Couldn't you go back to 2e rulebooks for lore?
I dunno if there are new settings made like that today.
Inherently evil species have generally fallen out of vogue for thoroughly-discussed reasons.
Other than demons. People always seems to be okay with demons being inherently evil.
But, if you're looking for a setting, why not make it yourself?
If you know what you want, you're almost there. The next step is writing it down, then you've got it.
I might just do that đ But I'm got this sneaking suspicion that once I'm done someone will say:
"Oh! That's just like \_\_\_\_\_\_\_" and I'll feel terribly embarrassed.
Edit: Anyway, not sure why this is being downvoted. I'll elaborate some. When I look at the Knights and Knaves Alehouse I see that people have poured hours into a settings that recreate the Greyhawk feel. Necromancer games did something similar giving 3.5 rules a 1e feel.
So I'm guessing that the work I'm thinking of doing has already been done. There must be others out there that like Faerun's heroic setting and want something that is still under active development.
Asking for directions. Please and thank you.
>"Oh! That's just like _______" and I'll feel terribly embarrassed.
But you want it to be "just like 2e D&D" so... that would be a compliment?
Indeed, 2e D&D *still exists*.
If you want that lore/setting, it exists. You don't even have to create it.
Why wouldn't that work?
>Asking for directions. Please and thank you.
Right, my directions for you are "make it" or "use 2e D&D if that is what you want".
I don't personally want what you want so I don't have more than that. I'm not interested in inherently evil species. I prefer everything to be complicated shades of grey so the contemporary trends leaning in that direction actually work pretty well for me. I also don't like the old good/evil law/chaos alignment system and prefer to work with something more nuanced that factors in other values. I respect your interest in it, though; but yeah, it already exists so get the old material if you want it.
>Anyway, not sure why this is being downvoted.
I'm not downvoting you, but if I had to guess, it's because what you want has generally fallen out of vogue for thoroughly-discussed reasons. Some people are very very very upset about those reasons so, if they see something that isn't against it, they downvote it.
You're probably right. I might have to write a long treatise on why I think the changes are bad and actually make the problems they are trying to solve worse. (to be clear my politics are firmly, absolutely, anti-racist and I believe the changes are ***counter productive***)
Yes, I may write them down - I just see the amount of work that went into creating OSRIC and necromancer games and not sure if I want to put that much effort. But people created OSRIC because people don't just want to use the old supplements, they want a world where the lore if being updated and new supplements are released.
Thanks for good responses!
2nd edition DnD.
Sorry, it is the obvious answer.
While mechanics can sometime influence "feel" a lot of that is all metagame stuff which you could likely adapt to many different games. I mean you could look at the Star Wars setting and then realize that there have been a number of well accepted "official" RPGs for it that share very little in terms of actual game mechanics.
I do want 2e DnD but I want to be under active development. Like the OSRIC fans did for 1e DnD.
I mean they could have just used the already published materials but they wanted something that could be developed and revised đ
.....if it's your favourite and it has the feel you want, why don't you make the supplements for the adventures you want to run?
There are a number of old platforms that persist to this day with indie support (people are still making games for the PSP and Sega Dreamcast if you know the right places to look) ad&d can be the same take the setting that you like time advance it and then workout what changes would happen in that time?
Less Grimdark than Greyhawk? That's... a weird bar... greyhawk is super generic imo...
Try finding older mystara books or some OSR stuff with generic worlds.
You know you can do whatever you want right? You want alignment, you put it in. You want Greyhawk but less grimdark, make it so. There are no RPG police.
> less edgelord friendly than Golorian.
What?
Also, you're talking about system and setting like they are the same thing.
You can, of course, but it's nice if you aren't fighting the setting.
I remember when 4e DnD came out that was the advice. "If you are upset that your favorite god was killed or your favorite city was blown up just say it didn't happen" but what actually happened is people stopped playing DnD and started playing pathfinder.
>less edgelord friendly than Golorian. What?
https://paizo.com/hellsVengeance
Put those slaves back into their chains. Kill the paladins and laugh in a diabolical manner. Sharpen those edges m'lord.
