I guess we are on the Fourth Greyhawk-adjacent thread now! To paraphrase the great Knight, Sir Ron of Burgundy, "You're writing another long Greyhawk thread? And you ate the whole wheel of cheese? How are you doing this? Heck, I'm not even mad, that's amazing!"
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This is based in a concept brought up by @Minigiant when the idea of Greyhawk as "low magic," came up. Specifically, he wrote that that there are multiple axes of magic (Minigiant used power, frequency, and versatility) and it's difficult to say that a setting is "low magic" unless you really examine the ways in the which it is low magic.
But what does this mean, exactly? I thought I'd do a deeper dive into the question of low magic both for Greyhawk and for 5e. I will be looking at it in the following sections:
A. Why Low Magic is Difficult to Define
B. Why There are Some People that Advocate for Greyhawk as a Low Magic Setting
C. The Difficulties of Low Magic Campaigns in 5e
D. Does Low Magic Still Have a Place Today?
A. The limits of my magick means the limits of my world.
While I think that you could break down the categories into more, or less, areas that Minigiant does, I think the basic thesis that he has (that magic means means many things in a campaign world) is 100% accurate. Let's think of this in different ways.
One example is Game of Thrones; in GOT, magic is beyond uncommon. But when there is magic, it is incredibly powerful. Most people would refer to GOT as "low magic" yet would also acknowledge that magic is insanely powerful.
On the other extreme would be a setting like Eberron. Again, it is almost invariably referred to as "High Magic" because of the prevalence of magic (magic as technology, magic is ubiquitous) and yet it doesn't vary from the standard rules of D&D that would apply to other settings.
So how can we drill down to look at the various ways that magic is presented, and how many (we are all individuals!) people tend to view the differentiating factors of what makes a low magic setting? In my opinion, it tends to be a set of binaries.
1. The World.
Is the world one in which magic is common and ubiquitous (Eberron, for example) or one in which magic is uncommon or not accounted for (Game of Thrones, for example). Is the magic current, or is it from the past? Are there magic item shops where you can purchase magic?
2. The People.
Are spellcasting NPCs common and ubiquitous, or rare? Does every town have a high-level cleric, and disease unheard of, or are high-level spellcasters infrequent and sometimes more an object of myth than reality? Does the campaign setting have many organized wizard's guilds (for example) or is every wizard an island unto themselves?
3. The PCs.
How common are spellcasting PCs? Do most classes have "spells" or "abilities." Do martial classes cast spells? Are there a lot of "always on" cantrips, or is spellcasting more limited?
4. The Items.
Does the campaign setting have a lot of powerful magic items? Artifacts? Is it assumed that most PCs will acquire power through gaining these magic items?
I don't think this list is the end-all, be-all, but I think by looking at it in terms of various components (the world, the PCs, the NPCs, etc.) it might frame it in a helpful sense. So moving from this generalize concept to the more specific example of Greyhawk would be helpful!
B. Magick is what killed the dinosaurs, darling.
When it comes to Greyhawk, I think it is difficult to advocate for the setting qua setting as being low magic. The reason for this is pretty simple; the setting, at least if you're looking at the "Gygax setting" that predates 1984, is incredibly open-ended.
Brief aside- I will be discussing the Box Set / Folio version of GH, and not the later 2e and 3e material. This is not to say that those materials aren't good, or have fans, or are invalid in any way. This is just already long enough.
But the reason there are people that advocate for a "low magic" (or, at least, "lower magic") Greyhawk primarily has to do with the factors enunciated above. Looking at them carefully, it is easy to see that (4), the items, is not low magic in Greyhawk. Greyhawk is the ur-setting for the most powerful artifacts and relics in D&D. Instead, it comes down to the interplay of 1, 2, and 3.
Fundamentally, Greyhawk is a setting in which there is, and has been, powerful magic, but the most powerful magic occurred in the past. Whether it's the artifacts and relics (insanely powerful magic items from a bygone age) or the spells (the invoked devastation and rain of colorless fire), there is a recurrent theme of the power of the past compared to the future; one which dovetails nicely with the early D&D practice of graverobbing .... um, exploring dungeons and crypts. The reason adventurers can find all this loot (money and magic) buried and lost is precisely because the past was a foreign country, of untold power. More importantly, however, the present is a reflection of something we can understand- the medieval/early Renaissance period.
