Low Magic Campaigns?

[molonel]

I thought that I’d embolden part of the post you quoted. Because this ... even disguised with a is crude and insulting. Fortunately for you, I’m not an elderly wheelchair-bound arthritic dyspeptic. I’ve seen game fashions, and gamers come and go over the years, however, I don’t insult other peoples campaign choices ... Of course you’re kidding. But why? Is it some insecurity on your part, that you won’t allow someone to post about an alternative to your preferred style of play?

Are you aware of how ironic it is when you accuse me of insecurity when your style of gaming cannot even withstand the rather tame, mild humor of a d20 Invalid campaign?

I've been in this game a long, long time, and I've also seen fashions and gamers come and go. But one thing has remained constant: at it's red beating heart, D&D is a power fantasy. It's where people go to swing big swords and cast big spells. Sure, there have always been DMs willing to run a Crawl through the Lovely Filth campaign (tm) where characters are afraid of dying from tetanus from a raw splinter. Or they spend the entire campaign screaming "Run away! Run away!" with echoes of Monty Python. But those games have always been in the minority.

Why? Because most people do not play RPGs in order to suck.

I think most of us have more than ample experience playing Joe Average in our daily lives. We generally go to D&D, or White Wolf, or whatever in order to be something else.

I’m happy enough with my campaign. My players, don’t complain, at least no more often than players do. They tell tales of their (admittedly minor) victories.

If you and your players are happy with your games, then good on you.

Enjoy.

Personally, I don’t like the term Joe Average, and as the rules I use aren’t level based (I won’t bore you, suffice it to say that I haven’t played a level based game for over ten years) then the level comparison is invalid.

They are plenty of non-level based game systems. GURPS and any of White Wolf's games come to mind, and there are plenty of others.

I prefer to use the term ‘ordinary people in extraordinary situations.' Have you ever played Call of Cthulhu? In my opinion it’s a magnificent game. There’s a huge amount of fun to be had from a game which is not ‘balanced,’ where the characters could die, not from ‘bad dice rolls’ but from poor role playing, like simply forgetting how much danger they are in. Check out some of the free stuff (adventures and background) at www.Lythia.com and if you don’t like it by all means say: 'it’s not for me,' and explain why. But don’t condemn my gaming style out of hand.

Of course I've played Call of Cthulhu. I'm using material from the d20 version of CoC in my two d20 Modern games right now, and I several of the old Chaosium books on my shelf as reference and background, as well as links to several Delta Green sites that I use regularly to get the juices flowing. It's a good game.

But characters in CoC are as disposable as toilet paper. They WILL go mad, or die. It's a nice break, sometimes, but it can very quickly grow just as disatisfying when your interesting story arc ends with your character scratching out his eyeballs for opening the wrong book. Again.

There is an upside and a downside to every playing style. All of the games I'm running right now are low-magic, and I just had a thread not too long ago about incorporating the old MERP/Rolemaster crit charts into a d20 Modern game precisely because I'm running grittier games. You seem to assume that since I can make fun of low magic, gritty games that I must therefore lack experience with them. I don't. But having played in them, and run them, I know that they ALSO have downsides, pitfalls and problems. That's why I can say with confidence that they are often romanticized, and usually by the DM/GMs who run them, rather than their players.

I'm not dismissing your gaming style out of hand. In fact, I'm probably at least as familiar with it as you are. And being intimiately familiar with it, I also know how to make fun of it. Because sometimes it takes itself a little too seriously.

 

[S'mon]

Molonel - you can have a super-low-magic grim & gritty campaign with nearly no magic, combat is lethal etc, and the player plays Rasputin. How the hell is playing Rasputin *not* a power fantasy? You don't need to be casting fireballs at 5th level to have a power fantasy.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

But characters in CoC are as disposable as toilet paper. They WILL go mad, or die. It's a nice break, sometimes, but it can very quickly grow just as disatisfying when your interesting story arc ends with your character scratching out his eyeballs for opening the wrong book. Again.

