Hussar
Legend
Didn't want to threadjack Buddhafrog's thread so I thought I'd bring this over here.
The bolded part is what I wanted to talk about. This is an opinion that I see brought up fairly often. The point basically boils down to "Greyhawk is a less magic heavy setting than Forgotten Realms".
I really wonder where this comes from. I know that I'm not a huge Greyhawk lore guru, but, I've read a fair bit, and, it looks to me, that Greyhawk is every bit as high magic as FR. I mean, in Greyhawk, you have wizards becoming gods by imprisoning demon lords, ultra-powerful wizards running the largest city in the land, countries run by undead, a country run by a god and so on.
Never minding the truly funky Greyhawk stuff like nations being wiped out by the magical version of nuclear MAD, or crashed spaceships, or various other pretty wahoo elements.
Is it possibly just because there is so much more FR material out there? People can see so many examples of high magic in Forgotten Realms simply because there's thousands and thousands of pages of material, while Greyhawk is much less covered?
Why is there this perception that FR is uber-high magic and Greyhawk is low magic?
Most of the core D&D settings are substantially higher magic than traditional LotR style fantasy, let alone grittier and less magic traditional fantasy. In my experience, both Forgotten Realms and Eberron are pretty gonzo high magic. Dark Sun has less of the obvious high magic societal transformation stuff; although powerful magic is a part of the setting, it's a grimmer setting where the powerful magic is mostly in the hands of not entirely human sorcerer kings (although obviously the PCs have magic and can become very powerful). But it is very much a contrasting setting--a world that is more nifty for how it can change perspectives than for people who haven't played much D&D before.
Out of the traditional TSR/WotC published settings, Greyhawk and Mystara are probably your best bets based on what you've said you're looking for. Unfortunately, they're both out of print to the best of my knowledge, with Mystara (the old D&D Known World) long out of print. I've never been a huge fan of Greyhawk personally, but many people like it, and it has less of an uber high fantasy feel than Forgotten Realms or Eberron.
The implied setting of 4e (Nentir Vale, etc.) also seems pretty close to what you're looking for. The points of light nature serves a gritty game well. There are a couple of supplements out describing it, and more on the way, but no comprehensive "start with this book" yet.
Good luck!
The bolded part is what I wanted to talk about. This is an opinion that I see brought up fairly often. The point basically boils down to "Greyhawk is a less magic heavy setting than Forgotten Realms".
I really wonder where this comes from. I know that I'm not a huge Greyhawk lore guru, but, I've read a fair bit, and, it looks to me, that Greyhawk is every bit as high magic as FR. I mean, in Greyhawk, you have wizards becoming gods by imprisoning demon lords, ultra-powerful wizards running the largest city in the land, countries run by undead, a country run by a god and so on.
Never minding the truly funky Greyhawk stuff like nations being wiped out by the magical version of nuclear MAD, or crashed spaceships, or various other pretty wahoo elements.
Is it possibly just because there is so much more FR material out there? People can see so many examples of high magic in Forgotten Realms simply because there's thousands and thousands of pages of material, while Greyhawk is much less covered?
Why is there this perception that FR is uber-high magic and Greyhawk is low magic?