What is "grim and gritty" and "low magic" anyway?

[Dragonblade]

It's beyond superheroic. Superheroes (and villains) do have a nasty habit of coming back from the dead, but the X-Men don't go into fight after fight knowing that 10 minutes and a bag of diamonds is all that it takes to defy death.

Sure they don't expect to be resurrected. But when was the last time an X-man or one of their foes actually stayed dead?

 

[Bendris Noulg]

I agree with this completely. The thing is people want high level D&D to be mythic. High level D&D is not mythic. Its superheroic. As in X-men.

But this arguement, once again, rolls around to yet another misconception that low magic vs high magic debates keep turning back to: is it proper to compare a d20 fantasy game (home brew or professionally published) to D&D itself?

Every time someone says, "D&D is supposed to be [high magic/super heroics/any other description]", I can't help but wonder, "so friggin' what?" If anything, the mistake of viewing every fantasy-genre RPG by how it relates to D&D does little more than present a rather poor basis of measurement and comparison; It's using one example of how d20 can be set up and balanced to judge the worth of any other manner of set up and balance (and is, in fact, something I warned against when 3E was first released and everyone jumped on the balance wagon).

I mean, my game is dark and grim; insanity is common; ignorance and superstition are common; etc. Why not, instead of comparing it to D&D, compare it instead to Call of Cthulu d20? Now, here's yet another example of d20 set up and balance, and using it as a basis, my game is super-duper uber powered. Or we can compare it to Midnight. Similar dark mood, similar evil-has-the-upperhand themes at work. Yet, compared to that settig, my world isn't that grim; the good guys do have a shred of hope for victory and entire continents remain under the banner of Good.

D&D is just another d20 game, regardless of the fact that WotC holds most of the marketing cards; it would be a shame to see the possibilities the engine offers limited by the expectations of D&D rather than moving beyond it in every direction to include different facets of the genre instead of excluding them.

But every time someone chimes in with, "But D&D is supposed to be...", they are doing just that: limiting the possibilities due to a false assumption that d20 Fantasy must equal D&D when such isn't the case at all.

 

[WizarDru]

I agree with this completely. The thing is people want high level D&D to be mythic. High level D&D is not mythic. Its superheroic. As in X-men.

I think it would be more appropriate to say, "SOME people want high level D&D to be mythic." I know plenty of people who want to just lay down the smack, and that doesn't change from 1st level to 20th level, and it's as true now as it was in 1980, when I first started playing regularly.

Personally, I think the 'mythic feel' is more goverened by the DM than anything else. If I occasionally have a negative reaction to people describing high-level play, it's that they seem to ignore a lot of factors when determining its value. The idea that being brought back from the dead is painless and simple, when it rarely proves to be quite that way. Either you're loosing a level or a sizable amount of gold in the form of gems. Even a 20th level character balks at throwing 25,000 gp away, unless the DM is giving them away for free or ignoring the spell restrictions.

It also should be pointed out that there is a difference between making a 20th level character and leveling someone up, over time, to 20th level and beyond. Sub-optimal choices get made on the way, if you work your way up to it. Feats, skills and spells are chosen that are useful at one point, but become less useful later. Treasure gets spent or used that might have been used differently, had the player known what was to come. Many such balancing factors are sometimes ignored when examining high-level play, which can certainly throw off the impression of the game at that level.

I readily agree that high-level D&D lacks many of the elements of fiction and myth...the problem being that fiction and myth make for poor games, especially since most myth and fiction have the luxury of focusing on a viewpoint character, inequal representation of characters and total control over the plot. The various and sundry creators of the Arthurian mythos didn't have to face problems concerning Lancelot being a better swordsman than Kay, or the fact that Lancelot enjoyed a completely different style of play than Percival, or that Galahad would be killed when the Breuse sans Pite got two criticals in one round and Galahad failed his massive damage save. Does that mean the story is bad, or the game is faulty? Of course not, but it does highlight that they are different creatures, with different goals. The issue, of course, is that most gng proponents would like to emulate that feel much more closely than D&D does, at its default setting.

High-level D&D doesn't emulate that feel well, but that doesn't mean that said play doesn't feel mythic. I think my players would argue that they found that battle against a swarm of miniature gulthias horrors fun, but they were much more involved in the argument with the renegade members of a celestial host that occured just afterwards, or the negotiation with the demon princess or the encounter with the three deities avatars. Almost none of which required rolls, and with which spells had little or no part.

The nice thing about 3e D&D is that, since it's so consistent from a rules perspective, creating alternate rules variants to address these issues is much easier to accomplish.

