"Low, Medium, & High Fantasy - what's your take?" Topic

Hi gang. I'm doing some preliminary research for my Fantasy supplement for my skirmish game. I'm looking at having 3 levels of 'power' for a period that would set the overall tone/feel/available magic/monsters/races that would be allowable during a game.

I'm curious what your ideas of current game or literary fantasy settings would constitute a low/medium/high level of 'power'.

For example, a Low level fantasy world might be Conan's hyperboria or Fafhrd & Mouser's Lankhmar, where magic and strange creatures exist, but are rare or hard to find.

A Mid level might be Middle Earth with rare but powerful magic and numerous non-human sophont races & monsters.

A High level world would be Warhammer's Old World, or Greyhawk from D&D.

Give me some more opinions or examples if you would please to help me round out my definition of these levels.

Thanks,
Faust

I prefer low fantasy for role play. I think that worlds soaked in magic make it difficult to relate to the characters so if you are doing anything but dungeon hack it is tough to do for me.

And not as interesting.

For table top I don't mind a little extra magic thrown in there but can do without as well. I prefer historicals so a historical game with some fantasy elements is good, like Trojan War stuff with some influence from the gods.

But even warhammer, which is relatively medium magic is cool.

I didn't like warhammer 5th edition which was high magic I would say. Every hero in every unit was carrying some magic bling-bling.

Toning that back in 6th edition was a good move, I thought.

In my reading I can go for any level. I guess that is largely irrelevant as I don't read much fiction these days anyway.

"Any sufficiently analysed Magic is indistinguishable from technology. …"
----Agatha Heterodyne
link

As long as you recognize that, in Game Terms,
a Bazooka is a Bazooka even if you call it a "Fireball",
you should be fine.

No problems until you start trying to 'fudge' a non-rational
and/or inconsistent collection of kluge-ey
game-breaking effects under the
heading of "Magic" (ala D&D).

Low Magic= Tech effects through the Dark Ages
Mid-Magic= Tech effects through Middle Ages/Rennaissance
High Magic= Tech effects from Victorian Age to Modern (or beyond)

By 'Effects', think of tech effect on Warfare, Cities, and society in general…

My two Koppins.

If I graded 3 levels, I would combine LOTR and Conan into "Low Fantasy"

Mid-Fantasy would be something like D&D with tons of magic, but little to shape the entire world.

High Fantasy would rarely be from gaming examples, but perhaps for Fantasy where human were not the standard race…talking dragon cultures, space fantasy travel and the like.

link

I like the LotR level of magic--enough to spice the stew, but not overpower it.

Low/medium/high definitions for gaming in the past tended to concentrate on the frequency and power of spellcasters and magic items, not on critters as such. Fiction includes critters a bit more readily.

Conan is Low magic. You can practically count the number of real casters in the world on both hands (and most of what they do is summoning), and Conan lays hands on genuinely and recognizably magical toys only a few times in his life. There is magic around the edges of the world, but only rarely portable or practical.

LotR is more Middle, as it has Elves of some power, Dragons, a balrog, and many items or materials of some power or clear superiority in reasonably common knowledge (assuming you aren't a cloistered hobbit). Just about every item of power has a name, however.

Most D&D games (and settings) are high magic, IMO. Spell casters are fairly common, and most items are sufficiently common as to have *types* instead of individual names.

Lankhmar is Middle-to-High, as casters are, if not common, certainly not vanishingly rare.

I agree that Conan is low magic/low fantasy, but it's pretty funny how in every story there's an evil wizard, "last of its kind" monster, demon-god or other supernatural thing. :)

And Conan is the leading cause of extinction, too…

Good points so far.

You probably want to divide it along two axes, rather than one.

So go from low magic (very little in the world) to high (everyone knowns someone who can do something magical). But low-fantasy to high-fantasy can exist alongside and independently of the magic scale.

So Conan (I assume) has just sentient humans and a handful of monsters. Middle Earth has a few different species, but on the whole they're all pretty well connected and limited in number. And frankly there's nothing terribly outlandish in Middle Earth anymore – orcs and trolls are still humanoids.

