So as I may have mentioned earlier, I started a AD&D campaign. 1st Edition, as that’s what I played back in the day and what I prefer. Okay, I actually started it as a Basic D&D (because of the kids) but rapidly converted it to AD&D as soon as we started. Well,, started is a bit of a misnomer, as it implies that it’s something that is actually going on. In truth, we only played once. My wife (who had never before done an RPG) liked it, but the kids were not so into it so it kind of stopped mid-adventure and never started again… since we don’t have anyone to play it with.
Anyway, I digress. In the months since our adventure faltered, my number one hobby has become fleshing out my campaign environment. I’ve written some 30,000+ words of: religion, history, demographics, rule clarification, npc’s, etc etc. And, as everything becomes fleshed out, I realize that I’ve created a realm that is very low magic. Well, that’s what I’d call it anyway.
Firstly, starting at the bottom and going up, I determined that about 2% of the population should be leveled NPC’s and the rest are regular folk. I divided those people up following the rule of “half are first level, half again as many of those are second level…” and so on. That ended me up with a grand total of 11 people of level 10 or higher, out of a population of 300,000. Not exactly the way that I used to imagine these things when I was a young player and it seemed like everyone was a this or a that. I then realized that there was no space for players to be much aside from human (okay, maybe halfling or dwarf, but not elf or half-orc)… And then I realized that I didn’t leave any space in the land for monsters. So it’s turned into, not an intentional low-magic area but, basically a people vs people environment where only a few people are classed and even the highest level of those aren’t high level (“not high level” being based on my RPGing in the early 80’s where I considered even 12th level to be mediocre). Now there is only a single 12th level NPC in the whole realm.
I think that this came about because I gamed lots in the early 80’s but never really DM’d, so I don’t have any experience in making an environment. While I was trying to put this kingdom together, I felt the need to make it seem believable, so I’d focused on medieval statistics rather than fantasy stuff. Now that I’m so far into it, I don’t feel like changing anything… But I do feel the need to come up with some small realm or city or something that’s high magic… If only I can figure out where to fit it in my world.
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