. I've steered clear of the Warhammer brand for thirty years, and I can't help but wonder whether the approach has, in the end, helped or hurt sales. I guess if you aim for a niche market, you live or die by the amount of money the market has to spend, and the Warhammer brand hasn't died, so, as a business decision, it is hard to criticise. As an artistic vision, though, you've got to be looking for something other than "compelling moral vision." Which, actually, I don't have much of a problem with. The Warhammer universes work best as sources of teh cool, anyway.

Which leads me back around to the idea of dark settings. I suggested above that BSG (2005) worked because it was seen as more adult, even cooler, than BSG (1979). Here we get the persistent error that what is adult and cool about a story is necessarily "dark." This is a mistaken reading, I suggest. We might now want to meditate on how those mistakes come to be made.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Most cyberpunk settings tend to be very dark. In fact, being very dark practically defines cyberpunk.

For all the bright colors in the film, Naussica of the Valley of the Wind is a very dark setting. Humanity is on an inexorable death-march and the efforts of the protagonists can at best delay the inevitable. The Earth is healing itself from centuries of damage, but the healing Earth has no place for humans.

[Clonus]

So: to come back to the point, I don't think that it's either the body count or the setting that make BSG (2005) "dark." At any given moment, the story may seem dark because people are making tough, and sometimes wrong choices, but if you follow the story through the lens of the subplots to which I've referred, you have a forward arc of character development and steady human gains. .

Huhn? What? The humans didn't gain anything. Their character development consisted of learning the eventual lesson that they were a failed experiment and the universe was a better place without them in it and they submitted to voluntary extinction to be succeeded by another human experiment which we see at the end is already starting to make the same mistakes and fail the same way. Now that's dark. The original Battlestar Galactica wasn't dark because it started with a bad thing, and then nothing else bad ever happened.

[Cancer]

Most cyberpunk settings tend to be very dark. In fact, being very dark practically defines cyberpunk.

A cyberpunk setting, as you say, has to be very dark.

I view "dark" in a setting to be one where the forces ruling the world have abandoned any pretense of what we would recognize as moral goodness, and goes so far as to impugn such goodness as wrong, weak, anti-corporate, subversive, etc., and seeks to extirpate it when it is detected. Frankly, I see today's real world as rapidly moving in this direction, but that's a political statement that doesn't belong in a gaming thread.

Another version of "dark" for settings is one where humans are well on their way toward extinction, and non-human (in fact, generally super-human) forces are working toward that extinction; or alternately, those super-human are preserving small packets of humans strictly for their own uses. If you're a chicken, then our real world is a very, very dark world, since most chickens live short nasty lives in farms and are destined to be food animals, and there is nothing any chicken can do about it. I also view absorption into an alien hegemony and depriving humans of free will as we know it to be irremediably dark, so dark that as a player I would rather destroy the world (and if I can take the alien hegemony with it, so much the better) than accept that outcome.

I tend to view a campaign as unacceptably dark when player characters cannot perform heroic acts. If the setting cannot be alleviated no matter what; if striving inevitably makes the situation worse rather than better; if there are no realizable choices that a player can make that the player would recognize as morally good, or something s/he would feel proud of doing.

A dark setting does not have to be a dark campaign, if the players can actually make progress in making that setting less dark.

[Nolgroth]

At the same time, Nolgroth's claim that none of the main characters were worth knowing by the end of the series seems to me an exaggeration.

Since I can only write from my own perspective and opinion, I can absolutely say that I was not exaggerating. I truly hated every single main sequence character. The closest one to a decent person was probably Bill Adama.

So "darkness" is so far not an attribute of stories lacking attractive characters, nor of a resolutely pessimistic setting. It's more of a stylistic choice, in which people face tough choices and sometimes make the wrong one. If it's a
crime to prefer that to the silliness of, say, BSG (1979), it's a crime that most viewers participated in.

Nope. Not a crime. I'll disagree with you about the relation of "resolutely pessimistic settings" and "dark" however.

In the final iteration of this theme, we get settings like Warhammer 40k, where everything is horrible all the time, because the alternative is even worse. This isn't even a premise, IMHO. It's an excuse for horror porn.

Can't argue with that. I'll add George RR Martin's novels to that pile too.

This thread got me thinking to an exchange between Rex and I over in the D&D 5th Edition thread. When you boil it down, I'd rather read a thousand Drizzt stories, a thousand Wolverine stories, and a thousand cross-overs between the two than one more story of "resolute pessimism" (and that includes watching as well as reading). BTW, not trying to make fun Lawnmower Boy, that phrase just seems awfully handy right now.