Author Topic: High Magic vs Low Magic  (Read 8165 times)

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Offline arakish

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High Magic vs Low Magic
« on: August 29, 2012, 02:31:01 PM »
There was also a Loremaster profession in one of the Shadow World products.
IIRC, though, the SW LoreMaster wasn't a "true" profession, as  the LoreMasters was more of an organization one would join (similar to the Navigators), and in the process "merge" one's original profession with the LoreMaster profession, including "exchanging" some base lists of one's original profession with the LoreMaster's ones.

Now that you mention it, you are completely correct.  It has been so long since I have read anything about Shadow World, I had forgotten that.

I just remember that Shadow World was off the deep end when it came to magic for my taste.  I tend towards mid or low magic worlds.  SW was so far beyond high magic end, there is no scale on which it could be placed.  Except, perhaps into a new category of "so impossible as to be unplayable."  Sorry SW fans, but not all like high magic worlds.

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Offline yammahoper

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Re: High Magic vs Low Magic
« Reply #1 on: August 29, 2012, 04:22:32 PM »
Indeed all may not like high magic worlds, but that doesn't make them unplayable  8)  In fact, they are easier to play.

Some players and GM's like really big scope.  Take Dragon Age for example.  Really big scope, saving the world from the Dark Spawn.  Yet Dragon Age II was pawned as inferior by the majority, in no small part because they were only fighting to survive and succeed with their family in a city.  A very limited scope must have been the reason because it was as limear as the first DA and the combat system had been improved (though the game was still to easy for mages imo, and lets not talk about the massive holes in DAII storyline).

Think of all the really good PC rpgs: their scope tends to be BIG.  Two reasons.  One revolves around the satisfaction of base human desire and ego, being the best, being great, being powerful and respected.  Crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and listen to the lamentation of the women. You know, the usual, even if it is 12 or so, and I find it no coincidence most begin the march into adulthood at about the age of 12.

Reason two is the simple and easy; combat is easy to code compared to subtlties of human intereaction.  Fighting is a challenge that is easier for a GM to deliver than suspense, intrigue, story, plot, character personality and development beyond leveling up, which is of course a simple measuring stick of success.  Who doesn't remember their highest level or most powerful PC (pun intended).

Yes, a tight controled low magic game requires a 15 year old mentality over 12, but 12 ain't all that bad!
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Offline intothatdarkness

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Re: High Magic vs Low Magic
« Reply #2 on: August 29, 2012, 04:34:20 PM »
I'm with you, arakish. High magic was just never my thing. Nothing against those who enjoy it, of course, but I never cared for it. Luckily, most of my gaming group doesn't get into high magic settings, either. Ours tend to be a bit grittier. There's magic, and the scope can still be quite big, but I don't think scope has to be inevitably tied to magic. Take, for example, the discovery in my world that goblins still exist and that they have a technological advantage over the other groups. That had pretty major implications that weren't tied directly to magic at all. Of course, there was a magical threat moving at the same time....
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Offline yammahoper

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Re: High Magic vs Low Magic
« Reply #3 on: August 29, 2012, 04:38:23 PM »
Hard to have Big Magic and not have Big Scope.  I also never hinted Low Magic Games couldn't have Big Scope, but when a single gate spell can increase scope to a multi-verse, Big Magic tends to win the  big scope arguement.
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Offline RandalThor

