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Message: <blockquote data-quote="werecorpse" data-source="post: 8119189" data-attributes="member: 55491">Many people have been taught and believe that a good story is made by subverting expectations. Combine a basic plot with a subversive twist and you have “something interesting” to get things started. So when you have a low magic campaign the “secret wizard” is this subversion. Imo It’s mostly a belief that they are adding a Spicey twist to the game. In fact they are that twist - what could be more fun! The problem of course is that it’s not a twist if it starts out that way, it’s the set up.In my youth I did some theatre sports (improv theatre/whose line is it anyway) and you would call for inspiration from the audience to start the scene. The scenes would often move in unintended and weird directions but that was part of the fun. If you asked for say a room in a house and an activity you would inevitably get “the toilet” and “building a time machine” or something similar. The advice I was given was that starting the scene at this level of absurdity meant it didn’t develop a weird twist, it was already weird, better to let that happen organically. I think of this with characters in an rpg. The exploration in the game is meant to be of something strange, unfamiliar, like a crazy cult, an inexplicable goblin attack, why the king banned druids etc. Starting off with the weird in party can distract from this but as I say the pull to “subvert expectations“ etc is strong and hard to ignore.my advice is give the players some other way to be special that doesn’t create this disruption up front  - if they are a standard adventurers let some be a noble, know a secret, or have a mystery about their background etc. This may satiate this common desire.</blockquote>

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