At least, it would be if Wulf would get Grim Tales to the printer, already.
(Either that, or change those banner ads, dadgummit!)

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

It does? Naaah, just that the DM is ready to be a rat bastard to actually get his plot done. You want the myth, I give you the Odyssey, By the Rules.

No, you are breaking the rules.

As I said before, DM Fiat is not a satisfactory solution to high magic gaming. Trumping the players' ingenuity with "higher magic" is the same thing as taking that magic away.

Dude, PLANE SHIFT?! The spell is wildly inaccurate as a 'teleport substitute,'

I'm beginning to suspect that your high magic game works because either you don't know the rules, or your players don't know them well enough to exploit them, or both.

Plane shift is wildly inaccurate, yes. But it is never more than 500 miles off target-- well within range of teleport. You plane shift out, you plane shift back, you teleport home. Piece of cake for a high level, high magic game.

and there's no garuntee that in the bit of time you're on the planes you won't be harassed by some might outsider.

So you threaten clever PCs with random attacks. Never mind that the outer planes are near infinite and the odds of running into something at random are slim, nor that the PCs can plane shift to a friendly plane, or a friendly demi-plane of their own creation.

and a portable hole doesn't contain enough air(one creature for ten minutes divided by thousands of creatures.....the math don't seem to favor that, even for 6 seconds).

[sigh] They HOLD THEIR BREATH. It doesn't matter how much air the hole holds. I think that veterans of the Trojan war can manage to hold their breath for 6 seconds or so.

So plane shift does not work. Even on the odd chance they decided to do exactly as you posit, and the DM overlooked the 'breathable air inside a portable hole' thing, they risk a TPK at TWO points in the quest, when they are in Olympus, and when they land again (Perhaps directly in the ocean, where some sea creature can swallow them up without so much as a ceremony)....

Plane shift works fine. You just don't WANT it to work. You don't want it to work so badly that you concoct ridiculous threats (such as a sea creature just happening to be in the right place at the right time, within one round's movement and attack, to swallow the party before they teleport home.

Well, there's a few reasons she wouldn't or can't.

She should have done this ages ago. But ok, we'll let it go. We have more DM fiat to get to!

So now not only are you suffocating the crew in a hole, you're killing them....what kind of mook would agree to this?! It's disrespectful and decietful, and all too wicked.....

Why is it wicked or traumatic? Off they go to Mt. Olympus. They've earned some shore leave, I would think. And they get a true ressurrection to come back safe and whole and none the worse for wear. That's how the spell works-- unless you want to arbitrarily stomp on this tactic, too.

So no, Resurrection-transportation doesn't work, for moral quandries and logistical ones.

Works just fine according to the rules. But again, you don't want it to work, and what the DM says, goes.

Gate: Possiedon (who has control in Olympus nearing Zeus's) puts the kibash on it, since opening a gate into a deity's realm can be forbidden by the deity there.

Ok, so Zeus, who's on the PCs side, allows Poseidon to take dominion long enough to put the kibosh on Gate. Well, ok, that doesn't seem arbitrary at all, but we'll throw you another one.

Teleportation Circle: It's a 5-ft radius, not a large enough area to get a ship by any means. And Greater Teleport has many of the same problems as Regular Teleport (no distance limit, but then there are problems transporting the entire army, and the bringing of the trouble of the gods home with them).

Feel like doing a little math? The teleport circle is live for 170 minutes, minimum. How many greek veterans can Odysseus hustle across a path in the nearly 3 hours the circle is live? A human hustle is 90 feet of movement every 6 seconds, which means every 6 seconds you can move 18 men, running single file, across the teleportation circle. That's over 30,000 men, give or take.

Any other ideas you want me to defeat, or will you rest with that and accept the fact that high-level, high-magic adventures can have all the elements of a classic mythical story?

I suggested that high level games are not mythic because of the existence of teleport and ressurrection, among others, and you proceed to show me how you go about nerfing the use of those spells in order to prove a point.

Unfortunately, you proved MY point.

If you want to impress me, show me how a high magic game can work WITHOUT arbitrarily curbing the abilities of the PCs. You were all over the abilities of the players like a cheap suit.

Taking away their abilities only proves the low magic argument.

In Other News: I'm not sure it takes a potentially great DM to do this (though I'm flattered you think me in the realms of P-Kitty!). It just takes someone who's reading along, who knows the capabilities of the players, and who makes sure they know that no matter how powerful they are, there is *always* something more powerful out there,

So you need to know how plane shift works, for starters, and how long a human can hold his breath, and you need to be able to do math, and when all else fails, you need to be able to threaten, cajole, or browbeat the players into forgoing the use of their most potent abilities.

