I'm an incompetent normal-magic DM--how do I fix it?

[TheAuldGrump]

I think the whole incompetient word syhould be avoided in either case. Everyone has preferences. Both can be used as crutches; high magic and low magic. It is a matter of waht type of campaign you are running and what you wish. It's very difficult to realistically run a mystery or investigatiion in a high level high magic campign. The focus usually becomes about proving the mystery as opposed to solving it.

Still a part of a good mystery story. Watch Columbo - the crime is actually shown to the audience before the detective even shows up on screen. There are also a few ways available to hide clues from high level PCs, though they can suffer through overuse. The best is simply to spread the clues around through multiple sites and encounters. (Set up the mystery like a flow chart, with each bit of evidence leading someplace else.)

Perhaps the Mystery Adventures part of this can be set aside as a seperate topic? None of this is addressing the OP's point, but might make a fun discussion in its own right. I'd do it myself but my girlfriend just called, and I need to call her back.

The Auld Grump

 

[Gothmog]

Gothmog - the problem is that you made the assumption that not running a low magic campaign is the sign of an incompetent DM. And that is what does make you an incompetent DM in my eyes.

I have been running games since 1976, so the length of time 'in harness' does not exactly swing my opinion from my current stance that all styles of play are acceptable if the players and GM are having fun. And for what it is worth I have not had any difficulty running high level mystery adventures. Just remember what tools the PCs have to discover the clues, allow for them, and make them part of the game. Remember, the bad guys have access to some good stuff too.

The Auld Grump

If you look back at what I said, nowhere did I state that a DM who enjoys high magic games is less mature or incompetent as you imply, or that only good DMs run low magic. I have played in one very good high magic game, and I had fun with it, but the DM really took his time to make sure everything made sense and fit together well. If you choose to see me as incompetent, thats your perogative, but a 13 year campaign with hundreds of adventures under my belt and players who love the game I run argues otherwise. Throwing the word "incompetent" around smacks of elitism, and doesn't accomplish anything. Everyone has different preferences, and I certainly don't lose any sleep over what high-magic fans think of me changing my game to make it suit my tastes and that of my group.

If a DM and his group is having fun, then you're doing it right and the DM is competent, whether its low or high magic. Yes, some low-magic DMs are too restrictive and enjoy keeping characters weak and under their thumb, and some high magic DMs are all about the leet powerz, building twink characters, and devising counters for every PC ability- but not all DMs of either camp are like that. I don't understand why when someone mentions low magic in a thread and asks for advice, why high magic fans come in and threadcrap (not saying you are, just saying its a tendency of about six posters on these boards).


Knight Isa- talk to your players before you make any decisions, and see if they are enjoying the game. If so, then you're doing a good job. If they have points they want to see addressed, then ask them how they would like the game modified.

A good high magic setting is Dawnforge by FFG- its a shame only four books were published for it. Its about the beginnings of the mythic age in a typical fantasy world, and the PCs are designed to be the heroes of legend. Well done, and no baggage like the FR with tons of powerful PCs.

Another good one is Arcanis by Paradigm Concepts. Its not medieval, but more Roman Empire in feel. Has some gunpowder, a serpent empire, very different but incredibly cool cosmology, and lots of magical events.

Definitely start the PCs at first level- having them jump in at mid-level with magic items custom-tailored to them will cause problems. I'd recommend against letting PCs walk into a magic item shop and buy ready-made items- instead let them commission items from NPCs or make their own, or be awarded items for services rendered. The magic item emporiums where PCs walk in and hand over a couple thousand gold for a ready-made item in stock ALWAYS IME leads to an attempt to swindle/break into said emporium, and unless you're ready for that end of the campaign (which could be fun if your players don't mind being hunted) I'd avoid it. Also, be prepared for travel times to be cut by 90%, or negated entirely by 9th level or so due to Teleport or Wind Walk. PCs will likely be Scry/buff/Teleporting as well, so you're going to have to read up a lot on the books to formulate effective strategies and defenses for your baddies.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

If you look back at what I said, nowhere did I state that a DM who enjoys high magic games is less mature or incompetent as you imply, or that only good DMs run low magic. I have played in one very good high magic game, and I had fun with it, but the DM really took his time to make sure everything made sense and fit together well. If you choose to see me as incompetent, thats your perogative, but a 13 year campaign with hundreds of adventures under my belt and players who love the game I run argues otherwise. Throwing the word "incompetent" around smacks of elitism, and doesn't accomplish anything. Everyone has different preferences, and I certainly don't lose any sleep over what high-magic fans think of me changing my game to make it suit my tastes and that of my group.

