Brainstorming: Lord of the...WTF?!?!

[Riley37]

One does not simply fly into Novosibirsk from the USA.

One does, however, fly a light aircraft from Helsinki to Moscow, and land in Red Square.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

So far we're going with evil use of technology vs. better, more ethical use of technology. What role does wild magic play in that mix? Are we applying Clarke's law, and explaining the super-jumps as an outcome of bionic leg muscles? Or is there a tension between magic and tech?

Saruman and Gandalf both use magic; only one of them has a base which produces smoke, soot, and oil stains. In JRRT's story, the battle between good and evil is also the battle of industrial vs. pastoral.

I favor this variant: the engineers who designed the Eye of Sauron satellite don't know their boss is a wizard who has augmented it with magic. The "ghost in the machine" is literally an undead spirit. Those augmentations are the reason why conventional counter-hacking methods fail, and our heroes are necessary. Only by opposing tech with tech, AND magic with magic, can our heroes defeat the BBEG. Maybe the PCs range from the white-hat hacker who doesn't believe in magic, to the martial arts mystic who counts time by dawn noon and dusk rather than by the clock. With the cyber-ninja in the middle of that spectrum.

I’m thinking magic real, not Clarkian. That fits better with the wuxia/Hammer films/Kolshack etc. vibe. Practitioners are rare- IDK if it’s because nonbelief minimizes the number of people trying to learn it seriously, or if it’s linked to heredity and/or rituals.

Mixing tech & magic needs to be thought about a bit. Are they antithetical? Is one more powerful than the other? Or can they be mixed and matched to achieve a given goal? Are they actually necessarily intertwined?

 

[Riley37]

I’m thinking magic real, not Clarkian. That fits better with the wuxia/Hammer films/Kolshack etc. vibe. Practitioners are rare- IDK if it’s because nonbelief minimizes the number of people trying to learn it seriously, or if it’s linked to heredity and/or rituals.

Mixing tech & magic needs to be thought about a bit. Are they antithetical? Is one more powerful than the other? Or can they be mixed and matched to achieve a given goal? Are they actually necessarily intertwined?

You might turn to Mage by White Wolf for a large body of thought and lore on that relationship. If nothing else, I love their use of Paradox as a limiting factor in spellcasting. It's not spell points, it's not spell slots, it's how far you can bend Reality before it snaps back and says "You are on Time Out. No more magic for you, until you cool off."

 

[Riley37]

For even more subtle themes... because subtlety is the notable trait of Hammer movies... tech and industry are related, but not exactly the same. Perhaps the optimum outcome in this setting can include high tech, when it's used gently and sparingly so that it's part of a more pastoral, less industrial landscape. Maybe that's the harmonious relationship between tech and magic.

Maybe magic flows through life, and is stronger in a swamp than a desert. It's also stronger where life is diverse (where the roots of the oak tree mingle with the roots of the ash tree and so forth). Thus, a strip mine becomes a magical dead zone, a chicken factory is not much better, while an old-fashioned farm which has pigs AND cows AND crop rotation is more compatible with magic even if the farm tools are made with high-tech alloys and a computer manages the irrigation schedule.

Maybe human lives with creativity and variety are more magic-compatible than lives lived on a grinding, relentless schedule, with repetitive specialized assembly line tasks; so again, high tech isn't anti-magic, but the most intense and profitable (for the owner) forms of heavy industry are bad news for the craft of magic.

 

[Bedrockgames]

For even more subtle themes... because subtlety is the notable trait of Hammer movies....

Wait a second. I've seen the Lost Continent and The Vampire Lovers. I love Hammer Movies, but I am not seeing how they are subtle.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I’m thinking magic real, not Clarkian. That fits better with the wuxia/Hammer films/Kolshack etc. vibe. Practitioners are rare- IDK if it’s because nonbelief minimizes the number of people trying to learn it seriously, or if it’s linked to heredity and/or rituals.

Mixing tech & magic needs to be thought about a bit. Are they antithetical? Is one more powerful than the other? Or can they be mixed and matched to achieve a given goal? Are they actually necessarily intertwined?

I think if you go with wuxia and xianxia style magic, you could blend that with technology. Much of it is based on Qi cultivation and stuff like acupoints. I can easily see that being extended into computer systems for example. Also there is the trope of spirited objects in chinese legend (which appears in these kinds of movies). So you could have a spirited AI or a spirited machine of some kind.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Wait a second. I've seen the Lost Continent and The Vampire Lovers. I love Hammer Movies, but I am not seeing how they are subtle.

(Was kidding)

 

[Bedrockgames]

(Was kidding)

I misunderstood the intention there.

Carry on in that case

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I don’t want to get too heavy. I want to keep a lighter, campier aesthetic. While the Gandalfs and Sarumans of the setting may be powerful, I still want them limited. Consider the lighter touch of Kung Fu Hustle.
[video=youtube;xssCyfRu3iM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xssCyfRu3iM[/video]
[video=youtube;_kZ4SHVKlRA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kZ4SHVKlRA[/video]

Not quite THAT cartoonis, of course. A middle path.

And to be clear, I’m not thinking of this campaign as an Americanized martial arts flick setting- I’m looking to wuxia cinematic aesthetics mainly to help model the magic & mysticism of a LotResque world of the (nonexistent) recent past. So not every character has to be a take on a characters played by Jackie Chan, Jim Kelly, etc. Jack Lord, Lee Majors, Jacklyn Smith, David Soul and all the rest are welcome too.

 

[Riley37]

Not quite THAT cartoonis, of course. A middle path.

If you seek the full power of the Buddha's Palm, you must indeed walk the Middle Way.

KFH had a light touch, and campy aesthetics. It also had themes and messages. Your campaign rules for magic and tech could involve an *understanding* of pastoral and industrial, without using as heavy-handed an approach as JRRT's description of ivy growing into a crown on a desecrated statue head.