D&D has a huge profusion of species, both sentient and non, and most things can breed with each other to form new true species, and you've got all sorts of different anatomies walking/rolling/floating/etc. about.

Good point about the 'races' vs 'magic' axis split. Indigenous species aren't a reflection of magical usage, per se.

Hmmm…..

I have to agree with the "medium rare" comment. A little more on the other races, etc., but stay away from every innkeeper having his flaming sword of death hanging over the hearth.

I'd also include LOTR in more the "low" category as defined herein. Yes, there are a number of items as listed but these are mostly epic and very rare in nature and the events being described are epic on a "once every few thousand years" scale.

Low-ish, very like Middle-Earth for wargaming or novels.

Bit more of the flash, bangs and whizzes if I'm playing RPGs (unless it's a Middle-Earth RPG).

Lots of magic can be fine if it's more a case of "everyday" magic like we use everyday technology (light bulbs are great and they changed life but the effects were gradual and not earth shattering like "Alan's Combination +5 Sword of Wounding-Staff of Destructive Spells-Resurrecting-Healing-and Food Providing Universal Thingie."

So, a hex to keep common vermin (four, two, and no legged) out of a church/house/storage building should be not uncommon. It could be a part time occupation for a farm wife with a touch of the Gift/Curse/Power.

Gracias,

Glenn

Use the Axis, Luke…

Yes, I think that's a good idea. I like limited numbers of sentient "Races" – maybe half a dozen medium to large groups, maybe another half dozen very rare groups – and I like my magic (High for RPG, Medium for mass battles, Low for skirmishes.)

Gracias,

Glenn

Avoid using terms like High Fantasy and Low Fantasy, even things like High Magic and Low Magic.

The terms High and Low Fantasy already have fairly distinct definitions and have little to do with how many fireballs a wizard can cast.

It is about how much different the world is from ours in terms of day-to-day living. In inconsistent worlds they will talk about all sorts of powerful wizards and raging magical storms but everyone will still go out to milk the cow every day.

D&D can be an example of this one. If a wizard can trivially create a continual light object every day and there are thousands of wizards in the world capable of doing so, torches would be entirely obsolete. Indeed, every farmer would have a two-penny light token that was simply carried with him everywhere. The Magic of D&D should necesitate that it be a High Fantasy world yet it is still, generally, a low fantasy world. Another example is religion: The whole Gods, afterlife, and immortality thing requires radical shifts when any person can be resurrected from the dead so long as there was trace DNA. Who the heck would bury their dead in a world where reanimated zombies and skeletons are a constant threat? Who buries their dead when you can get a resurrection?

I'd also call most many-race worlds low fantasy even though they might have a wide variety of races because at basic level, all the races are mostly humans with Furry costumes. When your other races are sentient plants that have an entirely different concept of time and ownership then you get into High Fantasy. If an orc is just a schoolyard bully/redneck with forehead putty, it is low fantasy.

LOW, the lower the better. The highest is Elric, of course, and although it makes fun reading it isn't very fun to game, imho, because magic rules all.

Also, I feel that demihuman races are too extreme in most fantasy. Humans are mediocre by comparison, which is just nuts. Tolkien's balance was the best so far; humans (men) coming into their own, as the other races recede. Howard's Hyborian Age is the best approach; virtually no races of other humanoids, except in the backwaters and otherwise forgotten corners of the world….

Number of Races compared to levels of Magic seems to be the biggest split between low/med/hi fantasy.

Would it be fair to say that the level of ambient magic in a realm would increase the number and type of humanoid variant species?

Or are we now counting how many Angels can fit on the head of a pin?

I think that Doug and I are on the same page.

I think that magic is a bit more common in Hyboria than a number of casters that you can count on one hand (since the Black Ring alone is said to have a dozen or more wizards, many of the Priests of Asura and Set are mages, and there are assorted witches out in the country), but I agree that it is low magic. That is what I like.