I don't know- I've had a couple of CoC PCs who lived to be old and sane.

You want disposable PCs, play Paranoia- the phrase "Paranoia Campaign" is almost an oxymoron.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

Are you aware of how ironic it is when you accuse me of insecurity when your style of gaming cannot even withstand the rather tame, mild humor of a d20 Invalid campaign?

I've been in this game a long, long time, and I've also seen fashions and gamers come and go. But one thing has remained constant: at it's red beating heart, D&D is a power fantasy. It's where people go to swing big swords and cast big spells. Sure, there have always been DMs willing to run a Crawl through the Lovely Filth campaign (tm) where characters are afraid of dying from tetanus from a raw splinter. Or they spend the entire campaign screaming "Run away! Run away!" with echoes of Monty Python. But those games have always been in the minority.

Why? Because most people do not play RPGs in order to suck.

(snip)

I'm not dismissing your gaming style out of hand. In fact, I'm probably at least as familiar with it as you are. And being intimiately familiar with it, I also know how to make fun of it. Because sometimes it takes itself a little too seriously.

I try not to take the mickey out of DnD, even if ‘at it's red beating heart, D&D is a power fantasy’ (a statement with which I disagree btw). Let’s face it, I’m posting on a DnD forum and to call the game you obviously love would be both rude and foolish.

However, I see no reason to use derogatory language like ‘Crawl through the Lovely Filth campaign (tm).’ The characters in my campaign aren’t afraid of dying of tetanus, nor do they spend the entire campaign in running away. I’ve never seen such a game, and if it existed I would not be interested in it.

You say: ‘most people do not play RPGs in order to suck.’ I agree.

But, do I suck? Do you? No!

As a real person, I’m no-one special, but a game where ‘no-one special’ like me can make a difference is more interesting to me than one where I’m playing an almost indestructible combat überman whose only thought is to smite his enemies. (That last sentence was an exageration to prove the point.) You obviously are not familiar with my gaming style, because your descriptions bear no resemblance to the games I run. Stereotyping and stigmatising gamers who play in a different way to you is not the way to help the (apparently dying) hobby we share.

 

[Professor Phobos]

It all comes down to this:

Some people want to play John McClane.

John McClane gets the living hell kicked out of him in Die Hard. By the end of it he's been ripped to blood pieces, he's exhausted, he's murdered a dozen people, and he's desperately, insanely terrified of the situation he's in.

But he still ends up tossing Hans Gruber out of a window.

The most compelling heroes aren't the ones who win overwhelmingly, but the ones who pull off the narrow victories against impossible odds. It's not about "crawling through filth" or dying of tetanus, it's about being John McClane, walking up to the last two terrorists with two bullets, no shoes, no shirt and a gun duct-taped to his back.

Default style D&D can make this style somewhat difficult to pull off without vastly increased mutual power levels- I mean, there's no effective difference between Johanus McClune, Dwarven Hero, walking up to the last two Titans with only two charges of his god-destroying death ray staff, no enchanted shoes, no shirt-of-blessed protection +100 and The Battle Axe of Ultimate Awesomeness mana-taped to his back, but all that requires high-powered tropes and motifs.

Some people prefer the motifs and tropes of more down-to-earth situations. D&D inevitably scales upwards, and does so pretty quickly.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

It all comes down to this:

Some people want to play John McClane.

John McClane gets the living hell kicked out of him in Die Hard. By the end of it he's been ripped to blood pieces, he's exhausted, he's murdered a dozen people, and he's desperately, insanely terrified of the situation he's in.

But he still ends up tossing Hans Gruber out of a window.

The most compelling heroes aren't the ones who win overwhelmingly, but the ones who pull off the narrow victories against impossible odds. It's not about "crawling through filth" or dying of tetanus, it's about being John McClane, walking up to the last two terrorists with two bullets, no shoes, no shirt and a gun duct-taped to his back.

