"Dark and gritty" settings?

[Maan]

I'd like to hear if anyone knows of some good "Dark&Gritty" setting that would work with 5e; homebrew stuff is fine, if well done.

Otherwise, I'm thinking about homebrewing such a campaign setting by myself.
Most of it I think will be a matter of aesthetics: just depict a darker, grimmer, maybe decading/crumbling world. Less jolly Halflings and merry Elves, more cynicism and drama. Possibly reworking races flavour-wise or even remove a few of them.

One thing I'd like to do is making magic less all-pervasive.
Yes, I know: discussions about D&D and low-magic/fantasy settings have been done and probably overdone. I'm not going in that direction, though.
I would just like magic to be (feel) less mundane, perfectly reliable and, well, pretty much available everywhere to everyone.
Sure, I will give it a different feeling: magic will be showy and arcane and eerie, and people (NPCs) will be frightened by it. But we all know that players will need to positively know that magic can actually go wrong, to really feel it as inherently dangerous and risky.
But I can't just nerf magic, or I would just throw games balance out of the window.

So, I was thinking: what if I just use the Wild Magic Surge table?
Something pretty simple: every time a character uses magic (no matter the font, a magic item producing a spell-like effect counts, too), I secretly roll a die (d6? d10?) and note the result down; that's the number of times they can use magic again without effects. If they use it once more, a magic surge happens. Then the process "resets".
I think this could work: surges can also have positive effects, so I'm not just hamstringing magic. But it does become more unpredictable, something that should make players think twice before using magic lightly and also explain why people in the game world are distrustful and afraid of magic.

Feedback is very much appreciated!

[CheddarChampion]

Curse of Strahd is gothic horror, that might be similar to what you want. That world is not a vibrant place.

[Crucius]

As CheddarChampion stated Curse of Strahd is a grim one. Out of the Abyss is also a particularly dark one, with survival elements, madness and generally always being on the back-foot. I heard some people quit that campaign because it was feeding their depressions in a not okay way. Just as an example of how dark it supposedly is. So anything underdark will probably work, since the creatures that dwell there lend themselves to a noxious plot and setting.

Your idea for magic is cool in and of itself, but should you do the risky magic thing it is important that you communicate this to your players before character creation. Transparency and communication are key of course.

P.S. your name means Moon in dutch!

[Steel Mirror]

I think the surge thing could work, though I agree that you should be very up-front and open about it with your players. Let them know that it can be a good or bad thing, and some players will thrive on the unpredictability. More tactically-minded players may be annoyed by it, but they can choose a different class.

I also support you homebrewing a world, but I always support people making their own homebrew worlds! Making magic feel scarce and a bit spooky can be handled largely in how you portray magic in the rest of the world, including maybe a few characters who have been on the bad end of a badly botched spell as friendly NPCs, and maybe a session where the Big Bad is the result of magic gone awry.

You don't HAVE to make the characters' own magic be crazy unpredictable and dangerous to make magic in the world at large feel that way, but a mix of both may give the best results.

[Trustypeaches]

Curse of Strahd has the following mature content:
- Death of children (for profit, for food, for fun)
- Existential Horror
- Body Horror
- Severe emontional Abuse
- Alcoholism
- Sexual Metaphor (Many characters are outright sexual predators)
- Genocide
- Insanity (not the fun kind)
- and more

[creakyaccordion]

Tbh I've seen a lot of campaigns where magic is fuddled with to seem "unstable" (including things like random effects tables, etc) and it pretty much always manages to do two things that seem paradoxical: it makes players who chose magic want to cast less since the Main Thing They Do becomes risky (which defeats the point of being a caster), and it makes everyone who isn't a caster jealous because they don't get to Roll On A Cool Table when they do their thing.

If you focus on changing the way magic works in roleplaying, I think you'll find that it changes play in such a significant way that you don't even need to change it stats-wise. Say magic has only been held in the hands of the wealthy in the society the players are in, and that its wielding is a status symbol with centuries or even millenia of cultural precedence behind it. Do peasants grovel before the sorcerer who shoots a firebolt at the goblins attacking their village? Are magic users more prone to bandit raids since wearing the kind of adventurer's gear that befits magic use is a symbol of wealth? You of course could flip this the other way: what if magic is considered heretical by the institutions that govern where the players are? Do magic users congregate out in the woods to trade spells and arcane knowledge? Are magic users publicly prosecuted and hanged in the streets? Are thieves' guilds more prone towards magic in a world where magic is criminal?

I think these kinds of RP ramifications will get the effect you're looking for without radically changing the balance of the actual mechanics of play.

[DanyBallon]

Not a 5e setting but I’m pretty sure it could be adapted; in the 3e era Fantasy Flight Games publised a dark and gritty setting called Midnight that was well received and much acclaimed.

You may find interresting idea for your own campaign

[the_david]

Peasants fear magic because it's something they don't understand. It's something they can never have access to, and it's pretty lethal to them. They have every reason to fear magic.
And even if there wouldn't be any magic, they might still go for the occasional witch hunt anyway.

