How to get the feel of a dark sword and sorcery setting? Rule changes?

[Rfkannen]

I've been working on a setting for a while now, it's a mix of innastrad, symbaroum, ravenloft, beowulf, the wardstone chronicles, And some Germanic folk lore.

The setting takes place in an endless dark woods filled with monsters, people huddle defenseless in small cities to try to fend off monsters. Adventurers are those few with streangth enough to survive the woods, and even they are feared, as anything that comes out of the woods is.


Pretty classic dark fantasy and sword and sorcery fair. The problem I've had is I'm not sure how to convey a sense of the themes.

Looking for ideas on how to convey the setting idea. Like variant rules (considering gritty realism and maybe sanity not sure) monsters to use, and stuff like that. Any general tips for running a game like this are also apreciated!

[Sorinth]

You shouldn't need sanity checks to get the feel of a dark world. In a lot of dark fantasy, magic is mostly a force for evil and/or comes at a cost. So although NPCs being suspicious of outsiders is a good start, you need to provide actual reasons beyond we don't trust strangers, that attitude needs to actually make sense and be the smart decision.

So I would probably modify most magic items I gave out so that they had small side effects/curses, and or be semi-evil. So lifestealing/poison stuff might be as is since they are semi-evil, but there would be things like the old mace of blood, where you have to coat the weapon in blood every day or it starts to lose it's power. A Berserker Axe, but allow the save every round you are berserk.

You don't want the drawback to be bad enough that the PCs won't use the item, but it should make it so that NPCs have a valid reason to never really trust anyone who uses such things. How can they ever trust the warrior who might kill his allies in a beserker rage? Can you trust the guy who coats his weapon in blood to only ever use the blood of animals/monsters? And so on.

To get the dark fantasy feel, it's mostly roleplay and providing information. For example, coming across the Berserker Axe and knowing the last person to use it killed his wife and kids in a Berserker rage drives home that dark feeling.


I'm not a huge fan of gritty realism, but one option to get something similar is to make long rests dependent on the quality of the campsite they find. So sleeping in a town works as normal, but when they are out adventuring they can make a survival check either while travelling or whenever they want to setup camp. If they pass the DC they find a good campsite and get the full benefits of a long rest, if they don't, then they only get the benefits of a short rest. This will encourage PCs to try and stick to the towns, which will be legitimate safe havens where they can properly recover, but also allows long rest classes a chance to regain abilities.

It can add an interesting RP situations if they "randomely" find these good campsites in the middle of the day rather then at the end of the day. The long rest characters might push to stop early and camp here, whereas the short rest characters might want to press on and not give up half a day. Additionally if most good campsites are already taken by a monster/animal it makes finding one an interesting decision point. They want the campsite to get their abilities back, but do they want to risk getting into a fight over it? This is especially true if the place is empty but has signs of being inhabited. Is it worth trying to rest in this empty cave that has orc graffiti, the orcs might return in the middle of the night?

It should be noted as early as 3rd level you get spells like Rope Trick that renders these campsite rules, so consider either banning, restricting, or changing these type of spells.

[Lorka]

I would use the grim and gritty resting options, I think thats what its called, where one nights sleep is short rest and a week long rest is a long rest.

I would also use the spell point system, but where long rest don't give points back, only sacrifice or some other ritual. Evil magic is a quick ritual involving sacrifice of sentients and good magic means a long ritual with sacrifice of animals and/or burning of expensive stuff.

Thats the major changes I would do if you want to stay with dnd 5e and still have it feel like dark S&S.

[Arkhios]

I just came up with this (might not be unique idea, but anyway):

Following the idea that magic use is considered "evil" and comes at a substantial cost, perhaps using spells would also sap the life force in some way. Maybe like this:

Every time you use a spell slot to cast a spell of 1st level or higher, roll a die equal to your hit die and take damage equal to that result. This damage can't be reduced in any way, unless you expend one hit die, in which case you avoid taking the damage.