Default style D&D can make this style somewhat difficult to pull off without vastly increased mutual power levels- I mean, there's no effective difference between Johanus McClune, Dwarven Hero, walking up to the last two Titans with only two charges of his god-destroying death ray staff, no enchanted shoes, no shirt-of-blessed protection +100 and The Battle Axe of Ultimate Awesomeness mana-taped to his back, but all that requires high-powered tropes and motifs.

Some people prefer the motifs and tropes of more down-to-earth situations. D&D inevitably scales upwards, and does so pretty quickly.

Well said

 

[Raven Crowking]

Well said

Indeed.

 

[gizmo33]

Why? Because most people do not play RPGs in order to suck.

There's pretty much no way you can play DnD, in even it's most low-magic form, and not be more powerful than a 1st level commoner. Pretty much the only way to keep PCs from being more powerful than a 1st level commoner would be to restrict them to only being able to play 1st level commoners. "But I want to be able to kill 8 orcs in a melee round, not a measly 4, ohmagawd!" This whole "if I don't have a +2 sword by the time I'm 5th level then my life will end as I know it" reminds me of someone doing a bad imitation of a stereotype of a 14 year old wanting to go to the mall. Maybe there's a player welfare agency that you can call.

 

[Celebrim]

You need to either excise those critters or compensate/empower/equip the PCs adequately for the dangers they'll face.

There is no need to excise the critters, and while one should always provide the PCs with the resources they need to face the challenges ahead, there is no reason to assume that this empowerment need necessarily mean introducing high magic into a lower magic campaign.

All that is really required is for the DM to realize that the effective CR of a monster that is vulnerable to magic is increased in the situation that the PC's don't have magic. So you simply wait a few levels before pitting the PC's against those monsters.

 

[Celebrim]

I've been in this game a long, long time, and I've also seen fashions and gamers come and go. But one thing has remained constant: at it's red beating heart, D&D is a power fantasy.

In my experience, maybe 25% of D&D players are first and foremost ego-trippers who play because of empowerment/compotence fantasies. If this is what is in a player or DM's 'red beating heart', in my experience they socialize poorly and are very difficult to integrate into a play group. Almost all the rules lawyers, munchkins, disruptive players, and players that turned in game issues into threats of violence, hysterics, and other sorts of out of game issues where in thier 'red beating hearts' primarily into the game because of empowerment fantasies. I've gotten to the point that if I think I can identify you as an ego gamer, that I'll discourage you from being at my table.

Fortunately, there are all sorts of reasons why people play D&D, and for most people empowerment fantasies are a secondary attraction.

For example, I've never had a female gamer in my group that primarily played because it was a power trip. D&D players include problem solvers that play D&D like it was a puzzle and are not interested in having powerful characters so much as proving themselves by solving puzzles through thier wits and not through in game abilities. Ego trip? Possibly, but it is a radically different one than the sort that demands big swords and powerful spells. These players tend to dislike games where thier characters are given big swords and powerful spells, because they feel that these abilities detract from thier oppurtunity to show off thier problem solving ability. It's not fun for them to be able to use brute force, even to some extent creatively applied force, to solve the problem because they see this as something anyone can do. Other players are dramatacists, who are less worried about experiencing the thrills of vicarious success as they are about feeling vicarous emotions - including fear, despair, romance, joy and so forth. Other players are primarily interested in socializing in a safe and playful environment. They could care little about whether the group has earth shattering abilities - they just want to interact with the other players and be part of a team and engage in shared imaginative play. Other players are artists, who mainly want to excercise thier wits, do interesting and dramatic things that will be talked about for years to come, and craft an interesting story for thier characters. Players like this are often completely uninterested in success as it is normally defined, and are instead looking for interesting narrative arcs to create or to be a part of up to and including a 'good way to die'.

So by no means assume that every player out there is looking to have a powerful character.