In a way, Eberron makes more internal sense as a setting. If you have the ability to churn out "always on" light, then why wouldn't you have lighting to counteract the darkness being churned out? Greyhawk (and other settings) tend to take the view, either explicitly or implicitly, of the "selfish spellcaster," that due to REASONS, there is no spellcasting for the general weal. That there are still plagues. That isolated villages still fear the night beyond their limited fires.
And this has other impacts, as well. Greyhawk, as a setting, has battles. Big battles, with troops. If spellcasting was common and endemic, those types of battles would be, at a minimum, more difficult to pull off.
As such, when I think of people advocating for GH as low magic, and putting it into the rubric above, I would say that:
1. In Greyhawk, magic is not prevalent, not accounted for, or excused away due to reasons. There is disease, there are battles of regular troops.
2. Greyhawk will have fewer spellcasting NPCs than a setting like FR. They exist, and they can be very powerful (Mordenkainen) or even get to god status (Zagyg), but they are interested in their own thing, not in the PCs. Wizards tend to stick to themselves.
4. Magic items are not made or produced anymore in any quantity, but powerful magic from prior eras is ubiquitous to those who venture to find it.
Which leaves (3). I think that many people who are advocating for "low magic" in Greyhawk are really advocating for a style of play as opposed to something necessarily within the campaign setting. In other words, this is more about the nature of 5e than about Greyhawk.
C. There ain't no iguana.
At a fundamental level, 5e is a "high magic" system compared to the editions of D&D that gave rise to Gygaxian Greyhawk. Only four classes (Fighter, Rogue, Monk, and Barbarian) aren't spellcasters by default, and the newest official class (Artificer) is a spellcaster as well. That means that almost every basic class is a spellcaster. When you add in the subclasses (like Eldritch Knight, etc.) that allow you to turn the martial classes into casters, or the feats (magic initiate, etc.), or the multiclassing, or the many races that provide you access to cantrips or spellcasting, then it quickly becomes apparent that 5e (in comparison to, say, the OD&D - 2e line, or the B/X - BECMI line) is high magic in terms of PC spellcasting ubiquity.
Just as notably, the existence of always-on attack cantrips makes magic much more ubiquitous in 5e as well. It is almost impossible to imagine a combat, or, for that matter, a single round of combat in 5e without spellcasting.
It's possible to see this when you compare the base 5e classes with a setting like AIME; in order to make a campaign setting low magic, you do have to re-work the classes. Because high magic is effectively baked into the rules when it comes to PCs.
So when people advocate for Greyhawk as a "low magic" setting, it usually means two things which are not the same:
1. Greyhawk is low magic as noted above; the PCs can special and different, and play by the 5e basic rules, but the rest of campaign world ignores this. You can define the "reasons" or be comfortable with not explaining the "reasons" but magic is not ubiquitous in the setting itself, although it is still powerful.
2. They want a coherent, official, "low magic" setting that would allow them to play something that de-emphasizes the spellcasting classes. In other words, this isn't about Greyhawk per se, but about the style of play.
So, a final question- is low magic, in terms of removing some spellcasting from PCs, even desirable?
D. Try, try, try to understand ... I want some low magic, man.
At a very fundamental level .... no. Low magic is not, in my opinion, that desirable. Just like people can say that 5e is too easy, and they should make a hard mode, etc.; well, there is a reason that videogames don't have that on as default. Most people don't want everything to be too hard. Most people want to be able to succeed, to have fun, and to use the konami code as necessary. I might like a 6e with low magic, and an emphasis on martial classes .... but I am not the target market. People like creating their characters, and new players are going to be inspired by an anime on Crunchyroll; not by a Fritz Lieber short story.
On the other hand, I think that campaign settings are a great opportunity to provide coherent rulesets for a variety of play. I don't think that low magic (for example) should be a default setting for D&D; that ship sailed a long long time ago. But I think that any given release of a campaign setting should introduce something new, and that a campaign setting that provided official and coherent low magic settings would be worth purchasing. If not today, and if not Greyhawk, then someday.
Anyway, those are my tentative thoughts. I'm sure others will have wildly divergent opinions on this!
D&D General - For the Love of Greyhawk: Why People Still Fight to Preserve Greyhawk
On the recent thread regarding the upcoming hardcover book and a discussion regarding Iggwilv and Tasha- https://www.enworld.org/threads/iggwilv-tasha-to-join-volo-xanathar-and-mordenkainen-updated.674231/ .... a discussion broke out about Greyhawk, and canon, and what is good, and bad, so on...
