The campaign I'm currently developing is rather gritty. The "look and feel" resembles Afghanistan and other desolate places on the Silk Road, with perhaps a bit of Barsoom thrown in here and there. The world is mostly rocky badlands, and a bloated red sun looms large in the sky, casting all with a baleful hue.
Combat will be presented as nasty, brutish and short. Magic appears very minimal: a wizard who goes invisible just vanishes (for all you know, he may have teleported). Magic is so "Vancian" that it doesn't require complex hand gestures, though you still have to point at somebody to shoot them with a Lightning Bolt. A healing spell doesn't invoke any glowy effects, either; the wounds just close up before your eyes.
Magic artifacts and lost technology exist side by side, and most people don't understand the difference (the "Ancients" are thought even by wizards to have simply employed a different form of magic). The difference between a wand of lightning bolts and a laser pistol is pretty minimal (you need a command word for the former, and a to hit roll for the latter).
Culturally and politically, it is a Dark Age or Long Night in the wake of the collapse of a corrupt empire, toppled by a Lawful crusade but not effectively replaced.
Humanity is on its "last legs". The world is already basically too hot and too dry to comfortably support human life. The wastelands are haunted by ghouls (which have a feral, wolfish appearance in this world) and even worse things. Whatever horrors the Ancients called up still sleep in the ruined, pitted citadels they erected long before written history. Most cities are in ruins, older stone construction existing side by side with more recent mud brick construction (the population and technology have regressed) and are typically only at about 20% or less of their former capacity.
Everyone agrees that the world is ending. But life goes on nonetheless.
Combat will be presented as nasty, brutish and short. Magic appears very minimal: a wizard who goes invisible just vanishes (for all you know, he may have teleported). Magic is so "Vancian" that it doesn't require complex hand gestures, though you still have to point at somebody to shoot them with a Lightning Bolt. A healing spell doesn't invoke any glowy effects, either; the wounds just close up before your eyes.
Magic artifacts and lost technology exist side by side, and most people don't understand the difference (the "Ancients" are thought even by wizards to have simply employed a different form of magic). The difference between a wand of lightning bolts and a laser pistol is pretty minimal (you need a command word for the former, and a to hit roll for the latter).
Culturally and politically, it is a Dark Age or Long Night in the wake of the collapse of a corrupt empire, toppled by a Lawful crusade but not effectively replaced.
Humanity is on its "last legs". The world is already basically too hot and too dry to comfortably support human life. The wastelands are haunted by ghouls (which have a feral, wolfish appearance in this world) and even worse things. Whatever horrors the Ancients called up still sleep in the ruined, pitted citadels they erected long before written history. Most cities are in ruins, older stone construction existing side by side with more recent mud brick construction (the population and technology have regressed) and are typically only at about 20% or less of their former capacity.
Everyone agrees that the world is ending. But life goes on nonetheless.
