D&D 5E New D&D Survey, with some in-depth setting questions

[Maxperson]

Huh. What does that mean, I’ve never heard of wide magic before.

Low and wide must be dwarf magic

 

[Maxperson]

I did too. My other two choices were Dark Sun and Ravenloft (although not the current version). I would have liked to have included Al Qadim, Greyhawk, and Mystara/Known World (due to the Gazeteers)

I picked Forgotten Realms, Planescape and Dark Sun. I'd have liked to include Spelljammer and Al Qadim.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Makes sense. I suppose I’m a fan of “wide” magic then, as that describes my preferred approach to magic in D&D. Though, I dunno, things like magic trains and airships still seem “high” to me.

I don’t see it. “I like how the widespread use of magic affects the world” doesn’t sound like it’s describing why someone likes a low magic world to me. A wide magic one, perhaps.

so lower magic application a pre magic industrial revolution eberron?

 

[Minigiant]

I mean, it’s definitely a novel use of the terms, but it’s pretty intuitive and potentially more useful than just high and low. Having height refer to the power of magic within the setting and width refer to how widespread magic is, you can describe the presence of magic in a setting with more precision than you could with just high and low. And under that definition, I’d say I’m a fan of very low, very wide magic.

That's why I use Power Frequency and Versatility

Setting	Magic Power	Magic Frequency	Magic Versatility
Greyhawk	High	Low	High
Eberron	Low	High	High
Dark Sun	Low	Low	High
Avatar	High	High	Low
Warcraft	Low	High	Low
Forgotten Realms	High	High	High

Overall I hope this this a survey to help design a new setting. D&D needs a new setting based on its modern conceptions and game design choices badly.

 

[Aldarc]

Warcraft has low magic power? Sense when? 1994?

 

[Minigiant]

Warcraft has low magic power? Sense when? 1994?

Relative to many fantasy settings and especially D&D ones, Warcraft is low power. You barely get past the D&D equivalent of 5th level spells without an artifact, a patron, or combined forces. And that itself is rare. And their magic (like 99.9% MMOs) is super narrow in scope for an individual.

There is just a LOT of casters in Warcraft.

The characters are just super durable.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I think you downplay how big Dragonlance was back in the day.

I'm very aware of that for a time DL novels were more numerous and popular then FR novels. That is no longer the case and has been for literally decades.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

In the past, they just had open-ended comment fields for the favorite Setting question: these felt like an attempt to distill the key aspects of previous feedback and see if they float with the fanbase.

Yeah it really felt like they picked each possible answer for a reason, I think they have long term plans for all of them.

I'll point out again that both Theros and Ravnica had open ended comment fields still, this is likely because they lack the kind of customer/D&D fan feedback that more traditional D&D settings had built up over the years, next time we do the survey like this that might have changed.

 

[Aldarc]

Relative to many fantasy settings and especially D&D ones, Warcraft is low power. You barely get past the D&D equivalent of 5th level spells without an artifact, a patron, or combined forces. And that itself is rare. And their magic (like 99.9% MMOs) is super narrow in scope for an individual.

There is just a LOT of casters in Warcraft.

The characters are just super durable.

I'm not sure if I agree with your assessment of Warcraft, but I'm also not sure if I want to spend the next few pages arguing about it either. Though it may be better if I were to suggest simply removing the non-D&D settings from the compared set so that D&D settings are compared with other D&D settings in regards to their magic.

 

[tetrasodium]

Makes sense. I suppose I’m a fan of “wide” magic then, as that describes my preferred approach to magic in D&D. Though, I dunno, things like magic trains and airships still seem “high” to me.

I don’t see it. “I like how the widespread use of magic affects the world” doesn’t sound like it’s describing why someone likes a low magic world to me. A wide magic one, perhaps.

Both the lightning rail and airships are recent developments. The airship is within like the last ten years and airship within the last decade with the timeline even noting when a few major cities were connected like how it might shortly adter/still during the us buildout of the transcontinental railroad. Yes they exist, but they are not common .

The elemental binding tech used for airships is even strongly hinted to have been stolen from the drow who themselves are former slaves of a fallen giant empire living in the bones of that empire the last 4000p or so years. The drow weren't really using it, they just preserved some of the applies the knowledge &tools of a much more advanced civilization thst developed it.

Eberron Timeline

Eberron has a rich and varied history; a history that can be seen all around you. From the ruins of recent wars to the ancient ruins of Xen'drik, what follows are the known highlights of the past. This timeline uses the Galifar Calendar to mark dates. Events from the distant past are intended to...

eberron.fandom.com