Numion quoted one of the lines where you did indeed imply this. I had to go back and review the topic in question, but that was your stance more than once. terms such as 'crutch' are loaded in a negative manner. Your response to being accused of using a crutch in turn on that thread should reviewed as well - you did not exactly take it in a friendly fashion. So I stand by my opinion in turn. Do not become upset when folks turn the tables on you and then say that you did not imply incompetence, because that is indeed what you did.

The Auld Grump

 

[knight_isa]

My problem isn't so much a lack of familiarity with magic on a party level (in fact, wizard is my preferred class to play) as it is a lack of understanding how prolific magic would affect things on a global level. From what I'm hearing, though, the general consensus is to ignore the global impact--basically just focus on the party and its immediate surroundings. Is that correct? If so, how do I get a good feel for the campaign world if I don't a good view of the big picture?

Edit: Also, there's been a lot of bashing of Numion & his above quote, which is admittedly taken out of context. It actually had a place within the context of the thread it was yanked from, and I'd appreciate it if people would 1) avoid further Numion/quote bashing and 2) avoid consoling me for liking low-magic. I'm not saying that I'm doing things wrong now; I am saying that I am interested in running a "normal magic" game at some time in the future and currently am not comfortable with my ability to do so successfully. Thanks.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

My problem isn't so much a lack of familiarity with magic on a party level (in fact, wizard is my preferred class to play) as it is a lack of understanding how prolific magic would affect things on a global level. From what I'm hearing, though, the general consensus is to ignore the global impact--basically just focus on the party and its immediate surroundings. Is that correct? If so, how do I get a good feel for the campaign world if I don't a good view of the big picture?

Edit: Also, there's been a lot of bashing of Numion & his above quote, which is admittedly taken out of context. It actually had a place within the context of the thread it was yanked from, and I'd appreciate it if people would 1) avoid further Numion/quote bashing and 2) avoid consoling me for liking low-magic. I'm not saying that I'm doing things wrong now; I am saying that I am interested in running a "normal magic" game at some time in the future and currently am not comfortable with my ability to do so successfully. Thanks.

Good 'nuff then.

I actually agree that starting with the big picture is the best way to go - perhaps creating your own game world will help. It does seem to me, rightly or wrongly, that most settings do gloss over the impact of magic, or restrict it to a few key events in the history of the setting.

If the monarchs have access to clerics with the abilty to raise the dead then how would it impact on their actions? Would someone have brought back Richard the Lion Hearted? How about William Rufus?

I admit that I cheated on the issue in regards to my own homebrew - I made magic something that was returning to the world after disappearing for over 1600 years. People had rationalized away most of the impact that magic had on previous history, but once it returned it began having a major effect. (Even low level spells such as Fireball having a major impact on the battlefield.) So magic is only now filtering up from its users, and almost no high level wizards exist in the civilized lands. So the Church reacted by 1. barring the use of magic without an indulgence, and 2. charging an arm and a leg for said indulgences. The result for the most part is a weakening of the church, as those who believe in reform accuse the Church of corruption, while others simply begin to ignore the Churches commands - like a crossbow a fireball throwing wizard is not something that the generals would simply set aside.

Eberron seems to have done a better job than most at integrating magic into the history - then again, the word is only now starting to recover from magic's impact on that history. Determining how much magic the movers and shakers of a world have access to is a major undertaking, limiting the level of the casters is one way to handle the problem.

Iron Kingdoms takes a somewhat similar approach, with the industrialization of magic.

The Auld Grump

 

[Gothmog]

Numion quoted one of the lines where you did indeed imply this. I had to go back and review the topic in question, but that was your stance more than once. terms such as 'crutch' are loaded in a negative manner. Your response to being accused of using a crutch in turn on that thread should reviewed as well - you did not exactly take it in a friendly fashion. So I stand by my opinion in turn. Do not become upset when folks turn the tables on you and then say that you did not imply incompetence, because that is indeed what you did.

