Embracing the D&Disms

[Shallown]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shallown
Part of technology is that it eventually becomes accepted by the common man. I think keeping magic and divine power as something seperate and frightening to the common person is part of accepting the D&D part of the world but still keeping it Fantasy/medeival.

I think there is a middle ground of planning for mid to high level power in a campaign that let's the players use those abilities and still keep it medieval/fantasy.

MAC
Perhaps it's a failure of my imagination, but I just can't imagine a world where dragons and demons walk the earth and anyone with a slightly above-average personality, IQ or insight (or any average person now Middle Aged) can master basic spells of arcane or divine nature retaining this fear of the 'unknown.' Quite the contrary, it seems it would be quite common.

My answer is that usually as a player and a GM if the characters are not scared of the dragons and demons walking the world then someone has failed as a GM and those characters can actually do something about it. So even if Farmer Bob is a 20th level expert/commoner farmer if he sees a dragon he'll probably drop a load in his pants since chances are he can't do anything to affect that creature. To me, its not about do the commoners accept these things to be real but the fact they are genuilly fearful (and therefore superstitious)of them. As I think they would be of high magic characters.


MAC
There are game systems that make magic rare and weird, but the D&D rules are setup such that 83.5% of the ECL +0 race-populations qualify for the prerequisites of some kind of spellcasting. (That's a real number - only 17.5% of the population would have a 9 or less in all three spellcasting stats.) You could say that Wizardly training is hard to come by, but all Adepts, Clerics and Druids need is faith, and all Sorcerers need is talent. Those are free and, according to the rules, abundant.

According to the rules, a human born with a spellcasting stat of 10 will get +3 to that stat through aging and maturity, and up to 5 points through level advancement. This pretty much guarantees that anyone of a certain age & experience has the stats required to cast spells of the appropriate levels. Spells up to 3rd should be quite common - by a straight interpretation of the rules.

This also explains how wimpy, no stat bonus, no inherant spellcasting humans even survive as a species in a world populated by magical monsters.

Yeah, it's not 'fantasy' or 'Arthurian' or 'Medieval', but as others have mentioned, D&D isn't designed to do those things. It's a category unto itself, which is exactly what I read from Quasqueton's first post. I was just trying to explore that.


I see your point clearly. There isn't a rules reason to stop those circumstances. But the rules are a tool to me and not a perfect one. This is one of those things that it might be interesting to run a game where what you say is the absolute truth and everytone is a potential character. I beleive most games don't run this way. I may be wrong . I could offer argue meant about why its not true but that opinion would not be supported by the rules.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Shallown
To put it in modern terms I don't worry about the exchange rate of french to american money is or what the weather is in Paris today cause ain't much way in heck I am going anytime soon but someone who is a CEO of a corperation may becuase he may need to fly their today for a business meeting. Two different worlds that both exist without one making the other unbeleivable.

MAC
You may not care about the weather in France, but if you appreciate wine or cheese (to pick two stereotyped examples) you'll care next summer what France's weather was today. Things happening far away will affect the prices in your local grocer. In a world with Teleport Circle Emporor Zirg's Ogre legions (made up referance to avoid FR referances) could have spread out to the entire world. Some peasants won't care about that fact - but some will.


But I would only care becuase those things may come from france to me. A modern mode of thinking. Farmer bob once agian wouldn't care. he may care about what happens in the next village where he gets wheat but does he care what happens a kingdom away. Not likely, in my mind. True Villagers may care about Emperor Zirg's army if they are in the way but I think the pointis they wouldn't understand or be able to stop it. That's what the big boys are for. I think that is the pointof being the hero is to be able to do what others cannot. Zirg's army is an example of when one world intersects with the other. Where high magic crashes in on the low magic world. I think they both can exist without negating the other. I think this is where D&Dism's have to find their comfort level. Allowing the unbalanced (in the big picture of realism) Spells to work and coexist without completely rewriting their impact on the fantasy world at large.

