It has been a while my friends, but the follow up to my throwback post on Dark Sun is here.
Let's dive right in.
Magic
On Athas, the world of this campaign setting, magic used to be all the rage. Magical wonders were everywhere and sparked the creation of technological marvels. The world was green and the air fresh. But one age gave birth to the next and horrors came to pass.
Fear and Loathing
Today, part of the world is run by sorcerer-kings. These once aging mortal magic-users have become demi-gods and under their rule any magic, divine or arcane is outlawed. The culture of magic has disappeared and only a select few can harness its powers today. These men and women hide in secret cults, for just one public display will enrage the common people to such an extend that they will lynch the creator of magical tricks.
Using the living world
The only way to do magic here is to fuel it with living energy.
On one side you have the preservers, who channel the life energy from plants without destroying them. On the other, you have those who are addicted to the adrenaline of magic and will take all the energy, leaving not a single plant alive. These magic-users are called Defilers, and the land they leave behind is utterly destroyed.
You can imagine why the common folk both hate and fear magic users.
Greyhawk opportunities
My setting
I have always thought of Greyhawk as a 'Middle earth-2.0' kind of world, but where gods are much more prominently present and where magic is more available. Not in such a way that you have magic shops in every village though, and in my campaigns I do not even have one in Greyhawk city. (There is one magic shop, the kind that appears and disappears on you but when you really really need it, it appears.) I do allow hedge wizards with some low powered potions and items. These Hedge wizards are seen as local sages who are very much respected and sometimes even feared (misunderstood). I also use factions where magic users can get better items if they are high enough up the ranks.
How to introduce Darksun into Greyhawk.
Some countries might outlaw wizards, while others force them to belong to the national school of wizardry and who need a permit. If they do not belong to the school, these magic users would need an alias to function in the world and have a secret basement or have secret forest meetings.
Sorcerers and occult casters might be feared and always need to be in hiding, as they do not belong to a school and their powers are often unexplainable by others.
Where does magic come from? From Boccob and the radiance from the planetary ring perhaps? Well, every campaign is different, and you might introduce a sorcerer type that draws from plant life to fuel their magic, similar to Defilers in Darksun. You can use the defiling radius rules from that setting to spice it up.
Spellbooks come in all sizes and forms on Athas and the setting has some interesting rules on those. You might use some of those rules to make Greyhawk spellbooks more valuable and strange (tattoos, a bundle of carved sticks, woven in cloth...).
Just some food for thought.
See you in part 2.
Oronir
Another great article. :-) I enjoy a "low-magic" approach in my own games as well, including even in World of Greyhawk games. I feel like this makes magic more creepy and inscrutable, so to speak, when the players encounter it. I'm not very familiar with Dark Sun though; I'll have to look into this a bit more. :-) As for spell books being found in strange forms, I've always enjoyed the old legend of how some sort of "native sorcerer" on Easter Island in the real world somehow caused the Moai statues to take up their sentry-like positions around the island by "causing them to walk by the words of his mouth", and that scraps of lumber from the canoe…