.....well played, prabe. Well played!
D&D General Greyhawk and "Low Magic" : Why Low Magic is in the Eyes of Beholder
- Thread starter Snarf Zagyg
- Start date
.....well played, prabe. Well played!
Maybe he was an insane powergamer ....
Or maybe, he was the inspiration for the UA Cavalier!
Low magic is hard to describe as everyone has such wildly diffrent views. And even more crazy is a lot of people get stuck in the middle and can't pr won't see beyond that. Lord of the Rings is a good example of a Low Magic Setting: just about no spellcasters, only a handful of weak magic items and just about no magical evneroment. And yet there are people who will disagree and say LotR is a crazy high magic setting. But there is on way it can be when you consider, say a world of five trillion people that can use Wish at will as a supernatural ability. Wish world would be a high magic world, there is no doubt......and LotR is not even close to that.
For levels of magic You need to take into account:
A.How much magic is in the whole world
B.How much magic is available day to day
C.And over all what can magic do.
Grayhawk has always been a Low Magic setting, after all it is inspired by '70's Sword and Sorcery. It's a dirty, gritty ''close to reality" type setting. Just consider that Oreth is basicaly like say 1300 Earth.....and what little magic there is has zero effect on the world. Sure maybe there is a slightly magical "explosion", but it's breif and does not change the world. Oreath has just about zero spellcasters that do anything piratical like produce food or light up the dark. Nearly all Grayhawk magic is stuck in the nitch of "dungeon adventure" use.
And sure, Grayhawk is just as popular as it has even been as some people like low magic gritty settings.
For levels of magic You need to take into account:
A.How much magic is in the whole world
B.How much magic is available day to day
C.And over all what can magic do.
Grayhawk has always been a Low Magic setting, after all it is inspired by '70's Sword and Sorcery. It's a dirty, gritty ''close to reality" type setting. Just consider that Oreth is basicaly like say 1300 Earth.....and what little magic there is has zero effect on the world. Sure maybe there is a slightly magical "explosion", but it's breif and does not change the world. Oreath has just about zero spellcasters that do anything piratical like produce food or light up the dark. Nearly all Grayhawk magic is stuck in the nitch of "dungeon adventure" use.
And sure, Grayhawk is just as popular as it has even been as some people like low magic gritty settings.
Pfft. They are good at hiding it these days.
And even that is overused
Food p
Earth p
Nature p
Music p
The Crimson Binome
Hero
That's definitely part of it. It isn't that Greyhawk is particularly low magic, but Forgotten Realms is so absurdly high magic that it distorts the entire scale.
125 posts and no one has yet pointed out what the DMG has to say on Greyhawk's magic status.
from the DMG (Chapter 1) :
This book, the Player’s Handbook, and the Monster Manual present the default assumptions for how the worlds of D&D work. Among the established settings of D&D, the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Mystara don’t stray very far from those assumptions. Settings such as Dark Sun, Eberron, Ravenloft, Spelljammer, and Planescape venture further away from that baseline. As you create your own world, it’s up to you to decide where on the spectrum you want your world to fall.
So the core setting considers Greyhawk as "default" neither high nor low magic.
How is this relevant? Well, it lets us know what the writers and designers thought (think?) of the magic level and how they would treat any Greyhawk based supplements.
from the DMG (Chapter 1) :
This book, the Player’s Handbook, and the Monster Manual present the default assumptions for how the worlds of D&D work. Among the established settings of D&D, the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Mystara don’t stray very far from those assumptions. Settings such as Dark Sun, Eberron, Ravenloft, Spelljammer, and Planescape venture further away from that baseline. As you create your own world, it’s up to you to decide where on the spectrum you want your world to fall.
So the core setting considers Greyhawk as "default" neither high nor low magic.
How is this relevant? Well, it lets us know what the writers and designers thought (think?) of the magic level and how they would treat any Greyhawk based supplements.
Urriak Uruk
Gaming is fun, and fun is for everyone
This is a good argument for Altdorf (and the Empire of Man in general) being low magic, Warhammer Fantasy being Low Magic overall seems dubious.
You have nations like Ulthuan which is essentially Elf-Atlantis, where they have all sorts of magic. You have the power of Chaos which causes all sorts of perversions and mutations. Rat-people living underground who use magic rocks to create near-Eberron quality magic weapons. An entire province of the Empire is run by literal vampires who raise armies of undead.
So yes, if you live in one peaceful town in the Empire, it's pretty low magic. But that's a pretty small proportion compared to the rest of that world.
Helldritch
Hero
And this is the problem. Since the beginning, we have had 5 different DMG cited as well as 3 different Greyhawk editions. From the get go, it was obvious that the 1ed base set was used. Not the others.
I am an absolute fan of From the Ashes, but I have restricted myself to 1ed material only. So should others unless Snarf tells us otherwise. At least, it is my assumption that Snarf refers to 1ed material. Am I wrong?
I am an absolute fan of From the Ashes, but I have restricted myself to 1ed material only. So should others unless Snarf tells us otherwise. At least, it is my assumption that Snarf refers to 1ed material. Am I wrong?
Urriak Uruk
Gaming is fun, and fun is for everyone
I just want to say, if we are really considering Greyhawk low magic, then we by default have to say Lord of the Rings is low magic as well.
The world of Tolkien certainly has fewer magic-users than Greyhawk. The amount of monsters is also probably equal (or even less). Mordor exists, but so does the Empire of Iuz in Greyhawk. Elven and dwarf nations exist, but they do in Greyhawk as well.
If we are saying Middle Earth is low fantasy, I can get behind the argument that GH is too. But I really don't think many of us think it is, do we?
The world of Tolkien certainly has fewer magic-users than Greyhawk. The amount of monsters is also probably equal (or even less). Mordor exists, but so does the Empire of Iuz in Greyhawk. Elven and dwarf nations exist, but they do in Greyhawk as well.
If we are saying Middle Earth is low fantasy, I can get behind the argument that GH is too. But I really don't think many of us think it is, do we?
Well, there is the slight issue that of the nine enumerated settings, there has only been a "Campaign Setting Book" released for ... one of them.
Two if you're into SCAG.
So I don't think that's really here or there, is it? It's squishy language that means anything, and there is no extrinsic evidence backing it up.
Similar Threads
