Why are there so few modern fantasy settings?

>>50626223
It's gay as hell.

Well, let's see: Kult, Delta Green, Cthulhu 90, Over the Edge, Unknown Armies, WOD/nWOD, Demon City Shinjuku, Sailor Moon RPG, Nephilim, INS/MV, Chill, Conspiracy X

>>50626223
There are a lot of them, it's just that most are modern fantasy horror games.

Part of the problem with a modern fantasy game is probably the number of changes you need to make in order for it to even make sense. Either you need to set up an entire secret organization to explain why magic is not well known, or you need to rework most of society to adjust to people randomly being able to cast flamethrower whenever they want. Plus, "modern" tends to assume real world, which means needing to represent real world politics and societies at least somewhat accurately. By contrast, a medieval fantasy setting doesn't need to do anything realistic, precisely because the entire thing is made up whole cloth.

You typically don't see otherwise medieval fantasy settings get into more technological advances because these settings are typically based on swords and sorcery: aspects of personal empowerment. Guns and cars and motors tend to depower the individual, more or less bypassing that whole requirement of personal skill, and games based around leveling up personal skills generally don't handle firearms all that well.

Modern horror tends to get around the common problems with a modern fantasy setting by making the horror more personal and local. You don't need to restructure society entirely just because the house down the street is (actually) haunted or because there is something scary stalking around the neighborhood at night.

>>50626258
Urban Fantasy isn't the same thing.

And probably because it can be hard to make magic & technology exist in the same setting without one of them feeling redundant.

FF15 did it pretty well, but perhaps only because the story was focused enough that you didn't have a lot of time to notice all of the dumb things.

I just think most people trying to do Fantasy are probably actively wanting to get away from anything contemporary.

>>50626223

Honestly, because the two clash like a motherfucker which is why I got incredibly turned off of FF15. I don't mind like, steam trains and shit like that, but the minute I see modern cars and giant turtle monsters, I fuck off.

Not saying 15's bad; it's just..for me, the dissonance is too much. Sci-Fantasy is fine, because in a lot of ways technology is kind of like magic, and if you do it well it can really add to a setting.

But, to be honest, I do honestly think it's because the clash is so just there that, unfortunately, it probably turns a lot of people off. FF can get away with it because of the brand, honestly, but if this were a new IP I honestly doubt it'd be selling amazingly well. Urban fantasy, I think, is one thing, but modern fantasy..you have to do a lot of work to make it, well, work.

It's certainly not impossible, but you do really have to do a lot more than most folks probably want to spend on their fantasy worlds and settings without risking potential audience alienation, or at least making it mesh well together enough that your audience won't immediately pass on it.

>>50626274
The cars were the weirdest thing to me, in FF15. Everything else was standard overdesigned Final Fantasy style, but the cars were just cars. Nothing that streamlined should exist in a Final Fantasy setting. At least put some unnecessary fins on it.

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>>50626556
I don't think that the target audience of Final Fantasy XV (young Japanese men age 15-25) are even familiar with what a 1950s car looks like.

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I run moé-fied, monstergirl/boy-ified Planescape campaigns (refer to the image to the left) wherein technology is effectively modern-day by way of enchanted items.

The Society of Sensation's recorder/sensory stones can record data, so they are used as the basis for computers, digital media, audio/video/smell captures, and the like.

The Harmonium desires to connect everyone together in harmony, so they have tapped into their musical affinity to transmit data via magical sound waves that pass through the Astral Plane. This is called the "Harmonet."

In the streets of Sigil and other planar cities, one can frequently see celestials, fiends, cordians, elementals, faeries, and mortals walking around with little crystals, bones, or shards of metal. These trinkets produce holographic, programmed illusions that respond to touch and serve as the interface for what amounts to smartphones. The Siri equivalent is called "Mimir."

Belief is power in the planes, and thus Harmonet memes are extremely serious business.

In the average planar creature's household, there might be a scry-levision that receives feeds from the Harmonet in the Astral Plane, a refrigerator and a cooling system powered by eternal ice from the Paraelemental Plane of Ice, and a computer with a quad-soul processor.

Businesses and buildings are likewise rather modern. There are department stores, beauty salons, nightclubs, and more. You might be attended to by a lesser guardinal store clerk (those compassionate Elysians simply love to help people!) as you go about shopping for a lightbulbs powered by Continual Flame spells.

There are no cars though. Intra-city and inter-city portals are a more convenient method of transportation, and for when people do need vehicles, they can always take spelljammers (which work more like 4e's spelljammers in that they can traverse the planes).

Is this a good job of modern fantasy?

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>>50626223

Too much effort to calculate geopolitics and how everything would get to that point. It's like writing a novel just to jump from the middle ages to the early modern era to an era where you get cars while still trying to aim for the aesthetic you want, such as swordsmen driving motorcycles. It's why Shadowrun opted for the "Lol you humans are suddenly elves now!" route. Furthermore, modern settings happen on a global scale that is easy to lose track of, making it very difficult to railroad and forcing the GM to account for more things that arise from easier transportation that would otherwise keep the players restricted to, if not a single region, at least a single Europe-sized continent.

>>50626265

Of course, if you lump horror with fantasy, then the amount of modern fantasy settings is roughly the same as non-modern fantasy settings, though I think the OP meant modern settings that aren't derived from Earth. Stuff like modern Warcraft and Eberron where soldiers are using radios, the cobblestone streets have started to give way to primitive automobile traffic, and air transportation has become the norm, and mass media is a thing. FF15 is a bit of an outlier in that it goes for an almost 90s aesthetic for automobiles in specific, wheres the rest of it is firmly rooted in the 20s technologically.

>>50626556
Having cars and chocobo both acting as transport options alongside each other was a bit strange yes, but it made at least a little sense. Chocobo are intelligent and nimble, both things you'd want when off-road in monster country.

The Regalia is pretty overdesigned, under the surface. It can fly for fucks sake.

Harry Potter.

>>50626695
I mean there are people who still ride horses in the real world for that reason.

>>50626223

There's Technomancer, which does a fantastic job... and that's about it? I don't know any other Earth based setting where there's open magic, technology, modern sensibilities and industry.

Shadowrun skips forwards to a point where it's a cyberpunk hellhole, and puts a lot of separation between magic and technology to reduce their interaction.

>>50626772
The most modern thing in Harry Potter is a train that takes them to and from school once a year.

>>50626223
Because most tabletop fans dont want to leave the hugbox for anything different.

Shadowrun always got shat on for having fantasy stuff blended in with cyberpunk (Its not like they did a good job with that either). Most campaigns hardly touch upon anything bit the magic, if rarely. I dont know why but people are okay with the bare ingredients but the moment you try to make a soup its just autistic screeching all the way down.

I hate that most of it is """horror""" because its such an wonderfully untapped aestethic. And while I dont think by voice can really do it justice.

Tl dr: people got shit taste.

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People have their autism triggered at the idea of modern fantasy because when they think modern they immediately think it has to be exactly how our world is instead of something that has modern looking aesthetics similar to our world without it having to be built up in the same way.

>>50626265
>Part of the problem with a modern fantasy game is probably the number of changes you need to make in order for it to even make sense. Either you need to set up an entire secret organization to explain why magic is not well known, or you need to rework most of society to adjust to people randomly being able to cast flamethrower whenever they want. Plus, "modern" tends to assume real world, which means needing to represent real world politics and societies at least somewhat accurately. By contrast, a medieval fantasy setting doesn't need to do anything realistic, precisely because the entire thing is made up whole cloth.

Why? It doesn't have to be Harry Dresden or something like that. The fact that there are people who can conjour fire is a known and understood thing in the world and contributes towards it being able to do the things it does. I understand people may not like the look and feel of it but really that sort of back flipping to justify it is unnecessary

>>50626223
Because most people half-ass it in a way that isn't fun. See >>50626999 for someone who knows what the hell they're doing.

Aren't most superhero settings modern fantasy?

>>50626772
Harry Potter setting also doesn't make any sense since wizards don't rule the world, for some reason.

>>50627083
>Harry Potter setting also doesn't make any sense since wizards don't rule the world, for some reason.