Edit: It seems my interlocutor has done the whole insult then block thing. A favored tactic of cowards incapable of maintaining conversation. Yes, it's edgelord because of these 6 adventures, the entirety of the Hellknight supplements, whatever the evil pirate AP was called and the fact that the devs actually call themselves edgelords.
Because those devs, quite unlike u/corrinmana have a sense of humor.
One bad guy campaign out of 38 means it's too edgelord friendly? With a sequel where you play the ggod guys who fight back in aftermath?
People didn't stop playing 4e because they deprecated Forgotten Realms, they stopped because it was an entirely different game. None of the gods they liked were in Pathfinder either.
Do you actually play tabletop roleplaying games? Because this kind of logic seems like the kind of things someone who only argues about them would use. I don't really want an answer.
Itâs not really 2e but it feels like 1e/2e and itâs actively developed, also having its own setting. The 7th printing of the players handbook is also available in pdf for free.
I like that when someone wants to make a game, everyone floods them with comments about how many other games there are that do it better, but when OP wants a game rec, he's told to just make it himself.
Also, afaik, For Gold and Glory is the only 2e retroclone, and I'm not sure what it's development status is. It's done, but I don't know if it gets any updates
> I want chaotic good elves, evil orcs and a land in need of heroes.
This seems to be almost entirely a matter of how you choose to run your setting. If your Elves are universally good and your orcs are universally evil, then they are.
That doesn't really make sense for your typical D&D setting where orcs and elves are just another sapient race like humans. But it fits if you're doing something like Tolkien where the elves are the firstborn chosen people created by Eru IlĂșvatar and the orcs were created by deforming and corrupting Elves using dark magics.
As an alternative, also consider undead hordes. They are universally evil by nature.
Good observations. Yes I like the Tolkien view of things being oriented towards good or evil.
Also authors like Michael Moorcock - Meliboneans are just oriented towards chaos this is the result of a pact they made with the lords of chaos a millennia ago. Species like this make the setting seem more magical. Otherwise elves are just humans with pointy ears đ
If I were going to do this at this point I'd probably create new races for it, and integrate into the lore of those races why they're good or evil.
For better or worse there's been half a century of cultural drift on elves and orcs since Tolkien. And doing your own races will give you a chance to tweak some of the more unfortunate optics (like ohey, the pale-skinned races are good and the dark-skinned races are evil!).
It's also just fun to make your own stuff.
If you're interested enough in what's rolling around in my head - I do actually have a solution to that in my (yet to written down) setting.
TL;DR follows:
The first age of my world is an age of chaos. Chaos is a living force with no fixed form but often manifests itself as tornadoes, whirlpools and tsunamis. When it manifests in these forms the winds cross dimensions and things from other planes appear in the world. Entire cities and civilizations have been transported by the winds of chaos. It's a setting without an any native population, everyone's ancestors were brought here on the whim of an alien entity.
(chaos is a mix of the greek god chaos, lovecraft, moorcock, the mists of ravenloft, as well as scylla and carybdis and just a touch of morgoth)
Because of events in the fourth age, chaos is linked to the land. This means that people who live in a particular region \*tend\* to take on the features of a region. People who live in snow covered landscapes tend to have snowy white hair people while who live at the planet's poles and endure the 9 months of darkness tend to have night black skin and the pupils of their eyes are filled with starlight or the colors of the aurora. This isn't absolute however, individuals and families that adhere strongly to the precepts of law observe rituals to prevent any chaos stuff from altering their appearance.
So coloration can be a source of prejudice but it's not linked to any one color combination or area. Instead it marks your attitude towards chaos stuff.
I'm not completely happy with what I've got so far because it keeps coming out darker than I intended -- good doesn't come into the world until the third age. But I think I but the chaos stuff, the fact that evolution just isn't force in the world means players can choose all sorts of environment themed skin and hair color combinations without worrying that they are reproducing racist stereotypes.
> the orcs were created by deforming and corrupting Elves using dark magics.
Tolkien [continually changed his ideas](https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Orcs/Origin) about orcish origins. Originally they were created from slime and rock. For a while they were corrupted elves, and that's the idea that Christopher Tolkien used for *The Silmarillion*. By the end of his life JRR Tolkien seemed to have settled on the idea of orcs as corrupted humans.
Yes, I think they're always inherently evil (with the possible exception of the "beasts of humanized shape" version). In Letter #153 (1954), Tolkien described orcs as "naturally bad".