I guess that sums it up.

Wulf

 

[Remathilis]

I think another problem with the low/high magic debate is that people think that D&D = Fantasy Game Simulator. Its not. Its no easier to use D&D to create the Oddessy than it is to play Star Trek with the Star Wars d20 book.
Grim Tales seems to be what I was looking for when I said a generic toolkit. Heck, Unearthed Arcana was a step in the right direction for LM/G&G. Oddly, Wizards seems to be heading in the opposite direction on magic than (at least) Enworld seems to be, with Eberron's extremely high magitech. However, it also seems better laid out than Realms for explaining this, so we'll see if high magic and pulp can co-exist peacefully.

Which leads me to a question mostly hinted at, but never answered: The next supposed edition of D&D will come out in anywhere from 5-10 years. When it does, should it go to a lower magic more realistic style of game, or the more computer/anime/high magic style game some people envision it to be.

In other words, should 4th edition be more or less magical/grim and gritty?

 

[WizarDru]

In other words, should 4th edition be more or less magical/grim and gritty?

IMHO? Neither. It should be even more modular and faciliatate customization easier, to allow individual games to customize closer to whatever flavor that group enjoys, with recommendations for how to make it happen. I expect that some of Unearthed Arcana's material will make into the core as sidebar material, for example.

 

[tauton_ikhnos]

And... the Journey of Odysseus, writ large, 20th level.

Basic Plot:
Poseidon is angry. He curses Odysseus. Odysseus does not have the ability to fight off curse, so he goes long way around.

That is the ORIGINAL plot, mind you. The GM nerfed Odysseus' mighty sailing skills, right there in text. So I'm going to nerf one thing, just like Homer did: his ability to travel quickly and efficiently back home.

D&D: Dimensional Anchor. On Odysseus. There's the start of your mythic tale.

Is there a nerf? Yes. Just like there was in the mythic text. I can see Odysseus' player whining already: "But I put 23 ranks in Navigation, skill focus, ocean born feat, and I've got a WIS 23... plus that astrolabe +2... what do you MEAN I can't find the way home, much less aim the ship at it? I've got a freaking +36 check!"

The Journey
Odysseus travels the ocean, blown from port to port, encountering strange and terrifying things.

D&D: Interplanar river. Odysseus sails down it, fiercely seeking for the proper natural gates (which will ignore Dim Anchor) to take him home. In the meantime, he goes from plane to plane, encountering strange and terrifying things.

The Challenges & The Methods:
Odysseus uses cleverness, some few magic items, and the sacrifice of his many men, to defeat strange and terrifying things. His skills also come into play, particularly his seamanship.

D&D: Same thing, run by competent GM, but with more magic items than the above, and clever use of spells. This is GAMIST aspect - there are challenges that are challenging, and clever players to defeat them. Since Odysseus is dim-anchored, seamanship will be particularly important in this story arc, and even though the player may curse the necessity in character, he will probably find it cool that he gets to show off.

Now, that wasn't so hard, was it?

 

[Bendris Noulg]

Good work, Wulf...

In other words, should 4th edition be more or less magical/grim and gritty?

IMHO? Neither. It should be even more modular and faciliatate customization easier, to allow individual games to customize closer to whatever flavor that group enjoys, with recommendations for how to make it happen.

Now that would be a dream come true.

 

[ManicFuel]

IMHO? Neither. It should be even more modular and faciliatate customization easier, to allow individual games to customize closer to whatever flavor that group enjoys, with recommendations for how to make it happen. I expect that some of Unearthed Arcana's material will make into the core as sidebar material, for example.

Ditto

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Have all of the Odyssey fans seen module M1, "Into the Maelstrom"? I have it up in my attic.
It's the Odyssey rendered for Master-level D&D (levels 26-36 IIRC). They did use various "Immortals interfere with your magic" ploys to nerf Create Food & Water and some other spells. But it looked cool.

One of the bits I remember is that there was a monster variant in the Companion set called "gargantuan." A gargantuan troll had 2x the height, 8x the weight and hit dice, 4x the damage and regeneration. Or something like that. Anyway, to replicate the island of the giants, they used gargantuan cloud giants. In the Expert set, your basic cloud giant did 6d6 points of damage per hit. These did 24d6. Ouch. And the maximum HP a 36th-level fighter could have was 153.
Sorry. Not meaning to ramble. Just reminiscing about the good old days of the black books and Weapon Mastery and tridents impaling one's foe...