WotC is moving on from its "Season of Horror" to its "Season of Magic," which raises some questions: what is "magic" as a theme in fantasy?
To me, my definition of fantasy is that it must involve the supernatural. This creates a very broad umbrella under which fantasy stories can fall, though there are plenty of genres that sit in borderlands and frontiers. In theory, you could write a whole secondary-world that involves a bunch of medieval politics of made-up countries with made-up histories, and that might seem like fantasy, but even drier, "harder" works of fantasy like A Song of Ice and Fire still have these supernatural elements, even if they are focused on less than the mundane, human-level politicking and interpersonal drama. But were you to write a truly-magic-less work of fiction like that, I think I'd be inclined to say that it was some other genre and not truly fantasy. Fantasy must have the supernatural, and magic, generally is a catch-all term for the supernatural.
D&D would have to be extraordinarily limited to avoid any magic. You'd basically only have humanoid and beast monsters (and lots of humanoids would also be banned,) and furthermore, you'd have to cut out a whole bunch of classes and some of the subclasses for the remaining ones.
I don't think there are many who would prefer to play that way. The magical and supernatural as a storytelling device is a license to allow our imaginations to run wild and free.
Which brings us to this question: how do we focus on magic when magic is already so prevalent in the game?
I think the answer is to delve into High Magic.
D&D in particular inherited and in many ways codified a kind of street-level magic. A scrappy bar-brawl might involve, sure, people pulling out swords or clubs or crossbows, but in a D&D world, it's just as common to have someone (maybe it's uncommon, but not unheard of) toss a Fire Bolt. There's a whole sort of trope and subgenre of a world in which random schmucks running around with kind of magical ability forces society to adapt. A shop with "enchanters will be prosecuted" on a sign in the window, or maybe the local tavern having a permanent illusion spell that works a bit like an animated neon sign.
But there's also a grand tradition in fantasy of this sort of higher, deeper, more profound magic - something on the cutting edge. If you think about it, the spells you cast in D&D, almost all of them, are temporary effects. They're also primarily battle-magic. High Magic, though, is the sort that can shape the world, truly creating lasting changes. It might even be something that changes the way magic works in the first place.
And that's... hard to build into a rules system.
Indeed, there's a kind of sense that when you hit certain tiers of play, you become heroes (or at least powerful individuals - nothing in D&D says you have to be a good guy) of historical levels of power. And certainly, the kinds of things you can pull off as an 18th level Wizard are pretty nuts. But it's pretty rare to have big, sweeping, permanent effects on the world outside of the Wish spell - typically the only other options being the ones you have to cast once a day for a year, and these might just effectively create a building.
So, I think there are two approaches to take here:
First off, there's the villainous plot: indeed, I think you could argue that many if not most plots involve a villainous archmage or lich trying to enact some grand scheme. We could look at published adventures: the Cult of the Dragon trying to summon Tiamat to the prime material plane in Tyranny of Dragons, or Acererak's efforts to create a new, evil god in Tomb of Annihilation. The players in these campaigns are trying to halt the effort and preserve the natural way of things as they exist already.
Another approach, though, could be one in which an act of high magic spurs forward a new adventure: perhaps some group of mages opens a number of stable, permanent portals to other worlds or planes. Now, there's a rush to explore these new worlds and/or deal with some of the new threats that come through said portals. Maybe new forms of magic suddenly become available - you could have a setting in which magic either didn't exist, or perhaps was only accessible through narrow means (perhaps it was a world of Warlocks only, but now mere mortals are able to access magic without a patron).
Of course, a third approach could be that it is the party who is seeking to achieve an act of great magic. The quests they embark on would be the steps required to achieve their grand work.
Now, in terms of aesthetics, I think High Magic should tend toward the surreal - mazes and other strange and confusing environments. Likewise, strange creatures are good options for your combat encounters - constructs, elementals, and monstrosities created through experimental magic are all strong options here.
While a Lich can be a great antagonist for a campaign focused on high magic (as it appears to be with the upcoming Deadfall campaign, with Szass Tam as the big bad) I would say that if you want to lean into this high fantasy vibe rather than dark fantasy, you might actually downplay the classic "army of the dead" minions that a Lich villain often has. Liches are undead, sure, but they're also powerful wizards, and thus might eschew armies all together in favor of greater magical creations.
As a last point: I'd go pretty heavy on providing magic items to the party, but I'd also favor "interesting solution" items. While I think you should always ensure that your party's, say, Barbarian, gets a cool magic weapon, I think this is the kind of campaign where I'd really favor things like Immovable Rods, Alchemy Jugs, Potions of Gaseous Form, and other things that don't have an obvious combat utility, but which encourage the party to get creative.
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