Is it time for a low-magic setting?

[rounser]

I made this suggestion ~4 years ago on rgfd, I think. People didn't like it. The level-grind aspect of the zeitgeist is strong....

But...but....you can just have everyone multiclass after level ten....the worst that can happen is a wizard 10/sorceror 10. It's using the innate penalty of multiclassed casters for good, not evil.

In fact, this solves all sorts of problems. Reach level 20 as a wizard 10/sorceror 10 and then maybe you can go "epic" and gain levels 11+ in wizard and sorceror. Neat. Problems: Fighter-types become much stronger in such a campaign...and monks get their progression cut in half, rogues and bards are similarly cut short...plus, how to handle prestige classes with "gain a level of spellcasting" in their description.

 

[Kapture]

I don't get what you want, protesting everybody's answers. So I'll go back to the poll.

The flipside of this discussion, as I understand it, is about game management:

You want a brand of DND that doesn’t rely to heavily on magic items.

Which means you don’t want to award as many magic items in your games.

Well, I’m all for GM’s doing what they want with your game. You go. But right now you’d have to jury rig the EL system. I suggest that every creature with damage resistance be considered 2 CR’s higher for purposes of determining encounters.

You also don’t want non-magical classes to need bolstering through magic. Well, in that case, Iron Heroes might help you out. They’ve shimmed the system with more feats, less items. But of course, that would be non-WOTC, and you’ve already declared your undying loyalty to the superiority of WOTC products.

I’ve thought about a system giving PCs feats instead of treasure.

Do we really need a setting to do this? How about a setting book? Like the War and Horror settings? You can title it something like: “Too much magic will make you go blind.”

See? It’s how you manage the game: I could probably run a successful low magic Eberron campaign. If I wanted to do the work.

See, what you’re questioning is what people want to work on. Kind of what you’re declaring is what you don’t want to work on.

Which means you’re questioning WOTC’s business model.

A bunch of people have pointed out that writing another setting requires work that may not see much return. Part of what your insisting is that it would, but I dunno. WOTC is pretty experienced. You may not like their decisions, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad for their market.

I don’t think you’re really listening to the answers to your post. You’re too busy having fun snarking at people for being reactionary DND lovers.

 

[Davelozzi]

I have only had time to skim this thread, but wanted to chime in.

BD, I can see where you are coming from wanting an actual D&D campaign on the low magic side. I think that Birthright filled this niche admirably in the days of 2e. However, with 3e/3.5 being so heavily engineered with recommended treasure levels, CRs, ELs, etc, I think the assumptions about magic is too heavily ingrained now. Which is exactly a d20 variant is better suited to this kind of game than D&D is nowadays.

 

[big dummy]

I'm going to admit to my ignorance. What the heck is a "Gutboy Barrelhouse"?

Gutboy Barrelhouse was the name of an NPC in some examples of play in the 1E DMG. I liked the name and found it amusing. Also personally evocative of another way of playing the game.

BD

 

[Raven Crowking]

It's quite hard to write a book that actively reduces the number of options that are out there.

I think it requires thinking of different types of options. Iron Heroes, for example, has plenty of options, and is definitely low magic. As was pointed out earlier, my revisions are lower magic (but not low magic) and I dare say they have a good many times the options available in the SRD.

Or, low magic campaigns relieve the DM of the responsibility of considering how magic changes the world, of considering how the extraordinary abilities of the PCs might casually derail his plot. By reducing the power level of PCs, it becomes easier to insulate the setting from the abilities of high level PCs to affect the landscape. Low magic reduces the required work.

Considering how something that does not have internally consistent laws changes the world is fairly easy in comparison to the research required to know how something was done in the real world at any given level of technology.

Also, you assume that the DM has a "plot" which the PCs should follow and can "derail". Something like, perhaps, the current prevelance of "Adventure Paths" in Dungeon or the old A1-4 through Queen of the Demonweb Pit. If you make this assumption (I do not) then it is still easier to claim that some unknown magical effect prevents the PCs from teleporting (some of the old higher-magic modules were rife with this) than it is to come up with a rational reason to cause the PCs to choose to follow your plot.

Finally, I've never heard anyone claim that PCs need incredible magic at their disposal to derail a DM's plans before. This one's entirely new to me!

