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

[Brilbadr]

I think the answer here is simple. You present your players with a book with the rules in before they agree to play and say "hey guys, what do you think of these rules-you'll notice that spellcasters are both weaker and more feared" (or whatever take on magic you want) If they say - nah, then fair enough. I think where people get upset is where the goal posts move, or where they didn't know where they were in the first place.

I know the book has spelling mistakes but..
Get Conan d20!
It will change your perspective on "low magic"
You can have mystery and spell casters. You just need to avoid having "Tim the Enchanter" remember him, out of Holy Grail. That is a 3.5 warwizard (minitures handbook). How mysterious? About as mystical as a flamethrower and a howitzer

I'll say it again. Read/Beg/Borrow Conan. Stop arguing. Go and get it now.
Actualy the barbarian class (the first in the book) is way over the top from my perspective and we actualy play with the standard 3.5 barbarian, but hey I think they wanted a Conan in every party. And the money rules are a bit "we are drunken barbarian idiots" oriented but hey, you take what you need. And you all need the magic system. Well most of you.
Go an get it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The only place I got upset is in the claim that normal magic limits story creativity, which is why I posted the how-to thread, which contains more than just nerfs and ways around the abilities for those who care to read it.

It has, I hope, shown that you can be just as creative and engaging in high power as in low power...it's just a matter of scale. On one end, the DM can reliably control and manipulate events to their desire because minor changes are significant (a +1 means something, it can be 'powerful'). At the other end, DM's need more major changes, and need to prepare for PC's 'outsmarting' them and taking their own route to the goals (a +1 is nothing, a +10 might be 'powerful').

Low magic/grim-n-gritty is first an issue of flavor, and second, and more subtly, an issue of DM control over the events in the game. Not all DMs enjoy rolling with the punches at high levels, not all can plan or free-form to that level, not all are happy with letting the players effectively 'cut out the middleman.' Not all players enjoy setting the stage to that degree, or feeling that powerful while still undertaking the quest.

Both are valid, and neither limits the creativity of a good DM in any way. You can have an arduous journey just as well in high-level normal D&D as you can in low-magic D&D, just as simply -- the high-level normal D&D arduous journey will have particular elements that not all DMs or players are comfortable with (such as requiring that each step on the journey be significant), however, just as the low-magic/gng D&D arduous journey will have particular elements that not all players or DM's are comfortable with (such as the risk to life and limb posed by nameless NPC brigands against the *heroes*). High magic games work just fine, and are capable of the same things as low magic, just with a different flavor, and it only ruffles my feathers when people claim they don't....

....and I will admit that Hong has a point....

 

[WizarDru]

Eh, I think you're pussyfooting around the issue there. The drive of Wulf's argument was that you can't run as many kinds of stories at high level because PC abilities will defuse the plot, and he has a point there. Some others were saying that nerfing of some player abilities at high level to enable a wider range of stories is not a good solution for that problem, and they have a point too.

Neither of which was the sole focus of the thread, as you were representing it.

Either way, this is the crux of what I'm not agreeing with...you say "less" and I say "different". Can you do a mystery at high level? Yes, but it will not be of the 'four people in a room, the door was locked, whodunnit?' variety. There are new and different kinds of stories that can only be done at high level to take the place of low-level adventures. There are not fewer types of stories, but if you only want to tell certain types of stories, then you will have a problem, becuase high level magic will sufficiently defuse those stories.

As PC has said, instead of nerfing character abilities, you require them. I certainly don't advocate removing players hard-won abilities, and I agree that developing solutions that deny them those powers to make the game work is a poor solution. That's not the same thing as saying that high-level games are less varied than low-level games. And many games will work at any level, such as the politics that occured in my game last night, which would have worked at 3rd level as well as 23rd level....but not the specific elements, such as the requirement that the PCs teleport to four different locations that are all over the world, for example, or the interaction with their ancient gold dragon mentor and the repelling of an invasion and the discussion of constructing a new mage's guild in the aftermath of the near-apocalypse. It's all relative.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

High magic games work just fine, and are capable of the same things as low magic, just with a different flavor, and it only ruffles my feathers when people claim they don't....

They work just fine and are capable of the same things as low magic, except of course, for capturing the flavor found in the bulk of myth and fiction.

"Just with a different flavor" isn't something you can just wave off, it's the heart of the matter, or so I perceived this discussion.


Wulf

 

[d4]

"Just with a different flavor" isn't something you can just wave off, it's the heart of the matter, or so I perceived this discussion.

some people like original recipe, other people go for extra crispy. it's all a matter of taste.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

some people like original recipe, other people go for extra crispy. it's all a matter of taste.

