Tell me about your low magic campaign.

[Galethorn]

Theudlund

Ok, now that I'm back from dinner, I'll talk about my in-progress setting, Theudland.

First, think of 9th century western europe. If you can imagine it, you're off to a good start. If not, think of a land of tiny, petty kingdoms ruled by warlords, where war is conducted by a warrior elite in hauberks and conical helms, with tear-shaped kite shields and broad-bladed cutting swords in hand, while most people just stay where they are and keep farming. There, that's--roughly--what 9th century europe was like, ignoring Charlemagne, of course.

Now, imagine a crescent-shaped island-continent that covers about the same amount of space as australia, but only has about half of the surface area because of its shape. It has a lot of mountains, specifically in a large northern region, and on either side of the southern 'horn'. Some are volcanic, others aren't. Compared with anywhere on earth, the climate ranges from alaska/scandanavia-esque in the north to very mediterranean in the south.

Ok, now you know what the Theudlund is like, roughly, in terms of the rough geography and social nature of things.

Though most lands are contested, there are six major 'nations' which tend to be the main movers and shakers in the world. I won't go to the trouble of describing them in detail, but I will name them and give a general theme...

First, there's Adalund, a viking/saxon/frank-inspired northern nation, which puts bravery and cleverness above other ideals. Then there's Vertesia, a byzantine/persian/norman-inspired nation that once held all of Theudland (except Adalund) in the iron grip of its empire. And there's Skyrlund, a non-viking-norse/celt-based farming nation with a strange almost-republic government. Then Holtla, a barely unified nation of wary barbarians in a forest that stretches for league after league. Next is Steorra, a confederation of island-kingdoms founded by seafarers from Adalund. Last is Lokyr, a sort of russian/mongolian/sami-blend of steppe-barbarians who live in the deepest part of the north.

So, there's a variety of cultures, a basic lack of order and civilization most places, and a warrior class of society that fights to decide which king owns what. It's got some common features, but is otherwise not a lot like the standard, high-medieval paradigm that most D&D settings stick to.


Now, what are the races? Human.

What about spellcasters? None.

Any magic at all? Oh yeah! Despite the lack of babble-and-gesticulate-style magic, there's plenty of other stuff. For example, a lot of the potions that hermits make actually do more than simply poison the drinker and make them hallucinate; swords that have graced the hands of kings carry curses and blessings; dead men rise in the wild places of the world, intent on slaying the living; shadows stalk in the night, taking those who wander too far from the fire; the fates smile on the bold. So, it can't be said that there isn't any magic in Theudlund.

What about monsters? Large, vicious cousins of already dangerous earthican (I love that word, even if it isn't real) beasts prowl the forests of Theudlund, not to mention the undead, as well as the distinct possibility that at least a few dragons still live in the world, albeit asleep in cold, mountain lairs. As well, there are things that go bump in the night, but their actual identity is known only to those who have lived through a 'sighting,' and such people are as rare as hen's teeth.

Oh, and what rules system am I going to use, you ask? A combination of Grim Tales and my own variants that I like so well. Included will be the Injury ('save vs. damage') variant for HP from UA (with armor-as-DR turned into armor-as-Fort-save-bonus-vs.-damage), my own new skill system (in progress), and a general simplification of feats, talents, and combat.

So, that's Theudlund...Coming this November to a table near me!

 

[Kashell]

A different type of low magic


Perhaps a little more work (But much cooler IMO!) is the campaign I'm running at the moment.

The 'world' so to speak is a normal magic world, however, until now it was just a one continent world.

The campaign I'm running is on a new, smaller continent that is 'low magic with exceptions' so to speak.

I wanted to run a campaign where magic was far less important and 'super natural' type powers were more important, but where magic is not obsolete. The first thing I did was lower the % rolls of all magic items(including scrolls) by 80%. It's relatively easy(just get a calculator) to change the loot profiles (as seen in chapter 3 of DM's manuel) and multiply it out.

For example, if a roll of 96-100 at level 1 is a magic item, multiply the amount of possible die rolls by .2 (or 20%) and that will be the amount of rolls for the new chart. In this case, 4 * .2 = .8 , so round up to 1. Now, your new magic % chance roll is only on a 100.

