"Realistic" settings, medieval but not necessarily

[Radisshu]

Something that annoys me about fantasy settings, and settings using magic in general, is how unrealistic it seems that magic barely has contributed to the setting's technology at all. Sure, there have been flying cities and such, but overall, one would expect the average, or at least the wealthy, farmer to use animated plows and so on, to save money. Entire factories could be animated, floating fireballs could light the streets up, etc.

Following a setting where magic exists as it does in D&D (possibly Dragon Age, though the whole anti-magic religion that's widely accepted kind of subverts this) to its logical conclusion would lead to a ridiculously magic-depending setting, which could be fun in its own way.

Another way is treating magic quite differently.

I've always liked settings that "feel" realistic. Sure, Fallout (strictly 1, not 2) is placed after the apocalypse of a retro sci-fi future, but there is something in the way people react and how society has rebuilt itself that makes everything feel quite real. It's dirty, it's sometimes cruel and dark, but it does not feel forced. A contrast to this could be almost any game, but as an example, BG2's setting feels just like every idea ever to hit high fantasy mixed into a single bag (which it is supposed to be, granted).

Sadly, though, it lacks the consistency of Fallout, making the game appear more as a jolly adventure, where facing a huge red dragon never actually feels that frightening. Just heroic. I realise this caters to many RPG gamers wishes, they just want to be the greatest hero in the realm, getting complimentary blowjobs from every village elder they happen to stumble across.

But I've always felt that playing a genuine badass in Fallout is much more rewarding than in BG2. Killing a bunch of bandits in a heroic game never feels even close to wrong, you're just the big hero with a shiny sword. And if you're evil, you're usually just a saturday morning cartoon villain that still for some reason ends up working for the good guys.

Killing a bunch of bandits in a "realistic" game, though, feels quite grim. Sure they might've attacked you first, and asked for it, or something, but you still just killed ten people, there's nothing glorious or heroic about that. You did what you had to do, that's it.

But why are sword-based settings rarely this realistic? Are there any medieval-like games that feel more like Fallout than, I dunno, Lord of the Rings? I guess Age of Decadence is trying to remedy this, but I would love to see a setting like this that isn't post-apocalyptic.

And no, I do not feel Dragon Age feels very realistic. Especially not the quest for the ashes, that was just ridiculous. What the hell where those ghosts doing? Couldn't I have read stone plates with riddles or something? What the fuck happened to subtlety?

 

[spectre]

Try Darklands. Still contains supernatural, but has it toned down.

 

[Radisshu]

Yeah, I wouldn't leave the superstitious things out altogether.
If I designed an RPG I'd probably want to keep magic in it, if it was party based, for gameplay purpose. I'd design it so that its effect on society in general would be minimal, though. One way to do that would be by making spells so that they could be explained naturally. For example, the most powerful attack spell would probably be something like call lightning, since lightning theoretically can strike people, it's just very uncommon.

Normally though, the spells would have to be less graphic. I'd probably want most of them to be based on auras emitted by the spellcaster, making allies slightly stronger and enemies slightly weaker, having some kind of invisible field through in which arrows usually miss their target, etc. I dunno. Anyway, the point is that even if there was a weird guy in the battle that apparently did nothing, it wouldn't be clear that s/he were a spellcaster, s/he wouldn't be flinging fireballs about and juggling magic missiles with force lightning coming out of his/her ass. Has this been done?

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

One thing that could be interesting, would be something more closer to RL Magick.

 

[PrzeSzkoda]

Try Teudogar: Alliance with Rome. It's got magic based on your and your enemies' belief in its power, so for instance a superstitious Teuton is going to be much more susceptible to your spells than a Roman Centurion (who doesn't really take that crap seriously).

 

[Radisshu]

^
Sounds interesting. I'll look it up.

One thing that could be interesting, would be something more closer to RL Magick.

RL magic? In what tradition? I mean, that can go from judeo-christian mysticism to shamanism. To modern day "white witch" wicca crap (which ironically is based on judeo-christian traditions).

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

One thing that could be interesting, would be something more closer to RL Magick.

RL magic? In what tradition? I mean, that can go from judeo-christian mysticism to shamanism. To modern day "white witch" wicca crap (which ironically is based on judeo-christian traditions).

All of them.

 

[deuxhero]

Though on the other end you get the Tippyverse (though at least it would be a LOT more intresting than the same medieval shit).

