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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 5267825" data-attributes="member: 21169">I got a good one:Forgotten Realms, and other high magic settings such as 3e's default and Eberron, are more believable than low magic settings.The PCs, whether the setting is high or low magic, will always encounter tons of it. They will go to magic places and use magic items to kill magic monsters. Half or more of them can cast spells or posess other magic powers - wizard, cleric, magic races, etc. And they will do this again and again and again. The world the PCs inhabit is always high magic. If the wider world is high magic too than that's fine, no inconsistency. But if the wider world is low magic then we have an inconsistency, a credibility gap. And that has been defined as believability.FR and the like are less realistic but more believable.EDIT: When I talk about a low magic world, I mean the world as it is experienced by most of its inhabitants. The average person in such a world seldom, probably never, encounters magic. In a high magic world the average person encounters magic frequently. However PCs in a D&D game will always have a pretty similar experience no matter whether the world is high or low magic. Half of them will be casters, they'll have magic items, meet weird monsters and so forth. And this will happen not once, but repeatedly.Middle-Earth in the time of LotR is a good example of a low magic world with high magic protagonists. The heroes seem to encounter just about every magic item, monster and magical being around at the time, save for Sauron. The average person in Middle-Earth wouldn't wield Sting and bear the One Ring and look into a palantir and meet Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, Tom frikkin Bombadil, Ringwraiths, the last balrog, Shelob, etc. Protagonists lead very interesting lives.</blockquote>

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