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

Inconsequenti-AL said:

That sounds about right!

FWIW, I'd agree that (some) low magic DnD can be difficult to run - simply because the further from the 'basic' rules a game gets, the more the GM has to keep track of, tweak on the fly and design house rules for.

Doing all that while making the game fun isn't going to be easy!

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Indeed, spot on. And it's not just the rules/house rules etc. that make it hard -- how do you sustain a long-running campaign where PC death is common and resurrection is not an option? At some point all the campaign's original PCs will be dead and some players may be on their second, third, fourth PC. Some players prefer continuity or the ability to continue playing one character, and the threat of not being able to do that isn't always attractive. Maybe grim/gritty/low magic is more suitable for one-shots or mini-campaigns?

I've never played in a "Low-Magic" or "Gritty" campaign...

EricNoah said:

how do you sustain a long-running campaign where PC death is common and resurrection is not an option?

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Simple!

Find players that understand that kick-in-the-door is the least viable option in any scenario and you end up with PCs that don't drop like week old Floridian flies. In 7 years, we've had a total of 3 PC deaths, compared to 5 old-age retirements (2 of which came out of retirement later to be part of a large political/warfare focused campaign which ran just wonderfully and occured along-side a quest-type campaign being occomplished by younger and/or longer lived PCs).

Sure, a poor GM can use low magic or GNG-type rules to crush their players, but that's a GM problem, not a low magic/GNG problem. On the other hand, "chumps" that only see bad in low magic or GNG... Well, that's a "chump" problem, and thus beneath me.

Bendris Noulg said:

Simple! [etc.]

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I posit that it's not simple. You are probably just good at running such a campaign! I would say that it would be a challenge for a typical D&D gamemaster or player to run a grim/gritty/low-magic game and have it be "successful" (by whatever definition one would want to use).

I have been running an AU campaign with "grittier" house rules that's not exactly low-magic, but healing is harder to come by and more things can hurt you in more ways. The "shape" of adventuring is quite different. You can't stack up four mid-to-tough encounters in a row like you can in D&D; yet if you give them too much time to rest in between, they go into each combat ready to completely unload everything they have, so it's a challenge to come up with encounters that they won't walk through but that won't cripple them unfairly. Not that it's bad, it's fun, but it is different enough that even for an experienced D&D GM, it's going to take a lot of practice and tweaking and fudging to get just the right balance.

Most of the bad experiences I've had with "low magic" campaigns can be traced back to the same mistake: the DM assumes it's a simple change, and doesn't attempt to adjust all the interrelated aspects of the game.

"I just won't allow magic items to be bought."
(The party is nearly wiped out by a low-CR monster with DR, since they don't have magic weapons; only the offensive spellcasters can do much.)

"No one can take a spellcasting class, they're supposed to be rare."
(The party takes a month to heal up from a minor skirmish, and gets wiped out by the first guy they meet who knows Fireball)

And so on. D&D has been balanced to a rock-paper-scissors style of unstable equilibrium, where each class can beat certain types of enemies easily and lose to other types. Likewise, it assumes the classes have access to some items; if you don't have an Armor AC AND a Natural AC AND a Deflection AC and so on, you'll get hit way too much.
Removing one type of character/enemy without adjusting all the other related parts of the game is just asking for trouble. A good DM will have no problem with this, because he'll already be considering all the other things he'll have to adjust, but a bad DM won't realize that he needs to tweak DR and resists and regeneration and AC and... you get the idea.

Frankly, in my experience, the best "low magic" settings are those that take a nonmagical system (like D20Modern) and add a relatively open magical system to it, one that doesn't scale with level so well or doesn't give so many spells per day at high level, but that has more flexibility than the D&D slot system. Or, something like Four Colors To Fantasy, where you add a very flexible "Hero" class; even though practically all of the PCs will take some levels in it, they'll still take the other classes at some levels. In my opinion, D&D just isn't set up to be low-magic, or at least not without a LOT of work and the need to second-guess everything you bring in from normal D&D sources.

Bendris Noulg said:

Simple!

Find players that understand that kick-in-the-door is the least viable option in any scenario and you end up with PCs that don't drop like week old Floridian flies. In 7 years, we've had a total of 3 PC deaths, compared to 5 old-age retirements (2 of which came out of retirement later to be part of a large political/warfare focused campaign which ran just wonderfully and occured along-side a quest-type campaign being occomplished by younger and/or longer lived PCs).

Sure, a poor GM can use low magic or GNG-type rules to crush their players, but that's a GM problem, not a low magic/GNG problem. On the other hand, "chumps" that only see bad in low magic or GNG... Well, that's a "chump" problem, and thus beneath me.

