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A new DM once presented a problem: His players expected a Grim/Dark setting, but he wasn’t sure if he had the “guts” to kill off his player’s characters. He was, therefore, curious to see if there was any way he could still have that setting, but without all the PC murder… It’s certainly a good question: How does one create a grim/dark setting while still retaining that low-mortality, long-form RP narrative style? Are soft-hearted DMs just out of luck?

Not exactly. As a Dungeon Master who has killed very few PCs in my entire DMing carrier, I still have players who tell me that my settings kept them up at night. So then, how do I keep my soft-chewy center so hidden? Here are a few suggestions that will help you build your world without the seemingly obligatory PC killing. And, if you don’t mind killing PCs, all the better! Implement these suggestions and you’ll have their characters begging they were never born it will be fun fun fun! Disclaimer: Although not technically a wholly grim/dark setting, I will be using some examples from Matt Mercer’s campaigns. Any spoilers that may come from these mentions will be marked accordingly.

How to build Grim/Dark settings…minus the PC Murder.

1) No NPC is Safe

Adopting the “no npc is safe” rule is probably the quickest route to instilling that sense of dread at the table. Showcasing the dangers of the world with early non-player character deaths will make your players paranoid, and push them to fix problems as quickly as possible, lest they lose their best blacksmith, their crime boss, their favorite temple cleric, the little girl who always waves at them when they go to buy supplies… 

To avoid feeling bad for killing NPCs, they must be designed to be expendable. Now, don’t get me wrong, this can be hard at first, but creating them with the express expectation that they will most likely die can help softy DMs prepare. A fair warning: There is a fine line between necessary and unnecessary NPC slaughter. You don’t want to overdo it, or your players might catch on. You have to be careful, making sure that the death is contextualized in a realistic situation, and that there is still some room for player intervention. You never want to completely remove player-agency. You may plan the death of many NPCs by tying them into plot points/campaign events, and when they don’t die, you can secretly feel warm and fuzzy inside. You’ll find that most DMs tend to do the opposite: They make all NPCs crucial parts of the story, grow to love them, and then get pissy when they get killed. You can still grow to love them…but you also need to know when it’s time to murder the things you’ve loved like your own kin let go… Examples: One DM who I think pulls off this strategy is Matthew Mercer, DM for Critical Role. The show itself has a two-sided reputation: It has its soft-hearted, funny, slice-of-life moments, and then it has situations that feel like they’ve been taken out of a Game of Thrones episode. However, unlike Game of Thrones, Matt hasn’t desensitized his audience. He kills NPCs just enough to remind his players that it’s possible, while still doing it infrequently enough that it retains that shock factor. In episode 39-41 of Critical Role’s first campaign (Spoilers ahead) Matt Mercer showcased his lack of any fear in destroying everything he has created. With four ancient dragons, he not only executed hoards of innocent NPCs in numerous cities, but he killed some important ones as well. This successfully instilled a sense of urgency in his players, prompting them to search for other NPCs and ultimately saving Gilmore from a narrative fork that Matt later revealed: They either found him in time, or delayed and found him dead. (Spoilers for ep 39-41 end here). In episode 51 of Critical Role’s second campaign (Spoilers ahead), Matt showed off his skills with a much quicker, albeit effective example of expectation setting, showcasing just how dangerous Xhorhas truly is. Not only did he murder a bunch of friendly rangers (minutes after the party had them) with world-building enemy magic, but he immediately followed the encounter with a potentially deadly encounter, by displaying the quick deaths of Bugbears by the claws of a 60ft roc, teaching his players that they needed to treat these “Mad Maxian” badlands with far more caution than they had in previous situations, potentially avoiding unwanted PC deaths in the process. (Spoilers for ep 51 end here).