 

[GarfunkeL]

VD wrote about this some time ago and it's not like he's been the only one. You just need to take a look into human history to realize how even a single invention can transform society in a century. Steam machine is a good example. In about two hundred years it killed the sail-ship industry (steam ships) and cargo canals and horse-carriage mail&freight (railroads and trains). It allowed the industrial revolution to happen because you could suddenly do things in factories that could be barely dreamed of before and you didn't need super-skilled craftsmen, just some poor sods who could barely read.

So, if magic in your setting isn't the target of Spanish Inquisition or extremely rare, it would and should transform the daily life of most people. Take a simple spell - magic missile. Classic DnD lvl 1 spell. Instead of being the bread&butter basic spell for adventuring mage, I (as a king) would order my court wizard to instruct all my spearmen until they can cast that single spell. I would have a tremendous advantage over my neighbours since suddenly my poor melee infantry has a ranged attack that cannot miss. Or sleep! Every merchant would have wards against sleep in their stores, otherwise clever thieves would just cast that spell while standing outside the shop and then loot it in peace.

Cities would have streetlights kept going with either tiny fire-elementals or by nightwatchmen who know enough magic to cast Light on them. Water mills could be built every where, you would just hire a mage to summon an water elemental to spin the wheels. Or wind mills and wind elementals. Heck, make a magic item which constantly casts Gust of Wind and you have a sailing ship that isn't stopped by calm seas.

Need plenty of swords and spears for your drafted army? Let's make a factory staffed with earth elementals, crafting crude versions 24/7. Sure, your Master Blacksmith will make better ones but by the time he has completed one, your elemental factory has finished twenty. Even better, animate the local graveyards and pay a miniscule wage to the closest relative of the dead person - next plague victims will be carried to your door! Skeletons and zombies don't need lunch breaks or pensions. Suddenly your factory output is enough to monopolize the market - sure, the Master Blacksmith still survives thanks to special-orders but the twenty others are now unemployed. Need more energy for whatever need? Well, the local druid grove can Call Lightning straight into your batteries. Just need hardy enough components! Oh, some protection around our hamlets? Stone Wall sounds like just the proper spell. In fact, if I remember correctly, there were rules in DnD 1st and 2nd editions for magically creating your stronghold. Why limit it there? You'll have proper, 19th century housing with running water in no time!

Agriculture can be safely forgotten, thanks to Create Food spells that every cleric has. Since we've put most of the craftsmen and all of the farmers out of jobs, we can just draft them into an army, equip them with the mass-produced shit and off they go, conquering the neighbours who cannot match our manpower. Besides, no one will die of food poisoning anymore, nor will they die of disease. Cure Disease being a very low-level spell anyway. We'll be drowning in people!

And that's without going into funky shit like Teleport or Time Stop. Let's just say, most settings don't take advantage of this at all.

 

[spectre]

Yep, these things actually prove that D&D as we know it now is (depending on how yo usee it), underdeveloped, or ready to fall apart, collapse under its own weight.

Same for most other high fantasy settings.

Now, the druidic and clerical spells can be balanced a bit by bringing alignment and different gods into play - mass feeding people with create food? No can do. Gods of fertility and harvest object.
But there is still the broken wizard stuff. Taking a close look on material components might hel here.

I think it originally was supposed to be like this: adventurers with "classes" and "levels" are important people in this world (and rare), the precious few ubermensh destined to greatness. (Anyone remember character level limits at this point, btw?). Reaching level 8 should be a feat, and level 15 guys are way on their way to godhood.

Later just went to hell because of simple escalation - what do you need to challenge experienced characters? Experienced npcs with equal skill, thus populating the world with more and more guys with "levels".

The result, people get the levels wrong. Level 4 wiz spells aren't supposed to be "low -level", they should be devastating. And yes, it's all in the name of streamlining and better balance.

 

[Pliskin]

What happens when the mana (or whatever yr magicks run on) gives out? Conservation of Mass: Matter can never be created or destroyed, only transformed. All that free stuff has to come from something.

You end up with Age of Decadence.

