Mundane vs. Fantastical

[I'm A Banana]

I'm talking about what actually happened at your table. At my table, the fantastic was pretty omnipresent. Every encounter, every scene featured the fantastic - be it in the form of the PC characters, magic spells, items, whatever.
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D&D games have always been wahoo, right from day one. 4e is just the first edition to not pretend that this isn't true.

Your logic is leaping more than a bullywug on a pogostick, mang.

What happened at your table didn't happen at everyone's table. D&D has, up until 4e, at least kind of tangentially made allowances for people to play non-wahoo games (3e had the "hidden subsystem" of E6, and NPC classes, and NPC's who were level 5 fighters who just did NPC things and didn't fight goblins, after all.)

4e is just the first edition to pretend that everyone who played D&D was playing middle-of-the-road by-the-book D&D, or even WANTED to play that.

That, IMXP, was almost NEVER true. People took the D&D rules and did weird things with them and, more often than not, made it work.

One of the things that was easier to make work was a non-wahoo game. Heck, Eberron, the setting made by 3e, for 3e, was distinctly non-wahoo fantasy in many respects (culling from noir, nobody's high-level, PC's aren't the only adventurers, etc., etc.). Wahoo fantasy isn't even defined, I would think, by the preponderance of spellcasters (since it's entirely possible to have low-level "mundane magic" be very non-wahoo).

4e pretends that no one really liked to play that way, and that's part of where 4e doesn't support some peoples' play styles, because some people actually enjoy that playstyle. I can't help but feel these people were like fans of Firefly. They just liked something that not enough other people liked to make it worthwhile from a mass production standpoint.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

This is neither for or against, but just another example to throw in for discussion.

The Temeraire series by Naomi Novick. It is set during the Napoleonic War except in this world there are various breeds of Dragons, many of which are used to form a "Air Corps".

The interesting aspect though is how Dragons are viewed by both different people of the populace as well as the reader. For the reader since Dragons are a common character in the series it feels normal and right to have them everywhere. This goes for their crews as well as nations where Dragons are part of the culture/society like China.

However, for your average person in London a Dragon is a terrifying scene and most people will run for shelter and hide if a Dragon thinks about landing in London. Even the extremely small courier Dragons cause much trepidation amongst the general populace.

Just more food for thought

 

[Fallen Seraph]

4e is just the first edition to pretend that everyone who played D&D was playing middle-of-the-road by-the-book D&D, or even WANTED to play that.

While I agree the surface feel of 4e is more magical, I feel that 4e is actually the easiest to turn into a less-magical, less-hyper-high-fantasy then any D&D system before.

The way math, fluff/mechanics separation, classes, balance, items, etc. is handled it is EXTREMELY easy to turn it into almost a Medieval-Europe rpg.

 

[I'm A Banana]

While I agree the surface feel of 4e is more magical, I feel that 4e is actually the easiest to turn into a less-magical, less-hyper-high-fantasy then any D&D system before.

That's as may be, but there's no actual support in the rules for a more mundane game.

Some actual rules support is usually better than some theoretical rules possibility.

 

[Hussar]

Uhm...wow, now you're telling me how I ran my games? Actually my games were alot closer to The Young Kingdoms (where there are actually races besides humans) and Lankhmar in 3.5 than what you're describing. This is what I came up on as far as fantasy goes way before I had ever read LotR. It wasn't all that hard to find alternatives to the base system. Some examples I used were snatching out full casters and replacing them with the Warlock, DuskBlade, etc.... limited multi classing into caster classes and no full caster single classes( this you could od with almost any edition), the spell system from Dark Legacies, and so on. I know it was very much possible to run this type of game...unless one was hellbent on using everything in the game instead of picking and choosing (especially in 3.5).

And that is the crux of what I'm getting at. Earlier editions had the tools to create a more swords & sorcery type game, yeah you had to subtract stuff but the things you needed were there. In 4e I just don't see it and I think it's another one of my dissapointments with it.

