I grew up on the Greyhawk setting and AD&D. If you've never been, Greyhawk is a collection of petty kingdoms or other feudal remains left behind by the fall of an empire. In the gazetteers for the setting over the years the feel of genuine mundane history has been well maintained alongside sporadic doses of fantasy. In other words while there were great wizards and even a demon-spawned demi-god walking the land, most of the setting and culture revolved around things like wars involving medieval-style soldiers meeting in lines on fields and such.
Many of us develop our styles young and get rooted in gaming traditions. All of my homebrew settings over the decades since have emulated Greyhawk's feel. My adventures too tend to be rooted less in spells and magic items, and more in things like warlords taking over land, noble cousins plotting against one another, or bandits fed up with taxes.
Now certainly there are monsters and magic in my games but these tend to fall into, say, about 1/3 of my setting, with the exception being made for sentient humanoid types. I come at these humanoids with a nod towards logic and history though. A group of kobolds doesn't just come into an area because: reasons and start worshiping a dragon. Instead, being a race of average intelligence and having a marked talent for a profession (mining) these creatures have evolved into a culture with modern technology and goals attempting, however "evilly" to co-exist near more "civilized" societies while mining and refining ores, learning the properties of stones and minerals, etc.
So I'm just throwing it out there for discussion: how much of the mundane "chocolate" do you mix with the "peanut butter" fantasy of your games?