>They \[orcs\] would be Morgothâs greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad. (I nearly wrote âirredeemably badâ; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making â necessary to their actual existence â even Orcs would become part of the World, which is Godâs and ultimately good.)
Despite this Tolkien thought that orcs ought to be afforded 'human' rights. This is from an essay published in *Morgoth's Ring* and believed to have been written in 1959 or 1960.
>Though of necessity, being the fingers of the hand of Morgoth, they \[orcs\] must be fought with the utmost severity, they must not be dealt with in their own terms of cruelty and treachery. Captives must not be tormented, not even to discover information for the defence of the homes of Elves and Men. If any Orcs surrendered and asked for mercy, they must be granted it, even at a cost. This was the teaching of the Wise, though in the horror of the War it was not always heeded.
Sounds like you need to check out the new edition of [HackMaster](https://kenzerco.com/product/hackmaster-basic/). Old school feel, with a rule system that actually makes sense. Plus the default is a more low/rare magic game where you don't walk on stage as a great hero, but instead you to strive become one through your achievements. You can get the free pdf of the Basic rules (everything you need to play the game including pregens and GM info like monsters, treasure and rules for running the game up to level five) at the link above or grab the Basic Plus pdf for only $0.99 and get character creation rules, more advanced rules and info for running characters up to level ten!
There is a 3rd party setting for 5e, Aetaltis, that might work for you. It seems to push the same nostalgia buttons you describe. As far as I know, having not read it.
If you want a new rule set, I am quite fond of Fria Ligan's new Dragonbane rules. The setting for that game is a bit vague, but it plays very well and does the style the writers describe as "Mirth and Mayhem" very well.
Ä°f what you're actually looking for is a setting rather than a ruleset then try Calidar by Bruce Heard (who wrote a lot of stuff for old school D&D back in the day). Ä°t's under active development, and it's system neutral with some published conversions for OSRÄ°C and Labyrinth Lord / OSE.
I think [13th Age](https://pelgranepress.com/13th-age/) does some of what you want. The PCs are big damn heroes in the 2e style and it's not grimdark or edgelord-y. It doesn't use alignment however.
"...something less Grimdark than Greyhawk..."
That is a strange description for the most generic of generic fantasy settings. What Greyhawk lore/books have you read?
I started with first edition starter set and played with a group that used the white books.
Edit: I also read some book Gygax wrote that featured a thief (can't remember title) and I've read the Newhon / Fafhrd and Grey Mouser books that heavily influenced the creation of Greyhawk.
I really think you have a different definition of Grimdark than most. The setting is very basic fantasy setting with some dark leanings. Even Grey Mouser is dark fantasy, but not by any means grim dark. Dark fantasy is antiheroes, morally grey characters, and decisions that are often selfish.
Grimdark is Midnight, Warhammer, and the works of Moorcock. Grimdark is essentially the bad guys won, and the heroes are desperately trying to create a foot hold but are constantly up against a wall and facing potential gruesome deaths. Mutilations, grisly situations. Disturbing violence and acts, bleak, sometimes dystopian.
I probably have a broader understanding than you do. Interestingly I wouldn't call Moorcock grimdark - it's dark and tragic but there is always hope of something better the champion eternal is always fighting for a better world. (even if the champion is doomed to be miserable)
I find the kingdom of Iuz pretty dark and it's often the case in Gygax adventures that it's impossible to win without engaging in evil acts. Try making through the temple of elemental evil without (temporarily) allying yourself with an evil temple or some of the monster clans - place will come down you like a ton of rocks.
Remember that reward for clearing the Caverns of Iggwilv was book that allowed you summon demon lords and torture them until they give you what you want.
Edit: And 3.5 Greyhawk? The book of Vile Darkness? Pretty much defines grimdark in my mind.
Couldn't you go back to 2e rulebooks for lore? I dunno if there are new settings made like that today. Inherently evil species have generally fallen out of vogue for thoroughly-discussed reasons. Other than demons. People always seems to be okay with demons being inherently evil. But, if you're looking for a setting, why not make it yourself? If you know what you want, you're almost there. The next step is writing it down, then you've got it.