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Re: High Magic vs Low Magic
« Reply #4 on: August 29, 2012, 04:50:45 PM »
First of all, perhaps this should be broken off into its own thread titled: High-Magic/Big-Scope vs. Low-Magic/Low-Scope, or something like that.
Some players and GM's like really big scope.  Take Dragon Age for example.  Really big scope, saving the world from the Dark Spawn.  Yet Dragon Age II was pawned as inferior by the majority, in no small part because they were only fighting to survive and succeed with their family in a city.  A very limited scope must have been the reason because it was as limear as the first DA and the combat system had been improved (though the game was still to easy for mages imo, and lets not talk about the massive holes in DAII storyline).
I don't know about DA, but I like high magic and scope in my games. Primarily because I have gamed for 30+ years and much of that was "low-level" for the start of campaigns that never continued, so I am jonesing for some high-level action. (Like 30, 40, or even 50+ in RM terms, or 1000+ point characters for GURPS, etc...) In the media, I think there is a problem with the "big-scope" equals win, scenario. As the producers will want to make a sequel to make more money if their first movie/book/whatever is a success, then where do they go from there? Does anyone remember the awesome movie that was The 13th Warrior? What were the stakes, again? A village? A few villages? And yet, it was a fantastic movie. (Though I would say, that by RM standards, the main characters of the story were all at least 15th+ level, so not newbies.)

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Yes, a tight controled low magic game requires a 15 year old mentality over 12, but 12 ain't all that bad!
Hey! I resemble that remark! (Though not for liking high-magic and scope, as I don't think that those aspects mean having a lower mental age. Plenty of other reasons, though.  :o)
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Offline intothatdarkness

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Re: High Magic vs Low Magic
« Reply #5 on: August 29, 2012, 04:56:53 PM »
Hard to have Big Magic and not have Big Scope.  I also never hinted Low Magic Games couldn't have Big Scope, but when a single gate spell can increase scope to a multi-verse, Big Magic tends to win the  big scope arguement.

I never said that it was competition between the two. Only that I don't like High Magic games.
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Offline rdanhenry

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Re: High Magic vs Low Magic
« Reply #6 on: August 29, 2012, 09:31:57 PM »
I have a problem with the terms "high magic" and "low magic" thrown around without clarification. There are at least three aspects of magic that can be varied independently:

1. Power of magical spells.
2. Commonness of spell-casters.
3. Magicality of the environment (number and variety of "monsters", unusual phenomena such as floating islands, magical herbs, etc.)

The degree to which each of these is "high" or "low" influences the setting, but each in different ways. They are therefore worth distinguishing.
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Offline Ironmaul

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Re: High Magic vs Low Magic
« Reply #7 on: August 29, 2012, 09:40:43 PM »
I have a problem with the terms "high magic" and "low magic" thrown around without clarification. There are at least three aspects of magic that can be varied independently:

1. Power of magical spells.
2. Commonness of spell-casters.
3. Magicality of the environment (number and variety of "monsters", unusual phenomena such as floating islands, magical herbs, etc.)

The degree to which each of these is "high" or "low" influences the setting, but each in different ways. They are therefore worth distinguishing.
I totally agree. For my tastes its a combination of casters being a rare breed, Low orientated magic environment, with minor spells that can become powerful(scaling in other words).

Offline yammahoper

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Re: High Magic vs Low Magic
« Reply #8 on: August 29, 2012, 10:06:02 PM »
Hard to have Big Magic and not have Big Scope.  I also never hinted Low Magic Games couldn't have Big Scope, but when a single gate spell can increase scope to a multi-verse, Big Magic tends to win the  big scope arguement.

I never said that it was competition between the two. Only that I don't like High Magic games.

No, not a competition, rather that magic tends to increase scope all by itself.

Lets say the basics of magic include healing, protections and wards.  A step up includes force spells like sleep, charm, confusion, distraction, touch of disruption, etc.  Above that comes invisibility and information gathering spells.  Then perhaps elemental attacks and area affect attacks, movement magic like fly and teleport, with gates and the like topping the list of powerful movement magic.  Some where in that mix are changing spells, illusions, etc.

What ever order you put them in, spells increase power and scope by what they allow the villians and party to easily accomplish.  Distance means less if a group can rely on teleport.  Battles are less threatening wih magical healing.  Information is less elusive with divination.  A spell for every occassion, so to speak. 

In addition to increasing power levels, magic allows entire new universes to spring into existence.  This is a massive potential increase in scope, something not achievable in mundane setting except for high tech settings, and in sci-fi tech simply replaces magic.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... Time to die.

