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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Henry" data-source="post: 964679" data-attributes="member: 158">It's ironic that Lord of the Rings could be considered low fantasy by this definition, because in Tolkien's view, only the One ring and a few other items could be considered magical. Most Elven Items were considered "really, really good" stuff, and not magical in the sense of invested with magic power. It was just superior to human stuff. Notable exceptions include Nairsil and Sting, but exclude elven trail bread, elvish cloaks, elvish rope, mithril forged items, etc.I think there needs to be better terminology used here. "low fantasy" should refer to a more grim and gritty take on the setting's outlook - the "crude, nasty, brutish, and short" that everyone likes to describe as life for a medieval peasant."high fantasy" needs to be about heroes, unlikely or otherwise, who perform deeds that are unfettered by worries of a commoner - Frodo and Aragorn are not worried about performing stable jobs for cash, and they aren't worried about scoring with the local trollop.low-magic and high-magic should be defined as how much magic is available to the common man, and by extension, to the PC's, who are going to get it from the common man one way or the other. Prevalence is what we speak of here. LOTR is by this definition low-magic but high fantasy, because it takes true heroism to get your hands on REAL magic. In most low-fantasy games I ever played in when younger, characters were scrimping for copper pieces in dung mines while clearing out sewers infested with rats, and scraping the slime off of the rusty dagger they found, which made for your backup weapon. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> For obvious reasons, I did not enjoy them for more than a couple of sessions, before I wanted to get back to risking my character for the pile of treasure that the trolls kept under the bridge.I'm sure that low-magic, low-fantasy games are fun, but not to my taste. Gimme high fantasy, and low magic, or high magic and fantasy, but keep me outta that low-fantasy stuff, and I'm happy. I live low fantasy every year. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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