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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Belegbeth" data-source="post: 1567407" data-attributes="member: 17228">Okay, this is a deliberate misrepresentation of the original point.  Yes most players do not care about baking bread, or haggling over a beer.  You have deliberately restated the original point in order to support your position.The original point is that the drama that you find in most well-known fantasy novels (Tolkien, Leiber, Howard, and more recent folks like Gemmel, Martin, etc.) involves GRIPPING stuff like combat with other human or human-like warriors, climbing dangerous walls, sneaking through enemy buildings, trying to stay alive in hostile environments, dealing with difficult political situations, and so forth.  (And don't down-play the drama of being pick-pocketed!  If the PCs' remaining gold has been pickpocketed after they've journeyed across a horrible desert, or if they find their "special magic ring" suddenly gone after bumping into a street urchin, that can lead to some exciting campaign developments!)  Few great fantasy authors include protagonists with earth-changing special abilities and bags full of magic items that enable them to overcome these difficulties without breaking a sweat.  (Yes there are exceptions -- I suppose some of Moorcock's stuff is pretty high-powered in terms of magic.  But in literature, at least, they are the exceptions.)Most players who have not memorized all the rules and spells in DnD are likely to find these kinds of "survival" difficulties more understandable as serious problems for their PCs -- i.e. the kinds of situtations that make role-playing exciting for them.  They are going to have a harder time finding the problem of countering an enemy's scrying attempts by means of counter-measures, while on guard for teleporting assassins, etc., intuitive.   (Of course, once they acquire adequate "game knowledge", such events may seem intuitive and dramatic.  Just as, I suppose, Star Trek fans find certain pseudo-technological "problems" in various episodes far more gripping than non-ST fans do.)The purpose of my original post was to point out this fact.  In terms of literature (and, yes, "real life"), "low magic" settings are simply more accessible to most players.  Yes there are exceptions.  But if a DM has a job (and other time pressures), it may be easier for him to create an exciting campaign by keeping magic "rare and mysterious" -- i.e. more similar in feel to the magic found in good fantasy novels -- than it would be for him to make it commonplace and utilitarian.And yes, even superheroes feel "emotions" and struggle with "relationships."  But is often harder for a mature reader to empathize with Superman's "relationship issues," than it is with those of, say, Aragorn or Samwise.</blockquote>

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