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Message: <blockquote data-quote="molonel" data-source="post: 1716026" data-attributes="member: 10412">Well, as someone has already said, one of those points wasn't quite so clear as you thought, and actually it was demonstratably false.And again, which part of Third Age Middle Earth do you want me to compare to those tables? Rivendell, or the Shire? Lothlorien, or Angmar? In Hyboria, what shall I compare? Conan's native Cimmeria, or the wizard-ruled lands of Stygia? One of my main points, throughout this discussion, has simply been that there are conceptual and imaginative problems with using those worlds as cookie-cutter examples of "low magic" when the worlds themselves are not static backwaters of low magic goodness. As a result of my points, your language has become a lot more confined and specific, you'll notice. It's never "Middle Earth" now, but "Third Age Middle Earth." That, in and of itself, communicates that you admit some traction in the points I've made. Most of the folks, yourself included, were not nearly so specific when those points were originally raised.Pretty soon, your assertion is going to look something like this:"Okay, molonel. Fine. Maybe the culture in the city of Aquilonia, the wizard cults in the mountains and the wizard-ruled lands of Stygia don't exactly fit our definition of "low magic" here, and maybe there are large regions of Middle Earth in the Third Age that don't fit that definition, either, and the First and Second age and the Age of Stars and the Age of the Lamps definitely don't. But you are absolutely FORCED to admit that the deserts of Shem, the Pict lands not ruled by shapechanging shamans and the northern wastelands of the Cimmerians (but not the Aesir) fit that definition! And you MUST admit that the Shire is pretty low magic."And I feel I've shown, through several anecdotes drawn directly from the books themselves, that your statements are incorrect or leave a great deal unaddressed. Perhaps it's time to agree to disagree?But what I'm saying is that even within Hyboria and Third Age Middle Earth, as within a "standard" D&D setting, there are disparities between different cultures. Someone else has already pointed out that you were incorrect in your assumption about the commonality of magical creatures in a standard D&D world. Will you possibly entertain, just for a moment, the possibility that there was more to Hyboria than the Cimmerian backwaters? Hedgewizards and shamans were not an uncommon occurence in the Conan stories, and their resemblance to low-level wizards and clerics is striking. The reason Conan is said to be so scared of magic, in the early stories, was because he was a barbarian.Well, I've confined myself mostly to references from the actual texts of the stories we've been discussing, and specific examples from those, so I can see why you'd prefer statistics since the stories don't actually offer any. Where do you draw your statistics about the occurence of spellcasters in Hyboria and Middle Earth, since you're now "clinging to statistics?"Well, you haven't SHOWN that they were lower. You've simply said it several times, and naturally the more you say something, the truer it becomes, yes? So I guess we're at a stalemate on that point.I consider there to be conceptual and imaginative problems with using those worlds as a baseline for "low magic." If you think they work, great. I'm not telling you not to use them. I'm saying I can't use them that way, because I've read the stories closely enough and carefully enough that I realize it's easy to walk away from them after a cursory reading, and forget a lot.</blockquote>

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