D&D 5E (2024) Building A Contemporary Fantasy Setting For 5.5E

[AlViking]

Half em vee squared. A pickup has many times the the kinetic energy of a wooden cart - around 50 times at a rough estimate. And it’s higher speed makes it harder to avoid.

Good luck getting the dragon to sit still while you get up to ramming speed. Is it just going to be plopped down immobile in the middle of the street while you start accelerating from a quarter mile away? How is this much different than ramming it with a sailing ship that has far more mass then you F-150? Dropping a magical fortress on a bad guys head is something that happened in a game I was playing. The DM just made a call and we went with it.

Because the real modern world is familiar in a way that a fantasy setting is not, the players will be familiar with the many common things in the environment that can be used as weapons or to solve problems. Microwaves, blenders, household gas and electricity supplies, lawnmowers, fire extinguishers, fork lifts - all these common environmental items are things players are going to want to try an use.

And anyway, why would the PCs, or the villains, not have access to military technology?

I don't consider D&D particularly realistic in the real world sense. They're action or superhero movie realistic, pretty much every video game RPG for FPS I've ever played has been the same. Reality is boring, in whatever timeframe it's set.

 

[TwoSix]

As long as the characters don't have access to military technology, I don't see why D&D wouldn't work. Yes you have to assume action movie logic for guns (running crouched with one hand raised to cover the side of their head obviously makes them bulletproof), but that's largely because we've never seen someone take a direct hit from a sword.

As far as how much damage a pickup does if it hits a red dragon - who cares? Make it up. Just like if you were piloting a sailing ship and rammed the dragon, or dropped your Daern's Instant Fortress on it's head and activated it as it fell. There are all sorts of things we have to just kind of guess at.

You can do that, but I feel like the point of running a contemporary fantasy setting is to crash your minivan into an ogre and see what happens. Or to have your ranger dual-wielding Uzis. If you don't want to do stuff like that, why not just play in the Realms or Eberron instead?

If you don't want something systemic, and just want to resolve using freeform narration (i.e. "make it up"), why use something relatively crunchy like a D&D derivative when you could play Kids on Bikes or one of the several contemporary PbtA takes (like Monster of the Week) instead?

 

[Corinnguard]

There could be a bit of an arms race between what magic can do, what technology can do, and what both of them could do together in a contemporary setting.

 

[AlViking]

You can do that, but I feel like the point of running a contemporary fantasy setting is to crash your minivan into an ogre and see what happens. Or to have your ranger dual-wielding Uzis. If you don't want to do stuff like that, why not just play in the Realms or Eberron instead?

I didn't say I was going to do it, I said it could be done. An Uzi can theoretically fire 600 rounds per minute which sounds impressive. Unfortunately the largest magazine only holds 50 rounds. So lots of bullets for 12 seconds. Mini-Uzis only hold 20-25 rounds so 3 seconds of full auto.

If you don't want something systemic, and just want to resolve using freeform narration (i.e. "make it up"), why use something relatively crunchy like a D&D derivative when you could play Kids on Bikes or one of the several contemporary PbtA takes (like Monster of the Week) instead?

What are the odds of being in a situation where ramming a red dragon with your pickup is going to be a good idea? The rules can't cover everything and I can always come up with edge cases to "prove" that a system doesn't work.

 

[Remathilis]

You can do that, but I feel like the point of running a contemporary fantasy setting is to crash your minivan into an ogre and see what happens. Or to have your ranger dual-wielding Uzis. If you don't want to do stuff like that, why not just play in the Realms or Eberron instead?

That would be the draw for me. Advancing the tech to see what D&D looks like with cell phones and desert eagles. When Final Fantasy 15 starts with your party on a road trip, that's almost the feel I'd want.

 

[Reynard]

In much contemporary or urban fantasy fiction, you need enchanted weapons (or weapons of special materials) to harm monsters. Gun don't kill goblins or werewolves or dragons -- starsteel does (or whatever). What I think some people ar doing is trying to construct some logic, instead of looking at the actual genre rules. The genre rules in Dresden, for example, line up pretty well with D&D.

 

[Reynard]

That would be the draw for me. Advancing the tech to see what D&D looks like with cell phones and desert eagles. When Final Fantasy 15 starts with your party on a road trip, that's almost the feel I'd want.

Sure, but that isn't contemporary or urban fantasy. That's magitech and aetherpunk.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Good luck getting the dragon to sit still while you get up to ramming speed

It doesn’t matter if it’s likely to succeed or not. Players are going to try it, because it’s the sort of thing that happens in stories set in the real world. And if the players want to do something, you are going to want to have rules to determine if it works or not. You might be able to wing it once or twice, but there are a whole load of things the players will try because they have seen it in real world adventures.

 

[AlViking]

There could be a bit of an arms race between what magic can do, what technology can do, and what both of them could do together in a contemporary setting.

There has always been an arms race with new technologies and counters for the technology, something we're seeing today with the advancement of drone warfare. If you do any game with a mix of magic and tech there are going to be some decisions made about how the two compete with or complement each other.

 

[Remathilis]

Sure, but that isn't contemporary or urban fantasy. That's magitech and aetherpunk.

The four dudes on a road trip in the convertible in the middle of a desert akin to the southwest US getting into adventures was the vibe I was looking for, not necessarily the exact technology or setting. It's not 1:1, but that feel to me was very urban fantasy in a way Eberron isn't.