It would be tedious to go over the many many threads here where we've all talked about how Magic in D&D is overpowered. There's a spectrum of opinions on this, naturally. But a couple of recent things have been nibbling at my brain...

I'm currently running an FFG Star Wars game. I detest the modern era of Star Wars. Even so far to say that I could lob a dollop of my own fecal matter at the Holy Trinity (Original trilogy) if I was drunk enough, but I digress. The OT has all the Greybox/Classic Greyhawk elements sitting there, glorious in their possibilities at the hands of the right GM with the right players. But there has always been this pesky "thing"...

The Force. Oh sure it's fucking cool! Bad guys throw lightning! Good guys shoot pebbles and rocks! They get to use their own weapons. blah blah. But the conceit of Star Wars in the modern era is that they're super-rare. Sure RPG's will let you shoe-horn your PC into using the Force... but it's a put-on. Contextually you could never be The Shotcaller of All Jedi unless the GM snowflakes you. The premise of the modern era of Star Wars strikes me like Lord of the Rings circa Third Age in terms of RPGs.

This is not a direct comparison - but a parallel one.

So in Lord of the Rings as an RPG, until very recently, most RPG's let you be a spellcaster. When we all know damn well that's not *really* how it's supposed to work in the setting without the GM letting you be a snowflake.

Handwave all of the setting conceits - most RPG's *let* you anyhow. Material be damned! Which I'm fine with. I just think it's dumb.

CONVERSELY - both settings did have time periods where magic is plentiful. If you played your game set during the Silmarillion - oh hell yeah, you could go full Exalted-level here and no one would bat an eye. Same for Old Republic - where there are tens of thousands of Jedi and Sith running around duking it out.

And it strikes me that both 5e LotR is kind of acknowledging this. Likewise with the majority of of FFG's Star Wars lines. The vast majority of the game has *ZERO* to do with Jedi and the Force. Even through there is an entire line of the game having to deal with The Force - the assumptions of the game are set during the movie-era, but they don't pound that into your head. By and large you'd have little to do with Force folks at all. And thus I've run most of my games as straight-forward space opera set in the Star Wars Universe... But with the caveat I do play in the Old Republic in case "I want to go there".

The new 5e LotR largely dispenses with magic because of the conceits of the setting. And no one shit a brick over it.

You don't need magic and the games run fine. But if you intro magic - it almost becomes a distraction unless you put a lot of it in. Otherwise you run into the same situation in varying degrees that you see in "normal" D&D where casters go from famine-to-feast in power.

Which makes me ask: Why is there not Silmarillion-era RPG?

Thoughts?

I think a LotR game pretty much requires magic... just not from the PCs. The land and creatures and older races still exude it in some degree. Magical treasures and places will come up in play.

In Star Wars the magic is the technology, which enables all sorts of fun adventure.

Probably because almost no one has read The Silmarillion, at least not all the way through. I tried a few times but couldn't do it. It's by no means as accessible as The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings.

Quote from: tenbones;970744It would be tedious to go over the many many threads here where we've all talked about how Magic in D&D is overpowered. There's a spectrum of opinions on this, naturally. But a couple of recent things have been nibbling at my brain...

I'm currently running an FFG Star Wars game. I detest the modern era of Star Wars. Even so far to say that I could lob a dollop of my own fecal matter at the Holy Trinity (Original trilogy) if I was drunk enough, but I digress. The OT has all the Greybox/Classic Greyhawk elements sitting there, glorious in their possibilities at the hands of the right GM with the right players. But there has always been this pesky "thing"...

The Force. Oh sure it's fucking cool! Bad guys throw lightning! Good guys shoot pebbles and rocks! They get to use their own weapons. blah blah. But the conceit of Star Wars in the modern era is that they're super-rare. Sure RPG's will let you shoe-horn your PC into using the Force... but it's a put-on. Contextually you could never be The Shotcaller of All Jedi unless the GM snowflakes you. The premise of the modern era of Star Wars strikes me like Lord of the Rings circa Third Age in terms of RPGs.

This is not a direct comparison - but a parallel one.