The second thing I did was institute a few of the renaissance weapons. Right now I'm only using pistols until I feel things out a bit more, but as long as you make sure to note that such things are 'the absolute highest technology in the world' ...well you get the idea.

Lastly, I found some interesting prestige classes and interesting races and molded my world around them. While I won't go into detail, if you check out the Entropomancer class(Complete Divine) and races like the Changling(Monster Manuel 3) you might get an idea as to how to create your own world.


It takes careful balance or else a world like this could easily overpowered or underpowered. The best way to deal with this is directly how you create your 'super bad guys' ...you know, the ones you have make cameo appearances until the heros discover that he's really the evil lord of the world when they thought he was good the entire time...or something.

Rule #2 for me is to make sure that the villians are just as cool with just as long of a history as the PC's(since my PC's tend to create interesting backstories...) and that your bad guys are the epitome of your world. It's good for keeping the PC's "Important but not unique" in the world when you have a similarly cool bad guy.

Just make sure to not make the "The PC's can't do anything" mistake with your bad guys. If they want to kill him, make it realistic. If they get over their heads(where you're absolutely sure they will die) then don't just kill them off...I would instead send them somewhere where they had to earn their way back out...In other words, they don't take XP penalties and lose items for "dieing" but instead suffer a set back in their quest of saving the world...sometimes, with that set back being grave indeed...


-Kash


Edit: I knew I forgot something. About Sorcs, Wizards and such, I give them one half the spells that they 'know'(except those gained at first level and not counting cantrips - - rounded down) Make sure however, that you balance it, whatever way you do it. (Player arguements for which class is best with nerfs and all = teh suck.)

 

[exile]

Forgotten Realms, Pulp Action, Things Man Was Not Supposed To Know

I just finished the first arc of what will hopefully be a long, but intermittently, running game (we rotate games and GMs frequently for a wide experience of play). I started with the basic Forgotten Realms campaign, specifically the Silver Marches (even more specifically the wilderness around Sundabar). I kept spellcasting power where the core rules seem to place it (i.e. no alterations to the classes), but I have turned the availability of magical items way down.

One of the NPCs (not particularly an antagonist) happened to have a Wand of Sleep (which I could kind of justify because he was from Halruaa), which much to my chagrin ended up in the hands of a PC (after another PC murdered him). Otherwise, I tried to limit non-monetary findings to masterwork (and even mundane) items.

Just for a bit more detail, I made a point of trying to up the pulp action (very much in vogue these days) by spelling it out to the players that I wanted such to be a part of the game and implementing action points. I think when I pick the game up again, I am going to make the players justify the use of action points with a cool descriptor of what they are trying to accomplish. I'll let you all know how that works out.

I also tried to up the Cthulhu-esque horror elements in the game. This came in the form of the introduction of a missing library. The first book of which the PCs have acquired (they are presently looking for the remainder). Not all of teh books are magical/contain spells, but they are all dangerous in some manner.

One thing that I have not done so far is use the environment/elements against the characters. Of course it is summer in the North, so things are pretty mild. I'm already looking forward to winter, so I can hit them with blinding snowstorms. I had planned for a good rainfall on Midsummer (a bad omen), but was so caught up in throwing humanoids at the PCs that I forgot all about it (oops). I think a rockslide and some wild animals would be a nice touch too.

Alright, sorry about the rambling...and the slightly off-topic-ness.
Chad

 

[hong]

Edgar Rice Burroughs meets Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft in a dark alley.

"... so the shoggoth says, 'what is this, some kind of a joke?'"


Hong "consider a spherical Cthulhu" Ooi

 

[Silver Moon]

How does your Wild West campaign work i'd be intrested in hearing about it.

The setting is the town from the old TSR Boot Hill Module "BH3: Ballots and Bullets". We use hybrid D&D and Boot Hill Rules for combat. Europeans and European-descended Americans are human; Native Americans are elves; this world's vikings were Dwarves; etc.

