Desdichado
Hero
For anyone who's bored enough to pay attention to my posting habits, I've probably made it quite clear that I'm a low magic, grim and gritty fan. Without getting into the specifics of how low that magic is, and how gritty and grim the setting really is, and certainly without getting into an argument about whether D&D should even be LM/GnG (we've had enough of those in the past to not need a hijacking in that regard here) I want to see what others have done.
What ideas do you have that set your setting apart? How do you develop interesting, fantastic things in a LM/GnG setting? Or do you? Are you more Harn-like; medieval realism and all that? What's an executive summary of your campaign setting?
I'm not really looking for what alternate rules you use, so much as what are the "soft" aspects of your setting; the stuff that makes it tick from an internal, not a metagame perspective.
Here's my example Dark Heritage campaign setting: more detailed information can be found in the link in my sig. Also, within the next few weeks I hope to start up a story hour based on our adventures in the world of Dark Heritage. It's not really grim and gritty in some ways (although it is in others) so much as it is low magic and swashbuckling; a kind of melange of Pirates of the Caribbean. John Carter of Mars, Robert E. Howard, Lovecraft, Warhammer and the Black Company.
Core Ethos Statement: A grim world in the grip of secret cabals of necromancers and fiends rule from the shadows but wherein swashbuckling, larger than life heroes can make their destiny and change the course of the world through bravery and wit.
Who are the heroes?: (in this case, specifically the three PCs). Konrad is a wild and wooly man from the wilderness, come to the great city of Cassant for reasons that are known only to him. He's a bit reckless, a bit scrappy, but he's capable and alert. Tson is a former slave and gladiator. He's a Bred human -- the former races who ruled the world created a number of human 'races', and Tson is known particularly for his strength, toughness and resiliance to the harsh environment. All of his race is covered with a thin layer of reddish-brown, downlike fur, but Tson is albino, making him stand out even more. His goals in Cassant are the discover what he can of the history of the breeding, to uncover what his roots truly are. And Roshan Boh is also a Bred human; a gracile, small man, although quick with his rapier. He's got pallid, chalky gray skin and piercing eyes, a soft raspy voice and a reputation as a spy and informer (common to his entire race.) He's also an amateur historian and scholar, with a keen interest in ancient history, from before the time of the Breeders, in fact.
What do they do? They freelance for the undermanned Inquisition in Cassant, trying to uncover the perpetrator of a number of robberies and murders done to secure ancient texts dangerous for their blasphemous versions of history, and their eldritch spells. They fight desperate boarding actions on the decks of failing airships, they search the seedy underbelly of Cassant for clues to their mysterious perpetrator, they battle thugs and toughs and summoned daemons and undead -- all the while wondering how they attracted such noisome attention. They search the hard lands out of town, and the dark graveyards of ancient cultures for knowledge of the truth about the Breeders, the breaking of the world, and the founding of the Monarchy of Cassant; itself the subject of a dark and threatening secret.
Threats, conflicts, villains? Someone has clearly marked the PCs -- they are followed by strange occurances and eerie happenstances, as well as more overt threats. Their very patron is suspicious and not to be trusted. Someone has been animating the dead, and using them as troops, and the shadowy figure of a soot-gray woman, bald and wielding two curved swords with deadly efficiency to steal forbidden tomes of dark content looms over their horizon like an oncoming storm.
Nature of magic Magic use is not natural to humans (Bred or otherwise) so it must be accomplished by touching the spiritual reflection of the world itself and manipulating that spiritual reflection to cause effects in the material world. However, actually doing magic is terribly dangerous -- at some time in the incalculably ancient past the world was literally ripped into pieces that now hang loosely associated in the sky like so much rubble. This catastrophic event caused a drastic mismatch between the material world and the spiritual reflection, and those who attempt to learn or use magic quickly find their sanity slipping through their fingers like a handful of water.
What ideas do you have that set your setting apart? How do you develop interesting, fantastic things in a LM/GnG setting? Or do you? Are you more Harn-like; medieval realism and all that? What's an executive summary of your campaign setting?
I'm not really looking for what alternate rules you use, so much as what are the "soft" aspects of your setting; the stuff that makes it tick from an internal, not a metagame perspective.
Here's my example Dark Heritage campaign setting: more detailed information can be found in the link in my sig. Also, within the next few weeks I hope to start up a story hour based on our adventures in the world of Dark Heritage. It's not really grim and gritty in some ways (although it is in others) so much as it is low magic and swashbuckling; a kind of melange of Pirates of the Caribbean. John Carter of Mars, Robert E. Howard, Lovecraft, Warhammer and the Black Company.
Core Ethos Statement: A grim world in the grip of secret cabals of necromancers and fiends rule from the shadows but wherein swashbuckling, larger than life heroes can make their destiny and change the course of the world through bravery and wit.
Who are the heroes?: (in this case, specifically the three PCs). Konrad is a wild and wooly man from the wilderness, come to the great city of Cassant for reasons that are known only to him. He's a bit reckless, a bit scrappy, but he's capable and alert. Tson is a former slave and gladiator. He's a Bred human -- the former races who ruled the world created a number of human 'races', and Tson is known particularly for his strength, toughness and resiliance to the harsh environment. All of his race is covered with a thin layer of reddish-brown, downlike fur, but Tson is albino, making him stand out even more. His goals in Cassant are the discover what he can of the history of the breeding, to uncover what his roots truly are. And Roshan Boh is also a Bred human; a gracile, small man, although quick with his rapier. He's got pallid, chalky gray skin and piercing eyes, a soft raspy voice and a reputation as a spy and informer (common to his entire race.) He's also an amateur historian and scholar, with a keen interest in ancient history, from before the time of the Breeders, in fact.
What do they do? They freelance for the undermanned Inquisition in Cassant, trying to uncover the perpetrator of a number of robberies and murders done to secure ancient texts dangerous for their blasphemous versions of history, and their eldritch spells. They fight desperate boarding actions on the decks of failing airships, they search the seedy underbelly of Cassant for clues to their mysterious perpetrator, they battle thugs and toughs and summoned daemons and undead -- all the while wondering how they attracted such noisome attention. They search the hard lands out of town, and the dark graveyards of ancient cultures for knowledge of the truth about the Breeders, the breaking of the world, and the founding of the Monarchy of Cassant; itself the subject of a dark and threatening secret.
Threats, conflicts, villains? Someone has clearly marked the PCs -- they are followed by strange occurances and eerie happenstances, as well as more overt threats. Their very patron is suspicious and not to be trusted. Someone has been animating the dead, and using them as troops, and the shadowy figure of a soot-gray woman, bald and wielding two curved swords with deadly efficiency to steal forbidden tomes of dark content looms over their horizon like an oncoming storm.
Nature of magic Magic use is not natural to humans (Bred or otherwise) so it must be accomplished by touching the spiritual reflection of the world itself and manipulating that spiritual reflection to cause effects in the material world. However, actually doing magic is terribly dangerous -- at some time in the incalculably ancient past the world was literally ripped into pieces that now hang loosely associated in the sky like so much rubble. This catastrophic event caused a drastic mismatch between the material world and the spiritual reflection, and those who attempt to learn or use magic quickly find their sanity slipping through their fingers like a handful of water.
