What is "grim and gritty" and "low magic" anyway?

In my experience "grim and gritty" and "low magic" has equaled poor DM. It means DM's that feel magic missle is over powering, but a fighter with a sword that critical threats on 16 or greater and does 4D6 plus strength, 3 times per round is perfectly balanced. It means the DM is getting ready to keep the best spells out of the game. It means the Mage might was well not even attempt to take item creation feats.

It means that anything that is more creative then "I swing my sword" will be crushed by an egotistical GM, that would rather have a boring lame game then see his/her story ruined by altering the adventure even a little bit.

It means fear of what the players could do, and fear that their perfect little game would be ruined if the players had any power.


Maybe your experience has been different, but that's been my experience.

kamosa said:

In my experience "grim and gritty" and "low magic" has equaled poor DM. It means DM's that feel magic missle is over powering, but a fighter with a sword that critical threats on 16 or greater and does 4D6 plus strength, 3 times per round is perfectly balanced.

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That may be your experience, but I do not feel that that is a fair summary of "grim and gritty". You are implying that the style is, in itself, bad.

Low magic does not have to be a question of what the DM considers "overpowered"; more likely, it is a question of the flavour and feel he wants in his campaign. Reducing magic does not unbalance the game as long as the DM takes into account that magic has been reduced in other areas of the game.

Obviously, a party without magic will not be able to deal with monsters which can only be harmed by magic. That's a DM call - he needs to design his world, and his adventures, to make sure that the lack of magic is not a disadvantage. This requires some effort on his part, but it is not necessarily unbalancing, and certainly isn't wrong in any way.

Imagine playing a Middle Earth campaign; magic exists, but it is not common. This, however, does not detract from the setting - it merely gives it a different flavour to "standard" D&D.

You might personally find low magic to be boring, but that does not mean that it is universally boring - that's just your taste. When it comes down to it, if everyone is enjoying themselves, then they are playing D&D correctly.

Remathilis said:

How do you define low magic?

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I think that most people use "low magic" to mean "more like classical fantasy" (e.g., Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Howard's Conan stories) -- not particularly low in magic except in comparison to D&D's implied default setting.

Low magic means that magic is less common, but not necessarily less powerful. No magic item shops, and maybe once every 3-4 adventures a minor magical item shows up (potion, +1 item or equivalent). I have run a low magic game for the last 12 years, and in 3E, my solution to the overly powerful core class casters was to grant all characters an extra feat at every odd level (not every 3), and to make casting classes gain a new level of spell every 3 levels instead of every 2 (much like the adept), but one more spell per day of each level. Its worked well, seems balanced so far, and the high-level magic (5th+) will pretty much always be out of the hands of most characters in the game. Spells of 6th level and higher are ritual spells, and require either lots of time or multiple casters to work. Cursed items or items with side-effects are also more common and interesting to use in such settings.

Grim & Gritty is a style of game where morality is relative (like real life), and cosmic forces of absolute good and evil are rare (especially good). Life in such a setting is often harsh, brutal, and short, and those with power hold it over those who don't. It isn't necessarily easy to die, but death can come from a mob of peasants just as easily as it can from the jaws of a dragon. This type of world is often protrayed in fiction and gaming as worse than the real world was in medieval times. Game mechanics that go along with this are lowering the massive damage threshold, using WP/VP (especially giving big critters extra VP based on size), and slowing HP advancement after a certain level (usually 10th).

I'm a big fan of both styles, and combine them to varying degrees in the games I run. I personally find that low magic and grim & gritty games are more fun to play in and run, becasue the players can more easily identify with their characters, and rampant munchkining of the game is much less likely with the kind of folks who like these games.

"Low magic" usually means that the DM hates powerful spells that can be used to divine the villain's intentions or bring dead characters back to life, and also hates powerful magic items. So they make magic items almost nonexistant and severely nerf spellcasters (but usually don't reduce the difficulty of encounters to compensate for this reduced-power party).

"Grim and Gritty" usually means that the DM wants the PCs to die every time they get an unlucky roll. "Grim and Gritty" worlds usually appeal to cynical and pessimistic DMs, because there is no hope for anybody and life is hell. If combined with low magic mechanics, players in "grim and gritty" campaigns will be rolling up new characters all the time.

As you can probably guess by my post, I'm not too fond of "Low Magic" or "Grim and Gritty".

This seems to be a love it or hate it topic. For what it's worth, any house rule or other deviation from core that is poorly implemented, poorly "balanced", or poorly refereed will garner similiarly negative responses.

I think the others have said what "low-magic" and "grim and gritty" are, and I agree generally, so I'll tell why I insert these ideas into some of my games. For me the draw is to put more emphasis on the characters and their abilities than on and magic items and just-in-time buffs. It means putting some measure of wonder back into magic. It means the players feel a bit the courage required for their characters to wade into combat with unknown enemies. Most of all, it allows all of us the chance to change the way we play, from a more brazen "I blast this" and "swing my sword" style backed up with readily available magic, to a more tactical, planning style. Less swagger and more tension.

