On: Dark and Gritty

I think Deminar is going to be a dark and gritty setting when all is said and done. Now, saying those words immediately sets about all sorts of images and ideas in someone's mind and usually all are different from the rest, so here's my take on the term.

Even with advances in magic and technology, the people on the floating isles worry about survival first and foremost. Much of the air around them is unexplored, home to pirates and monsters unknown. Raids are frequent, they're cut off from allies by miles of air, the only reason they're alive is because their ancestors were lucky enough to be on a chunk of land that rose above the devastation on the surface. Death is indeed always around the corner, to survive that, people have to become tough.

Now this doesn't mean that it's a humorless setting, that you shouldn't make PCs that can have a good time or that everyone in town looks at the ground and never smiles. It's just that there's not a lot of "light" in the setting. There are no sparkling elven towers that seem to glow on their own, for every knight, armor polished, protecting the weak, there are hundreds of orcs waiting to devour the weak. The streets are dirty, full of soot and ash, smoke is heavy in the air in the more technologically advanced places, some islands have never seen magic and would burn you at the stake if you did so in front of them.

It's like the world of Warhammer without some of the humor or even the "Points of Light" that D&D 4E is claiming to follow, without some of the more fantastical elements.

Now, some would argue this isn't a good fit for Labyrinth Lord and its AEC. After all, it, and it's spiritual parents B/X and 1st Ed AD&D regularly cared a sense of whimsy, humor and lightheartedness. From the artwork, to some of the more memorable NPCs to even many of the monsters and their design both artistically and mechanically. However, I'd argue quite the opposite, LL is a wonderful fit for the more Sword and Sorcery gritty setting. Characters are not superheroes, magic is very scarce (look at the spells and magic items compared to later editions of D&D), death for the heroes could be around any corner, and often times, they can't just waltz into town and pick up new "ubermagicweapon 5000," instead they must pry it off the cold dead hands of some monstrous being that was threatening to unless unspeakable horrors on that very town. Rules systems are just a tool to help tell a story, I could use something at high end as Exalted and still write a dark and gritty story around it and even reflect it inside the rules, but sometimes it helps to have a system to support it. And a system where the average magic user maxes out at 4hp and regularly goes up against things that average that amount of damage in one hit definitely supports the feel I'm going for.

Now I'll note that I love the whimsy that shows up in the "old school" D&D, the weirder monsters and places and that classic artwork, it's just not what I write best and indeed, if we were ever lucky enough to be graced with artwork, it would feature a much different style then what's typical in the OSR product that's coming out now that pays homage to the original.

Will that turn off some people that play with these rule systems? Absolutely, but it will also be something different and that has a chance to attract both brand new people and those willing to look beyond the "need to preserve the integrity of the game."

And I'm mostly writing it for myself anyway, so what does it matter how it's received?