Offline VladD

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Re: High Magic vs Low Magic
« Reply #9 on: August 29, 2012, 11:56:14 PM »
I think the availability of certain spells (invisibility, haste, detection, elemental manipulation) also is a big factor in determining the power and scope of a game world.

The effects of tightly controlled spells will be obvious and there are many ways of doing that. Simply throwing all spells out there and saying " pick what you like" is perhaps a recipe for high magic, and saying: no invis, haste, bolts and magical detection, even though a large portion of the population are spell casters (of one kind or another), will decrease the power of such casters by a large degree.
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Offline bennis1980

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Re: High Magic vs Low Magic
« Reply #10 on: August 30, 2012, 01:11:32 AM »
I agree with the above that magic opens the scope, and I have one quick point to make:

For those who like high magic / low scope settings, increase danger of magic considerable (and I don't only mean failure). If a caster opens a gate to another dimension, they could risk madness or digestion by a planar creature. A healing spell could have a risk factor for the recipient, for example mutation or addiction which puts players off it. Increase all chances of corruption, madness and other horrifying consequences of high powered magic as a counterbalance to it's existance.

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Offline GrumpyOldFart

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Re: High Magic vs Low Magic
« Reply #11 on: August 30, 2012, 05:41:16 AM »
I have a problem with the terms "high magic" and "low magic" thrown around without clarification. There are at least three aspects of magic that can be varied independently:

1. Power of magical spells.
2. Commonness of spell-casters.
3. Magicality of the environment (number and variety of "monsters", unusual phenomena such as floating islands, magical herbs, etc.)

The degree to which each of these is "high" or "low" influences the setting, but each in different ways. They are therefore worth distinguishing.

Yes, but they also influence one another, making it difficult t change one by very much without it "pulling the others along".

If spell casters are very uncommon, those capable of teaching those powerful magics are likewise very uncommon, making the average power go down. If powerful magic has been around and been fairly common for a long time, it's more reasonable to expect the 'magicality of the environment' to have risen. People experiment, after all. Commonness can change with the local culture, but power, risk and collateral effects on the environment cannot.
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Offline RandalThor

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Re: High Magic vs Low Magic
« Reply #12 on: August 30, 2012, 07:24:57 AM »
I have a problem with the terms "high magic" and "low magic" thrown around without clarification. There are at least three aspects of magic that can be varied independently:

1. Power of magical spells.
2. Commonness of spell-casters.
3. Magicality of the environment (number and variety of "monsters", unusual phenomena such as floating islands, magical herbs, etc.)

The degree to which each of these is "high" or "low" influences the setting, but each in different ways. They are therefore worth distinguishing.
I don't think that these are necessarily independant of each other - unless the designer of the environment goes out of his/her way to make them so. Otherwise, #3 dictates how much of #1 & #2 there are. It should look more like this;

I. Magicality of the Environment
   A. Commoness of spell-casters/magical creatures.
   B. Maximum Power Level of Spells.
   C. The Ease/Complication of Casting Spells. (Ease for high-magic, complicated for low-magic - usually.)

Example: Shadow World is bathed in Essaence, so there is a lot of it thru out the world, in the plants, animals, peoples, and even the minerals. So it is to be expected that there are lots of spell-casters (full, semi, or even nons who do a spell or two), and that magic can have some very powerful effects - because it is everywhere. In Harnworld, though, magic is rare, and so are magic-users and they generally do not do "big magic". (I think that if they want to do something really big, it would take a very long and complicated ritual in order to gather the power needed - if they are able to do anything like that at all, I am not too familiar with magic in the Harn RPG.)