So in Lord of the Rings as an RPG, until very recently, most RPG's let you be a spellcaster. When we all know damn well that's not *really* how it's supposed to work in the setting without the GM letting you be a snowflake.

Handwave all of the setting conceits - most RPG's *let* you anyhow. Material be damned! Which I'm fine with. I just think it's dumb.

CONVERSELY - both settings did have time periods where magic is plentiful. If you played your game set during the Silmarillion - oh hell yeah, you could go full Exalted-level here and no one would bat an eye. Same for Old Republic - where there are tens of thousands of Jedi and Sith running around duking it out.

And it strikes me that both 5e LotR is kind of acknowledging this. Likewise with the majority of of FFG's Star Wars lines. The vast majority of the game has *ZERO* to do with Jedi and the Force. Even through there is an entire line of the game having to deal with The Force - the assumptions of the game are set during the movie-era, but they don't pound that into your head. By and large you'd have little to do with Force folks at all. And thus I've run most of my games as straight-forward space opera set in the Star Wars Universe... But with the caveat I do play in the Old Republic in case "I want to go there".

The new 5e LotR largely dispenses with magic because of the conceits of the setting. And no one shit a brick over it.

You don't need magic and the games run fine. But if you intro magic - it almost becomes a distraction unless you put a lot of it in. Otherwise you run into the same situation in varying degrees that you see in "normal" D&D where casters go from famine-to-feast in power.

Which makes me ask: Why is there not Silmarillion-era RPG?

Thoughts?

Sarcastically correct answer to the bolded portion: Because Christopher Tolkien hates fun. Seriously, if he could finagle a way to get rid of all the LotR stuff (movies, video games, plush dolls, action figures, RPGs, etc.) out there he probably would. He controls The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales completely though. So nobody can use them.

LoTR, yeah I think it's dumb that you can be a Wizard when there are really only 5 in all of existence and 'Wizard' is apparently a weird Middle Earth spelling of 'Angel'. However, I'm not opposed to magic in LotR or games inspired by same. For example, I think the magic in the Elf, Dwarf, and Orc lifepaths in Burning Wheel are pretty good. They have their own magic, but it's not "I cast a fireball" type shit. It's more natural to what they are and pretty (IMO) Tolkienesque. Not exactly LotR, but trying to hit that feel.

Star Wars is one of those settings I love so much, but also one of those settings where I have no problem pulling a fold/spindle/mutilate on the setting at any given time. So, sometimes I run it as kind of low power New Hope-y Jedi (You are a fightin' man with a laser sword. You can sometimes trick weak willed people and maybe sense things out of the ordinary) and sometimes I go full on Force Unleashed wackiness (Pulling Star Destroyers out of orbit). I think Star Wars has a lot more room for power levels above the OT because there's no metaphysical basis for anything other than "The Force exists and can be harnessed by people".

With LotR there's definitely a theme of "Those days have gone down into the West; never will we see their like again." and I actually prefer a more 'Tolkienesque' game than an actual LotR game.

Quote from: Michael Gray;970755Sarcastically correct answer to the bolded portion: Because Christopher Tolkien hates fun. Seriously, if he could finagle a way to get rid of all the LotR stuff (movies, video games, plush dolls, action figures, RPGs, etc.) out there he probably would. He controls The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales completely though. So nobody can use them.

LoTR, yeah I think it's dumb that you can be a Wizard when there are really only 5 in all of existence and 'Wizard' is apparently a weird Middle Earth spelling of 'Angel'. However, I'm not opposed to magic in LotR or games inspired by same. For example, I think the magic in the Elf, Dwarf, and Orc lifepaths in Burning Wheel are pretty good. They have their own magic, but it's not "I cast a fireball" type shit. It's more natural to what they are and pretty (IMO) Tolkienesque. Not exactly LotR, but trying to hit that feel.