In high magic settings, the basic assumptions that players have grown up with no longer apply. It is no longer the case that a man cannot fly, a closed room does not mean someone didn't leave, and just because you didn't tell anyone your secret doesn't mean it hasn't already been broadcast to the world. Players are therefore forced to think in an alien mindset, and the DM is faced with the burden of making it all makes sense, because if the setting is not internally consistent then you're just making it up as you go.

In either a high magic or a low magic setting, there are basic assumptions that you have grown up with that no longer apply. Because magic so often imitates technology (lightning rail, anyone?) in a high magic setting, the basics of existence are similar to that of the modern world. Food may well come from a supermarket; you can transit quickly from Britain to the United States. In a low magic setting, the mindset is not the same as that of the modern world, and requires greater adjustment.

Alternatively, in the high magic world the rules of magic are clearly understood. So, you might have a technobabble explanation for how something works, but you need that explanation. In a low magic game, "it's magic" is enough, since no-one really understands how magic works. All you need is some notion of how the magic got there, and you can do anything you want.

Other way around.

A high magic world is saturated by magic, most often, and folks just tap in. What is the official explanation for magic in Greyhawk, for example? In a low magic world any incidence of magic requires some reason for it to be present.

And a bad big budget film is better than a badly made low budget film, because at least the audience can be distracted by the effects. And a well-made big budget film brings more to the table than any any cheaply made film can.

Yes to the first, no to the second. Yes to the first is, as I said earlier, why I believe WotC decided to go "Big Budget" with D&D. As far as the second goes, there have been many small films that show an independent and self-contained vision that is stronger than a committee-made decision could be. Night of the Living Dead is better without a big budget, IMHO. The same with Clerks. There are times that effects can do nothing other than detract from the content.

I think perhaps you are confusing your own preferences with an objective measure of quality.

Maybe. OTOH, I didn't say that low magic was objectively better than high magic. What I said was that the argument that "low magic was for lazy DMs" is objectively wrong. Also, that there is a place for low magic games, and that I would be happy (subjective, note, not objective) if WotC put out such a product (even though I doubt that they ever will).

If they did create such a product, I would buy it to glean ideas from....But it would have to be spectacular to make me give up the work I've already done.

 

[Umbran]

Lots of people played in low magic worlds in 1st Ed and 2nd Ed, and nobody blinked. Playing in a low magic world was considered to be easily done, and was considered to be supported by the rules.

In 3.X, lots of people play in low magic worlds. However, playing in a low magic world is no longer considered to be easily done, and is no longer considered to be supported by the rules. You say "low magic" and people blink, big time.

Well, as you mention later, things have changed. And some of the changes have made this a sort of "apples and oranges" comparison. The lines of communication in ye olden days were different, as were expectations. The former means that we really only know the preferences of gamers rather close to us at the time, so I don't even know if anyone alive today, including Gygax himself, can actually say what people liked and disliked with any confidence.

But, if we can base as best we can on what we know - I suggest to you that DMs in the past were far more interested, willing, and/or resigned to doing their own work in those days. And given how little those previous games cared about what we now call "balance", few of the DMs cared to try to enforce it at the rules level either.

Basically, whether or not people blink is not telling, unless you also consider what constituted "blinkworthy" in each era, and why.

Yet, as you say, (and I agree) the edge of a dime balance (used as an excuse for why low-magic games won't work in 3.E) is a myth.

I'll suggest that it isn't a myth. I'll suggest that this is one of the things that have changed - It is a difference in tolerances and tastes over time. The current fashion is for systems that are balanced on the rules-level, rather than not balanced at all, or balanced by heavy GM intervention.

This is not to say that a low-magic game is by nature less balanced. It is to say that folks more strongly prefer specialized tools. They want D&D to be specialized to do what it does. They don't want a general purpose fantasy game. So, they'll reject your attempts to make it more general.

 

[Sound of Azure]

This is certainly an interesting thread to read.

My opinion as I've been reading has changed a few times as I've been going, so I'm glad I didn't chime in immediately.

BD, I know how you feel. I think yeah, I would like WOTC to release a low-magic book, but only as a "tool-kit" book, like the 3.0 Manual of the Planes, or the Oriental Adventures book. As many would recall, OA provided a baseline world to use with the rules presented therein. It's good to have examples, IMHO.