Now, me preference is for high-magic - Shadow World is one of my favorite settings, so go figure - but I can play and have fun in low magic settings, like the Conan setting.
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Offline markc

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Re: High Magic vs Low Magic
« Reply #13 on: August 30, 2012, 08:12:54 AM »
  IMHO if high magic is deadly then it is just a matter of time before they die. As IMO when practicing spell casting you have the same failure results. Even if you are doing the spell wrong you can get very bad results. This would limit the number of people who could teach the high level spell and even if they did survive the learning process they would be hesitant to cast the spell. 
  I guess what I am trying to say is knowing the words, phrases, mental states, hand and body movements and positions; and anything else I forgot, does not mean to me you know how to cast the spell.
  If you are thinking of a scroll and a spell embedded in the scroll, then it is MHO that the embedding process allows a unknowing caster to cast a spell he does not know and without all or some of the side effects. But that is just my game and world.
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Offline Dougansf

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Re: High Magic vs Low Magic
« Reply #14 on: August 30, 2012, 03:52:58 PM »
I prefer more magic than Low, but perhaps not so much to be considered High.  I usually draw the line at visiting other Planes.

One of my GMs (for D&D 3.x) was a lover of Low Magic setting (namely, he loves the Black Company books).  So casters are few and far between.  Magic items are nearly unheard of, or Artifacts in NPC hands.

If you're running a Low Magic game, keep in mind that the PC caster may want role-models to look up to, learn from, aspire to be like, etc. Don't make the scarcity of magic penalize them when training, make it just like any other skill.  Make sure the world reacts accordingly as well.  If it's very rare, there should be a lot of "ooh, ahh" reaction, or people scared out of their wits, or torches and pitchforks.  ;)

One side effect we didn't see until it was too late (and wouldn't be a problem in RM).  D&D 3.X assumed a certain level of magic items boosting AC and such by certain levels.  Instead, our defenses stagnated, but our Attacks went up.  The fighter could auto hit (with first attack anyway), but our opposition could auto hit as well.  It was impossible for the Cleric to keep up with the damage.

I think RM could handle a Low Magic, all Arms character style of game (since we took a stab at playing a modern era game with Firearms Law once).  But without healing magic (at the least) it would be too short lived for my tastes.

Offline MariusH

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Re: High Magic vs Low Magic
« Reply #15 on: August 30, 2012, 04:07:19 PM »
We played an extremely low-magic campaign not too long ago, and I loved it. PCs were only allowed to be non-magic users, and those they heard of who knew magic could be counted on one hand. But like Dougansf pointed out; RM is designed with access to healing in mind, so we allowed herbs and potion-making to at least partially make up for the lacking healing-spells.
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Offline yammahoper

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Re: High Magic vs Low Magic
« Reply #16 on: August 30, 2012, 04:21:21 PM »
I ran a several year campaign in which the only magic was herbs and bonus items.  Worked very well, I really enjoyed running it.  The PC's eventually all learn foraging and herb lore, along with first aid, second aid and even surgery.  Diagnostics also became a very important skill to detect the serious internal injuries.  It certainly did keep the scope down: one enemy kingdom was more than enough to provide constant sources of adventure, with of course the wilderness/frontier.
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Offline Ironmaul

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Re: High Magic vs Low Magic
« Reply #17 on: August 30, 2012, 09:34:34 PM »
When spells replace a mundane skill, then that is classed as a high magic setting IMO.

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Re: High Magic vs Low Magic
« Reply #18 on: August 30, 2012, 11:20:06 PM »
When spells replace a mundane skill, then that is classed as a high magic setting IMO.

Like First Aid? Hard to think of any game with magic where healing is primarily done with skills. I think I would set a slightly stricter standard....

Personally I prefer somewhat low-magic settings.
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Offline pastaav

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Re: High Magic vs Low Magic
« Reply #19 on: August 31, 2012, 02:19:11 AM »
I think there are many aspects of high magic. If we look at Shadow World there are plenty of locations where there is an ancient complex that it littered with apparant non functional uses of Laen and other expensive materials. The functional bits where they exist are almost always things that can not realistically created with existing technology.

A setting might be high magic because there are plenty of natural magical environment wonders (flying mountains etc)
A setting might be high magic because there are lost technology of the science fiction type but that is explained as powered by magic.
A setting might be high magic because ordinary spell users have visible magic that can have a great impact on encounter.
A setting might be high magic because spell users can get god like abilities and reshape the world as they see fit.

Speaking about just low vs high magic does IMO miss much of the intersting differences between settings.
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