You sure about that? As I recall, the few times the minister of magic met the prime minister in the books, it wasn't the prime minister giving orders.

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>>50626265

If you need justification to have modern aesthetics in an otherwise fantasy setting how's something like this:

The two major soverign governments have decided to build their relationship with each other and increase trade. To do this they decide to take an old trade path and modernize it to make it easier for trucks to haul goods between the two countires. Not only that, it's a massive public works project that will generate jobs in a number of fields.

Egineers are tapped to start drawing up plans for the construction of several bridges aided by Druids who are familiar with the local people's in the lands between the two countries and help work out an optimum route that won't cause massive disruption to the surrounding nature. The various Wizard/scientist set to work integrating an anti-monster system into the lamp post posted every 10 miles to create zones to keep most of the creatures away from high traffic areas as these are already employed to keep monsters out of rural villages and to protect infrastructure like generators.

Warriors and mercenary groups bid on contracts to provide security for the construction workers and to occasionally go out and hunt for monsters sigted near the work areas to minimize their disruption to the work.

With Way stations being built along the road they act as safe havens for travelers to stop and rest for the night as well as actiong as stations that can send out magic probes to get a good lay of the land and watch for any signs of monster incursion or even illegal activity such as smuggliing and roadside bandits.

Even with the occasional monster here and there the economy is booming and the PCs are able to catch a bus to the next town which is covient because this one will let you carry your big ass sword with you as long as you have it peace tied in it's sheath for the duration of the trip.

One option to pull this type of thing off is actually using stargate/GATE themes. You know, some time after first contact, people are starting to know what's on the other side, trade of material or info, ect.
Essentially 'the frontier' with a twist. Which can start off from wither side. And you will never have to worry about running out of materials because you can just open another gate that leads to a world with a different gimmick.
Hell, isn't there a system/setting for this already? I remember it being related to gurps or some other ting, but my brain doesn't function well past midnight.

>>50627266
I like this.

>>50626223

Because smartphones would ruin Seinfeld.

>>50626223
It all ends up as you driving your Magic Mercedes up to ''MC Druids's'' to order a burger from a Dumb as a Brick Orcish worker.

>>50626223
I'm actually trying to find a system for running a game like this. Right now I'm leaning toward D&D 5e since I'm at least familiar enough with it to houserule it.

>>50628183
Give us some tidbits about the setting

>>50628227
I don't actually have much, sadly. I try to built the setting around the system rather than pick a system to go with a setting.

That said, something in the same vein as Final Fantasy XV would be pretty close. Modern day technology, guns and swords and magic side by side, etc.

I wish I knew

Almost all modern fantasy is restricted to urban fantasy

>>50628270
What do you want out of Rural Fantasy?

>>50628260
How are you going to explain so many races?

>>50628286
Not urban fantasy as restricted to cities

I refer to the "secret/hidden world" definition

>>50626250
i came in here to post this too

>>50628286
Gods did it, maybe? Or they were just always around, same as any other fantasy setting. Even different Final Fantasy games have more races than just humans, after all, even if XV doesn't as far as I know.

As for how they'd react to each other in a modern setting, maybe a less dystopian, non-cyberpunk Shadowrun.

>>50626223
People don't like mixing non-Fantasy with Fantasy.
Almost the entire point of Fantasy is to escape the humdrum of modern life.
When an elf is sitting on a bus, looking at his smartphone it's too real.

>>50628364
Actually, Shadowrun would be a great example of what I'm looking for. I want Shadowrun with the magic but without the cyberpunk.

>>50628299
Isn't that WoD, both versions? Keeping up appearances is important to most games there.

>>50628372
But it gets fun when you start throwing in other races. Is it mandatory for all seats to have a tail slot on buses? Do Pixies push for greater NFC acceptance so they don't have to haul around bags bigger than they are?

>>50628381
I've done some of that. How the old fantasy races start reappearing works pretty well.

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>>50626399
I disagree. Your immersion is ruined because you're used to pre modern settings. In the middle ages people made stories about what seemed contemporary to them.

The fantastic intruding on the mundane whether it's a dragon or wizard was part of what made it "fantasy". Things like knights and castles are part of the furniture because THAT was the mundane reality bored peasants lived with.

Don't bite my head off, but does Naruto kill your immersion? Kings, video cameras, yakuza, hand to hand combat dominance, movies, ox drawn carts, DNA testing, giant monsters, tap water, zombies, airships, barbaric childhood initiation rituals, computers, niggers walking on water, messenger birds, and hermit sages all rubbing elbows

I mean shit, even Middle Earth is full of glaring anachronisms

>>50628414
>But it gets fun when you start throwing in other races.

I disagree. Most races work on only a few stereotypes, and those typically translate badly into modern settings.

>Is it mandatory for all seats to have a tail slot on buses? Do Pixies push for greater NFC acceptance

This is the kind of thing most people do not care about.
It would be the kind of thing that was a visual gag in some talking animal movie.

>>50626658
I want to explore, know more of this world setting.

I even want to see a webcomic of this. Or even I dunno, me drawing a webcomic of this. Of course, to be legalese-friendly, you'll need to strip out more of the obvious planescape cues.

>>50628183

GURPS would do very well for this. It already has Technomancer, which is a modern Earth with a magical-industrial revolution occurring when the first atomic bomb tests brought magic back.

But more importantly, it has excellent support for modern technology and a whole book on creating magic systems (and another for how magic effects urban societies).

>>50628286
You don't have to necessarily explain it scientifically. A fantasy setting in modern times still could be creationist.

>>50628414
Thinking about what such cultures would work like is actually rather interesting to me. Language, fashion, food, accommodation...

>>50628423
Naruto was interesting setting, despite the hodgepodge. It is such a shame that the series went the direction it went.
Setting doesn't necessarily have to be really immersive - I can accept some fractures in it if the concept is entertaining.

I can't even think of that many examples in media that fit the requirements. Early Dragonball is closest thing that comes to mind.

>>50628534
Here are two harder curve balls:

What type of Culture would Dragonborn and Tiefling's have in a modern setting?

>>50628538
I think Star vs. the forces of Evil counts. I've been reading a manga about a Maid Dragon, so that might count too.

>>50628534
I think it comes down to storytelling. Even if you have an immersive and extensively thought out setting a shit story is a shit story.

Tribal African legends gleefully thrown in modern stuff without regard for "immersion" because the heart of the tale is timeless. Go to Mandinka villages now and you'll hear about how Sundiata used not an arrow but a magical bullet to vanquish Sumanguru. The Fang people changed their epic by adding modern soccer, and villains who instead of enslaving people as zombies to make cloth in the underworld they use zombie slaves to build railroads to the spirit world.

>>50628381
Kind of working on that...
About this issue with UrbanxModern, i'm handling it a bit like Dresdenverse, weird stuff is out there for most people to see, but unless they experience something by themselves they will ignore this world of "magic" and on top of mass midia works very well.

tl;dr:everyone knows someone that had supernatural experiences, but people usually don't buy it.

>>50628414
Well, about different races, they are either so human that they fit in without much disturbance (you wouldn't call someone shorty and bulky a dwarf in the literal meaning)
Or they are so different they usually "hide" in order to avoid pursuit from curious people (think about people breaking in your house just because they think its haunted).

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>>50628538
Hard to say, since I am poorly educated on tieflings and dragonborn to begin with. You'd need to figure out how such species are spread out and how emergence of modern technology and ideals affected them.

I am more on stance that in such setting the cultures would heavily depend on geographical location rather than species, although there would of course be a species-identity of sorts. And the composition of population would be dependent on the history.

I am not very good at worldbuilding, either way...

>>50628661
Interesting stuff.

>>50626884
Yeah, let's ignore the flying car.

>>50626223
Modern fantasy is (or used to be) really big in YA literature.

>>50626223
People over complicate fantasy worlds.

If magic is a known thing then the typical Medieval fantasy setting is actually equivalent to the mid Age of Exploration where some technologies never advanced because there simply wasn't the same interest. Ships and armor and such all did, but other things like guns lagged behind because of fireballs and lightning bolts. When you think of it that way it is easy to make a 2001: the fantasy game by changing some basics.