Thanks for the insight Mac. I enjoy the differing points of veiw. Trust me that in the fantasy game I created to play for fun none of these D&Disms exist becuase of how much reality I have to stretch to fit them in.

Later

 

[Henry]

So, how can we come up with adventures that, rather than being thwarted by teleportation circle, depend upon it?

Here's some examples for consumption:

• PC's are looking for a historic item that is NOWHERE to be found. Only clues to what happened are a broken reliquary and the guards are dust. Item has been stolen for years. The ONLY way to find the answer is a Legend Lore - not even commune will work if the gods don't have the item relating to their sphere of influence. Detective work SURE won't work on a case that cold.
• The PC's have learned that a conjuction of comets will occur within one week, and that is also the week that the planar walls are thinnest for a cult to penetrate two of five mystic towers spread across the continent and work a ritual to free their dark god. The PC's have to (A) work a commune or divination to discover which two towers it is, and (B) teleport to the towers or NEAR the towers (they've never been there, remember?) and pierce the towers' magic defenses and find the cultists and stop them.
• The PC's wish to free a god from imprisonment themselves, but the ONLY time to do it is for two people to be in the exact place and time and turn a key. How to do it without teleport?
• The PC's go to save the world - and they're just too late. There wasn't even a CHANCE to save the day - they didn't find out until the end was come. While they still have their life and freedom, they need to find access to a wish spell - or cast it themselves, if they're high level - and undo the catastrophe, but the wish is not powerful enough to undo another's wish, so they need to go back in time to stop the end.

In other words, make the adventure DEPEND on the magic in question. Without it, there's no way to win. It's no different than saying, "if they heroes don't act, all it lost" - because they still CAN act, with those "reality-breaking" spells.

 

[maddman75]

It takes more than an 11 in a mental stat to become a spellcaster. For sorcerers, most are considered to be born with a magical spark - how many exactly depends on the DM. Clerics must join the temple and be trained in the holy rites of the deity. Wizards need time to study and learn magic, as well as someone to teach it to them. Of course PCs don't have too hard a time with this, but they're special. For most people, its commoner or maybe expert. Only the rare exceptional individual actually takes a PC class.

 

[Mac Callum]

Quote: Shallown
I see your point clearly. There isn't a rules reason to stop those circumstances. But the rules are a tool to me and not a perfect one. This is one of those things that it might be interesting to run a game where what you say is the absolute truth and everytone is a potential character. I beleive most games don't run this way.

Me: The rules are not perfect by a long-shot, that's why I've changed 'em in my game. Before I changed them though I gave a lot of thought as to what a "pure" D&D world would look like. I "embraced the D&D-isms", to use Quasqueton's phrase. Maybe I broke hong's rule to "Not think too hard about D&D", but I wanted to make a world for my players (friends and relatives all) which was internally consistent with its rules.

To me, the easiest way to make sure that a world was both fantastic & strange mysterious, but not to nerf the players was to allow everything at a cost (higher than the PHB requires), and to allow for break-down over time. Add in those two elements and everything else falls into place.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Here's some examples for consumption:

Yes! Bravo! This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. The DM needs to make adventures that not only assume the existence of D&Disms, but depend upon them. Just browsing through the spell list and monster lists can trigger all sorts of adventure ideas.

The PC's wish to free a god from imprisonment themselves, but the ONLY time to do it is for two people to be in the exact place and time and turn a key. How to do it without teleport?

Not to mention - how to do it without Rary's telepathic bond, or some other method of precise, long-distance communication. Maybe the PCs don't have access to that spell, in which case part of the adventure is finding someone who does, and convincing that person to give them a copy (or cast it on their behalf).

The real beauty of mid- to high-level D&D play is that the players can surprise you with cool uses of their abilities. That inspires both player and DM to raise the bar on the game, making it more fun for everyone.