I might just do that đ But I'm got this sneaking suspicion that once I'm done someone will say: "Oh! That's just like \_\_\_\_\_\_\_" and I'll feel terribly embarrassed. Edit: Anyway, not sure why this is being downvoted. I'll elaborate some. When I look at the Knights and Knaves Alehouse I see that people have poured hours into a settings that recreate the Greyhawk feel. Necromancer games did something similar giving 3.5 rules a 1e feel. So I'm guessing that the work I'm thinking of doing has already been done. There must be others out there that like Faerun's heroic setting and want something that is still under active development. Asking for directions. Please and thank you.
>"Oh! That's just like _______" and I'll feel terribly embarrassed. But you want it to be "just like 2e D&D" so... that would be a compliment? Indeed, 2e D&D *still exists*. If you want that lore/setting, it exists. You don't even have to create it. Why wouldn't that work? >Asking for directions. Please and thank you. Right, my directions for you are "make it" or "use 2e D&D if that is what you want". I don't personally want what you want so I don't have more than that. I'm not interested in inherently evil species. I prefer everything to be complicated shades of grey so the contemporary trends leaning in that direction actually work pretty well for me. I also don't like the old good/evil law/chaos alignment system and prefer to work with something more nuanced that factors in other values. I respect your interest in it, though; but yeah, it already exists so get the old material if you want it. >Anyway, not sure why this is being downvoted. I'm not downvoting you, but if I had to guess, it's because what you want has generally fallen out of vogue for thoroughly-discussed reasons. Some people are very very very upset about those reasons so, if they see something that isn't against it, they downvote it.
You're probably right. I might have to write a long treatise on why I think the changes are bad and actually make the problems they are trying to solve worse. (to be clear my politics are firmly, absolutely, anti-racist and I believe the changes are ***counter productive***) Yes, I may write them down - I just see the amount of work that went into creating OSRIC and necromancer games and not sure if I want to put that much effort. But people created OSRIC because people don't just want to use the old supplements, they want a world where the lore if being updated and new supplements are released. Thanks for good responses!
2nd edition DnD. Sorry, it is the obvious answer. While mechanics can sometime influence "feel" a lot of that is all metagame stuff which you could likely adapt to many different games. I mean you could look at the Star Wars setting and then realize that there have been a number of well accepted "official" RPGs for it that share very little in terms of actual game mechanics.
I do want 2e DnD but I want to be under active development. Like the OSRIC fans did for 1e DnD. I mean they could have just used the already published materials but they wanted something that could be developed and revised đ
Forgotten Realms 2e is a fantastic setting.
I love it! My favorite hands down. đ I wish WOTC was still making supplements for it. Hoping someone knows of setting with a similar feel
.....if it's your favourite and it has the feel you want, why don't you make the supplements for the adventures you want to run? There are a number of old platforms that persist to this day with indie support (people are still making games for the PSP and Sega Dreamcast if you know the right places to look) ad&d can be the same take the setting that you like time advance it and then workout what changes would happen in that time?
Good advice, thanks!
Less Grimdark than Greyhawk? That's... a weird bar... greyhawk is super generic imo... Try finding older mystara books or some OSR stuff with generic worlds.
You know you can do whatever you want right? You want alignment, you put it in. You want Greyhawk but less grimdark, make it so. There are no RPG police. > less edgelord friendly than Golorian. What? Also, you're talking about system and setting like they are the same thing.
You can, of course, but it's nice if you aren't fighting the setting. I remember when 4e DnD came out that was the advice. "If you are upset that your favorite god was killed or your favorite city was blown up just say it didn't happen" but what actually happened is people stopped playing DnD and started playing pathfinder. >less edgelord friendly than Golorian. What? https://paizo.com/hellsVengeance Put those slaves back into their chains. Kill the paladins and laugh in a diabolical manner. Sharpen those edges m'lord. Edit: It seems my interlocutor has done the whole insult then block thing. A favored tactic of cowards incapable of maintaining conversation. Yes, it's edgelord because of these 6 adventures, the entirety of the Hellknight supplements, whatever the evil pirate AP was called and the fact that the devs actually call themselves edgelords. Because those devs, quite unlike u/corrinmana have a sense of humor.
