How do I run Modern Fantasy

How do I run Modern Fantasy

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Just watch enough flash videos until you get the right idea.

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Find some pregen modules for existing modern fantasy games and steal ideas until you're comfortable making your own shit

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Essentially is capeshit, go for mutants and masterminds.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    First you have to acknowledge that ‘modern fantasy’ is a bit of an oxymoron. Sorry. It is.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      How

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    You don't. Modern fantasy is garbage unless it's vampires or werewolves.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    watch a few episodes of Supernatural

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Watch this movie. After you get done criticizing it you will know how to run modern fantasy.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I don't know about Bright as a baseline. Some worldbuilding stuff is off for a tabletop game, and you're basically running Call of Cthulhu if you're restricting everyone to being humans.

      What if the magic is the source of the industrial revolution? Breakthroughs in magic made it cheaper and more freely avaliable to the point where it accelerates technological progress and revolutionises society?

      You've got a group of lvl 1 wizards sitting all day casting goodberry to make cheap goyslop to feed the masses with. You've got lvl 5 wizards casting fireballs to boil water and spin turbines to generate electricity. Necromancers rezzing skeletons to act as a cheap labor source, only to have a massive public backlash because A) having skeletons walking around everywhere is creepy and B) they're taking our jobs.

      Really when we're talking about DND magic, any society that figures that shit out is going to advance quickly unless "magic" is heavily restricted in some way.

      While a dude feeding thirty people is remarkable in the middle ages, and would certainly jumpstart a industrial economy if you've got anywhere near one in thirty numbers, it's nothing close to what we were managing in the 1600s. While some spells in the modern day can be incredibly useful, unseen servant, charm person, mold earth, they aren't economy shattering, world changing stuff apart from some life extending spells your list isn't all that exciting.

      Is a dude able to cast fireball cool? Sure, but I can cast grenade right now. Apart from life extension, resurrections, and maybe fabricate nothing really alters society.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        The big transformative change would be anything impacting metallurgy, as that was a massive limit to medieval societies. More than anything else, cheap large-scale metalworking enabled the industrial revolution.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Surely mechanic energy overtaking biological work was just as, if not more, important? Aside from water travel, all other kinds of transportation were hampered by the need to carry just as much food to feed the work animals, or people, as you could actually transport to sell somewhere. Not to mention the potential for consistent, uninterrupted movement.

          It'll come a bit later on in the revolution, but this is what allows you to have a train with one car of coal, if even, for many, many times the cars full of people and freight moving over much, much more distance than any animal or human powered transportation. Metalworking of course is necessary to create the mechanisms capable of sustaining this power, but that's not going to be enough until you can Tech Up to more efficient engines.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Surely mechanic energy overtaking biological work was just as, if not more, important?
            intertwined

            Indapendant of mills and energy, steel plow and more widespread handtools also allow technological increases. Better blooms, and blast furnaces are possible indapendant of these energy sources, and allow more advancements

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          If magic is posible to be teached, it would be controlled by the church & gentry until the renaissanse.
          After the XVII century there is enough population for firearms to be dominant, so maybe something would appear with magic?.
          I mean more population + humanization of magic, would lead to all the nations training all the mages they can, at least to defend from other nations using them.

          Its still would be limited because it would take years to train 1 mage and you need the facilities and teachers and so on. But the change in the societies would be notable.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            it would end up like modern universities where everyone with enough brain power and the financial situation to support studying for years is getting a degree to get a better paying corpo job than the rest of the masses have. 1 in 5 in the most underdeveloped countries is a wizard and 1 in 2 in the most developed ones. The modern office worker is the wizard of this setting

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Divination alone would shatter society, what the frick are you talking about.

        In our real history, necromancy / golemcraft to automate even just simple menial labor would have radically reshaped progress - and it's literally something we are still trying to perfect because of its obvious benefits.

        Polymorph type alterations of the body would be a multi-trillion-dollar business today, for cosmetics all by itself, nevermind the medical applications.

        But in point of fact, any kind of healing magic, even as limited and simplistic as it is often portrayed in sword-and-sorcery genres, would cause an immediate collapse and likely a world war if it suddenly appeared in a suburb somewhere. Trauma medicine is huge. But imagine being able to just cast a simple spell a all your cancer is gone. Your blindness is cured. War veterans are no longer legless.

        There would be an entirely new militarized arm of the police / intelligence agencies dedicated to nothing other than identifying and protecting against mind-manipulation magic... and they'd be paid for by the shadowy government organizations whose job it is to pervade society with ubiquitous use of that mind-altering magic to manipulate the population.

        And humans would have colonized the visible universe by now with even modest forms of teleportation.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Your basically talking D&D magic which is moronic because there is no set limitation on how you can use it yet all the settings associated with D&D don't go to the logical conclusions of what the settings magic could do (I suppose MtG being the only real exception give or take)

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          One golem costs 20-80 kg of gold in rare materials. And they are not eternal. Even steel ones will wear and tear over time. Damn useful and able to revolutionise the industry for countries that can make them cheaper and secure material sources but not eternal engines of production. You are paying at minimum something like a million dollars for one golem.

