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Message: <blockquote data-quote="el-remmen" data-source="post: 9649614" data-attributes="member: 11">I prefer a setting that leans towards the grounded, where the PCs (and some NPCs) are the special ones. Yes, people know magic exists, but it should remain "magical" and be about exploring the contradictory seeming mysteries of the cosmos by different means, not as a codifiable set of universal laws that anyone can apply and that becomes just another form of technology.I lean into cultural taboos and historical customs to explain behavior. Most people you run into are human. Most of the crazy earth-shattering magic is in the past and the state of the world and attitudes are based on those cataclysmic past events and how they might still effect the world (like an ongoing ecological disaster).I do still like some weird cultural things. For example in the setting I am working now, which is set in a Republic based loosely on Ancient Greece and Rome (with a dash of the Iroquois Confederacy), the Constitution (also known as the Charter of Peers) establishes that everyone owns their own body. This has led to a custom of making arrangements to sell your corpse upon death so your family can benefit - and the corpses are used to make candles and wigs and soap, etc - leading to an industry around this.  Of course, this would also be great cover for a secret necromancer building a zombie army or using bodies to feed some monster they are raising, or a ton of other adventure possibilities I have not considered yet.These two things (a democratic republic, corpse value) make the setting distinct from most D&D worlds. Another thing is the PCs meet a lot of "slaves." They are indentured servants whose contracts are owned by the State and then rented out to various private individual and companies, or used to perform State projects. They are citizens whose living expenses are paid (and those of their children), have a limit of 7 years on their service, but also have suspended voting rights during that time. They have rights that protect them and a portion of the judiciary meant to look over how they are treated. Different PCs have different feelings about this and different factions in the setting seek to abolish, reform, or reinforce more draconian rules around this.I personally don't want a train system run by genies trapped in engines or whatever and I don't think I could do a setting like that justice or even remember to reinforce that fantasticalness. I'd rather it be that truly fantastical things are either things the PCs are hunting for or are the threat to be stopped when they emerge.I would would run a fantastical world of all humans (and would prefer that) before one of every kind of fantasy people you could think of being equally available.</blockquote>

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