- The pace of technology is greatly reduced by magic
- Magic develops in the same way technology would, but at a slow rate because the need is reduced
- Every new generation of people are much smarter than the next still, and have better magical ability
- The driving force of scarcity is government (borders, wars, etc) or environmental (monsters are a natural response to human expansion)

Just keep to retrofuturism of your choice with magic. I would use the 70s and 80s: modern day looks like Stranger Things with much more magic, the future is cyberpunk on Earth and Alien in space, the far future is more Star Wars than Star Trek. If you like dieselpunk you make things a bit more grim and militaristic present time with magic more focused on improving life, if you inflict your players with steampunk then technology and magic all all interwoven cog bullshit. Atomicpunk stuff would be more like John Carter or Flash Gordon present day, and the future would be more optimistic.

It's just an easy guide to gove a distinct look and feel to your choice of present day.

When doing modern fantasy you can go basically 3 ways:

-Fantastic stuff may be big, but it's a well secret. (WoD, Harry Potter)
-Fantastic stuff is not big enough to change the world situation. (Dresdenverse, U.A, >>50628423, >>50628692 )
-Fantastic stuff is big and the whole world is different. (Shadowrun, FFXV, >>50628854 )

Also, bump

>>50629167
>Fantastic stuff is not big enough to change the world situation
>Dresdenverse

Are we talking about the setting where the summer lady nearly caused a new ice age, where Merlin put some "oh shit" countermeasures in Demonreach that were big enough to destroy Chicago, and where the Red Court of vampires basically ruled South America for centuries?

Because modern life is an existential hell wherein your body is so fulfilled that it will likely become obese but your soul is so malnourished that you sit in your office phoneposting on 4chan.

>>50629423
Yes, but all-in-all your everyday man lifes does not change a bit due to magic (mainly because there are always someone to fix the crap that would really fuck up the world), and even when stuff does splashs out they blame someone else (the fall of the red court made many other stuff stir to take up their places, the police/midia blamed it on an violence spree from mobs/gangs territory fighting.

So yeah, their magic and fantastic stuff is very relevant, but it does not affect your everyday life, just like dragons could wipe out kingdoms, but unless you were directly related to that you would harddly notice and could say that the dragon was crap and they probably went through a blight (or divine retribution)

>>50629167
That's true for any fantasy though, and it's why high fantasy being high magic is so retarded.

Anyone ever heard of Unsong or Ra? I think those would make cool tabletop settings, Unsong on the "Magic is real and has profound effects on day to day and global life" and Ra for "Magic exists but its seen as cutting edge science and doesn't really for the most part change day to day life for most people"

>>50626250
fpbp

>>50629620
It influences the everyday life of most people more than magic in, say, Potterverse does.

>>50629805
I believe they would be in nearly same level of effect in the lives of most people. (Muggle hunters, magic creatures on the loose, wizards blowing up bridges, etc.)

The main point here is secrecy and segregation, in one you have two whole different worlds where people try to keep boundaries up and usually one side bars the other, on the other you have an open world, where people tend to stay on their sides of the lines, but "anyone" may step up (see Johny Marconi and Karrin Murphy)

>>50626680
>Too much effort to calculate geopolitics and how everything would get to that point
And yet people still do that for medieval society.

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>>50627266

Makes me think why people don't look to FF12 more for ideas on how to have modern concept in a fantasy setting

>You have airship terminals that mirror Airports. The only thing they are missing are fancy magitech billboards to tell you what flight your on and overpriced vendors selling you food and shit on the side.

>Understand and utilize AC/DC generators and have lamps and light bulbs except the light bulbs are made from a special stone that absorbs magic and releases it as light and heat

>Even though they have highly advanced airships they know and have looked into the study of ground vehicles but have to deal with micro mimics that can damaged them.

>Have modern medical and scientific facility as well as healer doctors who cast Cure but also do modern surgery

>They have wards and shields to keep monsters away from populated centers.

If you already have modern day morales in your fantasy settings you can have other modern concepts dressed up in a fantastic sort of way that doesn't mirror regular stuff.

>>50630066
>Modern Day Moralés
Sounds like an interesting NPC.

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Dumping a few semi-related pics from a new project by Reno. Since the man is friend with Boulet, that made modern fantasy comics with the Ragnarok series and the War of the Worlds short story,my hopes are up.

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>>50631507
He's best with sci-fi stuff IMO, but I really like his style.

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>>50631518

War of the Worlds comic:
http://english.bouletcorp.com/2009/04/24/war-of-the-worlds/

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>>50631540

>>50630066
Ivalice is an Amazing setting for this sort of thing, it also introduces fantasy races in a nice way, some live among humans, some less so.

It also has a nice flair in which yes it feels modern but at the same time it has fantasy and renaissance aesthetics, its a nice mix and i think its what you should steal a lot from if you wanna go for this type of setting.

It also helps that its whimsical nature and its thought out artstyle go hand in hand.

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>>50626223
science > magic

>>50632079
Depends on the setting and level.

Also I don't see why you wouldn't be able to apply the scientific method to magic.

>>50632199
Magic functions art/craft and requires creativity and force of will. While there can be theory and history of magic, applying it is more difficult ordeal that requires aptitude for it.

>>50632199
>I don't see why you wouldn't be able to apply the scientific method to magic.
Then it's not magic. It would become some sort of sixth sense or latent ability. Nothing wrong with that, I've played and built settings where magical things happened due to scientific reasons. But it always felt that they lost a bit of the magical feeling (I hope that makes sense).

>>50626223
Because for whatever reason both developers and players hate "Modern." I've heard excesses everywhere from "We dont know how to make guns 'fun'" to "Players dont want to play in a modern setting because its to 'realistic.'"

I would fucking LOVE to play in a modern setting.
>>50631557
Looks fun as FUCK. Just playing an army or SWAT dude when suddenly MAGIC and ORCS and SPOOKY SKELLYS. Sounds awesome.

>>50628574
Wouldn't it be different? Like there would be a shit ton of different cultures for each race just as there is for humanity?

Better to slot various species into propensities for different class groups in different nations

>>50632463
I dont know, the whole "fantasy meets modern" i find boring.

I prefer a fantasy setting that is a modern setting at the same time, maybe not exactly like the modern world, but not medieval, it could ahve some medieval aesthetics , like dune has tons of medieval aesthetics and concepts despite beeing Sci Fi, but not beeing a neccesarily medieval setting.


I would say something like Morrowind lore era Cyrodiil, which was very much a modern place run in a fantasy setting (too bad oblivion had to shit all over that idea)

>>50632467
Also cultures that include multiple races. Again pointing at Ivalice again. There are different cultures and ethnicities, but these do include several races, of course not all races live in these multiracial societies and these societies are not neccesary multicultural, instead some cultures evolved around the idea of different races perfroming different jobs within that cultures confines.

>>50626223
It stretches people's suspension of disbelief too much to be widely accepted.

Traditional fantasy = accept everything, because it's fantasy.
Fantasy magic and monsters co-existing with modern tech = OKAY THATS BULLSHIT I KNOW HOW THAT THING WORKS
Fantasy magic and monsters kept hidden from the majority because MUH SECRECY = Okay, I can sort of accept that.

There's also the fact that 'modern' changes year on year, so you end up behind the curve. This is the problem cyberpunk has, because everything fucking changes every few years when some new game-changing tech comes along.
Like how Shadowrun had to bring out 4ed because of wi-fi, and then had to abandon commlinks because all the players had one in their pocket.

Here's an idea for a campaign:
Year is 22XX, humanity is starting to develop its presence in the galactic sector (tho still no contact). The HSS (Humanity's Space Ship) Triton is on a mission to survey possible earth-like planets.
During such a survey, the crew finds an ideal planet. Only its occupied. By what appears to be human. Which is downright impossible.

The crew sent some drones down to get a closer look.
One drone was destroyed by a flying beast that appears to weight several tons.
A second drone fell after coming in contact with what appeared as two clouds fist-fighting.
The third drone was struck by a spear that was thrown from half a mile away. It was then picked up and brought to a person who looks like what Gandalf would have looked if he had a steady job.