 

[Khor1255]

VD wrote about this some time ago and it's not like he's been the only one. You just need to take a look into human history to realize how even a single invention can transform society in a century. Steam machine is a good example. In about two hundred years it killed the sail-ship industry (steam ships) and cargo canals and horse-carriage mail&freight (railroads and trains). It allowed the industrial revolution to happen because you could suddenly do things in factories that could be barely dreamed of before and you didn't need super-skilled craftsmen, just some poor sods who could barely read.

So, if magic in your setting isn't the target of Spanish Inquisition or extremely rare, it would and should transform the daily life of most people. Take a simple spell - magic missile. Classic DnD lvl 1 spell. Instead of being the bread&butter basic spell for adventuring mage, I (as a king) would order my court wizard to instruct all my spearmen until they can cast that single spell. I would have a tremendous advantage over my neighbours since suddenly my poor melee infantry has a ranged attack that cannot miss. Or sleep! Every merchant would have wards against sleep in their stores, otherwise clever thieves would just cast that spell while standing outside the shop and then loot it in peace.

Cities would have streetlights kept going with either tiny fire-elementals or by nightwatchmen who know enough magic to cast Light on them. Water mills could be built every where, you would just hire a mage to summon an water elemental to spin the wheels. Or wind mills and wind elementals. Heck, make a magic item which constantly casts Gust of Wind and you have a sailing ship that isn't stopped by calm seas.

Need plenty of swords and spears for your drafted army? Let's make a factory staffed with earth elementals, crafting crude versions 24/7. Sure, your Master Blacksmith will make better ones but by the time he has completed one, your elemental factory has finished twenty. Even better, animate the local graveyards and pay a miniscule wage to the closest relative of the dead person - next plague victims will be carried to your door! Skeletons and zombies don't need lunch breaks or pensions. Suddenly your factory output is enough to monopolize the market - sure, the Master Blacksmith still survives thanks to special-orders but the twenty others are now unemployed. Need more energy for whatever need? Well, the local druid grove can Call Lightning straight into your batteries. Just need hardy enough components! Oh, some protection around our hamlets? Stone Wall sounds like just the proper spell. In fact, if I remember correctly, there were rules in DnD 1st and 2nd editions for magically creating your stronghold. Why limit it there? You'll have proper, 19th century housing with running water in no time!

Agriculture can be safely forgotten, thanks to Create Food spells that every cleric has. Since we've put most of the craftsmen and all of the farmers out of jobs, we can just draft them into an army, equip them with the mass-produced shit and off they go, conquering the neighbours who cannot match our manpower. Besides, no one will die of food poisoning anymore, nor will they die of disease. Cure Disease being a very low-level spell anyway. We'll be drowning in people!

And that's without going into funky shit like Teleport or Time Stop. Let's just say, most settings don't take advantage of this at all.

The way a magic system in a well thought out Earth based game should run is as a rarity. I remember my first times playing d&d when these questions ran through my mind.
However, mythology provides many of the solutions to the 'mage for hire' scenario. For instance, most religion based magic users would be forbidden to act outside their faith. Many sorcerers and witches of various stripes require somewhat rare physical ingredients (eye of newt etc.) to activate their spells. Etc etc. I've found that the various stories about magic users from popular classic literature provide more than enough balance against the possibility of such industrialized supernatural events.

 

[Khor1255]

What happens when the mana (or whatever yr magicks run on) gives out? Conservation of Mass: Matter can never be created or destroyed, only transformed. All that free stuff has to come from something.

You end up with Age of Decadence.

Actually, in many stories from actual mythology there are time events or even natural cycles that regenerate a magic users power.

 

[deuxhero]

snip

Eberron acctually does half of that. Tippyverse takes the whole thing, but does it better.

 

[laclongquan]

Low magic in a setting work because it affect the world hardly at all. Kinda like RL, you dont know if that's real magic or just pure superstious coupled with luck. Which is to say High magic setting currently is fucked up beyond belief.

I agree with GarfunkeL on about half of his point. A wise king would pay attention to making Magic Missile wands to provide simple range attacks to troops. However, the cost of each is unknown. If it's cheap, then yes, it's your basic issued weapons. If it's a bit expensive, then it's a special weapon issue to 1 in 5 of your troops, say. If it's too expensive then it should be concentrated in a single block of users to use en masse. But in that case how is it different from a block of longbow troops? That is the question of cost and distributing.

For the raising of the dead, it must pay to heed your people. "even the dead is not safe from our king" and suddenly the king became public enemy no1. Voila, Peasant Revolts! hell, even using a few as a case of both terror weapons and punishment against the dead would be too problematic.