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I couldn't agree more. I have been running a low magic/GnG game since the summer before I started undergrad (12 years now), and in that time there have been 3 PC deaths, 2 retirements, and one PC leaving the adventuring life to become a religious leader. Still playing in the campaign are 3 of the original 4 characters- a paladin, ranger, and mage. The players have been careful, smart about tactics, and don't use the kick-in-the-door-and-steal-the-loot mentality. When they think they are outclassed, they withdraw and come up with a better solution. I have found that this style of gaming requires a different, more patient outlook on the part of the players, and requires a realization that they aren't supermen, but people existing in a world along with all the NPCs, with the same limitations and obstacles.

The complaint of many of those who don't like low magic/GnG that DMs use it to hammer and screw players is really a non-issue. That is more of a function of DMing style than magic level or tone of the game. And its not hard to have campaign continuity in a low magic/GnG game, the DM just has to realize that he'll need to watch the kinds of challenges he puts up against the party (just as any DM needs to). That said, I think players often play MUCH smarter in a low magic game because they realize there is no quick fix for things like death, mutilation, insanity, etc.

EricNoah said:

I posit that it's not simple. You are probably just good at running such a campaign! I would say that it would be a challenge for a typical D&D gamemaster or player to run a grim/gritty/low-magic game and have it be "successful" (by whatever definition one would want to use).

I have been running an AU campaign with "grittier" house rules that's not exactly low-magic, but healing is harder to come by and more things can hurt you in more ways. The "shape" of adventuring is quite different. You can't stack up four mid-to-tough encounters in a row like you can in D&D; yet if you give them too much time to rest in between, they go into each combat ready to completely unload everything they have, so it's a challenge to come up with encounters that they won't walk through but that won't cripple them unfairly. Not that it's bad, it's fun, but it is different enough that even for an experienced D&D GM, it's going to take a lot of practice and tweaking and fudging to get just the right balance.

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Running low magic is definitely different than running standard D&D, and requires a little bit of adjustment on the part of the DM. One of the first things that the DM has to realize that that 4 consecutive combats with equal CR foes WILL kill the PCs. You pretty much have to ditch the CR system and come up with encounters that will be tough and fun for the PCs based on the known strengths and weaknesses of the party. Minor skirmishes on the way to the objective are fine, but smart PCs will avoid a battle until the conditions are most favorable to them. This might mean sneaking past guards or making diversions rather than killing them. In most adventures, I usually have just 1-2 combats, with the major fight being very tough, and allowing the characters to bring out all their big guns there rather than in the preceeding encounters.

I think a great way to get low magic is to add a backlash component...

Aaron.

I would draw a distinction between a tough game and a "grim and gritty" game.

Tough games are where the players know they can't win every fight and that they won't face challenges that only try to drain their resources. They know that kicking down the door might be a death sentence, so they look for other ways to solve the adventure.

"grim and gritty" has usually had a completely different conitation. It has meant you are powerless. You can't avoid being railroaded into the GM's plots, because, it is a gritty world where you have no allies and you have no tools that will avoid the pitfalls of their world.

The sad thing is that most GM's that say they want "grim or gritty" or "low magic" think they are really accomplishing something great by running a lame game. I've seen more pompus GM's that think they are great because they had the "courage" to ban Magic Missile.

Their arguements all tend to boil down to "D&D would be great, if the players just didn't do anything and just followed my awsome story and plot."

I'm not saying low magic is neccessarily bad, to each his own, really. It just always seems to be an excuse to justify running a lame game. When I meet a new GM, if they start out with "I run low magic" my alarm bells go off and I start marking the exits.

Gothmog said:

Running low magic is definitely different than running standard D&D, and requires a little bit of adjustment on the part of the DM. One of the first things that the DM has to realize that that 4 consecutive combats with equal CR foes WILL kill the PCs. You pretty much have to ditch the CR system and come up with encounters that will be tough and fun for the PCs based on the known strengths and weaknesses of the party. Minor skirmishes on the way to the objective are fine, but smart PCs will avoid a battle until the conditions are most favorable to them. This might mean sneaking past guards or making diversions rather than killing them. In most adventures, I usually have just 1-2 combats, with the major fight being very tough, and allowing the characters to bring out all their big guns there rather than in the preceeding encounters.

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Yep, and some of the fun comes from the fact that if the PCs are short of resources, you can kind of "nickel-and-dime" them in a way that doesn't always work in standard D&D.