Rather than Christianity we use D&D pantheons. Instead of the Protestant Reformation Europe this world had a similar split in the 15th and 16th centuries, but it was based on Wizard Magic vs. Clerical Magic. Great Britain and the United States are pro-clerical magic and anti-wizard magic, so the use of wizard/sorcerer/bard spells and magical items has to be done secretly.

Here is the Story Hour of the current campaign:

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=99053

which actually began as a spin off from this campaign:

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=28906

Both campaigns are filled with appearances by famous and infamous people, from both real history and fiction.

 

[Li Shenron]

I hear a lot of talk around these here parts about low magic campaigns, and the different ways in which people are implementing them. So, I want to know - which ruleset you are using, and I want to know about the actual world itself.

Not much of a low-magic world here, but only a low-magic-item world.

The setting is not significantly different from classic D&D, there's the typical rearrangement in races/monsters rarity, traits and cultures, but it has nothing to do with the nature of magic in the game. Same with classes, spellcasting is absolutely normal, eventually more various from the use of non-core materials but nothing special.

About the ruleset (summarized):
- permanent magic items are extremely rare to found and even more difficult to forge, each PC probably ends up having 1-4 permanent magic items on herself in a career's 20-level span; however the PCs end up being the same powerful as before because the items have several powers each
- consumable magic items are extremely perishable and the magic inside wanes in a few days
- as a result, there is almost no magic items market in the world except for lesser scrolls and potions
- item creation feats for permanent items are used to "awake" improvements within them, otherwise the items improve semi-randomly

 

[shurai]

Tomhawk, the Custom Setting

Essentially, for my campaigns, I leave the character creation rules untouched, in that any player may play any class or race. I do tweak the magic item rules quite a bit, however.

I reduce the magic item acquisition rates but I actually increase the power of whatever items they do find; I like players to have few magic items, but I want those magic items to matter. For example, a +1 longsword isn't much better than a regular longsword, statistically speaking, so I usually give out a +2 longsword instead. This is the key thing: I don't give the characters any way of knowing what the sword's bonus is. That way, the only way to gauge the value of their new sword is by its effects, which I like to describe over time using subtle hints.

It's amazing how much emotive power is instilled in an item like that when you take away the number and provide the players with subtle evidence instead. This does require me to hamstring certain spells, like Identify for instance; such a spell makes little sense in a world with few magical items anyway.

I also like to keep the general quantity of permanent magic items smaller than the number of party members. The Fighter, for instance, may have a magic sword, and the Cleric may have a magic shield, but the rogue may not have anything magical and the Wizard may have only some rare, but minor, trinket. This may generate some unrest among the players, but I think the added realism of uneven distribution is well worth the risk of someone feeling left out. Englightened players tend to worry about fairness less than character and plot anyway, as long as they trust the DM. Truly, I think D&D spends too much time mandating 'fairness'; we lose a lot of our verisimilitude that way.

If anything gripes me about default D&D culture, it is the obvious materialism. Essentially, PCs usually end up walking around with piles and piles of various magic items. As others have said, it ruins the atmosphere to have game events handled as questions of who has which situation-defeating magical item.

So, I don't particularly care for potions and scrolls; they feel too generic. Instead I like the one-shot items to be food-like or herbal, to make the campaign feel more earthy. Think lembas. The important thing is to build a rich culture, and that requires a rich barley-flavored halfling drink that restores vitality, not a potionofcurelightwounds, 3rd caster level.

I get the impression that most of the time when people say they want low-magic, what they're really after is richer culture. I think default D&D feels too much like the modern world: The magic items are like cel phones, nutritional supplements, explosives, or shots of morphine. You can just imagine some of the Wondrous Items to be made of Plastic and stamped with "Made in Taiwan".

Speaking of culture, that's where the lowness of the magic in my campaigns really comes out. I think medeival cultures are nothing without superstition and rumor, charlatan and ritual. Most citizens of most societies, therefore, have never seen a single magical object or spell. They believe in the stuff, of course, and everyone knows some Grandmother or other who knows dozens of charms and curses and whatnot. Some of these may even produce actual minor magical effects, but the trick is to never tell the players which they are.