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D&D General - Moar Greyhawk: Anthropocentrism and Humanity in Greyhawk
This post is related to another post I just wrote, about Greyhawk, here: https://www.enworld.org/threads/for-the-love-of-greyhawk-why-people-still-fight-to-preserve-greyhawk.674292/ After some time in the comments, a poster responded to a list of non-exclusive factors I wrote about Greyhawk...
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D&D General - Greyhawk did what? A partial list of Greyhawk Personalities
After looking at the two threads involving Greyhawk, I realized that there are many people who don't realize certain things are Greyhawk; either they think it's just "general D&D," or it's something that the Realms has tried to swallow up, or something else. So I thought I'd do a short post to...
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This is based in a concept brought up by @Minigiant when the idea of Greyhawk as "low magic," came up. Specifically, he wrote that that there are multiple axes of magic (Minigiant used power, frequency, and versatility) and it's difficult to say that a setting is "low magic" unless you really examine the ways in the which it is low magic.
But what does this mean, exactly? I thought I'd do a deeper dive into the question of low magic both for Greyhawk and for 5e. I will be looking at it in the following sections:
A. Why Low Magic is Difficult to Define
B. Why There are Some People that Advocate for Greyhawk as a Low Magic Setting
C. The Difficulties of Low Magic Campaigns in 5e
D. Does Low Magic Still Have a Place Today?
A. The limits of my magick means the limits of my world.
While I think that you could break down the categories into more, or less, areas that Minigiant does, I think the basic thesis that he has (that magic means means many things in a campaign world) is 100% accurate. Let's think of this in different ways.
One example is Game of Thrones; in GOT, magic is beyond uncommon. But when there is magic, it is incredibly powerful. Most people would refer to GOT as "low magic" yet would also acknowledge that magic is insanely powerful.
On the other extreme would be a setting like Eberron. Again, it is almost invariably referred to as "High Magic" because of the prevalence of magic (magic as technology, magic is ubiquitous) and yet it doesn't vary from the standard rules of D&D that would apply to other settings.
So how can we drill down to look at the various ways that magic is presented, and how many (we are all individuals!) people tend to view the differentiating factors of what makes a low magic setting? In my opinion, it tends to be a set of binaries.
1. The World.
Is the world one in which magic is common and ubiquitous (Eberron, for example) or one in which magic is uncommon or not accounted for (Game of Thrones, for example). Is the magic current, or is it from the past? Are there magic item shops where you can purchase magic?
2. The People.
Are spellcasting NPCs common and ubiquitous, or rare? Does every town have a high-level cleric, and disease unheard of, or are high-level spellcasters infrequent and sometimes more an object of myth than reality? Does the campaign setting have many organized wizard's guilds (for example) or is every wizard an island unto themselves?
3. The PCs.
How common are spellcasting PCs? Do most classes have "spells" or "abilities." Do martial classes cast spells? Are there a lot of "always on" cantrips, or is spellcasting more limited?
4. The Items.
Does the campaign setting have a lot of powerful magic items? Artifacts? Is it assumed that most PCs will acquire power through gaining these magic items?
I don't think this list is the end-all, be-all, but I think by looking at it in terms of various components (the world, the PCs, the NPCs, etc.) it might frame it in a helpful sense. So moving from this generalize concept to the more specific example of Greyhawk would be helpful!
B. Magick is what killed the dinosaurs, darling.
When it comes to Greyhawk, I think it is difficult to advocate for the setting qua setting as being low magic. The reason for this is pretty simple; the setting, at least if you're looking at the "Gygax setting" that predates 1984, is incredibly open-ended.
Brief aside- I will be discussing the Box Set / Folio version of GH, and not the later 2e and 3e material. This is not to say that those materials aren't good, or have fans, or are invalid in any way. This is just already long enough.
But the reason there are people that advocate for a "low magic" (or, at least, "lower magic") Greyhawk primarily has to do with the factors enunciated above. Looking at them carefully, it is easy to see that (4), the items, is not low magic in Greyhawk. Greyhawk is the ur-setting for the most powerful artifacts and relics in D&D. Instead, it comes down to the interplay of 1, 2, and 3.