The Auld Grump

This is my second (and only other reply) in that other thread. I didn't intend for it to come off snarky or insulting, but the tone behind text sometimes gets warped in a forum.

Very well stated- this is exactly what I was trying to say. Magic in D&D doesn't feel like magic from myth and literature- it feels like a game. There is no sense of wonder, no mystery, its simply a tool almost like technology. Because its taken for granted, players develop a reliance on it rather than on looking for alternative methods for solving a problem because it is so potent and reliable in every situation. And once players have found that the scry/buff/teleport or Imp. Invis/Fly/Bomber mage works, they rely on those tactics to the exclusion of all other things. I'll admit that as a DM, I would much rather think about interesting characters and plots in my game than searching rulebooks for ways to foil the latest l33t spell/magic item combo the players have discovered. Blah, extremely boring and predictable.

The problem is that D&D characters are so reliant on magic under the core rules that in order to prevent this kind of thing from happening, you have to reduce the power level of the game. Although I haven't restricted PCs to just NPC classes, I ended up making magic items much more rare, slowing down the spellcasting progression to 1 spell level every 3 leves of the class, editing the spell lists and making a cap of 6th level spells, and reducing the frequency of monsters. And you know what? I haven't seen the problem of player mental laziness in quite a while. While I occasionally enjoy the high-magic one-shot for its simple "wahoo" factor, I can't take it seriously because its impossible to identify with a character with that kind of power and who view themselves as their set of equipment or spells rather than as an individual with a personality and goals. Again, I'm not saying all high-powered play is like this, but IME in the last 22 years I have been gaming, probably a good 80% is. There isn't any right or wrong way to do things regarding power level, but I think that there is something to the arguement that D&D is overpowered and encourages a dependence on magic. Some people want to try and correct what we see as a problem, not a feature of the game- and to do that the basic assumptions and system of the game have to be modified.

"Crutch" is indeed a loaded term, and DMs both in high and low magic campaigns can use crutches- but I also said in the other thread as well as this one that not ALL DMs of either style do that. In retrospect, it wasn't the best term to use, and I didn't use it again after the first time. I have run high-magic games in the past and had fun with them, it was just for us the enjoyment we got from high-powered play was dampened by the magical arms race that took place. I'd say the high-magic campaign was a success too considering the players still talk about some of the events in it and laugh about some of the over-the-top stuff, but they weren't as deeply motivated because they played Superman rather than Indiana Jones and have told me they had trouble getting in the high-powered character's mindset. Part of this is also due to me having mostly bad experiences with DMs running high-magic games, and mostly good experiences with DMs running low-magic games. I'm not upset at all, but I don't like being represented as making declarative statements of the truth when I use personal qualifiers for my view ("in my opinion", "I think", "in my experience", etc). True, I could have (and should have) stated my opinions in the other thread in a more diplomatic way, but I stand by gist of my comments. I guess we have to agree to disagree.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

This is my second (and only other reply) in that other thread. I didn't intend for it to come off snarky or insulting, but the tone behind text sometimes gets warped in a forum.



"Crutch" is indeed a loaded term, and DMs both in high and low magic campaigns can use crutches- but I also said in the other thread as well as this one that not ALL DMs of either style do that. In retrospect, it wasn't the best term to use, and I didn't use it again after the first time. I have run high-magic games in the past and had fun with them, it was just for us the enjoyment we got from high-powered play was dampened by the magical arms race that took place. I'd say the high-magic campaign was a success too considering the players still talk about some of the events in it and laugh about some of the over-the-top stuff, but they weren't as deeply motivated because they played Superman rather than Indiana Jones and have told me they had trouble getting in the high-powered character's mindset. Part of this is also due to me having mostly bad experiences with DMs running high-magic games, and mostly good experiences with DMs running low-magic games. I'm not upset at all, but I don't like being represented as making declarative statements of the truth when I use personal qualifiers for my view ("in my opinion", "I think", "in my experience", etc). True, I could have (and should have) stated my opinions in the other thread in a more diplomatic way, but I stand by gist of my comments. I guess we have to agree to disagree.

Okay then. It does seem a tendency for posters on the internet to overstate their positions. I may have been guilty of it a time or two myself... I also have to admit that I seem to have mentally conflated two posts from the abovementioned topic, and yours was not the worst of the two, so I must needs apologize. (What the heck have I been reading lately...? Talk about stilted.)

