We are fantasy characters... in the modern world...

(Apologies to the police...)

I was wondering if someone might have some decent scenario ideas.

I am planning on running a Second World sourcebook game soon. For those not familiar, the premise here is that there are two "earths" situated in parallel realities/planes. One (the "First World") is pretty much modern day earth, the other (the "Second World) is a fantasy D&D version of earth. Characters from the first world who become too steeped in the magical and fantastic are exentually "exiled" by the more rigid laws of reality there, and after spending a short time in the first world (days or less), they are automatically shunted into the second world.

Now much of this game will run very much like a normal D&D game, with villains and empires and dungeons. But I don't want this game JUST to be a D&D game. In order to make the unusual feel of the setting stick, I need occasional forays into the first world.

That's where I need help. I need a few ideas for missions or motivations that would involve a fantasy character in spending time in the real world.

TIA for any assistance.

In the tradition of years of X-comics, there is always the evildoer who realises that crossing dimensions may well be a great way to elude persuit. Adventurers with a lawful bent (or who have crossed the boundaries before) may well be sent in persuit.

Dimensional cat burglers - people who slip through the dimensions and sell items that one has and the other doesn't for large sums of money. ("Ooooo, a radio that works via batteries rather than magic. how novel! Say, this burboun stuff is almost as strong as dwarf spirits. Brewed by humans, you say, well I'll be...)

The traditional magic item that the Pc's are questing after to defeat the bad guy is hidden in the other dimension. After all, where better to hide an item brimming with power than in a world where no-one really believes that power exists.

If you get a crime-organisation, something like the mafia, who realises that there's a bunch of people who wander around swinging swords and firing magic at will, they may decide that this is the best place to recruit hit-men that will disappear after the job is done. The whole meeting of the middle man in a tavern may seem like an overdone schtick, but you can sucker the Pc's into working for the bad guys (mercenary tasks are fairly common for DnD type parties).

Dimensional freying. Certain places leave the barriers between dimensions thin and easily bypassed, even without the use of magic. The problem being, these thin areas sap the magic from passing characters and leave them stranded on the other side.

Inter-dimensional Weapons Trading (You may be warded for magic, but how will you handle a bazooka shell?). The Pc's may be the smugglers making it happen, or may have to shift sides looking for a counter-measure for weapons that are flooding their world from the other side.

Mindset comes into play, it is one thing to sit and play a game but quite another when your life is on the line. You also have the power issue, I know I would not like to see some of my players go to another world and gain a lot of power!

Overall I think it would be a mixed bag, true fantasy setting, a roman setting where the men carry katanas type of stuff. I also think based on make-up of races and monsters filled with chaos.

Knowledge you carry over, I don't think helps because that information is for a different tech level and in many cases does not apply. Sure, some would but you have to learn new skills. Now I would have a hidden order that is trying to control those skills, build a new world and I would have one that tries to remove them, protecting their culture from the other world.

Thanks guys, tha's the sort of thing I am looking for.

Knowledge you carry over, I don't think helps because that information is for a different tech level and in many cases does not apply.

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Yup. They way things work in the second world, some technologies just... don't work. However, in some cases, technology can be replaced by magical equivalents.

Unfortunately, this nixes a few ideas, like this one:

Inter-dimensional Weapons Trading (You may be warded for magic, but how will you handle a bazooka shell?).

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However, the author has actually tripped upon some of these:

Dimensional freying. Certain places leave the barriers between dimensions thin and easily bypassed, even without the use of magic.

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See: http://www.second-world-simulations.com/SecondWorldNotes/SecondWorldNotesFrameset.htm and click on "roadkill highway."

A pac wants a certain bill passed in x months. They hire a group of adventurers to quest for charm person spells. The night before the vote. Big party lost of casting. Boom New law.

Cast and crew of b-movie films in Realms. Try to keep the secret as they win 13 Oscars.

I don't know a lot about the setting, but perhaps some of the major artifacts of the second world have been hidden by powerful NPCs (or Gods?) in the first world, where the nature of reality is such that they are a reduced threat to the populace. The PCs could be in competition with the "bad guys" to retrieve them in order to prevent their use by a bigger, badder "bad guy."

Alternatively, you could base forays into the first world on trying to prevent a fraying of the edges of reality from happening, rather than just accepting that they have. Perhaps certain features of the real world magically (or with ANCIENT technology) maintain the veil between the two worlds. Stonehenge may be a sort of "reality generator" for the first world, as may be the pyramids at Giza, or perhaps the Mayan pyramids in central america. In this case, there may be duplicates or reflections of these devices maintaining the division between the two distinct earths.

PCs might want to explore these for the sake of knowledge (why were the worlds divided, and who/what keeps them in this state?) or because the careful balance is threatened by any number of factors/NPCs/evil Gods. Perhaps the dominant empire wishes to recombine the worlds, or at least establish permanent two-way paths, so that they can expand their influence from the second to the first world. After all, even today's technologically mighty weapons would be hard pressed to defend against magic. Perhaps a nation in the first world wishes to do the same, but in the opposite direction...as the movie, "Reign of Fire" showed us, big guns CAN be effective against Dragons.

If in fact you want to focus somehow on the division between worlds, the PCs might find out that there is something *BAD* about the division itself--perhaps the two worlds *SHOULD* be one...and at the behest of a powerful ally, or perhaps an outsider, they themselves must work to bring down the barrier between worlds in a more widespread way, recreating a single world of magic AND technlogy where there are now two.

Just a thought.

If you want more ideas, e-mail me at kbauman@usd.edu--I briefly ran a D20 Modern/Pulp game based on a similar idea, but my PCs were all from the equivalent of the "first world."

I did have an idea like that except the it just parodys Old D&D and some modern world pop cultural figuers and Icons making fun of them.Some people got pissed off at the idea what I did.

To throw out another Police standard

Those coming into the first world can only reach it ethereally at first.....

Spirits in the material world

Jumping into the Wayback machine: Issue #100 of Dragon Magazine had an adventure called "The City Beyond the Gate", in which a party of adventurers set out on a desparate quest for an artifact, the Mace of St. Cuthbert. Said mace was hidden where nobody would ever look for it and where its very nature would go unrecognized - the Victoria and Albert museum in downtown London, England. So you can have a villain looking for an all-powerful maguffin, heroes trying to stop him. Or maybe vice versa. All trying to deal with a rather strange environment.

Or reverse it - a scientist invented some ultrapowerful superweapon, and realized that humanity wasn't ready for it yet. He figures out a way to send it through some kind of quantum rift, and it ends up as an interesting bauble in a dragon's lair. The strike team(s) sent to retrieve it are in for an interesting time.