Magic in Conan is so cool because it is messing with the laws of nature. By definition you are getting into a dangerous area when you do that.

In high-magic realms, where every third sword is magic etc., magic looses its special qualities. I don't want every Tom, Dick, or Harry to be able to throw a fireball.

Similarly, that means when there is magic on the field, or in the RPG, that there are special things that the players must do to activate the magic. That, in an of itself, is a whole other type of adventure. I make my PCs, for example, keep track of their magic ingredients. They know substitutions for ingredients, but eventually they have to re-charge, buy more, or in some cases find rare items. My players had an entire adventure devoted to stealing a stone called "The Purle Net" from a wizard so that their scholar could become a fire mage. Without the stone, you can't cast fire spells. All the more critical if her special stone is ever stolen…

And while we're on races, my other races are generally scarce, and again, something special. This idea that humans would allow Bugbears to walk around their cities is laughable. I imagine more than a few pitch-fork wielding mobs if that were the case. The 'inconsicuous elf', that curiously short Mr. Underhill, fine. But half orcs??? Hell no. Ogres? Not unless they are in disguise. And if humans are so medicore, then how are they in charge in the world? They are competing against inately magic beings who can see in the dark and live for a thousand years? I'm retty sure we'd be toast. So, my elves, dwarves and others are weaker, not stronger than men. Dwarves might be really good at some things (like crafting exceptional weapons and armor which is the only reason that this weaker race has survived at all) (same with elves except it is their relationship with nature that is secial) but martially they are both inferior to man. That is why they retreat and man rules the world.

My whole point, is that magic, magic races, etc. should be rare because they break the rules of logic. If you don't care about logic, then they are fine in abundance. But to me, logic makes a more engrossing and believeable world. In mine, where elves are weaker, they are something that is to be treasured like seeing an endangered species. "Oh look honey, that's an Sindarin elf! You can tell by it's makings. How special!" ;-)

I like high fantasy. I paint whatever interests me, and that isn't a bunch of humans and just a few other critters, but an even mix. As far as magic, the rules I use incorporate spells into game play naturally, so it doesn't overwhelm the game but is a balanced part of the battle. You can have mighty wizards or entire combat units with one spell. Magic equipment is abstracted into the unit's fighting ability.

I like a blend of low and med. I like magic to be rare and mysterious. I can allow that there are a decent amount of magicians, but most have only a little magic, and so use it sparingly. Only a handful will ever achieve major power.

For the average person, they will never experience magic, though they may see some tricks which are more than likely just sleigh of hands rather than true magic.

On the other hand, PCs aren't necessarily "average", so they will probably encounter forces of magic, and may even become magicians themselves. Still, they will only use their magic when they have to.

And Conan is the leading cause of extinction, too…

Hahaha I loved that. If you are known or introduced in the Hyborian world as "the last of your kind" you should be expecting a visit shortly from a certain Cimmerian…

"…As long as you recognize that, in Game Terms,
a Bazooka is a Bazooka even if you call it a "Fireball",
you should be fine…"

Actually, in a Fantasy game, that should be reversed to "…As long as you recognize that, in Game Terms, a Bire Beam is a Fire Beam even if you call it a "Flamethrower", you should be fine…"

In a Fantasy game the historical references are what ever the reverse of anachronism is. Historical gamers always want to force fantasy terms into historical equivalents. The "logic" of war games is skewed at best and the "genre-ism" between Historicals, Fantasy and Science Fiction is oddly amusing for those who indulge in all three.

I won't even get into what exact niche Pulp, Horror, Pirates, or Prehistoric (possibly VSF despite the "SF" in the title) belong; God Forbid we start categorizing "Classical Asian Warfare!" I Superhero Sci-Fi or Fantasy with a modernveneer? Yes, that's a rhetorical statement.

Oh, aboutthat Early 20th Century discussion – avoid it like the plgue too…

Gracias,

Glenn

Proving an Iconoclastic view…