I just finished a session of the second campaign I'm running (alternating every other sunday) and having listened to the podcast on grit recently I realized that my campaign worlds are usually pretty gritty.
But not gritty in the way that you have to struggle uphill to make sure your grandma doesn't waste her social security.
You see its a part of my style to set the PC's up to be a part of a really epic tale. And maybe that in itself is a nice subject to analyze in gamology. But more of that later and/or in another thread.
That sunday's campaign world is a relatively small empire, a theocracy made up of a group of large islands/small continents floating in a sea of clouds. Where one god (Amon-Re) made this world and the empire that rules that world. At least thats what everyone believed in the beginning.
The truth is radically diffrent. There are more of these groups of islands. But these groups are so far apart that the dirrigibles cannot reach that distance.
There used to be a network of magical portals linking the diffrent groups together. But for a reason unkown (probably war) these links where severed.
However some knolwedge of these networks remained in ancient lore and legend.
So at the beginning of the campaign, after a few non-connected adventures so the party could build up some synergy I get them hunting a cult thats trying to reconnect these groups. They are doing it for the completely wrong reasons.
At the same time, or rather a very long time ago a race of alien creatures (represented by mind flayers) has begun an invasion of the empire.
With the portals dead they had to cross the vast amount of space inbeteen the groups in airships. So they bioengineered a gigantic living ship that basically had to serve as a terraforming ship, colony ship and as a forward base through which the Flayers could begin their takeover.
The PC's find the thing shortly after its crashlanding on one of the outer islands, learn that there are these Tsochar things on board that take over human bodies.
They blow the thing up after a very scary dungeon crawl through that living ship but they do learn that some of those Tsochar escaped before it blew up.
Just today they learned that these Tsochar have infiltrated the cult thats trying to renew the connection as well as several people high up in the various arcane guilds and other important places. It might even be true that the people who are their allies are either already infected or prone to be infected fairly quickly. In other words right now they are finding themselves being hemmed in by enemies and allies who are becoming less then trustworthy.
As they put it quite nicely: "We're F*cked. Hopelessly F*cked."
Really grim and gritty I'd say. But in the end, assuming they make it to the end
. In the end they will become the heroes of the empire by vanquishing these terrible foes, beating back the invasion saving the girl etc. etc.
I realized that my other campaign, on the thursday evening is pretty much the same kind of flavour. I've put the PC's in mortal peril, I've placed the world they are in in mortal peril. Everything is bleak, dangerous. People are more likely to see them as a threat rather then as a boon.
All this, I think makes the campaign more memorable as the PC's begin to score the big victories against their enemies and indeed wind up saving the world, or whats left of it.