The Grim North is Undergoing Redevelopment

Snow fight

In order to convey a more sword and sorcery feel to the Grim North I have been immersing myself in pulp fiction of late. So I have feasted on a steady literary diet of Howard, Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, with some Burroughs' Mars stuff thrown in and even choked down one of Lin Carter's Thongor books. I also overcame my constant battle to enjoy Moorcock and actually liked some Elric stories.

So as a result I began hacking away at what I had written down for the setting that I considered "genre D&D," such as demihumans and stock monsters straight out of the manual.

I'm also working on a reskin of the cleric as a mystic warrior as opposed to a knight of some divine power. I want to avoid that warm fuzzy feeling of "True Gods" in favour a cold sense of cosmic indifference.

Non warm and fuzzy

Basically anything that looks like it might have come from the Forgotten Realms has had the chop.

Into the mix are serpent men, beast men of all kinds, more barbarians, elephant headed space wizards, Lovecraftian entities, weird science, alien races and dinosaurs (if I can find a way to shoehorn them into a setting that is effectively subject to unending winter, something like Marvel's Savage Land I think.)

So this in definitely in...