Ever Gamed No-Magic Or Low-Magic Fantasy?

[Cacique Caribe]

One of the reasons why I lost interest in gaming fantasy several decades ago was how magic took away from the fun of honest sword-slashing melee encounters against beasts and humans alike.  It just felt like cheating people out of plain blood and brawn fun.

After all these years it just finally dawned on me that perhaps I’m not the only one who must have felt that way at some point.

So, I must ask, has anyone ever considered gaming fantasy encounters with no-magic or low-magic?  As in hunting down some mythical beast of flesh and blood, though extremely strong, or a race of underground dwellers?  Or would that turn the whole game into nothing more that a medieval cryptid or “sci-Fi” hunt?

Just curious.

[Pictors Studio]

We used to do this with D&d all the time. Magic was super rare. There were different races like orcs and so forth but fewer of the magical races like elves.

[djbii]

I game mastered a Warhammer fantasy rpg once where the best the PCs got was a serving spoon that made food taste slightly better. They still talk about that campaign...but not in a kind way ;-)

[Ethelred the Almost Ready]

There are a lot of books you could use for source material.

Much of Tolkien would be low magic.
The David Gemmel books were, if I remember correctly, also low magic.
For a modern setting with weird creatures there are the Preston and Child books.
Beowulf.

I use Sellswords  for the Silmarillion.  No real magic has been used so far, but do have some beasties to kill.

[capthugeca]

I've never been keen on magic in open battle so don't tend to have wizards wandering around my games.
I've played HotT and Mayhem and just not included wizards in the armies.
I will use them in a skirmish game and so have used them in games of Sellswords and Spellslingers, where I think that the balance is just about right.

[Sunjester]

Most of my big-battle fantasy is Tolkien based, so it's always low/no magic.

[v_lazy_dragon]

I played a few Dark Age myth games - humans vs dragons/trolls/etc. Occasionally there would be "magic" swords and the such, but its more likey that these were just particularly well made pieces by  a master craftsman than something that shot lightning  bolts or set its target on fire.
We used the GW LOTR rules, just without magic users.

As an aside, where does low fantasy become medieval imagi-Nations? Not a problem either way, just a musing really.

[Nord]

I can't quite understand the question. Are you asking permission to play fantasy games that do not include magic? Which has been answered admirably, though I would also say play any damn ruleset you want and omit the magic bit if you want. But I suspect you have had a bad experience with overpowered magic (maybe Warhammer?) and that has deterred you. Any element of a game that is overpowered might ruin it for you - shooting, movement, artillery. You can adjust things to your own liking of course. If a game element is unbalanced in your eyes, just change it to suit your requirements.

[Cubs]

Yeah, all the time back in the day when I went to a gaming club, like you felt magic just ruined the whole feel of 'earning' an achievement. What little magic there was, was reduced to wizards locking themselves away in dark towers and consulting with spirits and demons as part of their unholy studies.

I remember one game (run by my brother) where our party was invited to join a hunt with a local lord. In the woods we encountered a manticore. Apparently it was a big part of the plot that magic beasts were roaming about … but we didn't really get it. As far as we were concerned it was a standard 'random encounter', albeit a particularly nasty one.

[Daeothar]

Tolkien's Middle Earth was mentioned, and throughout the books some pretty potent magic was both used and hinted at. But for most of the characters (bar Gandalf and the other wizards, obviously who, by the way, were the ME equivalents of (arch)angels), magic was as mythical and unfamiliar as it is to us.

The Game of Thrones setting has magic, but it's unknown, mysterious and especially in the first books almost nonexistent. It's when the White Walkers actually appear, that the cat's out of the bag.

And a lot of the Conan stories, even though they feature magic (mostly at the climactic ends, but a lot of those situations are ambivalent enough that they could be explained away in other ways), are not magic oriented (but correct me if I'm wrong; it's been a while since I read them).

The Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories by Leiber are also nearly(?) devoid of magic too by the way.

But maybe it's a matter of simply not using magic, instead of finding a setting that does not have any?