The Create Food spell that you said (1st time I heard of it) is pure fantasy horseballs. For a god to provide that much of energy/spell/blessings, you must pay back in other forms. I suspect live sacrifices, possibly humans.

 

[denizsi]

a setting where a world on the brink of natural disasters/apocalypse of global scale, threatening all civilized life on earth, is also torn between political and physical conflicts of two peoples: those with innate magical abilities and those without, and the blaming of the former by the latter for the impending doom of all life. Eventually, the magi unite and bring their own "final solution" to end the globalmagicthinkery and rid the world of all regular, non-magical people; let some of them live and sterilize them, devise ways of surviving the new climate of the world and adapt.

In time, they multiply and turn the world into a porn of high fantasy magic, living through a magical renaissance and advancing magical practices to such new and previously unimaginable heights.

Eventually, magic takes such precedence over most things in life, becoming a zeal and a religion, they start declining morally, socially and physically, finally becoming creatures so physically weak, they come to be terrified of any directly physical confrontation or effort, leading their entire lives shrouded in and aided by magic, reaching points of becoming almost ethereal, but still bound to physical bodies, in a decadent society.

Then, at some point, they start to bear babies who show no signs of innate magical abilities. Not all of them, not at once, but steadily more all the time. They are resistant to most if not all forms of magic, but without the tiniest stream of magical energies in their essence.

Initial wave of baby-murders prove fruitless as more "regular" babies, second babies, third babies, are born in a growing trend. Since they've long left all but the most basic devices of the physically applied civilization behind, the newborn grow to be physically weak yet brutish and, unable to communicate properly with their mothers and fathers, they grow violent, mentally and physically. Although the new generation, at first, takes their ascendants for gods, they quickly turn away and start breeding their own in their own image.

The second generation sees a reversal of hundred thousands of years of evolution, reduced to primitive kinship and further devolves it into a state of further chaos: Bloodlust on their greater, celestial ascendants upon witnessing the slaughter of the first generation who were their mothers and fathers.

You are born into this family of manboons. And you must learn to use and improve your primitive abilities to track and hunt down the false gods. That is, until you almost form a thought, resulting in your head hurting so hard, you forget about it all. Herp Derp.

 

[Black Cat]

@ Awor Szurkrarz

"One thing that could be interesting, would be something more closer to RL Magick."

The problem with using RL styled magic is that it won't work for a role playing game with a bias for tactical combat or dungeon crawling, at all. I doubt it would ever work for an adventure game or a storyfag role playing game that were not totally built around such ideas and concepts: If you take, for example, hermetic cabalah and simplify it to a banal, shit, boring point what is left is either the normal magic system we always get, if the game designer fails at subtletly, symbology, and philosophy, or a bloated ritual system that has more in common with an adventure game's puzzles than with role playing game magic, if the game designer takes the materialistic approach of taking that kind of shit literally.

I am not saying it would not be cool, and given how deep interactions and correspondences run in very developed systems of occult philosophy the player would have more choice and consequence than she knows what to do with. I'm saying i wouldn't trust anyone but, like, Iron Tower, in theory, or Ice-Pick Lodge, who don't care about the game being fun or playable at all, to do so.

The character sheet alone would be so bloated in correspondences and confusing interactions between, like, sephira and conceptual forces and the elemental balances of the symbols and the ideas and the resonance and the ripples and the governors and the worlds and the shells and the names and the letters and the gematric values and etc, etc, etc, nya, that it would be totally weird and totally complex. Maybe the, like, total smex too, but i think even the most hardcore citizen of Fair Codexia would say game's totally not fun, too much hardcore when their entire character build goes out of balance and suffers shifts on eight or nine or ten scales at the same time, nullifying all of the skills they bought during level ups, because they took the wrong dialogue line in a totally unrelated and unimportant mood stablishing conversation with an unimportant extra.

But, like, that would be kinda amazing too. Do want, nya.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Yeah, high fantasy settings where magic is common are realized in a pretty shitty way, but that's not exactly news, is it?

