What are some low fantasy settings that are PbtA or DW hacks? I know there are low power DW hacks, like Freebooters on the Frontier and the associated Perilous Wilds.
Are there many no-to-low magic settings out there? The DW hack of Mouse Guard Legends of the Guard and The Warren fit this description. What others?
Magic in high fantasy has a huge effect on the way moves are written, because even the more mundane classes require high octane abilities to fit the setting. Only a fraction of the moves that are built for high fantasy settings would work well in low fantasy.
City of Judas is fairly low magic and semi historical.
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I feel like DW would still run okay if you remove the magical playbooks and explain the Bard’s songs as being non-magical.
I agree. Not only are players free to choose whatever classes are available, including having an entire party with no magic, the GM is always advised to run the game according to the players’ choices. Much like having no thief means you aren’t likely to encounter traps.
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The key here is the GM. For a low magic setting – stop explaining things as magic, and keep reminding the players not to use magic as the explanation 🙂
(Disclaimer: The Warren is not a DW hack)
Yeah, DW totally works without any magic and can be as low to high magic as the GM and the players want.
As a GM it is also totally in your power to tell the players that this is a low/no-magic game when this is what you want to play.
It definitely depends on how broadly you’re defining “no-to-low magic.”
Sagas of the Icelanders definitely comes to mind. It’s almost no magic, and what’s there is very subtle (and arguably not even magic).
#Stonetop is an attempt at a low_er_ magic take on Dungeon World. The magic immediately available to starting PCs is relatively subtle, uncommon, and risky, and it’s meant to feel more sword-and-sorcery than classic D&D.
Heartbreaker World is even further on the sword & sorcery side of things. Magic is definitely presumed, but it largely hinges around spirits and sympathetic magic and the like. http://goo.gl/RX5tfd
There are the old Conan hacks of AW, Hyborean Saga (http://goo.gl/wUyzWm) and World of Conan (http://tinyurl.com/ju9gh4m). Again, low-magic in the sword-and-sorcery vein.
There’s A Storm Eternal (http://astormeternal.com), which is a refinement of Apocalypse World: Dark Ages.
…and that’s what I got. I guess there’s also SCUP (the Sword, the Crown, the Unspeakable Power) but there’s no public documentation for it.
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Tim Franzke I mentioned The Warren because it is PbtA and not Sword and Sorcery. Though I can see how the sentence I wrote can be easily misconstrued. I could have written that more clearly.
Tyler Solomon if you need a link, since City of Judas was the first mentioned, here it is: http://www.daimongames.com/judas.html
You can download the playbooks and handouts material to get an idea, and feel free to write me if you have questions about the game.
City of Judas is a great setting! However it is so much easier to simply tailor the choice of PlayBooks, add corruption, and use it as a Dw setting.