This could work with the Gritty Realism variant for Rests to incentivize players to be careful with their spells; both because their resources are spread thin and because over use exacts a toll.

[Dork_Forge]

I just came up with this (might not be unique idea, but anyway):

Following the idea that magic use is considered "evil" and comes at a substantial cost, perhaps using spells would also sap the life force in some way. Maybe like this:

Every time you use a spell slot to cast a spell of 1st level or higher, roll a die equal to your hit die and take damage equal to that result. This damage can't be reduced in any way, unless you expend one hit die, in which case you avoid taking the damage.

This could work with the Gritty Realism variant for Rests to incentivize players to be careful with their spells; both because their resources are spread thin and because over use exacts a toll.

That'll lead to a bunch of dead casters very quickly or no casting besides cantrips, even if the casting doens't kill them it'll leave them in a vulnerable enough place that the combats surely will (faster if it's gritty realism timescales for rests).

For this kind of game I think you really are left with a few options: play it low level (sub 5th) or play it without full casters to keep things from being too grandiose/ridiculous. With the hp and spell scaling in 5e this kind of game isn't easy to pull off the feel of when the characters start ramping up in power.

[UnintensifiedFa]

If you don't like gritty realism as much, but would still like a balanced rest system that makes long stretches still feel exhausting, I've got a homebrew rule that can be fun to implement (be warned, it requires a bit more bookeeping than normal rests):

First, you eliminate short and long rests, they are replaced by a kind of intermediate rest. (Lort rest if you will). You can now divide all abilities into 3 categories.

1. 1: Abilities that recharge on a short rest. These fully recharge on a "lort" rest.
2. 2 Abilities that have 1 use per long rest. These are tricky, but I rule that once you use them, you must rest twice to regenerate them.
3. 3 Abilities with multiple uses per long rest. This is tougher, but as a general rule, I take 1/3rd, round up, and that's the number you regen per rest.

Hitpoints are regained via hit dice and hit dice regenerate 1/3rd (rounded up) of your total per rest. Spell slots are treated as either case 2 or 3, depending on how many of each level you have.


It's a bit clunky, and some things can be hard to administer, but as a whole, it creates a roughly equal balance between rest classes, while also eliminating that feeling that a long rest fully recovers anyone. There are lasting injuries this way, and if you are dropped to near zero hitpoints several times, you're going to feel a lot weaker without being fully crippled.

[Lupine]

A side note on the magic's cost. If you don't want to making casting be a default cost, you could allow the creature to take hit dice equal to the spell's level worth of damage, giving the spell additional power.

This "blood magic" would introduce some horror. You give certain monsters max hit points, and make them use blood magic every turn.

[VonKaiserstein]

Make magic use dangerous. Perhaps the source has become tainted, or the land is cursed, however you want to do it. Narrate it as some sort of visible sign of corruption, perhaps a discoloration spreading from a random body part, or the caster emitting ever increasing light.

Always let whatever spell they'd like work- but give it a chance for triggering the corruption, I'd say 5% per casting, an extra 5% per spell level, and make it only reset a portion after a long rest. Perhaps for the corruption summon a demon, starting a forest fire, blotting out all light for a time, raising all the dead in the area- make yourself a table of dark and vile calamities. Let your NPCs warn the party of what's going to happen, and keep the mechanics from them. You can even tie this to magical items and potions- perhaps potions of true casting, to negate any corruption, or areas that roil with terrible miasma and double the chance of calamities.

But if you do this, you're going to strongly encourage Rogues and Fighters- so you need to up the stakes for nonmagical combat as well. Use the death save permanent injury table, and consider using a critical hit table or lingering injury rule or two as well.

[Lupine]

Make magic use dangerous. Perhaps the source has become tainted, or the land is cursed, however you want to do it. Narrate it as some sort of visible sign of corruption, perhaps a discoloration spreading from a random body part, or the caster emitting ever increasing light.

Make wild magic zones that do bad things. I created a disease a while back that hammers spell casters who use spells near a corrupted wild magic zone.

