Thought of the Day 2

It also occurs to me that I'm pretty darn tired of the trope that a campaign's main thrust is preventing the return or reincarnation or resurrection or reawakening (or whatever) of some ancient evil.  Is it somehow a truism that some evil dark lord of the past has to be worse than an evil dark lord of the present?  Why can't modern evil be compelling enough?

When we attempted to play through Rise of the Runelords, we got sick and tired of it (more specifically, the DM did) about halfway through the third module and we quit.  Now, years later, I'm actually reading the anniversary version of the campaign, and I just started the fourth module (y'know, the one where the fact that Karzoug the Runelord of ancient Thassilon trying to reawaken is actually revealed.)  When I did my CULT OF UNDEATH and ISLES OF TERROR projects, which deconstructed the Carrion Crown and Serpent's Skull adventure paths respectively, that was the gist of both of them as well.

To be honest with you; I've started to get a little tired of it.  We don't need some ancient dark lord like Tar-Baphon, Ydersius, or Karzoug.  There can be new warlords, tyrant warlocks and whatever that are equally compelling, and which belong to the modern age.

I mean; seriously—is Genghis Khan's legacy not sufficient because he wasn't Attila reborn?  Being Genghis Khan was good enough.