2) Look for Inspiration in Media

Literature is filled with juicy ideas for your grim/dark setting. You’re going to want to brush up on your post-apocalyptic tales, and stories that were a critique of the status quo, particularly those written by old white men that you “read” in high school. Granted, many stories that are part of these genres are based in the future, but these stories can be adapted to fit a medieval/renaissance setting. For instance, in George Orwell’s book 1984, the region was ruled by various tyrannical and ever watching ministries, keeping the poor weak and ignorant, oppressing and carefully monitoring the middle class, and pampering the rich. In Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle, work conditions were so poor and gruesome in the factory settings that people were losing limbs, children were being eaten by rats, and adults were being overworked into madness. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, censorship was so prevalent that all books were being burned, causing certain stories to literally be lost forever. 

Not a big reader? Just go onto the first page of your favorite World News channel and start taking notes: Rich companies dumping their toxic waste into local town’s drinking water? Check. Authoritarian regimes separating refugee children from their parents? Check. Countries censoring all media to hide the corruption of their own government at the expense of their citizens? Check. Organizations whose sole profit is the buying and selling of people and their organs? Check!

Fair Warning: When using real-world events, do so tactfully. Always be aware of the temperaments and opinions of your players, lest you accidentally hurt or insult someone in the process. Playing out social/political themes can be fun in games, but only if your players consent to that brand of storytelling. Having regions in your world function in this manner can grant your players an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. It will make them want to safeguard and protect anything that allows them to stay-afloat: a book, an NPC, an organization, even if it might be dangerous. Some would be willing to lose it all to protect a worthless little tavern with an anti-scrying charm so they can continue to organize their rebellion, hide refugees, heal the injured so you can kill them all when they’re all gathered in one place…

3. Make your players question their morality at all times.

Creating that sense of dread goes far beyond raw and dangerous settings. One of the best ways to make players truly fear every single decision they ever make in the world is to instill in them a fear from which they cannot escape: themselves. If you have players question their own morality, it will make that decision making feel all the more relevant, bringing weight and consequence to an otherwise hack-and-slash reality. One of the simplest ways of doing this is to expose your players to the raw suffering of their enemies: have baddies beg for mercy, cry for their mother, scream that they have a child right before the killing blow. Here: Which situation do you believe causes more existential dread? This?  DM: How do you kill him? Paladin: I chop his head down the middle! He killed that poor librarian. DM: You raise up your sword and cleave off half his face, causing his limp body to crumple to the ground. OR this DM: As you raise up your sword to slice his head in two, the thug screams out “They have my son Sa-” but the deed is done. The left side of his face is cleaved off, and you are left there panting. Food for thought, I hope. But setting up difficult moral decisions can go far beyond giving the “enemies” a personality. Staging situations where there is no wholly positive outcome is often enough to get your players questioning their role in the world. Have enough moral ambiguity and even Rainbow Happy Land will feel grim and uncertain. Fair warning: You don’t want all decisions to be incredibly difficult or your players might start getting frustrated and feel trapped by their real or perceived lack of player agency, which can often lead to rage quitting. Besides, you want some good and easy things thrown in there to make the very tough decisions all that more daunting.

Example:  During one of my campaigns, the party suspected the daughter of the priest to be a hag, but the only way to be certain was to either to wait for her to transform on her 13th bday in 3 days, and risk dealing with a full coven, or… burn her at a ritual stake and force and early transformation. The tragic dilemma was that the little girl had no idea she was a hag.  They argued for hours on what they needed to do. She screamed bloody murder till the very end. One of my players cried he was so conflicted. He shifted from CN to NG. Another player shifted from LG to CE. But hey, at least none of them died, right?

Now you may be familiar with the bean or d20 method, and its a nice method, but I find it sometimes can be odd with its landmassed and the beans can scatter too randomly.

So I present you the tangerine method:

Peel a tangerine then use the pieces how they peel off and arrange them into landmasses of your choosing as above and voila here's your new campaign world.

Hello all! I made an uncommon magic item list for all your dming needs. Click because tumblr killed the quality.