I do like your idea of wild magic surges, but I think it might work better as an area of wild magic. Something like a dungeon where magic doesn't work the way it's supposed to. It would shake things up, but not too much.
Do remember that villains would have to deal with the same drawback. It's also more bookkeeping for the DM.

In the end, this is just a gimmick. It doesn't matter if you use the mechanic or not. If you'd outlaw magic and add some witch hunters your players might act more careful.

War of the Burning Sky is a campaign that includes a witch hunt. It might be a good idea to check it out.

[SVamp]

Look for dark sun. I don’t know if it has been ported to 5E, but it’s THE setting for a sundered world where magic is hated: each time you cast a spell, you ARE killing the world.

As an alternative, get rid of all the casters and replace semi caster class abilities & spells with innate things they can do X times per day: paladin can smite x times per day etc. You can then add feats such as “lesser taint of darkness” to suddenly get lvl 1&2 spell casting abilities, all of them refluffed to be scary ****. I’d borrow the madness trait from call of Cthulhu every time you cast a spell, or at least do a roll on a bad things only table.

This way all players can be part of the magic corruption, but nobody is nerfed.

[Yora]

My own setting isn't dark and gritty, but somewhat of "Eldritch Prehistory". My approach to deal with magic was to cap all spells at 5th level. 6th to 9th level spells don't exist in the game at all (except as special monster abilities), and NPC spellcasters who can be found in towns and cities are almost all limited to 1st and 2nd level spells. Getting someone to cast 3rd level spells for you is difficult and 4th and 5th level spells aren't normally available as services at all.
This is combined with the assumption that PCs will never get past 10th level and humanoid NPCs also won't exceed that power level.

All of this has not restricted PCs in any way yet, but it makes a big difference on the world around them.

[Maan]

Mhm, I'm not familiar with published scenarios/campaigns since I've only been playing homebrew stuff, but I thought Curse of Strahd was a scenario or small campaign, not a fully fledged setting; maybe I got that feeling because Barovia is pretty small as a game world.
Could at least be worth a look for inspiration, that's for sure.

To better clarify what I intended, I was aiming for something more "realistic" (think low-fantasy or early sword&sorcery) rather than emo-edgy. :P It's just that to me the more classical settings for D&D tend to feel... I don't know, maybe a bit childish? Morality is so clear-cut, generally: Good is here, Evil is there. No shades of gray, or not many at least. I'd like something more relatable than "stop the evil god plans campaign #317".

Oh, I gave for granted that players will know about the world beforehand: what races and classes are available, how magic works, etc.


Not a 5e setting but I’m pretty sure it could be adapted; in the 3e era Fantasy Flight Games publised a dark and gritty setting called Midnight that was well received and much acclaimed.
You may find interresting idea for your own campaign
That looks interesting indeed! Not sure I would use it "as is" but it surely has some great themes.


My own setting isn't dark and gritty, but somewhat of "Eldritch Prehistory".
Also interesting. I'll take my time to read it

Most of what has been suggested looks promising to dig for ideas, thank you all!


P.S. your name means Moon in dutch!
Yep, I know. I had a half-dutch friend :P
It's actually formed with my name+surname first letters, but I kinda liked the double meaning (been using it since the days they invented the internet).

[Human Paragon 3]

Just popping in to day "dark" and "gritty" don't have to mean low-magic. Think about today's world. We have technologies that would seem like magic to people in the past and we are richer than at any time. People with power are staggeringly powerful, but there are many parts of the world (most of it in fact) where things are very gritty, to put it mildly.

Wherever there is autocracy, plutocracy, despotism, and unrestrained capitalism there will be those with a lot and those with not much at all.

That includes magic. If you are a powerful organization or person, it behooves you to horde magic and its effects to yourself, to use it liberally to preserve your own power, and to tightly restrict who else can use it and for what. In such a world, although there may be MORE magic on the whole than default D&D, you'll find plenty of darkness, grimness, and suffering. The only limit is your imagination, and you don't even need to use much of it. Just look at the real world for inspiration.

[Yora]

To better clarify what I intended, I was aiming for something more "realistic" (think low-fantasy or early sword&sorcery) rather than emo-edgy. :P It's just that to me the more classical settings for D&D tend to feel... I don't know, maybe a bit childish? Morality is so clear-cut, generally: Good is here, Evil is there. No shades of gray, or not many at least. I'd like something more relatable than "stop the evil god plans campaign #317".

I think very little needs to be changed about the rules to run such a campaign. Alignment is pretty much no longer present in the game and nobody will notice if you don't use it. Though as I said, I think not using the higher level material that is in the books helps quite a bit to tone things down.