True, and agreed upon several times already in this thread. To carry your analogy to the current point of discussion, however, it would be akin to saying that you can get original using the extra crispy recipe by virtue of saying that it's still chicken (which won't get you anywhere except my grandma complaining about crispy pieces getting caught in her partials).

 

[Dark Jezter]

They work just fine and are capable of the same things as low magic, except of course, for capturing the flavor found in the bulk of myth and fiction.

"Just with a different flavor" isn't something you can just wave off, it's the heart of the matter, or so I perceived this discussion.


Wulf

Folklore and mythology are also commonly filled with incestuous themes, but you don't see people scrambling to import those in their D&D campaigns.

At least, not in any campaign I've played in.

 

[Altalazar]

Folklore and mythology are also commonly filled with incestuous themes, but you don't see people scrambling to import those in their D&D campaigns.

At least, not in any campaign I've played in.

That is a very good point. I think perhaps that is part of the problem here - the great stories of myth often have a specific lesson to import - they are very specifically crafted to do so - and actual games where you have four or more players each doing their own thing just do not lend themselves to the kind of control necessary to craft a story of mythic proportions. Not unless the DM railroads could such a result be guaranteed. Which ties in again to the common complaint by those who dislike magic - that they have their options "limited" in making a plot - which to me sounds like frustration with attempts to railroad that get derailed by player's abilities.

If your plot requires players be absolutely unable to do something or require them to be absolutely unable to figure out something until times designated by the DM, it starts to smell and sound like railroading to me.

Now, this is separate from "grim and gritty," just to be clear.

Also, myths and legends often included larger than life characters - the stuff of epic level characters. Paul Bunyon, for instance.

I think if one is creative, one can craft just as fine a plot, magic or not. If there is an engaging story with interesting NPCs a night of fun can be had regardless of what level spells are tossed around.

 

[I'm A Banana]

They work just fine and are capable of the same things as low magic, except of course, for capturing the flavor found in the bulk of myth and fiction.

Well, assuming that "the bulk of myth and fiction" has a consistent flavor (it doesn't), I thought I had shown that the plot points in these stories can still exist in high-level D&D, they'll just have different trappings. A mystery is still a mystery, wether it's four people in a room and one dies, or it's a grand interplanar conspiracy involving the deities that may threaten entire worlds. Some people more like the former, some people more like the latter, and they BOTH capture the flavor of a mystery. And arduous journey is still and arduous journey, wether it's a road full of brigands on the way to market, or an river through the heavens collecting the parts of a shattered deity. An assassinated noble is still an assassinated noble wether he died from a knife in the back and complications during surgery or by a Sphere of Annihiliation. They have different flavor, but the same basic points of plot and conflict. You can choose from either -- you are not 'forced' to play Low-Magic D&D at high levels just to replicate certain points of conflict between the PC's and their enemies.

"Just with a different flavor" isn't something you can just wave off, it's the heart of the matter, or so I perceived this discussion.

But what I'm saying is that they're both capable of the same basic structure of conflict and resolution. It's okay to differ on the enjoyment of the ways in which the means and ends are accomplished....it's okay to like nickel-and-diming food and hp more than nickel-and-diming third-level spells. The point is, they're both nickel-and-diming, and they create the same conflicts, the same emotions, low magic or high magic. Neither is 'better at nickel-and-diming' than the other, it just takes a different form in each, ones uniquely suited to the flavor that the DMs wish to capture.

To take the chicken analogy further, Original Recepie isn't any better at satisfying hunger than Extra Tasty Crispy....they do the same things in the end. Some would rather eat one, and some the other, but it's not like Extra Tasty Crispy has some key ingredient of hunger-absolving that Original Recepie doesn't. It just tastes different. It has different ingredients. It's not like Original Recepie can't sate your hunger, it's just that you'd prefer to have Extra Tasty Crispy, and I've never said that's wrong.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

Which ties in again to the common complaint by those who dislike magic - that they have their options "limited" in making a plot - which to me sounds like frustration with attempts to railroad that get derailed by player's abilities.

Well, we've got yet another insinuation that low magic equates to bad GMing, but I'll ignore that little gem of bigotry and address the relevant issue...

In my experience as a player, I've seen high magic used by GMs to railroad and screw PCs so often that I started GMing to provide my friends with a game that didn't include any of that nonsense, which inevitably led me down the road to low magic, and, I must say, I'm still a gamer because of it.

None of my players feel that their choices are limited or that they are railroaded in any regard. Indeed, what they see is options within a viable campaign world that they prefer over the other games available to them (most of which are "core" games). Sure, they aren't the same options as one would have in a high magic game, but options are there and choices are theirs to make.

Anyone that's experienced the opposite didn't experience a low magic game, they experienced a bad GM, and bad GMs are not unique to any form or flavor of magic.