LOW FANTASY settings/adventures: WHERE? WHEN?

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

I for one am sick of all these high fantasy munchkin settings and adventures coming out from just about every d20 publisher. I am dying to see something gritty, like Lankhmar for d20.

No races except humans! No stupid elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, etc.! Maybe some orcs.

No cities that float through the clouds, the sea or outer space!

No dragons or other giant uber-monsters! Very few monsters of any kind, if any. Perhaps a few unique creatures.

No easy access to magic spells or items!

No polytheistic pantheons of billions of gods!

A place where you can get by with mundane armor and equipment your whole life. No DR/+1 monsters or better... or your PC is pretty much dead!

A place where you cannot come back from the dead without selling your soul to the Devil or some such evil power!

A place where you cannot get magical healing and combat is deadly and to be avoided!

Where, oh where, are the settings, sourcebooks, and adventures like this? Am I the only one tired of FR style games? I'm not saying don't make the other kind, but for gosh sakes, how about giving us a choice? As it is, I have to go through everything I buy and cross out every reference to "legions of gnomes" and "Happy Hairfoot the halfling thief" and "I'll raise you from the dead for 500 gold pieces!" Some company please help me...

AAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Wheel of Time.

 

[Crothian]

Use the magic system of CoC.

 

[Nightfall]

You could always just play in a sandbox. Seriously I don't know of any but hey, d20 is all about opportunity. Make your own. Oh there's also Mortality's version of it, Aedon. It's probably what you're looking for.

 

[Skywalker]

Its not d20 but The Riddle of Steel RPG which looks like a very good low magic fantasy setting. Very Conan the Barbarian.

 

[2WS-Steve]

My feeling is it would be best to wait until d20 Modern hits the streets and then adpat those rules to a low fantasy game; that way publishers have a standardized base system. So perhaps we'll see some of what you want early next year. I'm contemplating a product like this so I have a couple questions here.

How interested would you be in optional rules that treated certain monster abilities such as Incorporeal very differently? Currently if you've got a magic weapon this power just slows down your hack ratio but in games like CoC original you couldn't hurt a Fire Vampire with weapons at all; you needed water or sand. Would this kind of "realism" option be interesting or more trouble than it's worth?

For a low magic game there are a lot of low level items and spells that i'd personally like to see moved up a bit. I.e. making flying items about as rare as crystal balls and upping the level for stat increase spells, invisibility, and +10 to a skill items or spells. Do you think changing the relative value of these things would be interesting or a more simple solution where players just had very little gold would be better?

 

[RangerWickett]

You mean a setting like Mythic Earth?

 

[Lady Dragon]

You might wanna try the stuff from Avalanche.Its all based on real world earth,except maybe the ragnorak stuff.

 

[Eosin the Red]

WOT

 

[jkantor]

Mythic Earth looks like it has potential and so do many of the Avalanche offerings. However, I've run my games like this since about 1980. (One of the reasons why I have no interest in supplements like the Book of Eldritch Might.)

What I've found the primary advantage of such an approach to be isn't the grittiness per se - but the fact that when you introduce the magical, horrific, and otherworldly in subtle and/or limited ways, you keep the mystery and wonder alive. After all that's what Tolkien - even with elves, dwarves, etc. - does. Of course another key to Tolkien is the strong thematic continuity - something you also see in the Wheel of Time.

Currently, I'm working on a campaign starting in historical Japan (a la Sengoku), but where I will introduce elements of Oriental Adventures/Rokugan as time goes by. (Of course the players won't know ahead of time just what - or when!)

On a more contemporary note, Darwin's World has this kind of feel.

I think to be marketable, however, a product should be usable in a range of ways. What I'd like to do with the d20 company that I'm starting is to do just that - provide well-written adventures that could be used in a variety of campaigns. The key, of course, is to emphasize the motivations of the characters and not their equipment. The real problem with writing a generic D&D adventure is that it will be almost impossible to provide the strong thematic center that you also need.