What makes a big difference for me is the selection in monsters. I am not using the demons and devils from the Monster Manual and other books because they seem way too much like humans with masks for my tastes. I only use yugoloths and even those I fluff up to be more alien and inhuman. (Arcanaloth and nycaloth particularly. Ultroloth and mezzoloth are already very inhuman.) Slaads would also be okay if you play up their alieness, but modrons feel too silly to me. I also don't use drow, since even though they were originally pretty good ideas, they have gained too much immature baggage with them that is difficult to untangle now.
The D&D idea of "pure evil" is a bit cartoony. Which I think is fully appropriate for the generic mainstream presentation for D&D, but for a more mature campaign it's insufficient and more a distraction than a help.

In the same way, I would consider creating a custom set of other planes where the otherworldly creatures of the campaign come from. There are already a large number of planes in the DMG and you can quickly and easily create something really solid by just using five or six of them to create your own planar setting. Using all the planes that exist makes things feel to orderly and artificial to me. Just using Outlands, Beastlands, Pandemonium, and Gehenna feels more believable to me.

[Maan]

Yup, I guess at least part of my "problem" (so to speak) with today D&D is with the power level.

I mean, high level characters have become more and more like fantasy superheroes and their enemies are otherwordly menaces... that yet feel far too "human". Sure, this is not Call of Cthulhu, but yet!
Of course there's nothing inherently wrong with that and such a game can be quite epic: to my taste though it does feel too much "cartoony". Really a bit like superheroes in different costumes.

I've read an article about this, on how old school fantasy like Conan was in many ways more "relatable": he did find monstrosities at literally every turn, but those were still enemies near to his own "scale". He could defeat them with just steel, or cunning, or at least try and run away from them. Scary, but still down-to-earth situations.
I think it's easier to get involved in a gaming moment when we are talking about a tense, dramatic scene that is still relatable to our experiences, rather than when you are a flying, energy bolt throwing epic hero fighting some arch-devil bent on devouring the whole world life force.

[Steel Mirror]

I think it's easier to get involved in a gaming moment when we are talking about a tense, dramatic scene that is still relatable to our experiences, rather than when you are a flying, energy bolt throwing epic hero fighting some arch-devil bent on devouring the whole world life force.I get where you are coming from. There are lots of good options for gaming on the more down-to-earth side of things, rather than superheroes in a midieval setting (though I do love me some of the latter, personally!).

One simple fix is to simply reign in the levels. Don't take the PCs up to 20th level, focus on the levels where the play experience more closely matches what you are looking for. Level 1 can be downright nasty, and all the way up to 10 or so the PCs feel powerful, but can still be meaningfully challenged just by hoards of low (like CR 1ish) level monsters, especially when circumstances or terrain places them at a disadvantage of some sort. I don't know if you are familiar with D&D 3.x E6, but if you aren't look that up, it might give you some ideas on how to run a game like that.

You can also just give them greater challenges than the DMG typically advises; a group of level 5 PCs that get 3 or 4 CR 4 encounters a day will feel like badasses, that same group that runs up against CR 6 and 7 or more encounters on a regular basis will be a lot more fidgety. That goes doubly when you can arrange it so that the PCs are fighting the monster on its turf and it presses the advantage for all its worth, so that encounters feel less like their numbers stacking up against its numbers and more like an actual encounter with something unpredictable and deadly.

Another fix is to simply go with a different system. I'm not saying D&D 5E can't do gritty, it absolutely can with some skillful GMing and atmosphere, but there are other systems that have the grit baked right in, so to speak. I don't have a lot of experience with those particularly, since when I'm looking for a system I tend to prefer more cinematic two-fisted adventure than gritty realism, so somebody else with first-hand experience will have to fill you in on the best choices there!

[Corsair14]

Look up Ravenloft, as opposed to Curse of Strahd. As said it is gothic horror but there are many realms to punish their dark lords which encompass many gothic horror tropes. You have Transylvania(Barovia in CoS) you have several Asian realms, fantasy New Orleans, a realm where Adam(Frankenstein's monster) wanders around, a realm of madness where nightmares come true, an entire rift where the Fae hold court and run wild, religion gone wild/burn the witches, and a whole bunch of others etc. The best part is the "natives" think everything is normal, most have never seen the super natural. For the most part the realms themselves are beautiful and vibrant more so than any normal world. But its just a hollow façade. Beneath is all the rot and evil that the Powers have created to torture the lord the realm imprisons. When the sun goes down the torches light up and the doors are locked to protect against the supernatural creatures and boogeymen the people just know are out there.

[ImproperJustice]

If you want to crib a setting with a fair degree of lore that falls outside D&D and is really, really dark, you could take a look at Pillars of Eternity.

The game has a fully fleshed out Lore mixed with some pretty dark and unsettling themes, centered around birth/rebirth and when wizards/ scientists mess up those cycles.
And at the same time, those responsible may be the only people able to solve the problem.

It has kind of a Children of Men vibe on a fantasy setting, where children’s bodies are being born without souls, because the deity in charge of such things was supposedly killed. Then there is all ammner of factional debate betweendesperate acared people trying to figure out solitions, vs. selfish power groups who just want to sieze power in the chaos, vs. those that want to burn all knowledge and everything associated with the the whole process.
And that’s a very cliff note interpretation.