The players are dropped to the planet via escape pods. Their mission is to gather intelligence while the ship starts its year-long journey back to Earth to deliver the news.

>>50629167
>Fantastic stuff is big and the whole world is different.

We need more settings like this then.

Shadowrun I like but my only problem is how closely connected it is with the real world. Why can't you have it in a purely fantasy world that' has cyberpunk/modern aesthetics?

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>>50632463
You can find some works like that:
GATE, Reign of Fire (I wouldn't recommend either), dozen of novels whose titles I can't remember.

Raghnarok began as a gag-a-day about a teenage dragon in a magical forest with the occasional mushroom hunter, and ended in a civil war when some corporation decided to dump magical waste in the forest, resulting in a magical overload.

>>50632863
I get a stong Planet of Adventure vibe from that pitch.

>>50626680
>Too much effort to calculate geopolitics and how everything would get to that point.

Do you really even need to? All you need for a setting is a snapshot of the current situation. The players come in to change the situation, and that's really all that matters to the game. You can develop both past and future through play, so things emerge organically and things become connected in ways not even you as GM would expect.

>>50632437
>Then it's not magic.

Yes it would.

I liked Hunter X Hunter which I think falls under that category, but it's hard for me to say if it really benefited from it

>>50626658
Gay as hell

>>50626223

The problem is magic. You need it if you want fantasy, but at the same time you need it to be different from technology AND from your usual fantasy stuff.

By magic, I intend magical races, gods and every supernatural shit as well.

Is anon in >>50626658 still around? It would be nice if he could drop a disposable inbox to talk about the setting.

Most people bunch them with sci-fi, historical fiction, or steampunk. That's how it is.

>>50626680
Not that different than modern combat

>>50633926
True

>>50626250
First post worst post

>>50633004
>Why can't you have it in a purely fantasy world

BECAUSE THEN IT WOULDN'T BE CYBERPUNK, WOULD IT?
Go re-read Neuromancer and the rest of the series.

>>50634708
>BECAUSE THEN IT WOULDN'T BE CYBERPUNK, WOULD IT?

Why not?

It still has corporations that rule society, oppressed lower classes, and the physical combined with the technological.

It's just in Midgard or Gaia or Creation, not Earth. It's in a made up city instead of future Seattle or Hong Kong.

>>50633597
>>50628496
Hey, I am not that person but if you want to contact them then try "abugoflight" on Skype or "Earth Seraph Edna#1648" on Discord.

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>>50633175


Exactly. Applying the scientific method doesn't imply perfect understanding but a way to figure something out through observation and experimentation. I.e. I figure out a reliable way to make fire in my hand and after I burned myself a few times I had to channel a bit of magic to help protect my hand and cloths from being burnt.

I mean, just because we don't completely understand the forces of nature and the universe doesn't stop us from figuring out ways to use it and that should be no different with magic as well hence magitech is a natural conclusion of using magic and gradually modernizing.

>B-but muh fantasy

How about this. You have one culture that was so reliant on magic that it never bothered to innovate anything. If it was good for gramps it's good for you. Then you have your neighbors up the way who figured out how to use magic to help build things. Creating Adamantine to build tall long lasting stuctures, Mythril for medical tools that don't rust and are naturally anti-bacterial. Low level mage workers who cast fireball into the furnace for their steam plants that powers their grain mills and eventually someone figures out to put one on the back of a wagon.

At some point, your typical fantasy stasis village is still living like they did for the past several hundred years while their neighbors have since become and new global modern power and don't even bother to crush their neighbor under tow leveraging their economic power to simply buy them out .

>>50626802

I live in farmsville, CT and one day I stopped to get gas. While I was standing by the car getting it gassed up, a woman on horseback galloped right down the middle of the street, went down the road and turned a corner. That was wild lol.

>>50626680
I'd say everything in Lucis/Insomnia is 2015/16, but everything outside of it is all based in the 50s technologically.

Really disappointed there's only Quay and Lestallum to travel to, I was expecting a lot more in the way of cities. But it was an okay game. Kinda short, story-wise. XIII took me a lot longer, and I've been playing VI for quite a bit (just grinding in World of Ruin now)

I'm hoping SE 100% pulls their head out of their ass for XVI, if it's ever made.

>>50626223

Because Western nerds REQUIRE justification. They violently refuse to let anything simply happen 'because'.

They are also convinced this is a virtue.

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>>50626223
here's a pretty good one, at least if we count early 20th century as modern

>>50628781
the flying car is literally an enchanted car that pops up once or twice.

>>50632079
I like the idea that science = magic for setting.

Science is a branch on the magic tree that happens to be so successful at what it does where most other branches are so dangerous and unreliable they've fallen out of favor/understanding by most of society.

>>50634831
Cyberpunk is explicitly set in our world, though. That's a defining characteristic of the genre.

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>>50626223
Typically escapism is about getting as far away from everyday life and the mundane as possible.

>>50635226

More like RPG nerds. I mean, the people who use pen and paper RPGs.

I don't think SWs ever had problems with the Force, it never needed to be "systematized".

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>>50626223
Most people likes fantasy partially or totally because of escapism. Modern = more similar = less escapism.

>>50627064
>>50626999
if it didn't look like our world, it would not be modern.

it would just be fantasy.

>>50628423

Naruto kills my immersion, yeah, for multiple reasons besides the clash between modern and fantasy. Like I've said, it's not like it makes it bad, but for me personally, I really would have rather had Naruto take place in a defined, pre-modern setting with ninjas and yakuza and magical abilities than merge with the real world.

It's why I can't ever bring myself to enjoy FF15, it just clashes so much and I end up hating it because of that clash. It's not like there's something wrong with the setting, honestly, it's just not something I like in either my fantasy or my contemporary stories. Modern should be modern and focus on those stories, and fantasy should embrace that as well, and forego the modern stuff.

Either do what shadowrun does and make the tech so high-tech that it may as well be magic. Hell, I enjoy when there's a mishmash, like in Sabriel, where you have some WW1-like tech but there's magic and schools, and it's very fantasy-like with a few modern-ish inventions.

I don't like when the aesthetic is so modern it's not out of place in our world. That's not what I -- again, i'm not saying things that do this are bad, just that for me, I can't get into them at all -- want in my fantasy. Whether it's swords and sorcery or sci-fantasy, it should embrace that vigorously.

A setting, in my eyes, can be interesting and fascinating DESPITE the glaring anachronisms that are otherwise, for me, glaring flaws. Naruto, FF15, harry dresden, some of sarah hoyt's stuff, star wars, sabriel.

But that doesn't make them bad at all. Just, they're really not something I like at fuckin' all.

>>50635571
It's a tendency sure, but not necessary to be cyberpunk.

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What the fuck is the difference between urban and modern fantasy? How is urban fantasy anything else than just a flavour of modern fantasy?

>>50635740
Urban fantasy focuses on urban environment. Most of out world is not and will never be an urban environment.

>>50626399
Did you also get turned off FFs 7 and 8? Nuclear reactors, trains with automatic security scanning, airplanes, cars, space shuttles, space stations, cybernetic weapons, SMGs, submarines, etc.

>>50635740
I think Urban Fantasy generally has something of a "Masquerade" in place, where the general public is unaware of all the supernatural shit going on, while in Modern Fantasy, it's all out in the open.

>>50627266

>Taking the bus to the next city to look for work
>Suddenly here the thunder of motorcycles as an Orc biker gang crashes out of the woods
>There's a fuck off huge Ogre riding a Trike with his axe hanging off a side car
>Tell the driver to stay in the bus while me and my mates and a few of the other passengers jump out to deal with them

Imagine putting that on your resume that you fought off highway bandits on your way to an interview?

>>50635740
Urban fantasy has the fantasy part be something secret to the majority of the world, and often employs elements of horror. Modern fantasy has the fantastic elements in the forefront. It isn't a secret, it is intrinsic to society and technology.

>>50630066
The Barheim Passage was great, just for what it showed us of the setting's technological history.

>>50635113
>While I was standing by the car getting it gassed up, a woman on horseback galloped right down the middle of the street, went down the road and turned a corner. That was wild lol.