Also I just wanted to say you are making some pretty big generalizations about playstyles and campaigns, where are you getting this stuff from. I have experienced a few games ran by different people and I wouldn't go so far as to claim they were all wahoo fantasy. Maybe those are just the type of campaigns you create and enjoy.

What am I basing this on? How about just about every module produced for the past thirty years? The game designers assumed that you would have a balanced party - 3 fighters, a cleric, wizard and thief. All the way forward from there.

All fighter party? Sure, I'm sure someone played that. But, would you think that's common?

That's as may be, but there's no actual support in the rules for a more mundane game.

Some actual rules support is usually better than some theoretical rules possibility.

I've seen this one a few times. 4e S&S game. 1 house rule. All PC's must be martial classes.

Done.

There. I just made a 4ed game that is a thousand times closer to Conan than 3e ever was because I don't need clerics or any sort of divine healing. One house rule. That's all it takes to make a mundane game. Poof, done.

I have a nicely balanced game, I don't have to worry about pretty much any issues like not having casters, either give the PC's magic items as warranted (after all, S&S genre has lots of magic items and weapons) and pick and choose appropriate monsters and opponents.

That's a whole lot more simple than E6.

 

[I'm A Banana]

All PC's must be martial classes.

Done.

Depending upon the "mundane" you're going for, no, it's not.

Because you're STILL seven or eight cuts above any town guard.

S&S, maybe, but S&S is hardly the benchmark or the endpoint of a "mundane" game.

 

[Hussar]

A further thought about playstyles.

While I may be painting with a pretty broad brush, aren't you guys doing the same? You're claiming that people didn't play the way I'm proposing. Based on what? Personal experience?

At least I can point to some pretty concrete evidence. Just about every module assumes at the very least, a cleric and a wizard in the party. The game assumes that you will have at least a cleric and quite strongly suggests that you have a wizard too. The vast majority of game rules from 3.5 and earlier deal with magic - why the very strong focus on this if few people actually use these rules? Drow as a PC race. Minotaurs as a PC race (note this is still 1e). On and on.

Maybe it's a problem with definition. I see anything other than plain jane humans as fantasy. Yes, elves are fantastic. Undying (or at least close enough to it) faeries are fantastic. Dwarves are fantastic. Orcs are fantastic. Wizards are fantastic. If it doesn't exist in the real world, it's fantastic.

Imaro - I see no difference between a full caster and a warlock when it comes to the fantastic. With a warlock, you are going to see magic used in each and every encounter in the game. Every single time. How is that not wahoo? And, conversely, how is that remotely low magic? Note, sword and sorcery as a genre is not low magic. Elric is S&S and is most certainly not low magic.

To me, the fact that pretty much every group out there had elves, wizards, clerics, whatever makes D&D pretty wahoo. It's fantastic right from the get go. If I wanted to play a mundane game, I'd use Chivalry and Sorcery or GURPS. D&D just doesn't fit the bill very well.

 

[Hussar]

Depending upon the "mundane" you're going for, no, it's not.

Because you're STILL seven or eight cuts above any town guard.

S&S, maybe, but S&S is hardly the benchmark or the endpoint of a "mundane" game.

But, in D&D, by 3rd level, you're seven or eight cuts above any town guard. So, D&D is mundane for maybe 2 levels and then it's fantastic. It's the nature of the level system.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But, in D&D, by 3rd level, you're seven or eight cuts above any town guard. So, D&D is mundane for maybe 2 levels and then it's fantastic. It's the nature of the level system.

Right.

But, as I said above, some actual rules support is usually better than some theoretical rules possibility. 4e has no actual rules support. 3e at least had 3 levels (and, again, depending on the campaign, that could go even longer).

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Well one can always simply refluff/reskin monsters to stay constant. I have run games where by simply refluffing and reskinning higher level monsters it has made it feel like the PCs even at higher levels are still wary of town guards.

Since a level is abstract, just by how you approach a power and a level, a level 10 can seem like a god, or it can seem like a weakling.