 

[I'm A Banana]

IMHO, there's not a whole lot of superstition in a D&D world about magic and monsters in general. You Average Bumpkin has probably seen both, and probably knows family members who've done likewise. He's seen second-level magic, he's seen orcs, he's heard about what an ankheg looks like. You're not going to be able to freak him out with just an elf and a magic missle...

Now, a beholder and a meteor swarm, maybe...

The common folk don't *need* to have superstition -- they have practice. Everything peasants have done the world over for "good luck"? Well, the peasants in D&D do it because they know the power of beasts and magic.

In addition, just because a spell exists and is accepted doesn't mean that it has widespread use. Eberron solved this problem nicely by assuming low-level NPC's -- there's not enough wizards to cast polymorph on the entire workforce, even assuming you could pay them...cheaper to pay three thousand laborers at 1 sp/day, anyway. Polymorph still exists, and is still as strong as it is, but the awe is from not a lot of folks being able to do this.

I don't understand why magic has to be alien and foriegn to common folk -- certainly to most common folk the real world over, everyday magic is a common thing. Horseshoes over your door, mind-altering drugs, rain dances, charms, phallic symbols, specific rituals and rites of cleanliness, grooming, and diet, specific education, a moral code -- these things, in the REAL WORLD, give people "magical" (spiritual, perhaps) power, it is believed.

Why should the common mook in D&D regard magic as something to crap themselves over when every Sunday (to give one example) every Catholic in your city believes in the weekly miracle of Transubstantiation without breaking a sweat?

 

[LostSoul]

Magic Items seem to be the biggest way to have magic items affect the world. An altar that casts True Ressurection one per day that's been around for ten generations would be quite a handy thing.

And if you want people to worship your God, you better be able to compete with this sort of thing.

You want to control the weather in your kingdom? Have a bunch of druids come up with magic items that control the weather in a small area. Call 'em Weather Poles or something. It might take a long time to do this, but what do you care - you're the Lich-King of Morgovia. Time bends to your will.

Whenever I think about D&D-isms in a world, I always see it eventually polarized into one of two states: a utopia or a dystopia. One where the Good Guys won and pretty much got rid of Evil, death, hunger, poverty, insanity, pettiness, etc. through magical means; or one where Evil kicked Good's pansy behind and ruled the world in Darkness. That's a pretty interesting campaign setting... I think if I were to publish something like that, I'd call it "Midnight".

(There is another option to Evil, and that's something that Barsoomcore came up with: paranoia rules the day. So after the great Lich-Wars, the Lich who ruled killed all the mages (and possibly wiped out all worship). Magic is once again rare!)

I think when you try to come up with a world with D&Disms, you have to decide how long those magical practices have been around. If Teleport was created by a Wizard only a generation ago (or lost at some point in ancient history), things would be different than if Teleport had been around for as long as people could remember.

 

[ruleslawyer]

A favor, guys. Given the size of these posts, can you try to format quotes accordingly? It'd be a big help.

Part of technology is that it eventually becomes accepted by the common man. I think keeping magic and divine power as something seperate and frightening to the common person is part of accepting the D&D part of the world but still keeping it Fantasy/medeival.

Yup. IMHO, however, the only way to do it is to keep magic mysterious and rare. Thus Mac's points about accumulation and proliferation. Stuff just isn't mysterious and frightening to people if it's part of their everyday lives, systemic, and classifiable, which, given the demographics in the core books and the D&D magic system, is the case in a standard D&D world.

My answer is that usually as a player and a GM if the characters are not scared of the dragons and demons walking the world then someone has failed as a GM and those characters can actually do something about it. So even if Farmer Bob is a 20th level expert/commoner farmer if he sees a dragon he'll probably drop a load in his pants since chances are he can't do anything to affect that creature. To me, its not about do the commoners accept these things to be real but the fact they are genuilly fearful (and therefore superstitious)of them. As I think they would be of high magic characters.