Posts like these make me realize how much of a redneck I am. I don't even notice anymore when I see horses on the street. I might chuckle a bit if I see one hitched up outside a business in town though, that's a bit odd since usually people would hitch them somewhere outside of the main drag (mostly so they don't shit on the sidewalk).

>>50635798

FF7 is one of my least liked rpgs, and FF8 is..okay. I didn't like it at all, to be frank. I liked the scenario and some of the overall characterization in 7 and 8, but by and large, neither game was something I ended up playing past the first or second disc.

They're not bad. They're pretty competently made games. I really didn't like them, though.

>>50635876
FF7 does get better after he first disc, though.

>>50635965

I follow a general rule with RPGs, which is if I don't like it within the first five hours, I pretty much stop playing it. FF7 hit that barrier for me, as did FF8.

Like I said, it's really nothing against the games, I just personally ended up disliking them a lot.

>>50636000
SquareEnix is one of those developers that has a good midgame on a lot of their games, but typically a slugish begining. They have gotten worse over the years because now they also want their games to be blockbuster movies.

>>50626223
Because people are intimately familiar with modern day life, and therefore very likely to notice inconsistencies created by the insertion of fantasy features.

>>50626223
because d&d

>>50636290

So as long as you live in a dirt village doing your dirt farming for your lord you wouldn't notice a monster casually strolling through.

What the fuck does that even mean?

>>50626223
Fullmetal alchemist with more races and magic. Why do people try to overdo it, then it just seems trashy.

>>50631518
Nice QBZ-95. I like my T97. Don't Like that situation so much though. Is the artist Chinese?

>>50636362
I mean if you introduce a feature into a modern setting, players will have a stronger feel for how it could affect aspects of daily life, which leads to confusion or calling bullshit if that expectation isn't met. Stuff like "Wait a minute, if you've got enchantments and ice magic, why the fuck aren't all the computers supercooled with runes or something" or "if healing spells are real why do doctors still exist" or "if you can summon elementals for grunt labor how come the blue-collar unions aren't calling for war in the streets."

In a less personally familiar setting, that feeling is lessened, because the players don't have that personal experience with the realities of life in that setting, which means those sorts of connections don't come to mind as readily.

>>50636290
U wot m8?

Monsters and magic were just as "wtf?" then as it would be now

Take Africa for instance

You have niggers in red capes coordinating cattle raids by cell phone and giga niggas in the jungle shooting motherfuckers before eating their flesh to absorb their powers

And don't get me started on the "real" phenomena of witchcraft most africans are terrified of

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>>50635965

I agree. Part of me wishes XV had begun actually in the city like VII did and then open up into a wider world.

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>>50636362

It's much harder for innovations to bring long-lasting effects to pre-modern societies: lord knows how much money has been pumped into the impoverished parts of South America and Africa without results, as you'll rarely have the knowhow needed to maintain complex infrastructure on-hand, leading to a lack of adoption of advanced technology/magic, with stuff that gets inserted by a third party eventually breaking down because there are no real means to support it if something goes wrong. Heck, in contemporary history, bits of Russia were still living in dirt villages doing dirt farming guarded by men in maile armor with muskets and pikes while tanks rolled through the next closest settlement.

>>50636490
Not trying to meme here, but isn't that a FAMAS? French colors on the shoulder patch, no?

GURPS

>>50636778
Reminds me of the bumfuck Chinese villages who thought the emperor was still around in the 1950's

I have a script and half of a treatment for a sitcom set in a modern-day fantasy laying dormant on my hard drive as I work on another, easier-to-make project. In the process of working on that, I came up with some reasons why it's not seen.

First off, fantasy tends to have a different flavor of story that is weird to put into modern-day settings. What's the modern-day analog of the peasant farmer who becomes a hero and marries a princess? I suppose you could have a kid from the projects save the daughter of a famous actor, but it feels very different. The projects kid isn't getting involved in a crazy world he never knew existed—he has fucking movies, he knows what's up. He also doesn't get to become the new famous actor just after he gets married, so his reward feels a lot more temporary.

Speaking of games specifically, there's no equivalent to "a noble hero is the last hope to slay the evil dragon, lest he take over the entire kingdom." If you have a creature that can withstand modern weaponry, no noble hero is going to take it down. You might as well just give up and let the dragon run everything.

Ultimately, it comes down to something of control. In a medieval fantasy setting, humans have very little control, because humans had little control in real life during that time. Dragons make sense alongside Mongolian hordes.

In the modern day (in fully industrialized countries, at least), that's not the case. There's little need to have roaming adventurers, because we have institutions that will do most of their work for them. I suppose you could get a great game if the players were some kind of magical special ops team, but then they have to take orders from a commanding officer, and it becomes extremely railroady automatically.

For my sitcom this didn't really matter, because it's about a freshly graduated magical engineer and his coworkers getting into weird situations. For a game, however, it's trickier.

>>50636788
Is a generic roleplaying system, it does everything ok, and nothing well.

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>>50636788
>>50636803

I'd say GURP's strength is mixing a bunch of otherwise disjointed setting elements into something workable, so if you want a party with an SS member, a Teutonic knight, a Mr. Handy, and a magical girl, it can get it to work.

>>50636803
>jack of all trades meme

GURPS is as good at gameplay as any other system.
In fact, I think its best quality is combat which so many people seem to despise in other games.

>>50635631
midi-chlorians

>>50636801
Not really, because the modern aesthetic doesn't have to be in our world at all. It is fantasy after all, so we can have cars, guns, planes, swords, and whatever else without it having to be developed the exact same way as our world.

>peasant farmer who becomes a hero and marries a princess.

Absolutely still possible, instead of riding a horse, he has a car or a motorcycle, he still goes on his path to become a hero, and eventually gets the girl.

>A noble hero is the last hope to slay the evil dragon, lest he take over the entire kingdom

Also still possible. I like how FFXV does it with the Hunters. Monsters are a thing of the world, a necessary evil as they're used for food and goods. Hunters take them out, both getting their shit and protecting people. Being the last hope meaning you're the last guy available to do the job.

>In the modern day (in fully industrialized countries, at least), that's not the case. There's little need to have roaming adventurers, because we have institutions that will do most of their work for them. I suppose you could get a great game if the players were some kind of magical special ops team, but then they have to take orders from a commanding officer, and it becomes extremely railroady automatically.

Not true at all. That institution can very well be a citizens militia. You get a license to hunt, but it's monsters instead of animals. Players usually are acting beyond the law anyways, they handle things themselves even with a lawful institution that's mean't to handle things. It happens anyways and there is often little repercussion for taking the law into their own hands, when there is is just makes for more complications which is good for the story and game.

Between the cities of even modern day, are vast tracks of country. The country land, while developed, still gets problems with animals, and you get animal problems in the cities too. Now replace animals with monsters. Nice and easy change.

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>>50636782
You might be right. No front sight post, and that looks like a stanag. Didn't notice the flag.

Ya your right. Oops. I have failed the cube, for once. It. Was. A. Famas.

>>50636871
It's combat is absolutely terrible, with a deluge of options. Too many options is absolutely a bad thing.

>>50636949
You dont have to use all of the options, they're called options for a reason.

>>50636801
Dude

All you need is a longer than average story

With a national/global/galactic/universal scale

Following a single hero/group of heroes/family

Who strive to complete a goal/quest

Perform extraordinary deeds

And have multiple adventures over the course of their journey

Perfectly possible in the modern age

Shit

Magical terrorists, ancient evils awakened, avatars of the gods descending to earth, orphans born with unimaginable powers, mysterious doctors who can heal with uncanny success, etc

>>50636949
That's why it's designed so that the GM can relatively easily determine what options are gonna be available or not.

>>50636977
Going from GURPS Lite alone, which im looking at right now. As in the basic system, no addons or additions, is already too fucking much.

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There's nothing wrong with modern fantasy settings. You just need to balance various things.

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>>50636315

>>50637157
The guns doing nothing was bullshit though.

>>50638559
What do you mean?

>>50638833

He's probably referring to when Fuhrer Bradley is cornered and people start firing at him, then he becomes super speed and dojs them all.