It could be very easy to play a WHFB game without using any magic at all (would speed up gameplay considerably too). Just omit all the magical items and magic users from the list. Obviously, this would mean that, for instance, demonic armies are mostly out. But then, that would probably be part of the point.

Other suitable systems, in which magic is not as powerful to begin with are Warlords of Erehwon and Dragon Rampant (which would then simply be Lion Rampant I suppose ), and I'm certain that there are many more. And these can be (and regularly are!) played without magical elements.

To be honest, I must admit that I prefer 'honest' battle over arcane trickery and magical combo's in my games too. No game-changing spells that dominate the field but instead, actual battlefield tactics. No suddenly appearing warp portals that suck away random units, but steel against steel...

[Munindk]

There are a lot of setting with few or none of the traditional elements that get labelled fantasy, but are more like alternate historie versions of the middleages (+/- a few hundred years).

[Aerendar Valandil]

Yes, when DMíng I tried to keep my gamesworlds low magic, especially when it concerned 'normal' life. No magic shops, no units with magic swords, no magic universities. Most characters would never have experienced magic, for most inhabitants magic was something of myth, and even potential evil: low-level mages who were to open with their powers could risk being shunned or much worse. Magic items were rare. It made magic more special and the campaign more heroic, I think.

[Daeothar]

Yes, when DMíng I tried to keep my gamesworlds low magic, especially when it concerned 'normal' life. No magic shops, no units with magic swords, no magic universities. Most characters would never have experienced magic, for most inhabitants magic was something of myth, and even potential evil: low-level mages who were to open with their powers could risk being shunned or much worse. Magic items were rare. It made magic more special and the campaign more heroic, I think.

That, and the fact that I am very, very wary of what my players could and would do with anything even remotely powerful...

[Hobgoblin]

I've long seen magic as the bane of fantasy games - and, to some extent, novels: I strongly dislike fantasy novels that have 'magic systems' like those in games.

When my gaming friends and I were kids, we generally banned magic in Warhammer except at the lowest level. And our RPGs tended to feature very few spellcasters.

My reasons for the dislike are threefold: first, magic tends to unbalance games in an undesirable way; second, powerful 'on-screen' magic doesn't tend to reflect the better sort of fantasy literature; and third, magic systems tend to be fiddly and get in the way of smooth game-play.

There are exceptions, of course. I ran Tunnels & Trolls at the weekend, and the party's couple of semi-competent rogues (Grey Mouser-style magical dabblers) added to the mirth. And Dragon Warriors' spell system was clear and simple enough, even though it was a bit out of synch with the evocative background. Also, RuneQuest's magic was very well integrated into its background (and, to some extent, could be understood as the placebo effects of primitive belief, if you so desired it).

In wargames, I don't mind magic when its effect is slight. The original Song of Blades and Heroes is excellent here: magicians can cast two spells: a long-range attack and a 'transfix' effect. Neither is more powerful than a well-placed arrow, but they do add an extra dimension to the game. I don't usually use magicians in HotT, but magic there is very well balanced and integrated with the rest of the game, so it works fine. And Of Gods and Mortals obviously depends on supernatural powers and is great.

In general, though, my preference is for magic to be an 'off-screen' thing. Fantasy games, for me, are about monsters, weird species and exotic-looking miniatures. Magic should be sinister, obscure and time-consuming - not really something seen on the battlefield other than through its effects: the risen dead, summoned demons or whatever. I do, though, think that magical items should be more common than magicians - especially cursed or ambivalent items. I've put a few thoughts together on this in some blog posts.

[PhilB]

This question gets asked occasionally on the Paizo boards for the Pathfinder RPG. The consensus was that all you have to do is remove the spellcasting classes and magic items, and Bob's your uncle. Same for any RPG, really.

Pathfinder is based on D&D3.5, so as characters increase in level they have access to a plethora of "feats" and other powers. It would be fairly easy to limit selection to reduce or eliminate any "magical" influence. DD5 is far simpler, and might be a good choice for a no or low-magic game.

The Pendragon RPG was a very cool Arthurian campaign with almost no magic - none at all, if that fits your fancy. There was a lot going for that game, but I never managed to convince other players to try it out.