These sorts of games tend to be more character- and interaction-driven rather than combat-driven, for obvious reasons. When these campaigns are DM'd and played by the players just like a standard rules game, bad things happen. If the understanding on both sides of the table is that Things Are Different, it can be an enjoyable change of pace.

Saeviomagy said:

To me
"Low magic" usually means "I hate handing out magical items, so I removed them, inadvertantly making anyone who plays a wizard or cleric significantly more powerful than the rest of the party, but that's ok, because I cover it by saying that wizards and clerics are uncommon. Even though there's one of each in every party."

"Grim and gritty" usually means "I love save vs death mechanics and I hate hitpoints. I've further devalued the fighters of the party by removing any staying power they have."

Simply put - if someone uses either of these phrases to describe their campaign, it means that they didn't really think about the campaign world beyond their own personal DMing preferences.

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Ouch...I don't know who you play with, but any DM worth his salt will balance out a lack of magic...if its low magic...that means you probably aren't going to have a mage in your party...that statement seemed like a misinformed attack on people using house rules, to me. Low magic means there is very little magic in the world, mages are so uncommon that the odds of your party having one is very slim, and their magic may or may not be nearly as strong as that in a setting with normal magic. White Wolf's World of Darkness would be my idea of a grim and gritty setting. And thats my two cents

I think that, as a DM, the campaigns I run probably fall into both the "low magic" and "grim and gritty" groups, although both of these terms are extremely subjective and have come to possess nearly as many meanings as "munchkin."

ManicFuel already covered most of the reasons that I like this style, but there is one other that I consider to be important, although it involves world-building more than individual characters and adventures. Most people I know despise the idea of magic as technology (the so-called "Flintstones-style game" that the DMG briefly mentions being an extreme example of this). However, as a DM, I have found it very difficult to find a believable explanation as to how, in a world where the default D&D level of magic has existed for thousands of years, this has not occurred. mmadsen touched on this by stating that many literary fantasy worlds have a level of magic that is much different than that of D&D. This creates an interesting sort of dilemma when much of Greyhawk, FR, and many other "generic" D&D worlds draw on fantasy archetypes from literature for inspiration, and then insert them into a world built upon entirely different assumptions. For instance, no kingdom should be without teleportation circles linking major cities and outposts, or items of sending to eliminate the need for messengers and troop movements entirely. Also, blacksmiths should be a thing of the past, thanks to fabricate and wall of iron. There are many other examples that unfortunately I can't really point to without my books in front of me, but the point is that I've yet to see a setting that factored these peculiarities into the dynamics of the setting. Rather, they seem to make variations on established fantasy that are independent (and sometimes completely contrary to) the gameplay rules that govern the world.

In short, I've found that lower magic and a grittier setting not only tend to make for better roleplaying and stories, but they also get rid of many inconsistencies that D&D created by borrowing out of context from fantasy literature.

Gothmog said:

in 3E, my solution to the overly powerful core class casters was to grant all characters an extra feat at every odd level (not every 3), and to make casting classes gain a new level of spell every 3 levels instead of every 2 (much like the adept), but one more spell per day of each level. Its worked well, seems balanced so far, and the high-level magic (5th+) will pretty much always be out of the hands of most characters in the game. Spells of 6th level and higher are ritual spells, and require either lots of time or multiple casters to work. Cursed items or items with side-effects are also more common and interesting to use in such settings.

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And if I say pretty please could I get a copy of such a simple and elegant mechanic?

ManicFuel said:

This seems to be a love it or hate it topic. For what it's worth, any house rule or other deviation from core that is poorly implemented, poorly "balanced", or poorly refereed will garner similiarly negative responses.

I think the others have said what "low-magic" and "grim and gritty" are, and I agree generally, so I'll tell why I insert these ideas into some of my games. For me the draw is to put more emphasis on the characters and their abilities than on and magic items and just-in-time buffs. It means putting some measure of wonder back into magic. It means the players feel a bit the courage required for their characters to wade into combat with unknown enemies. Most of all, it allows all of us the chance to change the way we play, from a more brazen "I blast this" and "swing my sword" style backed up with readily available magic, to a more tactical, planning style. Less swagger and more tension.

These sorts of games tend to be more character- and interaction-driven rather than combat-driven, for obvious reasons. When these campaigns are DM'd and played by the players just like a standard rules game, bad things happen. If the understanding on both sides of the table is that Things Are Different, it can be an enjoyable change of pace.

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Very good points. Low magic games do tend to be much more character oriented, and IME the players have had to think much more and use sound tactics to overcome odds rather than blowing through it with obscene amounts of magic. Characters rely on their skills and knowledge, not on their nifty magical gizmos. And you are right in that without some sort of modification to the core system, low magic games with the normal D&D classes simply fall apart fairly quickly.