          You'll just get wars for golem materials instead of oil.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Read the first 5 or so Dresden Files books.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Read Harry Potter.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    We talking full integration of magical elements into a modern setting or a secret world kept hidden?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      First one. I don't like the secret magic stuff or the shadowrun It's earth but with magic!!

      I lean more towards Final Fantasy type of modern fantasy

      • 1 year ago
        Smaugchad

        The important question to answer is when and how magic was introduced into the world. If magic had always been real and readily available then there wouldn't have been much reason for industrial revolution thus no "modern world"

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          So in my setting, Magic is more music based requiring users to open themselves up to the Cosmic Tunes (placeholder while I find a more suitable name). Wands are used as a conduit. But to even open your ears to Cosmic Tunes requires a great sacrifice, haven't really decided on that but it could just be like enjoyment of food, your sexual drive,l etc etc so while Magic COULD be mainstream enough I think the barriers that exist prevent most from ever taking that leap to actually learning it

          • 1 year ago
            Smaugchad

            Good responses because

            In this scenario, where only certain rare people are even capable of performing magic and only at great personal sacrifice I think that logic dictates the existence of magic would naturally be a secret kept not just by the mages but systemically by the powers that be to maintain the status quo

            and conversely

            What if the magic is the source of the industrial revolution? Breakthroughs in magic made it cheaper and more freely avaliable to the point where it accelerates technological progress and revolutionises society?

            You've got a group of lvl 1 wizards sitting all day casting goodberry to make cheap goyslop to feed the masses with. You've got lvl 5 wizards casting fireballs to boil water and spin turbines to generate electricity. Necromancers rezzing skeletons to act as a cheap labor source, only to have a massive public backlash because A) having skeletons walking around everywhere is creepy and B) they're taking our jobs.

            Really when we're talking about DND magic, any society that figures that shit out is going to advance quickly unless "magic" is heavily restricted in some way.

            In this sort of a situation, where magic is something that is discovered and can be used to power industry then you logically go in one of three directions. The magic can remain magical in which case industry obviously develops differently and you have a completely different "modern world" or magic simply replaces some other form of energy like electricity or magnetism and the world is the same or, option three, "magic" is something that operates scientifically and parallel to real historical industry but with some specific concrete differences that create specific fantastic elements in an otherwise normal setting. This is cool but it is really science fiction, not fantasy.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              I have wondered why there cannot be more situations similar to Avatar where the Firebenders basically created industrialization and electricity generation. Wizards generating all the electricity to power a city and using fire magics in foundries to create steel and other metals seems like a decent use and good way to make money outside of adventuring.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I dislike wizard gatekeeping. I dislike it even more in modern fantasy because it effectively explains why magic doesn't exist in modern society, obviating the premise of the setting.

            What if the magic is the source of the industrial revolution? Breakthroughs in magic made it cheaper and more freely avaliable to the point where it accelerates technological progress and revolutionises society?

            You've got a group of lvl 1 wizards sitting all day casting goodberry to make cheap goyslop to feed the masses with. You've got lvl 5 wizards casting fireballs to boil water and spin turbines to generate electricity. Necromancers rezzing skeletons to act as a cheap labor source, only to have a massive public backlash because A) having skeletons walking around everywhere is creepy and B) they're taking our jobs.

            Really when we're talking about DND magic, any society that figures that shit out is going to advance quickly unless "magic" is heavily restricted in some way.

            You've basically described the plot of Final Fantasy VI, which remains the most perfect fantasy game of all time. But your version is way less cool because it doesn't have magimecha.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Jew

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >But your version is way less cool
              He is likely a /misc/tard for his buzzword usage so makes sense.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              I thought the basic plot outline of FFVI was the presence of magical creatures made an arms race. And one kingdom discovered that they could be caught and stuffed into factories to power their machines, weapons, and their dead remains could be used to infuse magic into people, making them into even more of a commodity.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          What if the magic is the source of the industrial revolution? Breakthroughs in magic made it cheaper and more freely avaliable to the point where it accelerates technological progress and revolutionises society?

          You've got a group of lvl 1 wizards sitting all day casting goodberry to make cheap goyslop to feed the masses with. You've got lvl 5 wizards casting fireballs to boil water and spin turbines to generate electricity. Necromancers rezzing skeletons to act as a cheap labor source, only to have a massive public backlash because A) having skeletons walking around everywhere is creepy and B) they're taking our jobs.

          Really when we're talking about DND magic, any society that figures that shit out is going to advance quickly unless "magic" is heavily restricted in some way.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          This is sort of why i was never into the lazier modern fantasy stuff like Orcs and elves but in New York! Because magic always being there, and other races also always being there means it would not look exactly 1:1 like the modern day but with green people here and there.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Cultural contamination from repeated Isekai'ed heroes has brought technological and social change to fantasy land. After hundreds of years of this things have stabilized into a contemporary analogue for our modern world with supply chains being secured by adventurers in the employ of nation states instead of massive standing militaries.

