Interesting that you refer to Tharkold, the realm in which humans are literally enslaved, as having parts of it be bleak
Tharkold is all bleak. But it's not all
oppresively bleak. I mean, Tharkold is Russia, which is not the best place on Earth even under Core Earth axioms. But the Blasted Lands can do some cool post-apocalypse stuff as opposed to "Russia with cybernetic murder tech".
I've never been a fan of Orrorsh. Probably because I like to play my characters for a while rather than having to make one up every time I play, because the previous one died.
I've never played an adventure in which the character has the moment of crisis in TORG. That would have been interesting. My characters were always natives of their home Cosm, rather than being transformed.
The Day One adventures released along with the core rules did just that. You start as Core Earth folks doing their thing when suddenly a Maelstrom Bridge slams down and you have to deal with a new reality. When you do something cool and heroic, you have your moment of crisis and unlock the "real" pregen. In some of the cases, that involves transformation – for example, the Living Land adventure has a soccer mom transform into a jungle amazon (well, not technically an Amazon as those are will eventually show up in the Nile Empire as it expands into Greece, but you know the archetype), and the Nile Empire has the tourist guide/amateur historian turn into a priest.
TORG always seemed like a really cool idea to me in theory, but I never got into it. Playing cavemen and giant stompy robots in the same party always seemed like a nightmare to balance out...
In TORG: Eternity, the different cosms tend to be a bit closer in power level than they were in OG Torg – once you have reasonable firearms, they don't get a whole lot better on an individual level than that. Sure, a Tech 26 GWI Godmeeter, with damage 15 and 25 shots (if you care about ammo) as well as the ability to swap between ammo types if it has multiple ones loaded, is better than a Tech 18 Webley Revolver with damage 14 and 6 shots – but it's not like it's in a completely different league. Other cosms tend to be better at other things – sure, a warrior-type from Aysle will likely not be as good at warrioring as one from the Cyberpapacy, but an Aysle mage will have lots of advantages over a Cyberpapal witch.
And realities are the great equalizer. That Godmeeter is going to be a contradiction anywhere other than the Cyberpapacy, giving you a 1-in-20 chance of disconnecting when you use it – and when you're disconnected, you lose the ability to use stuff that isn't supported by the surrounding reality. The Webley, however, is fine in any cosm except Aysle (fantasy) and the Living Land (stone age/dinosaurs).
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