[Discuss] Fantasy in BM

[Anthony Cerqueira]

On 11/27/07, Dominic <dham0749 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> BM has always been a low-fantasy game. Except for a few exceptions,
> everyone's human, there's no magic, and supernatural events are rare enough
> that hermits could only know them as myths.


Everyone but sirion is human this is true.
There is magic but it's on the fringe, and lots of people are trying very
hard to keep it there or kill it completely ic.
Meanwhile some types of supernatural events are so common people just
ignore them.

There are hints of a slightly fantastic flavour to the world, only small
ones and only in some places. Undead and monsters often roam, strange
prophets fortell of terrible events which come to pass, nobles seem to live
forever and heal any wound no matter how grevious if given enough time, and
there was even once a lich. What does this mean? Well for those who will
have no part of anything as silly as superstition, it's just proof of how
misguided some poor fools are and that science and faith still has some
ground to cover. For those who think hanging a horseshoe over the door is a
good idea, it just gives them more fuel for the fire. The point is that
these kinds of things are exceptions rather than the rule, popping up once
in a while, and for the most part people's day to day lives are totally
normal, full of terrible wars, but normal.

But things seem to be changing. The whole daimon thing surprised me at
> first, but then again, it's beluaterra, it's fun and doesn't represent the
> whole of the islands. But then we got sages, tinkering all kinds of renowned
> items. Yet again, nothing too fancy there, it's more for prestige and
> placebo effect than anything else.



I agree things are changing and it is strange. It makes one wonder
just what the future holds,
but it might not be bad. Battlemaster comes form Spellmaster, the world is
the same, but the details are very different. Since Tom made Spellmaster he
obviously likes a little magic, and maybe he's decided to bring more back.
In order to keep the low fantasy tag, magic has to remain an exception,
difficult to find and unknown over all, otherwise things will start to shift
to high fantasy. However what happens is something we'll all have to wait
and see.

But now we've got wizards? Scrolls and magic? Gods are *real*? Why would we
> make gods real? Not only is it a severe restriction to creativity, would
> advantage the established elite while harming new prophets, interfere in
> roleplay in an unmanageable way, but really, at the core, do we really want
> *this* much fantasy? Most of my characters are strongly religious, one is a
> prophet (though his faith got destroyed) and the other an elder who sees
> signs out of anything that surrounds him (monsters are in the way, this must
> mean my god wants me to fight the monsters, travelled got delayed, this must
> mean my god disapproves of my goals, I took power by killing the ruler, this
> must mean I must secure and grab more by doing the same to my new opponent,
> etc.), and I would very much like the possibility to view them, as a player,
> as dellusionnal people with psychological disbalances, which is pretty much
> how I view most prophets who don't do it out of greed.


Some excellent points.
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