Low-magic campaigns

[Lord Dynel]

Instead of going off into a tangent with my ramblings on a different thread, I thought I'd bring this up in a new topic.

If you've ever gamed with the Chenault bros. you would find that in their campaign there are no magic item shops with easy to purchase mystical goods.

Sounds like every game I've GM'ed for the last 30+ years.

Me too on that. My home brew worlds are always low magic and therefor no way to go into a village and buy/sell magic armor.

Well I take that back, I did have a world that was kind of "Starfall" based and was high magic, but that isn't my norm ...

I'm definitely not knocking you guys, not in the least, but the occasional magic-laden games are kind of fun (in my opinion). For me, it allows me to see some of the cooler magical items from the books in play. What good is a Holy Avenger, a Robe of the Archmagi, or a Ring of Wishes if you never get to see them in action? Never getting to see the player interaction with said items, never see the wonder or excitement of getting one of these bad boys. I'm not saying you guys don't give out the cool stuff, and I've had my share of low-magic campaigns, but it's always been a head-scratcher to me why 30 years of low magic campaigns is bandied about like a badge of honor*. Maybe I'm missing something, and have been for a long time, and if that means I've offended anyone with this then you have my sincere apologies. I hope you guys know that it's never my intention to offend anyone.

So what is it? Is it the nature of your campaigns? Is it the desire to not have the inflation of power that magic items bring? Is it something else? I'm really curious as to why some people always prefer low magic campaigns.



* This is coming from a guy who intends to start his next campaign with the PCs (hopefully) surviving the first 20 minutes of the first session and find themselves destitute and gear-less!

[Lurker]

LD

Don’t worry about offending me on this, it is all flavor so no one is wrong - unless you prefer banana to orange cream popsicles, but that will open an argument from my college classes into this forum …
I don’t know about everyone else that plays “low” magic worlds, but mine does not mean “no magic” it just means that it isn’t on every corner of every village. There will be no high level cleric attending each shrine for every god, there isn’t a yea ole magic shop in every village, etc etc etc. However, in this setting, the magic items are ALL unique and the sense of excitement and wonder is further enhanced. Instead of having a cleric at the local temple that can remove the curse the party stumbled into. In my setting the cleric is unique, on a specific island, and will only remove the curse if the party is in good standing with a specific goddess (the same one they met at a stream crossing and either helped or angered).

Plus, in this setting, as the player advances that special sword the hero found back at 4th level – that was +2 and glowed when a goblin was within 50’ has been through years of adventures and grown (becoming a huge part of the character).

Moreover, it gives some good background for the DM to work with. The hero is going into a land controlled by a lord rumored to have made a pact with a demon lord (and will need said holy avenger to survive). To ready for the quest, he needs to take the sword to a temple high in the alps, have the priests pray over it for a month or three (while he helps the temple guards rid the area of ogres and other baddies terrorizing the mountain passes).

This can go for all the “special” magic items. The magic robe the mage found has been a robe of the magi all along but he only is able to access all its powers now that he has grown to a level of being a magi. That or, when the mage needed a power outside the norm and is a panic, “wow I wonder where that spell that save your life came from”

Now as for “badge of honor”, I apologize if I sounded like I equal it to the red badge of courage, I don’t. It just more explains my preferred home brew. That said, I’ve played in worlds where magic was common place and had fun, and other games have been as low magic as my preferred home brew and the experiences was as fun a pulling eye teeth. It all comes down to the DM & the players making the game and setting fun. The magic setting is simply the backdrop for the fun.

Now why do I prefer my home brew to be low magic. 1st I’m a history guy and everything I make is always filtered through that. I love classical literature (Homer, Beowulf, etc etc) and can add those magical and fantasy elements to my worlds, but the foundation is always a historic styled setting. Second. Early in my gaming I played a MU and it went horribly. Because of that as a player I never mastered magic using characters. With that, as a DM I was behind the power curve with my magic using players. To fix that, and help us all have fun, I limited magic and made the lesser magic available more special.

[Snoring Rock]

Magic is hard to come by in my world as well, but in a large city you can find potions in two or three places, but not in shops. They are sold in the hidden closets and secret spaces behind the herb shop. Magic weapons and armor are not sitting on shelves either. They must be commishioned and then fabricated. They always require the party going after some rare component as well. That is what brought up the entire expert work armor thing.

[bishop]

In response to the original poster on why low magic campaigns are popular amongst storytellers/gm's/ck's I dropped some instant messages to a few gamers and here are a few things they responded to when i asked them this question.

1. Giving players magical gear often defeats their role play drive and causes them to bicker over said gear.

2. Magical items unchecked can be in abundance with economic markets of the game. Forcing role play to suck and players to get mad at the GM. (I paraphrased this one)

3. Magic Items are sought after instead of rewarded. If they don't think they'll find any magic items when they get them they are stoked.

