Concept: One Of Those Tabletop RPG Settings Where The Big Shiny Artifact Is The Source Of All Magic,

Concept: one of those tabletop RPG settings where the Big Shiny Artifact is the source of all magic, except the Big Shiny Artifact got blown up hundreds of years ago, and in the intervening span individual communities figured out how to make their own Little Shiny Artifacts, so in the setting’s present day, each community has its own idiosyncratic magic system that only works in that community and its immediate environs.

This is all a framing device for a roguelike-style campaign where the player characters and their basic traits are persistent from scenario to scenario, but they start each scenario at “level one” (or its system-specific equivalent) because the game’s character advancement mechanics entirely revolve around mastering the local magic system, and magic items acquired in one community don’t work anywhere else, so the party has to start over from scratch advancement-wise each time they move on to a new town.

(The player characters are, of course, presumed to be exceptionally rapid at picking up on new magic systems, allowing them to speedrun the customary zero-to-hero trajectory over the course of each adventure, but there will always be a few locals who’ve had much longer than they have to get the hang of it and have made good use of that time, handily explaining why every random-ass village has some sort of godlike boss monster living in that cave over there.)