Creating a World-View of Magic

How can the DM put all this together? Let’s consider a couple of the AD&D campaign settings as examples. First of all, take a look at Faerun, the setting of the Forgotten Realms® campaign. Magic is quite common in the Realms, and only slightly mysterious; everyone knows of the great wizards and the typical powers a wizard is likely to command, but there are a number of unique spells and magical items to be found. Magic is also fairly powerful in Faerun and comes with little cost or sacrifice to any character who works hard enough. The magic of the Realms is about average for an AD&D campaign.

The Dark Sun® campaign has an entirely different approach to magic. Magic is still fairly common and mysterious, but it can be extremely powerful (the sorcerer-kings of Athas command 10th-level magic) and comes at a great cost—the defiling of any living vegetation nearby when a wizard casts a spell. In fact, the destruction caused by Athas’ wizards is the chief cause of the planet’s dessication and the rise of bizarre, mutated monsters.

Last but not least, the Birthright™ campaign setting

portrays a world in which wizard magic is rare. Mages are mysterious figures with unusual powers. Only a handful of characters have the heritage required to make use of true magic, and fewer still can command the kingdom-shaking powers of realm magic.

Here are a few ideas for alternative magic settings for your own campaign:

The College of Sorcerers: In this setting, all wizards belong to a single guild or society cloaked in rite and mystery. (The imagers of Stephen R. Donaldson’s The Mirror of Her Dreams are a good example of such a society.) Spells may require a rare or unusual ingredient controlled by the College, or the College may treat spells as secrets that must be kept at any cost.

Secrets Man Was Not Meant to Know: Wizard magic is the province of horrible pre-human powers of the Outer Void, and dealing with them is the worst kind of betrayal. Insanity plagues those foolish enough to delve into the secrets of these elder powers; H.P. Lovecraft’s stories are an excellent model of this kind of campaign. Chapter 6 describes a spell point system of magic that reflects this type of setting.

Smoke and Mirrors: Wizards are far less powerful than they appear to be—most are nothing more than alchemists and scholars who can command a few feeble spells. Any spell that creates something out of nothing or summons energy where no energy existed before cannot be cast; illusions, divinations, and minor alterations and summonings are the only types of magic that work. Many magical effects are accomplished through nonmagical means; for example, a pyrotechnics spell is nothing more than a handful of chemical powder thrown on a flame.

The Magical Renaissance: In this world, almost everyone has a magical talent or two. Magic is fully integrated into society, not as a replacement for technology, but as a part of the common awareness and an augmentation of a person’s skills. Chambermaids use cantrips to dust and to make beds, royal investigators have access to speak with dead and ESP to enforce the law, and many brilliant works of art are at least partly magical in nature. Even nonwizards may have a small selection of spells in this kind of setting.

The Lost Powers: Priests of this campaign have almost no spell powers. The various deities of their pantheon have lost the ability to grant spells to their followers or have denied their followers spells for some reason. For a particularly chilling campaign, combine this thesis with the Secrets Man Was Not Meant to Know scenario to create a world in which the only spellcasters with any power are the insane servants of inhuman powers.

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