It's surprising how you can produce a superstitious player-character that way, and it makes the roleplaying so much more interesting.

Speaking of roleplaying, I like to alter the cultural perceptions of spellcasters. I like the citizenry to fear them or be in awe of them. This way some spellcasters can be hated and persecuted, but also obeyed out of amazement. So it's a tad balanced.

There's basically no way to buy a magic item in my world; having a market for the unbelievable is just absurd. I've yet to have a spellcaster character want to use the Item Creation rules, so I don't yet know how to resolve that.

Also, in my world, good is good and evil is evil, and although the primary advantage of evil is its ability to deceive, it's clear which is which much of the time. All magic items carry some sort of alignment and related effects. This prevents the players from collecting magic items from the various bad people they kill.

Anyway, I've gone on more than long enough; that's how I do it.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

HârnWorld is the place, HârnMaster my system of preference. (I’m drawn to skill based percentage systems).

The world is definitely medieval, the island of Hârn contains 5 human Kingdoms, a human ‘Republic,’ a quasi-kingdom occupied by ‘viking’ invaders, a dwarf mountain kingdom and an elf forest kingdom, thousands of years of detailed history leading to the current situation. The populace are mostly rural, and mostly serfs. Most folk believe that dwarves & elves don’t really exist. They’ve never seen one. The background is detailed and rich and is well supported by professional quality fan-written material. There are a few monsters & barbarian tribes in the forests, but other than goblins & trolls my players have met few creatures. They have more than enough trouble dealing bandits, ‘zombie cultists’ and the power politics.

The HârnMaster system, as you’d expect, works well with the world. There are very few mages, some are charlatans, some have a little knowledge, a small number are powerful. Magic, when it works, can be effective. The gods will, sometimes, aid their priests, but most ‘miracles’ could be explained away as coincidence or luck. Combat is deadly. The lack of levels means that my battle hardened and experienced players are still wary of entering combat.

GOM

 

[irdeggman]

It depends very much on your definition of low magic.

Birthright was a TSR setting pegged as low magic. But it really wasn't. It was low magic item, but there were still a lot of divine spellcasters. Arcane magic was defined as lesser or true. Lesser (more common) was limited to all spells of 2nd or lower and only divination and illusion spells of higher level. Only those with elven blood or the blood of the gods (bloodlines was a unique BR aspect that would take too long to describe right here) could cast true magic.

Now at Birthright.net we are updating the rules to 3.5 and capturing this aspect. We will probably end up with magic items cost twice as much as the listed price. What this does is increase teh gp price and the xp cost of creating magic items, hence reducing how "common" they are. This was fromthe Coplete Warrior as a low magic option.

 

[Insight]

The game world that my group is using falls under the Low Magic Frequency, High Magic Potency category. Magic Items and Spellcasters are rare, but powerful. This fits in well with the basic tenet of the campaign, that is to say that everything magical should be, well, magical, and not a part of daily life.

There are very powerful mages, and some very powerful divine spellcasters as well, but the priests etc tend to have a lot more political power than actual spellcasting ability.

As you can imagine, there are multiple priesthoods and the like, though interestingly, all of the 'evil' gods are considered 'dead' and are not a part of the common man's consciousness at all. Basically, they were 'wiped out' by the previous Empire. There are, of course, dark cults dedicated to reinvigorating the worship of these 'evil' deities.

On the arcane side, there are two main approaches to spellcasting, which match up with the D&D approach: witches/warlocks (sorcerers) and magi (wizards). Up until the fall of the Empire, witches and warlocks (sorcerers) were not at all common, while the magi reigned supreme. They had Traditions that functioned as clans for the magi (and had other political functions as well). Now, the positions are reversed - the witches and warlocks are far more common than Tradition magi.

In terms of items, the ability to create permanent magic items has been lost since the fall of the Empire. Those knowledgeable in the creation of magic items are very rare, and the creation process is a secret. At this time, PCs can create temporary or charge-based items, but not permanent ones. They may at some point learn how this can be done. Right now, the PCs have magic items in their possession, and for the most part, these items are very powerful, but not plentiful in the campaign world.