NOTE: I made it obvious that this was likely to happen, and there are many solutions that did not include spells. the PCs liked the challenge

[Monster Manuel]

I would focus on The Woods as a setting, making them genuinely dangerous and creepy.

Some regional effects, similar to the Lair effects of a Legendary Creature would be a good place to start. Maybe some kind of global effect that makes it easy to get lost, or tempted towards some other goal while you;re in the woods. Basically, in good adaptations of Germanic folklore, "The Woods" are an allegory for uncertainty and personal identity crisis...a trip "through the woods" is a journey of self-discovery, and that discovery they come to at the end is often not a positive one. Mechanically, you can lean heavily into the thematic and background material in Curse of Strahd, that'll get you a good part of the way there.

Hags would be an excellent villain for your game. Maybe even make them not always adversaries; maybe the hags control some vital resource in the world, so they have to be bargained with, rather than just avoided our fought. These bargains should never be pleasant.

Lycanthropes also fit the mold pretty well. Fey type creatures would work, but they would have to be the darker, more threatening unseelie type fey. Pixies would not be cute little woodland people in acorn hats and leaf skirts, they would be sinister shadows in the woods that lure the unsuspecting traveler towards danger.

The gritty realism rules for healing are a good choice.

Any changes you make to the magic system, to make it more of a dark bargain than the mainline magic stuff, you have to be careful not to skew balance to far away from the spellcasting classes (if you care...it could be perfectly fine to weaken the spellcasting classes, just be aware that you;re doing it and it could have an impact on the way the group plays). For instance, you could have spellcasting be a horrifying glimpse into the darkness of the world, and each spell requires a roll in the optional Sanity rules. That would work, thematically, but you are seriously gimping the wizards and clerics of the world.

Maybe cosmetic changes, like a slight change to the components required for a spell, could work better with less balance impact. Say, maybe, the verbal components to a spell are unnatural and otherworldly, and people react accordingly. Maybe there is only one kind of Arcane Focus available, and it's controlled by the aforementioned Hags, and everyone knows it. No mechanical change, but using a wand tipped by the iron nail of an Annis Hag, while uttering syllables you should not be able to pronounce, could be all the change you need in order to get the right feel.

[Lupine]

Another thing to consider is making human life seem worthless. Part of what made Beowulf as bad ass as he was was that he fought Grendel naked. Grendel, who fought and killed armed human guards, eating them like popcorn. He took a person every night, and no one. no one could stop him. Until Beowulf.

Remember, the Heros should be the "Beowulfs" here (unless you're going for a horror theme, in which case, there are no beowulfs) So every time there is an interaction with mortals, it should be impressed on the players just how helpless the mortal settlements are. Sure, they have high walls, and great gaurds, but why bother? The monsters can come anyway.
Along that note, they may not even bother with walls: Bandits are not a worry. The bandits in the forest are long dead.

Small settlements don't exist. The monsters have taken the people long ago. But the ruins should be there (this is especially true if the forest is a recent change.)

The only mortal settlements will be absolute behemoths of construction and building. You see, when humans gather in huge numbers, the death of one or two per day isn't a significant number. But these numbers are absurdly large. So large that it will take massive amounts of architecture to support them. These gigantic cities might know about other cities, but anyone who has been to any of the other territories will be a rare find (and probably a criminal)

The people probably won't try to enforce borders, but maybe one of the cities has a huge population boom. Large enough that they can support a full army. Too large for their food supplies. This city would start forming an empire, or even create and enforce borders. This city, if it got large enough, could vanquish the forest form it's borders, and become a safe haven.
I think you can see I'm enjoying this.

Really, the best way to make this is to think about the changes that a death a day would make on the formation of human societies. I'll leave you to finish the thoughts.

[Keravath]

Most of the "feel" of any world is in the description and tone you use in describing it. It is in the minds of the players and doesn't need any sort of mechanical reinforcement.

