i said something like i prefer a low fantasy milieu with and eye toward verisimilitude. i will add that dark is good, but grimdark is too far. i will add that a dm enumerating the ratio of oak to spruce to elm while describing the trees in the forest is also too far.
will you others write a bit about your preferred style?
Some of that is really setting, which for me is Eberron. It is a magic-as-technology setting, with magitech levels approximating real world tech in the late 19th and early 20th century. That's not the draw for me though, not directly. What got me hooked on it was the way everything in the setting fits together, it feels like a real place, much more than the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk. You still get dungeons as mythic underworld, beholders, vampires, liches, demons, etc., but you also get evil corporations, terrorists, multinational criminal syndicates and cold war intrigue. And the way alignment is mutable, and interacts with political objectives and moral compromises, and the way religions are faith based because the existence of the gods cannot be proven, makes it interesting to me.
The setting was intended to be a vehicle for Trad/Neotrad style games based in noir and pulp fiction, but I don't run Trad/Neotrad games, I'm more of an OSR-informed Classic guy myself. The underworld is, in myth, the body of a cosmic-sized evil dragon, the mother of all fiends, and includes any kind of demiplane you might want to put in there. So the idea of a dungeon that is literally trying to kill you, with doors that stick for you and open freely for monsters, and bizarre traps and "tricks" with seemingly no purpose, really fits in here. The aesthetic I'm going for in dungeons is "survival horror".
Outside of the dungeon there is just a ton of shit going on and I want players to engage with it. I actually don't get to run the world exactly the way I want, I have had to compromise because most of my players want more direction than I do when I'm a player. They also probably don't like it as dark as I do. I'm not grimdark, but I do like it gritty, especially in the cities. I lean a bit noir in the big cities. There can be hard choices, and not everything ends well.
I do a lot of converting and altering of old TSR modules. Right now I am about to start running a filled out version of the sample dungeon in the 1e DMG, which has hooks leading to N1. I've significantly modified the cult in N1 to match it to one of the in-setting cults, and linked that to a pregen cleric in case anyone wants to run him. After that, there will be an invitation from the Baron of Restinford, which may lead to L1 and will probably lead to L2 should they choose to take the hook.
The motivations of the factions in L2 (Assassin's Knot) I have significantly changed. I got rid of the goofy split personality cleric in love with the Baron's daughter. The assassin's guild I have made into a former special forces squad which was burned by the King's Citadel and is now subject to a kill order. They are laying low and getting by as smugglers. Baron Restinford's fief includes a preferred smuggling route, and the Baron's irritating efficiency is more or less shutting down the route. So they kill the Baron and his family, facilitate installing an ally as the new baron, and pin the murders on members of a relatively harmless political group that wants to abolish the monarchy.
The ex-SOF's customers are a terrorist group that actually wants to take down the monarchy, to whom the SOFs are peddling illegal weapons, poisons, etc. - I'm trying to come up with a really awful weapon of mass destruction, or maybe stuff like white phosphorus bullets. So a lot of the activity in the region comes from smuggling and terrorist activity. There are also orc, ogre and giant raiders from the mountains, and aberrant monsters from the Skyraker Forest.
Also, the sample dungeon is the site of a gate to the plain of Endless Night; the now-ruined abbey was the site of a long forgotten sect of monks who sealed the gate, and maintained the seals. With the monks gone, the seals are starting to weaken...
I don't care if people want to optimize their characters, but they have to do it in-world. You don't get to just "pick" your new feats, powers or spells when you level, you need to find someone to teach you, or some plausible way to figure it out on your own. There are local schools - gladiator schools and hedge wizards, for example - but they aren't necessarily on the cutting edge of martial discipline. So you might be seeking out a reclusive master, looking for a lost spellbook, or making a pact with a fiend.
Similarly, if you want a particular magic item, that's fine, you just need to figure out where it is (I'm converting the 1e sage rules and applying them to university professors) and go get it, dealing with any challenges along the way. Some kind of training and found gear will always be available, but if you want the good stuff, well that's a hook.
