There are plenty of different ways to flavor your world inDungeons & Dragons. One of the best ways to find the tone of your characters' adventures is through the many subgenres of fantasy. It is a fantasy roleplaying game, after all.
One of these many subgenres is low fantasy. The polar opposite of high fantasy, it is often marked by incredibly little magic, a focus on realism, and even a little bit of grit and grime thrown in there for good measure. But, how do you create a low fantasy setting for your players to explore?
10Limit Magic
To Cast Or Not To Cast
One of the main differences between low and high fantasy is how common magic is. While high fantasy may see everyone having some magical abilities, low fantasy sees arcane powers as incredibly rare to come across.
Limiting the magic you see in your world may not seem too hard, but the big change is how your characters and the NPCs you run will react to seeing magic users. Are they revered, hated, or just pariahs in the eyes of those around them?
This isn’t to say that your characters can’t all have some magic ability, it can be a great way to conect your party to be some of the few mages out there, and there are plenty of ways to tie that into the lore of your world.
9Keep It Simple
As It Can Be Anyway
High and grand fantasy will often see paladins and chosen ones saving the world, or some other grand goal. This isn’t to say you may’t do so for your main plot in a low fantasy D&D game, but you may need to adjust some things.
Perhaps look to a less “grand” plot for a low fantasy setting. you may still make an epic adventure depending on how you flavor it: overthrow an evil government, defeat a necromantic lich, or defend against an evil army. You can still have your party save the world, one or two facets of high fantasy won’t change much as long as you ramp up other qualities.
Crunchy, Grim, Dour
Barbarian/Intimidation by Mark Behm
Low fantasy, especially in modern media, is often marked by dark, gritty, and tense scenarios. Characters who are scheming and self-servicing, monsters that don’t hold back, and asetting that is often darkerthan it is hopeful are all great ways to bring this to your table.
However, grit can take the form of a lot of different things, and is a scale in and of itself. Find out where you and your players align on that scale before beginning and build your world (and the adventures inside it) to fit them.
Make sure you check in with your players to get a sense of their limits. Gore and violence may need to be limited or glossed over, dependent on your players' boundaries.
7Check Out Other Media
Movie Night?
There are some great movies, books, shows, video games, and other TTRPGs out there that embody the different aspects of low fantasy. Using one of them as a foundation is a great way to see what you want to do, and it’s a good way to relate the world to your players.
Take a look at some of these as you create your own low fantasy world, you may even be surprised at the low fantasy worlds you are already familiar with. The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and even American Gods are all low fantasy but are incredibly different in tone and plot.
6Explore Technology (Or Don’t)
Inventions Aplenty
In a world with little magic, the people of your world may have looked to other methods to solve their problems. Reliance on technology may be the way they’ve done so.Steampunk machines, more advanced warforged, even firearms may have popped up in your world.
Figure out what role technology plays to help build your adventures; it can really add some spice. However, as far as technology goes, a low fantasy world stuck in the Middle Ages can also be a fun adventure.
5More Moral Ambiguity
Grey Characters If You Will
Low fantasy worlds can often be full of characters with compromised, or even vague, morals. This can also make dialogue and roleplay a little bit more interesting, as not everyone will look at your characters as saviors.
A great example is George R.R. Martin’s Game Of Thrones universe, where characters are well-rounded but usually contain some good and some evil (sometimes a lot of evil).
Limiting your white knights, holy paladins, and those other superhero-types can help drive home the tone of the world that your characters find themselves in. It doesn’t have to go full grimdark, just enough to feel a little rougher than most fantasy worlds.
4Combat Vs Conversation
Two Solutions To The Same Problem
This is the balance that every GM has sought to perfect since the dawn of D&D. Different genres can lend a hand to this, including that of low fantasy worlds. In a setting like low fantasy, that often doesn’t care for the lives of the players, combat can be focused on more.
This isn’t to say that dialogue and speech skills go out the window. In fact, they can be more nuanced in this setting. But, in low fantasy worlds full ofdanger and deadly monsters, combat may happen more often than not.
3Lean Towards Realism
More Or Less
One of the main tenets of low fantasy worlds are they are, more or less, like our own. Limiting how they lean into fantasy is the best overarching way to ensure your own world stays in this subgenre.
It can be a lot to alter if you’re used to playing the typical type of D&D world where magic and realism go hand-in-hand. But keeping a realistic notion in mind will get far easier as the game goes on, and the more you build the world, the more little bits of other types of fantasy you’re able to sprinkle in.
2Push Your Players
But How Far?
Low fantasy settings often don’t take too kindly to the players in them meddling with it. Knowing that, it’s best to challenge them, letting them know the world itself is a challenge. As said earlier, you don’t have to go too hard into this, it’s not grimdark, and you don’t need to try for a TPK.
However, beefing up encounters with enemies, making dialogue more tense, and even making puzzles and traps more common can all lean into challenging your players. It doesn’t always have to mean combat.
1The Tone Of Words
Power Word Tone
Setting can mean a lot of things, and throughout this list there have been a lot of ways to build up the low fantasy setting you’re seeking to create. Sometimes it’s the little things that can carry the tone a long way.
Naming your NPCs, describing the scene around your characters, and even how you approach the way the people interact with each other all add to the theme of the setting. Focus on the grime, the struggle, and the everyday lives of the NPCs and enemies to really drive it all home.