I'm quite fond of low(er) magic settings, but see no problem with the higher magic settings either. Both can be exciting in their own ways. As has been stated above, there are a reasonable number of options outside of baseline D&D to use.
At present, due to the flavour I'm trying to have in my game, I'm going for a lower-magic setting. By this I mean lower amount of magic items. (Un?)fortunately, this means a lot of work for me, so that challenges remain challenging, and the non-casters don't get outshone by the casters (Granted, I don't have any of the ordinary caster Base Classes except Spirit Shaman, but hey.... )

My point is this: You're not going to be able to do what you seek without either modifying a lot, or going outside of the WOTC stable for what you seek. As much as I'd like WOTC to release their Low magic toolkit, they probably won't. We already have d20 Modern. We already have Unearthed Arcana. We have a lot of great 3rd party d20 publishers as well. Also, I hope you won't be afraid to ask anyone here for tips on Jury Rigging your rules, if you want to "fix" them yourself.

Anyhow, thanks for creating such an interesting discussion!

 

[Imperialus]

The big problem I see with a "generic" low magic setting is this:

When someone says high fantasy, almost every D&D player knows pretty much what to expect. It's been around for 31 years now. Low magic though is a little tougher to pin down. Are you talking a low magic grim and gritty sword swinging festival out of a R.E. Howard novel? Or are you talking a psudo historical world like Game of Thrones? Heck to branch off from settings that have been published how about John Marco's Tyrants and Kings? There are a few exceptionally powerful spellcasters that use their magic at great personal sacrifice to combat an empire founded on science.

Honestly I feel that if WoTC were to sucessfully pull off the publication of a giant "catch all" low magic world it would be a disservice to the gaming industry. There is a reason that the smaller publishers are producing the low magic settings. With very few exceptions high fantasy settings using the D20 rules don't do well. I mean does anyone know how well Kalmar sells? How about Arcana unearthed as a setting not a varient rules system? If WoTC were to produce the "greyhawk" of low magic worlds what would happen to Conan, The Black Company, Thieves World, Midnight, GoT and Iron Heros?

 

[Raven Crowking]

This is not to say that a low-magic game is by nature less balanced. It is to say that folks more strongly prefer specialized tools. They want D&D to be specialized to do what it does. They don't want a general purpose fantasy game. So, they'll reject your attempts to make it more general.

I am not exactly certain who you mean by "they" here. But I do see a couple of flaws in your reasoning.

(1) Creating a low-magic varient is making the game more specialized. Therefore, from what you are saying, this would seem to be what folks want. Given that, consistently, approximately 1/3rd of polled populace claims to want this, it again makes sense that this is what folks want.

(2) The idea that folks want D&D to be specialized "to do what it does" seems to suggest that folks only want the game to do what it currently does, or even that what it currently does is universally seen as better than other things that it could do. Thread after thread, and poll after poll, show that this is untrue. A very vocal minority wants low magic. A very, very vocal minority wants the current setting defaults set in stone. Most people seem to want to have a level of choice in setting.

I guess what I'm saying is that, in the above quoted paragraph, I don't see a whole lot of support for your contentions. Even in this thread, one can easily read that 3.X both can and cannot support change, that it both is and is not balanced on a dime, that it both can and cannot do low fantasy with very few modifications, and so on. There simply isn't any more of a uniform "folks" now than there was in Ye Olde Days.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

(Psi)SH - That's my point. Yes, the character has 8 or 9 magic items. However, they are ALL minor items that don't make a huge difference. Taken together, sure, they help, but, individually, they aren't a big deal. That character has +3 AC, +1 to hit and damage and +1 saves over a non-magic character. This is not a massive difference. Yes, it's an advantage, and, at higher level, that advantage blooms into a great chasm, I don't deny that, but, it's not a huge gap.

That wasn't even my point, however. It's not even the balance issue yet, it's the flavor issue. I don't think the hero should be covered in magic items. The balance issues come with with few more levels, and with weak NPCs.

As for "player entitlement", it's part of the game. It's part of game balance, and game balance is part of what makes the game fun. I've seen lots of campaigns weakened or even ruined by DMs handing out too little or too much treasure. I don't trust statements like "be careful with what monsters you throw at PCs" because it's more involved than that. It's a lot of work, which is why you're better off using a system actually designed for low magic.

There's a lot of people saying you can do DnD with low magic, despite many experiences to the contrary. Maybe really sharp DMs can do it. That's a very slim percentage of the DnD playing population. Most DMs will have to rely on a product designed for low magic.