The odd thing is that my own tastes lean toward lower magic settings, but blanket statements bother me. I like the PCs to need to think things through before commiting themselves to action, and for them to have (somewhat) limited resources. On the other hand, most of the longer running campaigns that I have seen locally lean towards high magic, so I have to admit to the success of the style.

The Auld Grump

 

[DerHauptman]

I'm not upset at all, but I don't like being represented as making declarative statements of the truth when I use personal qualifiers for my view ("in my opinion", "I think", "in my experience", etc). True, I could have (and should have) stated my opinions in the other thread in a more diplomatic way, but I stand by gist of my comments. I guess we have to agree to disagree.

I feel you pain here Goth. I just went through this in another thread along with about 20 others in a short time here. I think this audience is just a little too sensitive about things they are passionate about and like a wild west gunfighter quick on the trigger to respond while ignoring qualifiers in general. Too bad too.

Oh well, at least we are learning the audience huh?

 

[Gothmog]

Okay then. It does seem a tendency for posters on the internet to overstate their positions. I may have been guilty of it a time or two myself... I also have to admit that I seem to have mentally conflated two posts from the abovementioned topic, and yours was not the worst of the two, so I must needs apologize. (What the heck have I been reading lately...? Talk about stilted.)

The odd thing is that my own tastes lean toward lower magic settings, but blanket statements bother me. I like the PCs to need to think things through before commiting themselves to action, and for them to have (somewhat) limited resources. On the other hand, most of the longer running campaigns that I have seen locally lean towards high magic, so I have to admit to the success of the style.

The Auld Grump

No problem. I was more vitiolic in that thread than I usually am because about 2 months prior to that, I quit a high-magic campaign a DM was running. He had pet NPCs who could do no wrong, supremely simple plots he thought were complex and brilliant, was a railroading plot nazi and many NPCs had "mysterious defenses" for anything we tried he didn't expect, would spend hours surveying PC weeknesses between sessions so he could take a character down with his special combos he researched and then gloat about it, thought any character not optomized and maxed out with magic and abilities was "worthless", and in general would quote Core Rules as gospel and deride violently any view contrary to his own (especially low magic- he referred to Midnight as a "piece of ****"). I played about 10 sessions with them out of kindness to my friend who also played in the group and invited me, but I couldn't take any more. Ugh- that was the single worst game I've ever had the misfortune to play in. I tried not to make too many blanket statements, but I probably overstated things a bit as well.

 

[kigmatzomat]

My problem isn't so much a lack of familiarity with magic on a party level (in fact, wizard is my preferred class to play) as it is a lack of understanding how prolific magic would affect things on a global level. From what I'm hearing, though, the general consensus is to ignore the global impact--basically just focus on the party and its immediate surroundings. Is that correct? If so, how do I get a good feel for the campaign world if I don't a good view of the big picture?

I recommend working backwards. Choose a big picture you like and decide how that big picture could have come about. Magical disease that cut down particular kinds of casters, nasty religious war, war of any kind really, death of a god, natural disaster, etc can result in "non-standard" distribution of casters, limits on the types of magic, gaps in the normal knowledge, or anything else.

I often start games at the "small picture" level and get the basic feel of the game world fixed in my mind and then work up the "big picture" so that it is detailed by the time the players are ready for it. Most people don't need more than the brief segments on the nightly news to feel they have a decent grasp of the world so no need to go writing a tome describing the sociopolitical history of the region.

Remember that the rules are yours to command, not vice versa. You are the GM, creator of the setting. When it comes to setting vs. system, the system should bend. However there are very few hard rules in d20 that significantly affect the setting so you should be able to find a way to apply the rules in a way that works. It's like a box of legos. Sure, you may make some rather boxy circles but you can still do it.

You do have to be careful with using magic willy nilly for the "kewl" factor. You may think the ability for a dozen priests to perform a a ritual that creates a well is a minor bit of non-campaign impacting shiny but the party will find a way to leverage that. Best thing to do when that happens is to find a way to stall/distract the players for that session so that you can plan things out in the meantime. Simple things like "the headpriest is out of town standing a vigil over their dying aunt and is not to be disturbed" are less likely to result in PC hijinks than more complicated avoidance scenarios.