>>50639366
Yeah but that was clearly explained by his super-speed and so on he never got hit so he never got damaged by the bullets, otherwise bullets were shown to be very very effective.

>>50635844
>They stop to ask for directions.

>>50626223
Because it's overly busy. Too much redundancy between magic and technology, which causes both to feel underutilized. See Shadowrun.

>>50632079
Fuck off.

I fucking love magitech. I also love it if it has this weird dirty 80s aesthetic like the surface is made of a plastic or ceramic, like early anime robotics.

>>50635619
>>50635635
I think that on the contrary, modern fantasy would be a better form of escapism, since it's closer to reality initially.
You will never be part of the LotR setting. But some secret world right under your nose, or a portal that suddently opens the way to other dimensions? In some dark corner of your brain, you're wondering if it could happens, and that makes your imagination run wild.
May be the reason why Isekai are so big in japan recently, or why bit lit is a top seller.

>>50636801


>there's no equivalent to "a noble hero is the last hope to slay the evil dragon, lest he take over the entire kingdom
Even if we disregard prophecies in stuff like Harry Potter, Matrix or Star Wars or mass effect, if it's an acquired chosen one, that have vital characters despite taking place in a modern/futuristic setting, there are ways to avoid that issue. Maybe you're the only one in the right place at the right time, or you're a PR trick, or it's just that all the previous attempts have failed and another team is already being prepared while you're on the field.
Shadowrun and Dark Heresy do this quite well "Yeah, the fate of the world might be in the balance, but it's a daily occurence and I have half a dozen similar problems to take care of, so go solve that one and don't bother me until its finished."

>but then they have to take orders from a commanding officer, and it becomes extremely railroady automatically.
Maybe your organization has independant cells to avoid infiltration, or your superior has disappeared and there's a power vacuum, or everyone is busy elsewhere, or you went rogue, or you're private contractors, or your boss is some chthonic entity that doesn't make sense half of the time but still get results.
A lot of games manages to be decently free despite having a higher autority.

>>50636949
It's still one of the best games for gunfights.
And I don't know anyone that plays with all the extensions. Usually you use the core book + 1 to 3 extensions, which is the the norm for most systems.

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>>50626223
Despite being late to the show, I'll give my input.

Modern Fantasy is hard. If we're talking about a completely fictional fantasy world with modern elements like FFXV, then it just comes down to worldbuilding and the well-known challenges it possesses. Magic, creatures, races, and tech can all be explained at the writer or creators discretion. Creating a fantasy world like this is easy. Japan has been doing it for years with anime and manga and comic books and some western media like The Legend of Korra have tried their hand at it. Brandon Sanderson, love him or hate him, has created a setting resembling the USA in the 1930's with guns, car chases, train robberies, and several magic systems all in the same setting. Fictional modern fantasy settings are abundant in books, animation, and comics, but don't appear as frequently in TTRPGs.

However, inserting fantasy elements directly into a real world setting opens up many challenges that are very hard to address. Most modern fantasy stories that take place in our real world involve secret societies or hidden underworlds as it gives the creators a lot of freedom by isolating their stories and conflicts in a way that doesn't interfere with the world at large. They don't have to explain things. Creating a connected world of fantasy and magic on top of our own would essentially be creating an alternate history setting and would require a good amount of knowledge of history and politics just to create a believable setting. Creating one from scratch is far easier since you aren't spending half of your time rewriting history just to make sense.

tl:dr Creating a believable world is hard when you try to overlap fantasy on our real world. It's a lot easier when creating one from scratch and there are plenty of fictional modern magic settings that exist. Read a book nigga.

>>50626265
>Guns and cars and motors tend to depower the individual


I cannot ignore how pants on head retarded that sentence is. Mention three inventions that had perhaps the most impact in empowering individual mobility for whole societies and call them de-empowering.

>>50641188
You missed his point.
Exactly because said inventions empowered humanity, they diminished the importance of personal ability.
What does it matter if you can run at 30 MPH when you have a car?
What does it matter that you can bench press half a ton when you can build a motor to lift an elephant?

>>50641265
What does it matter if you can run at 30 MPH when you have a flying dragon as a mount?
What does it matter that you can bench press half a ton when you can enchant a ring of Strenght?

He misued empowerment in his initial post.

>>50641265
Because there certainly is no personal ability in driving cars, shooting or operating a lift. It's not like people made whole sports of driving at insane speed with milisecond reaction times.

The furthest I will push my modernization of magic would be the early 20th century. The time is already super foreign to us in general. Everything is at that point where it is becoming modern, but the ideas behind it can be downright silly at times, because people were all still figuring that all out.

I'm working on a setting where magic is basically treated as early electricity, only liquefied. The ability to produce it on a large scale isn't there yet, so people produce it locally, limiting the overall quantity of it for large scale industry and projects. Transportation is also a bit more difficult. Cables can be fed into, and you can get work out of them, you can't just pump the juice through anything short of a proper pipe.

The floating planetary disk humans live on is fairly tame (largely through force and humanity's propensity for tool use). The only monstrous species you find there now are those farthest from civilization, or would just be considered dangerous animals by the people of the world.

Off world things get different very quickly. Humans are the only sapient species that relies as heavily on using things as they do. Incidentally they are also the least in tuned with the magics of the world. So other creatures and their cultures make much greater use of magic and much less use of technology. However since all that developed off island from humanity and is just now (sub 100 years) interacting with humans it exists as foreign within setting as it is outside of it. Something only those able to travel the aetheric sea interact with in any reasonably frequency.

It should come at no surprise that the game I'm planning involves traveling to these frontiers. Much like the referenced time period's expeditions into the deeper less civilized parts of the world. Cept with less (overt) racism.

People know too little about medieval times. So they don0t see problems and incongruencies in a medieval setting with magic, dragons and elves.

In modenr times they will be going: No sense for elves to not use phones. Why do dragons not equipped with rocket launchers? What is governemnt doing.

I'm relatively sure that if yuo describe a high fantasy setting to medeival guy he will tell you it is stupid and unrelastic and triggers him.

>>50642027

Most of the time, those guys are pretty autistic. Not medieval folks, but people who get mad at high fantasy when it's not realistic. A lot of them or at least a decent majority, understand escapism and the fun and romanticism people hold of medieval society and culture, even if it's not true to real life.

I'd bet even some of them like high fantasy stuff, because it's really fun to imagine society if magic were introduced to the mix; now those witches you heard horrible stories about are real [and probably a bit prettier].

>>50636517
this. Very much this.

>>50641265
Save money really, you don't need a car in town and you don't need to buy or rent that motor

>>50642027
>In modenr times they will be going: No sense for elves to not use phones. Why do dragons not equipped with rocket launchers? What is governemnt doing.

Well duh, it only works well if the world is designed to incorporate the fantastic elements.

>>50640375

Why is it that people think we're trying to directly port these elements into the real world? If that's the problem people like you have with it (weird as it is) then you are clearly misunderstanding because you make it sound like a setting couldn't develop it's own modern aesthetics. sure it would be similar to real life just like many things in fantasy tend to have real life parallels (because where else are we drawing inspriation from?)

>>50641265
But that's wrong, as we today still idolize personal ability over technological ability, also personal ability is still there when the technology is not.

>>50641265
Because all of that magic is man-portable at a scale the tech could only wish it was?

Isn't SMT modern fantasy?

>>50642987
Some are, the first two were more Post-Apocalyptic. Some have done into more fantasy realms since then.

Shin Megami Tensei III:Nocturne was the first to take place in a modern setting. Strange Journey is technically in a modern age too.

The Persona series spinoff has all taken place in the modern age too.

I'd argue Persona and Nocturne are more Urban Fantasy though, as the magic and devils are a sort of secret from the public.

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>>50643155
>Nocturne
It takes place in a post-apocalyptic inside-out desert world where all but 6 humans are dead. The closest the series gets to urban fantasy is in the original Megami Tenseis, and SMT1 was in the '90s.

>>50626223
Guns in Fantasy settings is cancer

>>50643446

y tho?

Has no one brought up Percy Jackson yet? They seemed to do a pretty good job of doing a modern fantasy.