4. Magic is great if the players rp it in the context of the game and the items aren't thrown at them. Or they are thrown at them because magic is everywhere and therefore its not worth what it would be in a non-magic game. (this guy likes magic) I tend to see some good arguments here if its in the context of the setting.

5. Its too confusing and wastes time. (he really didn't like magic)


personally i like low magic settings because it is such a huge benefit to find a magical item for a player and a party that you want to hold onto it and never let it go. In a high magic setting it loses the luster and i can't draw in the players with an end reward.

I guess at the end of the day without rewards the game will lose its excitement with some players (not all). So low magic settings with 1 big magical item or a couple scattered about makes my players hold onto that passion longer. Also gives me a good story line to draw them in.

[Arduin]

I'm definitely not knocking you guys, not in the least, but the occasional magic-laden games are kind of fun (in my opinion). For me, it allows me to see some of the cooler magical items from the books in play. What good is a Holy Avenger, a Robe of the Archmagi, or a Ring of Wishes if you never get to see them in action?

For my game, you have misconstrued "no magic stores" with "low magic". If one is using the prices in the books, "no magic stores" is simply logical using the price wage structure used in the same books. There simply isn't enough demand for goods costing that much to sustain magic stores...

[bishop]

Last minute response from a buddy who runs games in upstate ny.

"It doesn't matter what kind of power level/magic level a game is, im beyond any game thats simple stats on paper anymore if i want stats on paper ill play a computer game. When i rpg with a group i want to be playing a CHARACTER if thats low or high or med power i dont care i just want it to be a char i tend toward high power as it usually gives the pts to flesh out an actual character."

So what i take out of it, and i would edit my other post but I'm too lazy to do that.
If the group is mature enough it shouldn't matter what power level is in the game as long as they are role playing.

[Lord Dynel]

Thanks for the reply, Lurker. I have to say it was an interesting and informative response. I appreciate you pulling back the curtain, so to speak, on you campaign.

Yeah, I debated on whether or not to leave that "badge of honor" comment in my post. I didn't mean anything negative by it - I couldn't think of a better way to put it. I kind of group the "low magic campaign" with other types of games (or game types) that I hear and don't quite understand (for lack of a better word) like "I never use published materials," " Gygax-only Greyhawk," and statements like that. I don't understand them in the regard that it seems like, to me, that you could be limiting yourself by limiting your options. But hearing stories like yours, Lurker, gives me great insight on an opposing viewpoint. Thanks!

EDIT: Gosh, a lot of responses! In the time it took me to reply to one, there's a load more to read. Awesome!

[ArgoForg]

Unsurprisingly enough, I tend to play a higher-magic campaign, and that higher/more magical feel is actually part and parcel to the campaign world I'm developing.

Sure, you may not be able to find the rack of +5 Holy Avengers in every marketplace, but there will certainly be places that you can buy the odd magic item/potion/scroll. Natch, you can also find snake-oil salesmen that will sell gullible adventurers healing tonics and luck charms, and probably even the odd place where the seller may not realize what they are reselling is magical. I'm hopeful that's all part of the flavor.

And to some degree, it's also necessity. There are a lot of magical creatures in my world, and a lot of creatures that can cause what 3.5ers on other boards called "Save or Suck"-- blindness, incapacitation, paralysis, petrification, insta-death, etc-- so it would almost seem like stacking the deck to not have some means available for players to counteract it once in a while. (And yes, although I'm sure some grit their teeth at the idea, Raise Dead/Resurrect is even available for the right price and to the right god. )

I can understand the desire for a lower-magic and even more historical-based FRPG, and I can (and have!) even enjoy it. But to me, fantasy equates to magic and lots of it, so I wouldn't feel right making a campaign world where it wasn't pervasive.

[serleran]

I alternate between low magic (high tech), high magic (replaces tech), high magic (and high tech) and whatever other combinations I can find because I like variety. Staid worlds are fine, and they can be interesting, but I want a setting where my imagination can do whatever it wants.

[jdizzy001]

d&d 4e player here, and despite the game i play, i prefer low magic settings. this spawns from the time i read the john carter novels. yes, john carter had "special powers" because he was on a planet with a gravity lower than earth's, but when it came to sword play john carter was awesome cause he had the know-how. likewise i prefer that my games be low magic so the pc's have to rely on their own abilities as opposed to what they're carrying

[western watcher]

On my campaign world I don't have magic shops out in the open. but made the buying and selling of magic items more or less an underground market. Kinda of, "I know a gnome, who knows a guardsman, who has an uncle." approach. Of course, the more powerful the item the longer it took to find a buyer or seller. This of course increased the chances of interested third parties learning about said magic items in question.