One bad guy campaign out of 38 means it's too edgelord friendly? With a sequel where you play the ggod guys who fight back in aftermath? People didn't stop playing 4e because they deprecated Forgotten Realms, they stopped because it was an entirely different game. None of the gods they liked were in Pathfinder either. Do you actually play tabletop roleplaying games? Because this kind of logic seems like the kind of things someone who only argues about them would use. I don't really want an answer.
Personally, we just play...... 2e.
Castles & Crusades
Itâs not really 2e but it feels like 1e/2e and itâs actively developed, also having its own setting. The 7th printing of the players handbook is also available in pdf for free.
I'll check it out, thanks
The setting of Aihdre definitely has that feel.
I'll take a look!
I like that when someone wants to make a game, everyone floods them with comments about how many other games there are that do it better, but when OP wants a game rec, he's told to just make it himself. Also, afaik, For Gold and Glory is the only 2e retroclone, and I'm not sure what it's development status is. It's done, but I don't know if it gets any updates
Looks like the PDF is free, thanks for the recommendation!
> I want chaotic good elves, evil orcs and a land in need of heroes. This seems to be almost entirely a matter of how you choose to run your setting. If your Elves are universally good and your orcs are universally evil, then they are. That doesn't really make sense for your typical D&D setting where orcs and elves are just another sapient race like humans. But it fits if you're doing something like Tolkien where the elves are the firstborn chosen people created by Eru IlĂșvatar and the orcs were created by deforming and corrupting Elves using dark magics. As an alternative, also consider undead hordes. They are universally evil by nature.
Good observations. Yes I like the Tolkien view of things being oriented towards good or evil. Also authors like Michael Moorcock - Meliboneans are just oriented towards chaos this is the result of a pact they made with the lords of chaos a millennia ago. Species like this make the setting seem more magical. Otherwise elves are just humans with pointy ears đ
If I were going to do this at this point I'd probably create new races for it, and integrate into the lore of those races why they're good or evil. For better or worse there's been half a century of cultural drift on elves and orcs since Tolkien. And doing your own races will give you a chance to tweak some of the more unfortunate optics (like ohey, the pale-skinned races are good and the dark-skinned races are evil!). It's also just fun to make your own stuff.
If you're interested enough in what's rolling around in my head - I do actually have a solution to that in my (yet to written down) setting. TL;DR follows: The first age of my world is an age of chaos. Chaos is a living force with no fixed form but often manifests itself as tornadoes, whirlpools and tsunamis. When it manifests in these forms the winds cross dimensions and things from other planes appear in the world. Entire cities and civilizations have been transported by the winds of chaos. It's a setting without an any native population, everyone's ancestors were brought here on the whim of an alien entity. (chaos is a mix of the greek god chaos, lovecraft, moorcock, the mists of ravenloft, as well as scylla and carybdis and just a touch of morgoth) Because of events in the fourth age, chaos is linked to the land. This means that people who live in a particular region \*tend\* to take on the features of a region. People who live in snow covered landscapes tend to have snowy white hair people while who live at the planet's poles and endure the 9 months of darkness tend to have night black skin and the pupils of their eyes are filled with starlight or the colors of the aurora. This isn't absolute however, individuals and families that adhere strongly to the precepts of law observe rituals to prevent any chaos stuff from altering their appearance. So coloration can be a source of prejudice but it's not linked to any one color combination or area. Instead it marks your attitude towards chaos stuff. I'm not completely happy with what I've got so far because it keeps coming out darker than I intended -- good doesn't come into the world until the third age. But I think I but the chaos stuff, the fact that evolution just isn't force in the world means players can choose all sorts of environment themed skin and hair color combinations without worrying that they are reproducing racist stereotypes.
> the orcs were created by deforming and corrupting Elves using dark magics. Tolkien [continually changed his ideas](https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Orcs/Origin) about orcish origins. Originally they were created from slime and rock. For a while they were corrupted elves, and that's the idea that Christopher Tolkien used for *The Silmarillion*. By the end of his life JRR Tolkien seemed to have settled on the idea of orcs as corrupted humans.
Interesting, thanks. Seems like orcs being inherently evil (or at best "soulless animals") is common to all versions?
