Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Odhanan" data-source="post: 2936763" data-attributes="member: 12324">I think there's a mix-up that's been going on for a while on what "low-magic" means exactly. In fact, what low-magic means varies with people. For some DMs it means a decreased power of the player characters. An increased control over "the story". What would be at stake then is the control over the game and its events. Not whether the game's "low-fantasy or not". If you want to have "low-magic" game in which characters are in fact "mundane" characters with basically way less options and abilities than their D&D, magic-laden counterparts, Iron Heroes is clearly not for you. If however you want the action to be at the center of your game, with PC heroes that perform feats of heroism, awesome combat-moves but are not loaded with magic items to do so, then IH clearly is your game. I don't agree. IH isn't about the combat. It's about the action, as in "fantasy action-heroes". There's a huge nuance, because "action" can mean combat heavy games, yes, but also heavy in chases, athletic moves, extreme situations and environments, and so on and so forth. And this, if you ask me, is very much in the tone of Sword and Sorcery stories like R.E. Howard's or Leiber's stories. Conan and the Grey Mouser enter the "Forlorn Temple of Doom", steal the Heart of Ahriman, slaughter the Priest while swinging on the live and sacred snakes tied up to the roof of the shrine. They escape the Temple by climbing up the stairs while the structure starts to crumble! They run over the walls of the High Tower crashing down over the temple below and then jump hundreds of feets in the air from the top of the shattered tower!  The temple itself collapses from the shock it receives from the tower's fall in a huge cloud of desert sand, never to be heard from again. The two thieves walk away, badly wounded but richer, to the next city where they will drink until they pass out. Tomorrow will be another morning. Another adventure.Here, that is what IH is about, in my opinion. It's playing out hard-and-fast Conan or Grey Mouser stories with AC/DC in the background. The PCs do awesome things in IH adventures because they can. In the rules, that's abilities for classes, yes, but also extended Skills uses, challenges and stunts allowing you to use these Skills, and so on and so forth. That's the heart of action fantasy for me. It's not about Jack-the-Half-Handed trying to make a living killing frogs around the village.</blockquote>

Verification