Dark Sun
A campaing setting made for aD&D 2nd edition back in '90. There are 3e conversions approved by WotC, but they were never published as books or anything.
It's notable for being almost as grim as Warhammer 40k and definietly darker, since it has dark in its name.
Setting
The game is set in the world of Athas, a dying planet. Once full of happiness and sunshine, the planet was drained of all resources during the long and rich history the creators came up with. There is no water, no minerals and no hope, only cannibal halflings, a lot of sand and a dying sun.
Races
Most of the generic fantasy races were exterminated a long time ago, good riddance!
This means no gnomes! First reason why this setting is full of win and awesome.
- Halfling - Once fairly dominant culture as I recall, now they are cannibals living in jungles
- Elf - No forests for them, ha! They are desert nomads, thieving and grieving all the time.
- Dwarf - Almost typical dorfs, except they are bald and they are even more fixated on their stuff
- Mul - Half-dorfs! Second reason why this setting is full of win and awesome!
- Half-giant - Big bad meanies, whith lolrandom alignment
- Thri-Kreen - Sentient mantis. strange, scary folk
- Dray - Horribly deformed dragon-people created by one of the undead psychic dragon monsters that runs the planet.
- Aarakocra - Sentient birds, for those who don't want to play anything normal, but hate bugs or lizards.
- Human - Sentient halfling, only larger
Classes
- Clerics - there are no real gods in the setting, so most clerics worship elements or quasi-elements. Druids serve nature spirits or some other stupidity.
- Templars - they get their power from so called sorcerer-kings (dragon like people who rule cites now or whatever).
- Psionics - psionics are considered accepted and normal practices in this setting. In fact, every PC is guaranteed to have at least one psionic power!
- Wizards - two types exist in the setting, but everyone hates them both:
- defiler - evil mages, who suck out the life force of things.
- preservist - mages who are not manly enough to steal life force, so they sacrifice efficiency to keep the stuff around them alive. Unfortunately for them, the commoners think all wizards are the same.
External links
Darksun Wiki - a wiki almost as empty as this one