Star Wars is one of those settings I love so much, but also one of those settings where I have no problem pulling a fold/spindle/mutilate on the setting at any given time. So, sometimes I run it as kind of low power New Hope-y Jedi (You are a fightin' man with a laser sword. You can sometimes trick weak willed people and maybe sense things out of the ordinary) and sometimes I go full on Force Unleashed wackiness (Pulling Star Destroyers out of orbit). I think Star Wars has a lot more room for power levels above the OT because there's no metaphysical basis for anything other than "The Force exists and can be harnessed by people".

With LotR there's definitely a theme of "Those days have gone down into the West; never will we see their like again." and I actually prefer a more 'Tolkienesque' game than an actual LotR game.

Exactly!!! But Star Wars is like that too - in the OT there are only four "real" (Jedi or Sith) Force users (Palpatine, Vader, Ben and Luke) and this is largely because in the OT everyone has been hunted down and killed - and this is it. Simple. But this makes the probability of having PC Force-users both 1) improbable and 2) dumb because your interactions with other Force users free of the canon will be nil. Unless of course you wanna make a bunch of shit up.

That's pretty much exactly how Lord of the Rings is. And don't get me wrong - I think both settings work fine as RPG's in those respective contexts. But it's clear you could blow it out to epic-levels of yore, if you really wanted the PC-magic-users to make sense. I'm wondering if that's not the right response the everpresent complaints about magic-in-D&D-is-too-powerful discussions? Very few of the settings in D&D really make sense with the assumptions of magic as expressed in the mechanics of D&D.

This is why I liked the Netheril boxset. Wheel's off. This is why I want a Silmarillion RPG. YEAH! Morgoth's hammer makes 50-ft divots in the ground when it hits, your PC dodges, but poor old Fingolfin - DEAD! Old Republic - holy crap! Darth Badass just force-grabbed that capital-ship and slowed it down, your PC jumps 60-ft in the air and throws three-lightsabers at him.

Quote from: Dumarest;970748Probably because almost no one has read The Silmarillion, at least not all the way through. I tried a few times but couldn't do it. It's by no means as accessible as The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings.

Ignorance is never an excuse! There's some serious awesome there. Dense as it is. (and yes... it's dense). It's worth one read-through.

Quote from: tenbones;970767Exactly!!! But Star Wars is like that too - in the OT there are only four "real" (Jedi or Sith) Force users (Palpatine, Vader, Ben and Luke) and this is largely because in the OT everyone has been hunted down and killed - and this is it. Simple. But this makes the probability of having PC Force-users both 1) improbable and 2) dumb because your interactions with other Force users free of the canon will be nil. Unless of course you wanna make a bunch of shit up.

That's pretty much exactly how Lord of the Rings is. And don't get me wrong - I think both settings work fine as RPG's in those respective contexts. But it's clear you could blow it out to epic-levels of yore, if you really wanted the PC-magic-users to make sense. I'm wondering if that's not the right response the everpresent complaints about magic-in-D&D-is-too-powerful discussions? Very few of the settings in D&D really make sense with the assumptions of magic as expressed in the mechanics of D&D.

This is why I liked the Netheril boxset. Wheel's off. This is why I want a Silmarillion RPG. YEAH! Morgoth's hammer makes 50-ft divots in the ground when it hits, your PC dodges, but poor old Fingolfin - DEAD! Old Republic - holy crap! Darth Badass just force-grabbed that capital-ship and slowed it down, your PC jumps 60-ft in the air and throws three-lightsabers at him.

I think the big difference with Star Wars though is "You TOO can become a Jedi Knight, Luke Skywalker!". There's a path there, for a PC to become a Force user, if not a Jedi or Sith. And in the movies, we're hard focused on the characters and don't really pull back to an entire galaxies worth of stuff. There could be even more paths, it's wide open! LotR very much does not have that.

Quote from: tenbones;970744Which makes me ask: Why is there not Silmarillion-era RPG?

Thoughts?

Because Tolkien sold the rights for the other books to United Artists for cash and a royalty (who sold most of the rights to Saul Zaentz) and the Tolkien Estate has had nothing but problems collecting on the royalties from United Artists and Saul Zaentz.

In addition, Christopher Tolkien is not happy at all with all the commercialization of the IP.  He'd let someone have the rights to anything else when his asshole learns to chew gum.