        The ideas and expectations of late 20th century early 21st century Earth somehow inflicting themselves on this place haven't escaped the notice of the Gods. Those that have thrived have taken advantage of these transplanted heroes ideals and today "Brand as religion" is commonplace.

        Government mandated free schooling of the peasant class until they're of age has resulted in an explosion of literacy. Magical knowledge is handled differently from nation state to nation state. Long lived species can remember the old days but have been seduced by "modern" conveniences and wish stability to perpetuate their access to consumer goods.

        TLDR - Chosen hero has brought Starbucks to Faerun. The Gods approve.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I hate masquerade so much.

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Everything comes down to your magic system. If you run a low or mid fantasy setting, there's no problem and you just do contemporary times with magic substituting technology or adding in a bit of flavor. But if it's high fantasy, you gotta do a lot more leg work, since the essential elements of high fantasy fundamentally clash with the down-to-earth feel of urban fantasy.

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    GURPS
    I'm planning a Shadowrun-esque game as we speak

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Final fantasy 7 always stuck with me because the commercials looked cool when I was a kid. Just do whatever looks cool--soldiers with giant swords riding hoverboards or whatever.

    Also always wanted a modern fiction with something like fairytale logic or magical realism. Just like we enjoy fantasy that is loosely medieval without worrying about where the crops come from if the wilderness is full of TPK level monster encounters. I just don't really have the talent or discipline to articulate it.

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Take 5e
    >Replace "longbow" with "assault rifle" and "crossbow" with "shotgun"
    There

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      You are everything that is wrong with gaming

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Not just using the gun rules in the DMG
      Are you moronic?

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Take a kitchen sink fantasy setting and put it through industrialisation. Make reference to various fantasy tropes but translate them into something more "modern."

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >How do I run Modern Fantasy
    By running a game set in a period similar to the modern era, while containing things that are impossible or improbable.

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    If you are not straying too far from human norms, then GURPS will work. Fantasy Hero from Hero Systems is also good. If the Unity System (All Flesh Must Be Eaten) ever got a more fleshed out magic system, it would work as well.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >AFMBE
      Dungeons and Zombies, no? I think it’s all cribbed from Witchcraft anyway.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        If you are not straying too far from human norms, then GURPS will work. Fantasy Hero from Hero Systems is also good. If the Unity System (All Flesh Must Be Eaten) ever got a more fleshed out magic system, it would work as well.

        Yes, Witchcraft (and/or Dungeons and ZOmbies) will do all of this. Witchcraft has an absolute smorgasbord of magic powers to use.

  18. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >replace race with race
    >replace class with class
    That was easy.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Tyrone, level 5 lumpenprole Black
      Like this?

  19. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Just play it straight. Act out the modern world and just add the gameplay elements as they come up. If anyone asks dumb questions like “how has the addition of elves changed world history” just handwave it, or incorporate player suggestions.

  20. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    What sort of fantasy setting are you trying to create? Are you just trying to justify dudes in modern looking gear carrying swords and other archaic weapons? You don't have to really justify someone using a bow or a short sword in a modern day setting.

    Is there some threat that is uniquely adapted to Humans and has forced them into concentrated areas?

    Do you have to go out as a team to do things like protect groups of people or gather a special resource?

    As worthless of a game as Antham was the skeleton of the idea I think makes for a good modern fantasy setting where you can have as many melee and modern ranged weapons as you like to deal with monsters or against similar individuals and such and go quest for macguffins to make your power armor more awesome.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >What sort of fantasy setting are you trying to create?
      none
      anon just wants to spam threads

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Okay. And?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Pretty much yeah I want bros that shoot magic and swing swords and shoot guns fighting monsters before getting in thier car driving to the local hotel and chilling watching TV Ala Final Fantasy 15

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Then what's the hold up?

  21. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Read shadowrun and remove the cyberware.

  22. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    First you need to define the kind of modern fantasy you want.
    The biggest one generally is whether or not there is a masquerade of sorts where normals either physically can't see most magic shit or where the magic shit tends to stay hidden.

  23. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    imagine him fricking her

  24. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Rule of Cool

  25. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    If you need to ask - you shouldn't.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Typical redditor response

  26. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    GO Balls to the walls make it it's own setting rather than just Earth but Magical, where being a dude in Business suits who kill people with Advanced Medieval weaponry be a suprisingly common Career, where Corporation experiment with pulling Supernatural Monster entities out of the well of Humanity's Collective Unconcious where there are technologies that can Seemingly Break all known Laws of physics that often come with terrible behind closed doors concequences and might aswell be, there are far away place outside of the mega city full of spooky magic shit.
    use a cool word for mercenaries/Adventurers tho Mercs is already a cool word

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      What about Blackadder a d gays

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