I'll just come right out and say it. I think Magic in DnD is dumb and it should be stopped. Well not completely, but it definitely needs to be toned wayyyyyy down.
My favorite fantasy worlds have always been those where Magic was a mysterious and uncommon phenomena. Like LOTR, where there were 5 wizards in the universe and only 3 were in middle earth, one turned evil, one was good, and the other didn't give a shit. This made what Gandalf and Saruman could do amazingly powerful. Even just the little shows of magic that Gandalf did in Bag End made Bilbo shit his pants.
For us DnD players and DMs out there Gandalf growing tall and making his voice boom was basically him casting prestidigitation.,. a cantrip... This use of magic would seem like nothing in most DnD games. But in LOTR it had an impact not just to Bilbo, but to the viewers and readers as well.
The Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire, Mistborn, The Kingkiller Chronicle, all of these amazing worlds and stories make magic special in their own way. And this "magic" is what I want to capture in my games. I want an NPC or player to cast prestidigitation and have all of the other players react like Bilbo did.
I was talking to a friend the other day about my thoughts on Magic in DnD, and how I see it as "overpowered". They agreed, saying that a Level 5 wizard is like a walking, talking WMD (Weapon of Mass Destruction). They are too right.
Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with players feeling like powerful heroes. I think that's one of the main reasons we play these games, to feel like a bad ass. But I think when it comes to magic it gets out of hand.
With how leveling in DnD works out most of the time, your players will hit level five in 5-10 sessions, usually on the lower end. And at this point the Wizard can blow up a small village twice a day, all the while a fighter can swing their sword twice every 6 seconds. I think there is a gap here. Not only do they have amazingly destructive capabilities, I don't feel like they've earned them.
Gandalf is a bajillion years old and he can make his staff light up and frighten thousands of orcs. Meanwhile your wizard PC killed a few goblins, and a ghost and they can now shoot lightning out of their ass.
My point is that this makes magic in DnD less special. And that's what I want to do:
Make Magic in DnD, magical again.
How am I going to do this? Worldbuilding, lots and lots of lore and worldbuilding.
I am at a point in my home games where they are all wrapping up nicely at about the same time. This made me look forward to what's next.
I love DnD, and luckily, myself and my players want to keep playing so that means I needed to create something new.
I have been running games in a homebrew world for about 6 years now. It is the world I created when I first picked up DnD 5E, which is the first edition I had ever played. I made a lot of beginner mistakes when worldbuilding and now that I have some experience under my belt I wanted to try and create something new again. And this time have it be more me, and less of a Forgotten Realms knockoff.
I had been kicking around world ideas for a while and finally I landed on one that really called to me and brought up this internal hate for magic in DnD. I want to create a world where magic is dead.
And I know what some die hard DnD players reading this are thinking, "Dark Sun already exists dummy." That is true, but I wanted to create something that didn't have so much slavery in it.
So that is where this Blog comes in. I am going to use this as both a reflection for myself as I begin writing up this new world, and also as a place for you all to take anything that strikes your fancy and use it in your own games.
My plan as of now is to post some lore as to how this world became deprived of magic, and then work my way through the DnD monster manual from A-Z, recreating the monsters in a magicless world.
Its going to be a wild ride and I can't wait to see how it goes.
Until next time,
B.B.G.
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