I'll just re-state for the record that I find even D&D spell powers (and monster powers, and the PC power increases at medium-to-high levels) impossible for me to hold in my brain as a GM running a dynamic game world, anywhere near the way I want to, unless I design a world where most of it isn't present. The cause & effect seems just impossibly complex to think about if there are supposed to be hundreds or thousands of people who can cast hundreds or thousands of spells that can do all sorts of things. I've tried and I'm too aware that I just have to make up something but it's not rational because there could always be a few other powerful wizards scrying in and doing something gonzo. Etc etc etc.

Quote from: Dumarest;970748Probably because almost no one has read The Silmarillion, at least not all the way through. I tried a few times but couldn't do it. It's by no means as accessible as The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings.

I read it as a teen. It's not too hard if you're use to reading Greek and Roman myths which are also written with a sense of distance that you see in The Silmarrillion amd certain other national epics.

Quote from: tenbones;970767Unless of course you wanna make a bunch of shit up.

The Old Republic exists because someone "made a bunch of shit up" just to make a video game with huge Jedi vs Sith battles. So I don't see why that wouldn't work for any SW RPG GM.

Also, I'm assuming that when you say "modern Star Wars", that what you mean is Star Wars in the current Episode 7/8 timeline, since the OT is the least modern SW of all. A bunch of us play Star Wars 77, which is SW where only the first movie (and novel) is canon. It gives you more freedom to add stuff since Vader was just one of many Dark Lords of the Sith pre-ESB.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;970901A bunch of us play Star Wars 77, which is SW where only the first movie (and novel) is canon. It gives you more freedom to add stuff since Vader was just one of many Dark Lords of the Sith pre-ESB.

Actually there are no Sith at all as far as the original movies go and Darth Vader is just his name, not a title, and there is no mention of any "reverse-Jedi"...and of course Darth Vader wasn't written to be Luke's father either...but I agree, when I play Star Wars I generally set it right after the end of the first movie (the one actually titled Star Wars) for those reasons: freedom, lots of unexplored terrain (are there any Jedi who survived undiscovered? how big is this Rebel Alliance? how big is the Empire? are there anthropomorphic green rabbits to team up with?). I also use stuff from the pre-Empire Strikes Back comic books, including the original Jabba the Hutt:

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And Han shot first.

Sure sure! I'll stipulate all this...

My point I'm trying to get at - is that perhaps magic as its presented in most RPG settings today (and to a lesser extent, in general) is not done well? I'm using modern Star Wars and LotR as an example...

They're *best* imo when they're low-key, or high-powered. This, to me, is where D&D has gone off-rails from the OSR. I'm not an OSR-guy, mainly because I'm a system's whore, not because I have some intrinsic dislike for the OSR and it's spectrum of games. But I believe the system-creep into settings that otherwise were not built with those assumptions have largely been rendered silly (see modern Forgotten Realms).

Quote from: Dumarest;970921Actually there are no Sith at all as far as the original movies go.

Vader was referred to as a "Dark Lord of the Sith" in the novelization of the movie, in the place where he first shows up on board the Tantive IV. I believe that he was described later in a way that implied he was just "one of the Dark Lords" but I can't find the actual quote.

Also, "Sith Lord" was part of the original dialog, but was cut.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja4WudpzBYw

Quote from: tenbones;970941They're *best* imo when they're low-key, or high-powered. This, to me, is where D&D has gone off-rails from the OSR. I'm not an OSR-guy, mainly because I'm a system's whore, not because I have some intrinsic dislike for the OSR and it's spectrum of games. But I believe the system-creep into settings that otherwise were not built with those assumptions have largely been rendered silly (see modern Forgotten Realms).

I agree with regards to D&D. In Dave's original magic system, each spell had a cost (in terms of gold pieces or special ingredients) which would limit their application to society at large. When Gary dropped those limits for simplification he really opened the door to all sorts of impacts to the game world (that's been consistently ignored for decades). For example, Create Food isn't that game-world breaking a spell when each casting costs 50 gp.