Use dark and shadows in your descriptions. Play up the eerie dark and shadowy nature of the woods. Have the characters originate in a village. Describe how isolated the villages are buried deep in the woods surrounded by shadows and evergreens. The cold breeze that blows even on a warm summer day and how the sunlight never seems to penetrate when you are in the woods.

Villages are dreary, little or no color is used. Clearing enough of the woods to find room for planting crops is difficult and requires "sacrifices" .. maybe offerings of food? to the creatures of the woods who are never seen but the food is always gone in the morning.

There are small trails through the woods between villages, big enough for a mule and a pedler or two, never large enough for a wagon. Occasional pedlers come from the woods carrying some news and trade goods. They too make offerings for safe travels which sometimes work. They are never trusted since it is never clear whether they are fully human. Racism and mistrust are likely very common depending on the range of races allowed in your campaign.

However, none of this requires any mechanical changes, just how you describe it and how the characters interact with the world and NPCs. I'd avoid things like gritty realism to start with unless you prefer running a game with a slower pace - even then I would tend toward using the weekend and week concept with a long rest being a couple of days off and a short rest being overnight.

[Lupine]

Actually, this could sound a little weird, but when narrating, we tend to describe the light, and the colorful things in such. I challenge you to change that. Instead of describing the source of light, describe the shadows around it. Instead of describing the bright colors in the light, only describe the forms of things. talk about dim forms in the dark. Objects in the light? No, stick to the form, and try to be brief. Direct the focus to the darkness. This makes the narration more murky, rather than bright and wondrous.

Spoiler: An example

Show

A simple scene: huge cave room with a hole that lets light onto a tree. To the left, a statue of a dragon
"Light narration"
You enter from the passageway into a large room. In the center, a bright beam of light glimmers upon a small tree, which grows to catch the light. The condensation of the rocks in light scatter flecks of light around the room. A statue of a dragon stands, dimly lit against the cave wall, and the light casts an illusion that it's eyes glow against the dark.
"Dark narration"
You enter from a passageway into a large cavern, which is shrouded in shadow. The inky darkness is only violated by a single beam of light, which shows a twisted tree. To the left, the dim form of a dragon stands nearly invisible against the darkness, betrayed only by the fire like reflections on the statue's eyes

This is a slightly more extreme example, but it serves to show how a change of focus can have large effects. Notice how the "light narration" seems more wonderous, almost sacred. There's light of "god" shining through the rocks, and showing the tree, but in the "Dark narration" the light is more aggressive, almost like it is invading the all-pervading dark. Likewise with the dragon. In the first form, the dragon is obvious to be a statues, and is speckled with light. In the dark version, the dragon is initially not recognized to be a statue, and at first, the players will probably start reacting to the possibility of a dragon fight. They might even miss the statement that its a statue, and find out when they take a swing at it. This makes the statue more ominous, and makes the room feel murky and mildly dangerous, despite that the fact that the room carries no additional information.

Now, this doesn't mean that if the players ask about a color of something, you say "It's color is a last refuge against the darkness" Just the opposite. You give exactly what they ask for, and nothing else. For example, they ask about the tree, you might say, "its dark green tree." but if they ask about the statue, you might say "It is finely carved, and each scale is chipped out against the stone. This statue's quality leaves you wondering about the sculptor's interactions with dragons, for it seems almost perfect."

The difference here is how much you say in it. For things about light and color, you say it in the least amount of words necessary to convey the message. For things in the dark, you spend more time than normal, and leave open endings, which draw the audience to the things in the dark. As a result, they think more about the dark, and it makes the world darker.

[Dr. Cliché]

I've got one piece of advice that might seem slightly odd - it may be advisable to not make your world (or at least the civilised parts of it) too bleak or unpleasant.

Basically, at the end of the day, your players should still end up caring about this place and its people and want to save them.

With this sort of setting, you can easily go too far and make your world so bleak and miserable that the players simply don't think it's worth saving. Whatever their quest was supposed to be, it will probably turn into 'let's acquire Teleport or Plane Shift and go literally anywhere else'.