Equating "fearfulness" with "superstition" is a problem here. When I watched those planes hurtle into the Towers two miles away from me, I was plenty fearful and horrified, for myself, loved ones, and strangers I'd never see. That doesn't mean that I'm superstitious about terrorists, or that I don't see them as an endemic and understandable part of our world. Likewise, airplanes, cars, and KitchenAids may impress me as human inventions, but I've some understanding of how they work. That explicitly doesn't square up with mystery or superstition.

I think Mac has it on the money; it's really, really hard to imagine the full extent of how D&D's demographics and magic would impact on the world. For one, I think teleportation circle is a serious game-breaker. A sufficiently far-sighted ruler with access to the right wizard, or a smart and money-inclined wizard (and who doesn't want money if making magic items and scribing spells costs so much?) will make a permanent one of these at some point spanning two major city markets and post guards at both ends; from that point onward, it's effortless, free transport of goods and services. True, the wizard or his descendants are going to charge what the market will bear, but that does mean perfect and efficient small package trade, message systems superior to FedEx, and stress-free diplomatic travel.

Resurrection and healing are the big ones, IMHO. In our world, biotechnology is the second largest recipient of venture investment, behind information technology. Reliable healthcare (including public health and hygiene) have a tremendous impact on the human experience, facilitating population expansion, wealth, and family structure. The fact that these services would be provided most competently by people of Good (with a capital G) nature with a strong incentive to give them out for free is pretty tremendous. The greedy nature of most religions in D&D games has never made sense to me; Catholic missionaries have braved the front lines of guerilla conflict to preach peace for decades, churches hold wide-open soup kitchens, and even the mullahs of Hamas feed, clothe, and educate thousands of people for free. If I were to embrace the "D&D-isms" of alignment and divine magic fully, I'd have a world (or some regions of the world) where potable, disease-free water was available for the asking, sickness and wounds were cured almost instantly, and even death was a mere ailment to be cured, albeit at a cost for even the most charitable churches (if only to limit demand pressures).

Whenever I think about D&D-isms in a world, I always see it eventually polarized into one of two states: a utopia or a dystopia. One where the Good Guys won and pretty much got rid of Evil, death, hunger, poverty, insanity, pettiness, etc. through magical means; or one where Evil kicked Good's pansy behind and ruled the world in Darkness. That's a pretty interesting campaign setting... I think if I were to publish something like that, I'd call it "Midnight".

Yeah, this sorta dovetails with what I was thinking almost exactly. The funny thing about Midnight is that I just don't understand why the designers bothered to write new rules for it (especially such buggy ones). It's actually one of the few campaign settings in which I can see the D&D-isms working just fine. In essence, the PCs have to use all the cool powers at their disposal, or they'll die. They HAVE to spend a good amount of wealth and spell energy just to walk around constantly protected from scrying, because if they don't, the Legates will hunt them down and slay them. Public health and abundant resurrections? Well, sure... if you're powerful and evil enough to be valuable to the Shadow. Teleportation for fun and profit? Hardly.

If I were to run an out-of-the-box D&D setting, I'd do it Midnight-style. The alternative would be to play it like a superhero game, in which the PCs can completely transform the world, but they're among the few who can do it and they've constantly got their hands full dealing with new and ever-more-threatening foes on their own power level. But it'd be too high-powered and too fast-paced to be a classic heroic fantasy setting. There you go for my general take.

 

[ruleslawyer]

While there are far-reaching effects the impacts should be much smaller than you postulate because of the limitations of the spells.

Sorry this is so long but I wanted to rebut each invalid point.

Hmm...

As a method of mass movement Teleportation circle is inefficient. Either it lasts about 3 hours or it costs 4,500xp to make permanent (and there will always be a limited number of 17th level Wizards)...
[SNIP]

So? If you can cast it once, you can cast it multiple times. Unless a kingdom can afford to patrol its entire land mass (and here's an interesting question re D&Disms), all it takes is a few such spells to move an entire army plus supplies behind enemy lines over a few days. Worse still, we can craft scrolls of the spell that a) could be used, albeit with a failure chance, by lower level wizards and b) are cheaper than the 4500 xp required for permanent TC. That does in fact eliminate the need for dangerous overland marches, and renders natural barriers and strongpoints nigh-useless under some circumstances.