In your classic fantasy setting magic should be restricted to few and powerful individuals who have their own reason not to share their power with others (LotR style).
However if its presented as so common that even the lamest level 1 adventurer can cast some fairly powerfull spells, the whole world should be build around the fact that magic is common and pretty much available to every one. I think creating such a world in a logical and consistent way would require much work, but if done right, the results would be awesome. I imagine a fantastic world with all kinds of magicly-animated machinery, magical weapons of mass destruction etc.

Now that's a high fantasy setting I would thoroughly enjoy.

 

[AzraelCC]

I imagine a fantastic world with all kinds of magicly-animated machinery, magical weapons of mass destruction etc.

That WOULD be awesome, but it is also necessary for such a world to have rules for magic: where does the power originate? How is it replenished? Is it finite or infinite? What are its limits? Defining those rules is a double edged sword. Coherence and verisimilitude would be achieved, but then magic would look too much like science. That's the problem with magic in a game. Games have concerns of balance and logic, when magic should operate beyond the natural laws of a given world.

 

[sqeecoo]

Betrayal at Krondor and King of Dragon Pass need to be mentioned here.
In the former, mages are very rare but very powerful, and they do influence the world. Their actual abilities are somewhat vague too (not like 20d6 damage in 20 feet unless save vs. death), so it does not feel unrealistic.

King of Dragon Pass has magic brilliantly done - it's tied to the very detailed background myths and traditions, and while it comes into play often it rarely actually does something obviously supernatural. Maybe 90% of the stuff you do with magic could easily be explained as coincidence, placebo or drugs.
You also never get direct access to magic, but generally influence the "gods" through rituals and relics, so you never feel like a demi-god, and magic retains a lot of mystery - and yet it is an integral part of the gameplay. Brilliantly done.

I'd love to see a proper RPG (KoDP is more of a strategy/adventure game) with magic like that - more about rituals and knowledge than levels and mana. I'd be great if the game was ambiguous enough to never let you be sure whether the "magic" is all tricks and mumbo-jumbo or if there is something real there.
Something the Sherlock Holmes movie actually did surprisingly well, for instance.

 

[laclongquan]

Actually, Prince of Qin is one effort to use Chinese magic system in a game. And philosophy, plus Feng-Shui, I-ching. Still, they shaved a lot from original materials.

 

[Pliskin]

What happens when the mana (or whatever yr magicks run on) gives out? Conservation of Mass: Matter can never be created or destroyed, only transformed. All that free stuff has to come from something.

You end up with Age of Decadence.

Actually, in many stories from actual mythology there are time events or even natural cycles that regenerate a magic users power.

Not what I was refering to, at all. Not individual mana stores, but global. It's not about filling up yr gas tank at Magick-Exxon, it's about how much mana-oil is still floating around in the ether (or wherever it comes from).

More like:

I imagine a fantastic world with all kinds of magicly-animated machinery, magical weapons of mass destruction etc.

That WOULD be awesome, but it is also necessary for such a world to have rules for magic: where does the power originate? How is it replenished? Is it finite or infinite? What are its limits? Defining those rules is a double edged sword. Coherence and verisimilitude would be achieved, but then magic would look too much like science. That's the problem with magic in a game. Games have concerns of balance and logic, when magic should operate beyond the natural laws of a given world.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

--- Arthur C. Clarke

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Praedor is an excellent example of a realistic setting that still has magic.

 

[Haba]

Another way to approach magic, whilst retaining some degree of realism would be to make it bloody dangerous to use. Especially to the user. Something akin to Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy and Jordan's Wheel of Time.

Magic wouldn't be commonplace because it comes with a price that nobody is willing to pay.

I really liked the beginning of Aleshar - once you got magic, you could do whatever you wished with it, no artificial limitations. The only catch was that most of the time overexerting yourself would get you killed.

Modern games have limitless opportunities for such systems. Imagine a game where magic doesn't create matter out of thin air, but rather converts it. Casting powerful magic would drain the life from everything surrounding the caster and finally from the caster himself. You couldn't cast a fireball without a source of natural fire to draw from etc.

 

[overtenemy]

Modern games have limitless opportunities for such systems. Imagine a game where magic doesn't create matter out of thin air, but rather converts it. Casting powerful magic would drain the life from everything surrounding the caster and finally from the caster himself. You couldn't cast a fireball without a source of natural fire to draw from etc.

That's precisely what defilers do in Dark Sun. Think it's why the world is all post apoc. Fucking bullshit that they didn't let you play one in the cRPGs.