D&D 5E Modern/sci-fi elements? in MY fantasy?

[Tony Vargas]

I'm curious how many of you guys have played in, or ran games, that had explicit alien technology in them or involved interactions with modern Earth ("modern" meaning anytime from 1900 to 2015).

Just a couple years ago, I ran Temple of the Frog, from Blackmoor (c1975), it included a human-appearing alien in powered armor. So, yeah, sci-fi elements have been with the game from very early on.

So how about it? Were these elements merely in the background were they front and center, or were they deeply ingrained into the setting itself?

I've run campaigns with things like that hidden or in the background before, or with plausible deniability that they were some sort of magic. In my current campaign (running since 2011), the party are from the Feywild, and have visited a number of different 'mortal' worlds, including different historical, alternate-historical, and near-future versions of Earth in the 20th & 21st centuries.

I ask because my homebrew setting is fantasy with post-apocalyptic undertones, set on Earth a thousand or so years after humans kinda vanished from the planet under mysterious circumstances and there's "magic" run amok, and I'm kinda looking for inspiration from you fellow players/GMs. Definitely not ripping off Shannara. Nope.

There's a science fiction sub-genre you could be looking at, starting, not surprisingly, with Vance's Dying Earth. Other excellent examples would be Gene Wolfe's Urth of the New Sun and Marion Zimmer Bradely's Darkover. More obscure examples might include The Sword of the Spirits (John Christopher) and Karl Edward Waggoner's Kane series.