>>50643682
Not him but they trigger certain demographics and 99& of the time is the end result is a clusterfuck of
>waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah guns make it too easy to kill stuff, remove guns!11!111, REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE why can't muh samurai slice bullets in half with a flick of his katana11!!11!, FUCKING GODDAMN NIGGERCUNT how fuck dare you imply that muh custom made 2 mm revolver can't kill a +100 ton dragon with a single shot!!!!!!!!!1!!

Personally I blame this on Hollywood and vidya that seem to be incapable of realizing that guns and shit like plate armor existed together for couple centuries.

I think a good way of doing Modern Fantasy and avoiding tropes that seem to trigger people is to have the convergence happen recently.

>Suddenly, Dragon people appeared
>Two months later, things are back to normalish

That way, you can have your magic and plenty of special stuff, but not enough time has passed for magic or other similar things to be fully mapped out.

>>50644492
Then don't make guns that powerful?

>>50644578
What's wrong with having a modern world that's developed with fantastic elements intrinsically?

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>>50640375
Bullshit

Anyone who has an education in medieval history can tell you that the presence of magic and monsters would make everything unrecognizable OTL

But it's not about "realism"

It's fantasy

That's why we call these things pseudo-medieval and pseudo-ancient

Because more than 3 seconds thinking about the subject you realize it's not very "medieval" save on a surface level

Pic related

One of my favorite modern fantasy settings

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>>50644578
>slice of life Modern Fantasy
Deal with the bullshit of high school / college plus the fact that there's magic being slung around and aggressive Gnoll and Orc women wondering the halls.

>>50644599
Why do the Japanese have absolutely no problem with the modern fantasy genre, but everyone in the west gets their panties in a knot over it?

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>>Muh setting/system dump (WIP)
>>Modern "low-fantasy" current world
>>Everyone is into it, but most folk don't believe ( a bit like real life) balance is kept by governments and underworld institutions making pacts and undermining each other
>>Most monsters and legend from urban legends are somewhat true, not only that but there are creatures that came from places other than earth, they either fit in and/or hide themselves, or find themselves under pursuit and/or compulsory collaboration
>>There are 9 kinds of power that can be employed
>>Private, money and high stations, if buying rocket launcher and hiring mercenaries armies is not a power I'm not sure about what else is
>>Public, having friends in high places and politics/blackmail/sabotage stuff, this is about who you know and deals you may cut.
>>Techniques, some people are able to walk on walls and cut bullets in flight, think all awesome stuff that usually would be near impossible but some autist decided to put effort and time into it until success
>>Technology, use your intelligence and skill to research and deploy bleeding edge stuff, from fighting drones to biological weapons.

>>cont.

>>50644596
Like some people have mentioned, if the fantastic has already existed you wind up with two things:

>Masquerade
>A 'modern' world that is actually much more different

Obviously, some exceptions exist and are easy to accept. If the Aztec and Inca were Lizardfolk without magical powers, California and Texas might look different while still being important states to the US now. But if magic is strong and quantifiable, you'd wind up with a really different world.


However, in strong magic settings, I'm fond of things like Nyx from Persona or the Bittercold from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. Something very dangerous that makes using lots of magic a very bad idea.

>>50644725
>cont.
>>High magic, use whatever way you findo to manipulate "ether" through sheer perseverance to do whatever you may, it's not easy and usually not all that fast, but you're achieving the impossible, don't complain.
>>Subtle magic, there are weird rules and laws to the world, so why not exploit them?...Symbolic and symphatic magic, true naming, elder secrets and cerimonial magic are all available here.
>>Planar magic, there is more between heaven and earth than just one plane. There is something out there and you can use its power by channeling a patron or commanding lesser beings.
>>Avatar magic, reach out for divinity, become something bigger than yourself or make yourself bigger than life, either way grasp the gifts and flaws of being a demi-god.
>>Mastery, while other are reaching out for powers to shake the world, you are taking just another shot or swing, making yourself a little better, making sure that when it comes to it there is no one in the world above you in this field.

That is a temporary character sheet, and trying to balance this shit is hell-like

>>50644730
>A 'modern' world that is actually much more different
Sure but it's still aesthetically and technologically a "modern world" whether electricity is actually spirits, or radio and wifi has become a mesh network of magic known as the Weave.

>But if magic is strong and quantifiable, you'd wind up with a really different world.

That has modern aesthetics. What's so hard to believe about that?

>>50626223
Because your definition of "modern fantasy" is arbitrarily narrow. There're loads of settings that are both modern and fantastical. Presumably, you mean specifically settings that take inspiration from the "epic fantasy" genre, A.K.A. things that rip off The Lord of the Rings/D&D and then combine with a modern setting. Well, the reason that particularity niche is uncommon is rather obviously the fact that the mediaevalism of epic fantasy is a large part of it's appeal. Additionally, another aspect of the appeal of epic fantasy is that it's fantastical, and therefore introducing more elements of the real world takes away from that. Subsequently, a setting creator who has decided to include non-medieval elements in their fantasy is far more likely to also draw upon science fiction as well as the real world, Shadowrun for example is blatantly just D&D plus cyberpunk. This is called science fantasy and isn't uncommon at all. In fact, science fantasy is what Final Fantasy XV is, what with all the robots and such.

>>50644654
Throwing out conjecture here

But I think it's because the sci fi and fantasy ghettos never reached anywhere but America and Europe

And because Nips aren't as rigid about genres as Westerners

In Japan (except during WWII) nobody saw any issues with Shinto, Buddhism, and Taoism blending together

Unlike Christianity which is very strict about the issue of mixing

They don't set out to "write a fantasy story" with a formulaic knight/dragon/wizard scheme in mind

It's just whatever appeals to them

>>50637157
That's just steampunk, and the Victorian era isn't what people tend to mean when they say modern.
Or dieselpunk, maybe,if you want to split hairs. Still not modern.

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>>50643446
That's a pretty cool shitty opinion you got there, faggot.

>>50644796
Once upon a time we called all this stuff Speculative Fiction

Whatever is improbable or impossible in this world falls into this category

>>50644775
To be honest, I'm probably running I to the same thing this dude/tte >>50644812 and >>50644796 are saying.

Personally, I'd love to go all out. Just do what the Planescape person and this guy/girl here >>50644643 said.

I wouldn't mind stuff like going to the mall and seeing SparkleGnolls at Hot Topic and Spencer's, or thinking about buying a used Magic Carpet but wondering if my Obamacare covers accidents with it, only to find out Allstate now provides parachutes.

>>50644812
So what, you think glorious Nippon doesn't have genre tropes whereas baka gaijin are incapable of originality? Because that's what it sounds like you're saying. And that belief would be mistaken. The west does in fact have plenty of science fantasy, and japan has it own historical fantasy, it just features samurai instead of knights, because obviously they draw upon their own history.

>>50644887
No. Genre definitions are all bullshit but speculative fiction is especially meaningless. Sometimes it's a word that encapsulates both fantasy and science fiction and sometimes it's what you call your work when you wrote a science fiction novel but think science fiction is genre trash and want to avoid using the term to describe your own work.
It's certainly not a term "we" all used to use once upon a time. It's as commonly used now as it has ever been. It was, and remains, from it's inception to now, a wishy washy bullshit term.

>>50645003
No

I'm saying it's not utterly codified as much

>>50645255
Well, you're wrong.

>>50644492
I'd change players.

>>50643446
Magic as a weapon in fantasy is cancer.

>>50643903
Percy Jackson is once again urban fantasy, which is an entirely different genre than what OP is talking about. OP is talking about an actual D&D-style fantasy world that just happens to be set in the modern day.

Think Shadowrun without the cyberpunk.

>>50644835
>That's just steampunk, and the Victorian era isn't
The FMA setting is more closely 1940s/50's Europe, and a long time after the Victorian era. It's not splitting hairs, it clearly falls into what's considered the 'modern' Era.

>>50647245
1940s/50's
Absolutely not. Just because it uses the word Führer doesn't mean it's set in the fucking 50's.
And the modern era began in the 16th century, so, yeah, I don't think that's what OP was referring to when they asked about modern fantasy.

