New Campaign Idea - Forgotten Realms: Modern

[KaintheSeeker]

Hmm..

Gnoll Policeman (works well in Thay I'm sure)
Orc Bartenders
Orge mechanic (hit it till it works.. definitely his style)
Elf Park Rangers ('We can't kill that .. it's endangered.. well more than us anyway)

 

[Zappo]

Uuuh, is anyone really going to complain if things like manticores and chimerae are endangered species? I mean, I'd say "still not good enough", but maybe that's just me.

 

[Turanil]

I like it, but using United States of the Sword Coast just seems wrong to me.

I second that opinion. Otherwise, this idea sounds great. In fact I don't like normal FR, but I would like to play d20 Modern / Urban Arcana / modern FR, much more than d20 Modern / Urban Arcana / Earth real world.

 

[diaglo]

Ed Greenwood did this years ago in DragonMagazine. the pages from the mages articles were partly due to Elminister visiting Ed and drinking his beer and eating his pretzels.

 

[MaxKaladin]

Something similar was advanced on the Forgotten Realms mailing list years ago. It was called something like "Dark Realms" or "Realms 2000" or something like that. It didn't have the loss of magic element as I recall, but did the "advance the realms to the current day" thing.
It might be on the web somewhere.

 

[Sejs]

Magic goes away and all of a sudden Lantan becomes Big Man On Campus. Haha suckers, we don't need magic for our stuff and now you don't have anything that can balance it out.

The lantanese have never really been that expansionistic, however. But whomever could get lantan on their side would have a huge leg up on anyone else. Alternatly, once the Pall fell and various conflicts began to spring up, maybe Lantan declaired themselves neutral and just started handing out technology to everyone equally.



As an aside... once magic goes away, Evermeet would find itself in pretty deep donkey-pie. Something of which we wholeheartedly approve. ^_^

 

[Grand Harvester]

What a coincidence. I ran a FR Modern 3-part miniseries just weeks ago. Here are the some points:

*Humans are the dominant species. Elves have left for greener pastures, dwarves went underground into extreme isolation, and all other humanoid races bowed to the human juggernaut. The orcs rebelled against this and a great war ensued. They were no match for the human's tech and were driven into extinction.

*If you look at the world map in the FR Book, it looks similar to our world. I just added some nations and changed a few cities. Since Waterdeep is located in the NW corner of "Europe", I made it into the FR equivelant of London in the nation of "Dhavia." North of Maztica, is a land that was settled by Dhavian colonists who eventually rebelled. Now they are the "Union of the Republic (UR)."

*Magic is in slow decline. With the advent of tech, ordinary people can use "magic" without going thru rigorous study. Divine magic is also faltering since most of the gods have left. Psionics is on the rise, especially in the UR. Their Psi-Ops Special Teams are the best in the world.

To see the episode logs of my campaign, go to www.criticalhitgames.com Look for the articles titled "Guns, Gnolls & Rock n' Roll."

 

[lord_banus]

I read the log, sounds pretty good. I will have to get a game up and running as soon as my Oriental Game is finished. Or I could be really freaky and use some sort of time effect and let them wake up in some city of Wa. Cliche'd I know but could be interresting. They could be the only ones around that know of the magic returning.

I am curious as to why people think the United States of the Sword Coast is a bad idea. It would only be superficially like the US. I could be truelly evil and make Evereska the Las Vegas of the Realms.

I had a few other nations in mind: The Moonsea Confederation, The Dalelands Union, Silmar (Silver Marches).

 

[Torm]

What I don't understand is why most, if not all, concepts like this I've ever seen involve a weakening of magick. Seems like it would be interesting to see what direction "technology" would take if it were intertwined with magic all through its development.

A suggestion: Get some long-time players together with FR and general 3.0 or 3.5 sourcebooks and copies of How Things Work, and let them munchkin the heck out of innovating whatever they want using their own current knowledge AND what they think 20th level characters would know, and then use THAT for the basis of your technology. And don't let magick die. There's already too many games like that, IMHO.

(Some of the guys I used to game with had come up with working cars and even a type of helicopter based on munchkining the heck out of the Frisky Chest spell under 2nd Edition rules. Think of the possibilities!)

As to why a lot of people aren't digging the "U.S. of the Sword Coast" thing, I can't speak for them, but to me it sounds too "parallel Earthy", plus the nation that would arise out of the Sword Coast seems to me like it would bear more resemblance to England or maybe even France or Spain than the U.S. A powerful Lord's Alliance that eventually ends up somewhat deferential to a Representation of the Commoners, and you pretty much have the recipe for Great Britain.

Remember, the map you see of Faerun in the FR book is equivalent to a map of Eurasia and Africa - there's probably a whole other hemisphere lurking around somewhere, and that seems a more logical place to develop any sort of U.S. analog, if you're going to have one.

 

[lord_banus]

I guess the weakening of magic comes from a general belief that you can only have one or the other. Most technology has been developed to solve a problem which is mostly unnecessary if you have access to magic. A good example of where magic is used for common technological purposes is in Halruua (sp?) which to me seems to have a renaissance feel.

Parallel earthy is just what I am after, again for the comfort factor though I was only originally putting a name to places rather than stamping impressions over the top. I was thinking that waterdeep would be a combination London/New york with old buildings and massive high rises. I'm not sure about the other lands such as maztica so I may just drop the US equivalent and concentrate on a european and asian feel. Just larger and more varied.

Prehaps whats needed is to drop the collonisation from the alternate FR history which will remove the need for the US, Australia, south america and the african continent. The energy for the expansionism could be put into the religious wars which would in turn give the whole world a more grim, gothic outlook. This would provide a more militaristic rather than political global arena with a more bitter Cold war. This still leaves a lot of room for roleplaying in the genres of Merc units, spies, infultration and even full scale conflicts.

when magic returns it could just add fuel to the fire.