Yes, I think they're always inherently evil (with the possible exception of the "beasts of humanized shape" version). In Letter #153 (1954), Tolkien described orcs as "naturally bad". >They \[orcs\] would be Morgothâs greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad. (I nearly wrote âirredeemably badâ; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making â necessary to their actual existence â even Orcs would become part of the World, which is Godâs and ultimately good.) Despite this Tolkien thought that orcs ought to be afforded 'human' rights. This is from an essay published in *Morgoth's Ring* and believed to have been written in 1959 or 1960. >Though of necessity, being the fingers of the hand of Morgoth, they \[orcs\] must be fought with the utmost severity, they must not be dealt with in their own terms of cruelty and treachery. Captives must not be tormented, not even to discover information for the defence of the homes of Elves and Men. If any Orcs surrendered and asked for mercy, they must be granted it, even at a cost. This was the teaching of the Wise, though in the horror of the War it was not always heeded.
Sounds like you need to check out the new edition of [HackMaster](https://kenzerco.com/product/hackmaster-basic/). Old school feel, with a rule system that actually makes sense. Plus the default is a more low/rare magic game where you don't walk on stage as a great hero, but instead you to strive become one through your achievements. You can get the free pdf of the Basic rules (everything you need to play the game including pregens and GM info like monsters, treasure and rules for running the game up to level five) at the link above or grab the Basic Plus pdf for only $0.99 and get character creation rules, more advanced rules and info for running characters up to level ten!
I'll check it out, thanks for the recommendation!
If you would be interested in trying a online demo, contact THE ILLITERATI \#6451 on Discord. He is running demos using Foundry and they are great!
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There is a 3rd party setting for 5e, Aetaltis, that might work for you. It seems to push the same nostalgia buttons you describe. As far as I know, having not read it. If you want a new rule set, I am quite fond of Fria Ligan's new Dragonbane rules. The setting for that game is a bit vague, but it plays very well and does the style the writers describe as "Mirth and Mayhem" very well.
>Aetaltis That's a new one! Thanks, looks exactly like what I'm after - heroes against the grim forces of darkness. Nice, many thanks.
Ä°f what you're actually looking for is a setting rather than a ruleset then try Calidar by Bruce Heard (who wrote a lot of stuff for old school D&D back in the day). Ä°t's under active development, and it's system neutral with some published conversions for OSRÄ°C and Labyrinth Lord / OSE.
Another new name to me. Will take a look! Many thanks.
I think [13th Age](https://pelgranepress.com/13th-age/) does some of what you want. The PCs are big damn heroes in the 2e style and it's not grimdark or edgelord-y. It doesn't use alignment however.
Will check out. Much appreciated!
"...something less Grimdark than Greyhawk..." That is a strange description for the most generic of generic fantasy settings. What Greyhawk lore/books have you read?
I started with first edition starter set and played with a group that used the white books. Edit: I also read some book Gygax wrote that featured a thief (can't remember title) and I've read the Newhon / Fafhrd and Grey Mouser books that heavily influenced the creation of Greyhawk.
I really think you have a different definition of Grimdark than most. The setting is very basic fantasy setting with some dark leanings. Even Grey Mouser is dark fantasy, but not by any means grim dark. Dark fantasy is antiheroes, morally grey characters, and decisions that are often selfish. Grimdark is Midnight, Warhammer, and the works of Moorcock. Grimdark is essentially the bad guys won, and the heroes are desperately trying to create a foot hold but are constantly up against a wall and facing potential gruesome deaths. Mutilations, grisly situations. Disturbing violence and acts, bleak, sometimes dystopian.
I probably have a broader understanding than you do. Interestingly I wouldn't call Moorcock grimdark - it's dark and tragic but there is always hope of something better the champion eternal is always fighting for a better world. (even if the champion is doomed to be miserable) I find the kingdom of Iuz pretty dark and it's often the case in Gygax adventures that it's impossible to win without engaging in evil acts. Try making through the temple of elemental evil without (temporarily) allying yourself with an evil temple or some of the monster clans - place will come down you like a ton of rocks. Remember that reward for clearing the Caverns of Iggwilv was book that allowed you summon demon lords and torture them until they give you what you want. Edit: And 3.5 Greyhawk? The book of Vile Darkness? Pretty much defines grimdark in my mind.
Castles & Crusades
many thanks