Strictly Non-Magical World

In worlds where there is no magic at all, there can be no genuine Mage characters. (Of course, there can be characters pretending to have magical powers, but they're probably Rogues running some sort of scam operation.) Priests, Rangers, Paladins and Bards exist but have no spells or magical abilities whatsoever; they have only whatever special status their society places on their professions.

Warrior-oriented campaigns set on strictly non-magical worlds are good for a lot of things. By taking the emphasis off magic, you put it on such things as combat, battling the elements, and pure adventure. In such a campaign, only one's wits, physical abilities and skills make the difference between success and failure, life and death. Magic, with all its mystery and all its complications, doesn't ever enter the picture.

This also means that things which would be unimpressive in a magical world can be awesome and mysterious in a non-magical one. A "dragon" may just be a giant dinosaurian beast with no intelligence, no magic spells, and no breath weapon, but it will be terrifying anyway, as the characters have no magic with which to help destroy or defeat it.

Without magic present, characters are never raised from the dead. They must be played more carefully than in games where resurrection is a commonplace event. It might be advisable to start characters out at 3rd level, as described in the Character Creation chapter, so that they'll be a little tougher to compensate for this situation.

Such a campaign is ideal for settings based on historical periods. You could base your AD&D® game campaign on the Crusades, on the era of piracy, on the wars of imperial Rome or ancient Greece, on the conquest of the New World. These are all settings rich in action and mystery, but for which there's little evidence of monsters or magic.

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