Fundamentally, Greyhawk is a setting in which there is, and has been, powerful magic, but the most powerful magic occurred in the past. Whether it's the artifacts and relics (insanely powerful magic items from a bygone age) or the spells (the invoked devastation and rain of colorless fire), there is a recurrent theme of the power of the past compared to the future; one which dovetails nicely with the early D&D practice of graverobbing .... um, exploring dungeons and crypts. The reason adventurers can find all this loot (money and magic) buried and lost is precisely because the past was a foreign country, of untold power. More importantly, however, the present is a reflection of something we can understand- the medieval/early Renaissance period.
In a way, Eberron makes more internal sense as a setting. If you have the ability to churn out "always on" light, then why wouldn't you have lighting to counteract the darkness being churned out? Greyhawk (and other settings) tend to take the view, either explicitly or implicitly, of the "selfish spellcaster," that due to REASONS, there is no spellcasting for the general weal. That there are still plagues. That isolated villages still fear the night beyond their limited fires.
And this has other impacts, as well. Greyhawk, as a setting, has battles. Big battles, with troops. If spellcasting was common and endemic, those types of battles would be, at a minimum, more difficult to pull off.
As such, when I think of people advocating for GH as low magic, and putting it into the rubric above, I would say that:
1. In Greyhawk, magic is not prevalent, not accounted for, or excused away due to reasons. There is disease, there are battles of regular troops.
2. Greyhawk will have fewer spellcasting NPCs than a setting like FR. They exist, and they can be very powerful (Mordenkainen) or even get to god status (Zagyg), but they are interested in their own thing, not in the PCs. Wizards tend to stick to themselves.
4. Magic items are not made or produced anymore in any quantity, but powerful magic from prior eras is ubiquitous to those who venture to find it.
Which leaves (3). I think that many people who are advocating for "low magic" in Greyhawk are really advocating for a style of play as opposed to something necessarily within the campaign setting. In other words, this is more about the nature of 5e than about Greyhawk.
C. There ain't no iguana.
At a fundamental level, 5e is a "high magic" system compared to the editions of D&D that gave rise to Gygaxian Greyhawk. Only four classes (Fighter, Rogue, Monk, and Barbarian) aren't spellcasters by default, and the newest official class (Artificer) is a spellcaster as well. That means that almost every basic class is a spellcaster. When you add in the subclasses (like Eldritch Knight, etc.) that allow you to turn the martial classes into casters, or the feats (magic initiate, etc.), or the multiclassing, or the many races that provide you access to cantrips or spellcasting, then it quickly becomes apparent that 5e (in comparison to, say, the OD&D - 2e line, or the B/X - BECMI line) is high magic in terms of PC spellcasting ubiquity.
Just as notably, the existence of always-on attack cantrips makes magic much more ubiquitous in 5e as well. It is almost impossible to imagine a combat, or, for that matter, a single round of combat in 5e without spellcasting.
It's possible to see this when you compare the base 5e classes with a setting like AIME; in order to make a campaign setting low magic, you do have to re-work the classes. Because high magic is effectively baked into the rules when it comes to PCs.
So when people advocate for Greyhawk as a "low magic" setting, it usually means two things which are not the same:
1. Greyhawk is low magic as noted above; the PCs can special and different, and play by the 5e basic rules, but the rest of campaign world ignores this. You can define the "reasons" or be comfortable with not explaining the "reasons" but magic is not ubiquitous in the setting itself, although it is still powerful.
2. They want a coherent, official, "low magic" setting that would allow them to play something that de-emphasizes the spellcasting classes. In other words, this isn't about Greyhawk per se, but about the style of play.
So, a final question- is low magic, in terms of removing some spellcasting from PCs, even desirable?
D. Try, try, try to understand ... I want some low magic, man.
At a very fundamental level .... no. Low magic is not, in my opinion, that desirable. Just like people can say that 5e is too easy, and they should make a hard mode, etc.; well, there is a reason that videogames don't have that on as default. Most people don't want everything to be too hard. Most people want to be able to succeed, to have fun, and to use the konami code as necessary. I might like a 6e with low magic, and an emphasis on martial classes .... but I am not the target market. People like creating their characters, and new players are going to be inspired by an anime on Crunchyroll; not by a Fritz Lieber short story.
On the other hand, I think that campaign settings are a great opportunity to provide coherent rulesets for a variety of play. I don't think that low magic (for example) should be a default setting for D&D; that ship sailed a long long time ago. But I think that any given release of a campaign setting should introduce something new, and that a campaign setting that provided official and coherent low magic settings would be worth purchasing. If not today, and if not Greyhawk, then someday.
Anyway, those are my tentative thoughts. I'm sure others will have wildly divergent opinions on this!
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