>>50644492
>Personally I blame this on Hollywood and vidya that seem to be incapable of realizing that guns and shit like plate armor existed together for couple centuries.
not to mention if we expand outside of Europe, the Chinese have had Black Powder since the 9th Century, and advanced it enough by the 11th Century to have a pretty thorough manual on describing a multitude of different uses for it in warfare; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wujing_Zongyao

not to mention it managed to spread into Europe, the Middle East, and India between the 12th Century and 14th Century, so plenty of overlap between knights and guns

>>50644887
I prefer the Weird Fiction label myself

>Guys, why is there so little X?
>There's loads of X.
>N-no I mean why isn't there loads of a really specific subcategory of X.
Because it's a really specific subcategory of X.
Most people who want to do fantasy in the modern world will just so fantasy in the modern world.

>>50645590
How?

>>50642987
The Devil Survivor series probably comes closest. Nocturne uses a city as the level design, because the apocalypse literally happens like one hour in.

Anime seems to be one of the places that do it fairly frequently.

>Normal world
>but there's a school/university you can go to to learn magic/summoning/hunting/swordsinging etc.
>Basically whatever the settings "gimmick" is.
>Otherwise it's a normal world with a specialised university course where you have to sign a waver in case you get injured.

This does mean that it treats the "fantasy" element as more of a gimmick on the whole setting rather than entirely relevant though.

If I could get through more than one episode of Wizard Barristers it seemed like it might not have done Modern Fantasy terribly.

There was also that one "demon lord" anime, where the church "sponsored" all magic, and the main character was the reincarnation of the demon lord (who was basically the settings sole atheist), and wanted to save the world/be a good guy. The entire setting was basically modern, except it was all powered by magic and occasionally magic energy got corrupt and caused mutations and monsters.

>>50648788
Once again anime is the correct answer

>>50647804
>Absolutely not.
Absolutely yes.

The presence of heavy tanks and other forms of artillery, of radio and refrigerated trucks and other advanced technology, as well as common place automatic guns would easily put it in the late 40s/50s.

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>>50644643
Pros: It's a lot easier to get a girlfriend now.
Cons: The girlfriends are mean and might kill you accidentally.

>>50651900

It's not really high fantasy, though. It's a fairly low magic setting set in what could be 1940's germany, certainly, but really only uses the aesthetics and some tech from that era while remaining in its own bubble of fantasy.

It's not really modern so much as it takes inspiration from it and applies it to the world the characters inhabit to give the world more character and a certain feeling, but it's certainly not 'modern fantasy.' by any stretch.

>>50644579
Then people scream about them being to week.

Firearms in many settings suffer heavily from a mythilization of their deadliness and a misunderstands about why firearms became the primary combat weapon all over the world.

>>50635278
I have spent the past reading this
this is some good shit
>Page 99
>Museum of Dangerous Art
>Free Admission on Loonsday
Curator of Dangerous Art would make an awesome background package for a character

>>50648851
Behead those who insult animu desu.

>>50654544
Too fucking bad then.

If you want swords, axes, magic, armor, and guns, then guns need to be taken down a notch.

If you want realistic guns, go play innawoods or a modern military game. This shit is going to be fantastical, bullets riddling off dragon hide, enchanted ammunition, the crazy fuckers who dodge or even deflect bullets with a melee weapon.

In all likelihood, using a gun will be your kind of "thing" like how there are swordguys and axeguys and the like and it won't be tacticool in the slightest. If you have a problem with that, then don't play. If you want to be a stylish gun-toting badass, then welcome aboard.

>>50656015
yeah it is, although I'll admit I wish it was a little less human focused, also it really needed a full world map included(even if it's main focus is on the New York City expy) because without one it makes keeping track of all the different ethnicities and nationalities a little difficult(not to mention some of it's concepts are a little awkward)

>>50648851
I'm not going to say it's the "right" answer, because a lot of the time the "fantasy" element is just a gimmick added to the world. On the other hand, there's that one Manga where Dragons showed up and conquered the human race, and now a secret organisation is planning to wage war against them by training mages to summon "fake" dragons, to fight them. (Forget the actual "story" to the manga, it's a harem where the main character has the Mother of Dragons embedded in his psyche as a loli-ghost who grants him the power of the dragon-slayer at a cost, I dropped it because I couldn't tell what the fuck was going on, and it was SO CLOSE to being interesting I think I would have preferred something boring and generic).

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So let's change the topic a bit.

Post about what kind of Modern Fantasy story YOU want to read about? What's the special gimmick? Are there lots of intelligent species around? Does it look like the present day with a few magic bits, or does it look way different?

>>50657208
Again, something in the vein of FFXV or better yet, FF8. I fucking loved FF8.

>>50657208
Honestly, I really like the idea of just being granted a "class" at some stage. Like you wake up one morning, and a menu pops in front of you that just says "CONGRATULATIONS: Your class is [class name here]".

Nobody else can tell what your class is, and it doesn't tell you unless you discover what the class does naturally. All classes have "rarities", but there's a fucktonne of them so even "unique" classes are seen occassionally, it just means that nobody but you is that class.

>>50635683
So basically fantasy is fine mixed with the entirety of human history except for the little bubble around you?

>>50628496
No one is gonna DMCA your shitty planescape webcomic, anon.

>>50635571
>Cyberpunk is explicitly set in our world, though. That's a defining characteristic of the genre.
[Citation needed]

>>50658396
I might

>>50658382

If you'd bothered at all to read it, I never said it was bad; merely explained why someone, like myself, finds the idea to be clashing and ultimately a turn-off and is presented as a subjective opinion -- not bad, just simply a turn-off and immersion breaker.

I guess the concept of reading is a bit difficult, though, so it's easy to forgive such a mistake.

>>50627104
Fudge wasn't giving orders either. He was just keeping the PM posted on any important updates (wizards are real; voldemort and harry potter; dementors, azkaban and sirius black; voldemort is back; I've just been fired) and saying "we've got this, don't worry about it"

>>50629945
What about professional porn mostly being male-on-female and female-on-female because the owner of all the biggest studios and most of the smaller ones happens to be a straight incubus?

>>50632798
What'd they replace commlinks with?

>>50652149
>Pros: It's a lot easier to get a girlfriend now.
>Pros: The girlfriends are mean and might kill you accidentally.
I don't see a problem. I love aggro women.

>>50660779
Mobile communication devices that operate on the gigahertz range.

Phones.

>>50626250
/thread

>>50626223
cus 9/10 times they end up being super cringey

>>50661127
That's actually 9/10 of all fantasy/sci-fi settings.

>>50626223
The way I like it is to keep the mundane and fantastic slightly separate, and bring them together in more isolated incidents and have it spread from there. The big magic shit is usually an intrusion from elsewhere, not an everyday occurrence you'll see on the drive over to the supermarket. If you know where to look, you'll still be able to find an impossible path that leads to some other world that shouldn't exist, which some might call "fairyland" or any other thousands of different names depending on the realm and culture. Magical beings tend to live in these places, and often keep to themselves.

The issues arrive is when their inhabitants start leaving. When dragons invade from elsewhere and start thinking of nesting over in our world. When demons spread like a plague to possess and influence people in various ways. People don't start suddenly getting born as Elves. Elves already exist somewhere else. The change is when their visits become more frequent. When the borders between worlds grow thin, and some people steal the arts of the otherworlders in order to wield such power for themselves.

The otherworlders are not primitives or savages. Their capabilities aren't necessarily easy to combat with modern technology. Sometimes fire must be fought with fire, and the world must adapt to the changing times. Our heroes are the Prometheans who have stolen the secrets of magic for themselves, to share with mankind so as to level the playing field. Psychic-Commandos(Battle-mages) are trained to deal with the larger threats, but even the smaller ones need people who can put them down.

Maybe they're not all hostile, but one still needs to be able to stand among them as equals, rather than as pets or servants.

>>50642194

Yeah, but in general that's because most people that study history understand the separation. When you port fantasy into modern times, for some reason it seems everyone's inner autist flares up. Probably because they actually know about the modern world, but it's not an acquired knowledge.