Besides, who cares about the military applications? Use it for trade...

And as soon as the army moves away you have a supply line that can be cut unless you recast a circle into the camp every time you want to resupply.

Yeah, it can be cut. So what? Your army's already right near where it needs to be.

Unfortunately telepoort circles are not activated by objects and teleport (which the spell is based on) only allows creatures "carrying gear or objects up to its maximum load". So no wagons only supplies carried by porters of pack animals.

Boats and wagons allow you to move large weights of good efficiently so would always be a viable option. The sheer cost of creating a pairs of permanent teleportation circles means that it would not be viable except between very important locations. And you would still need ships and wagons to pull all the goods in to the central point and distribute them out again. So Teleport Circles would replace the major long distance trade routes and then act as a nexus for local trade routes. Try working out the logistics of moving enough grain into a major city to feed the populace, a lot of wagons will be involved.

Not necessarily. Pick up, bring through, put down, come back, pick up, bring through, etc. And boats and wagons, which are subject to bandit raids and other losses, also take months to travel back and forth between destinations. The travel time from England to China during the Age of Sail averaged 180 days or longer. That's a lot of time to have even one or two porters taking stuff through a teleport circle.

And yes, you are 100% right that TCs would replace only major trade roads or arteries; but what a change! The exploration of shorter trade routes, even between known destinations, may rank among the most important forces shaping modern culture; taking it away is enormous!

Fortresses would not be useless, the purpose of a fortress is to allow control of an area. Build Fortresses and link them with Teleport Circles and a government has a very good defensive network to command invasion routes. And if you preposition supplies in fortresses the defender can move troops around quickly to respond to invasions. So its an advantage to the defence.

Two words: Maginot Line. (Mac covered this, didn't he?)

So these spells aid the courts and organisations but do not ensure that there are no problems.

Yeah, but the issue here is "how do D&Disms impact a campaign world? Mind-affecting spells have a LOT of impact whether or not they work 100% of the time, UNLESS you house rule them to actually give INCORRECT answers some of the time.

So a 13th level druid affects a 3 mile radius for an average of just over 4 days. And the spell can only add or remove the stated effects. In summer the list is Torrential rain, heat wave, or hailstorm. Want light showers? Not with Control Weather.

Monsoon crops everywhere is a BIG change. Besides, these are the important ones:

Winter Frigid cold, blizzard, or thaw
Late winter Hurricane-force winds or early spring

Plant Growth would be widely used but it only raises yields by 1/3 and affects a ½ mile radius with each casting.

That's a lot, though. But generally, I don't think these are the really scary spells.

Absolutely true except for spells that cost xp. And yes the Sorceror (assuming he chose Wall of Stone) can usethe spell to do this and good on him, all that this means is that construction times of rock walls that can be crudely shaped is reduced. So civil engineering projects are quicker and cheaper. That’s a good thing as it means that settlements can be easily fortified against predators.

It means that engineering products are practically free. If I can make a coffer, even a crude one, I can certainly shape a bridge or gatehouse. Again, it's a big, big deal. Besides, the big one isn't necessarily WoS, but wall of iron, which entirely eliminates the need for certain kinds of mining and makes for some REALLY tough walls.

 

[Orius]

See what I mean? In the Earth’s middle ages the Church was seen as the font of all knowledge, and this largely retarded the economic growth of Europe. In D&D-world the Church really will be the font of all knowledge – and it will be right! Information in books cannot be trusted to be correct. Information directly from God is directly from God. No non-Church university can possibly compete with that source of information.

Ah...but what if the god of the church is a god of lies?

And all the priests are completely ignorant of this?