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Back to the topic, SR was both divergent history and fictional future. SR's SAIM (sovereign American Indian Movement) was loosely based in the real world American Indian Movement (AIM), which was tarred as terrorists by the FBI in the 70s, not to mention betrayed by the Nixon administration...

Oh, SR1 was a mess of beautiful potential. SR2 threw out most of the convoluted stuff and SR3 was way easier to teach newbs than d&d in the era of ThAC0. Even after 3e, SR had a more compact set of magic spells, fleshed out by summoning, that made it easier to pick up. Over 30+ years of...

Really? SR has always been one of my favorites. Dice pools make for bell curves and counting d6s is easy for new players.

This is sort of true but was less so in earlier editions. In <=3e, casters didn't have "concentration" so casters could fire all their spells with duration when heroes trigger an alarm. (Like....the Alarm spell...) The invisible, flying caster was a thing. 5e eliminates most of those (and...

In the 1400s China's Imperial Examination would test 2-3 million people per year(ish), and only 1% passed. The exams weren't held on a steady schedule and varied by region so this is an annualized average. The "typical" official took the test 2 or 3 times before passing in their 30s. Giving...

Gandalf pretended to be low level and avoided casting powerful magic to keep Sauron from noticing. He had to punt when the Balrog showed up. The Gandalf-simulacrums can cast Wish, being a copy of full-strength Gandalf. Those could try to do the stress-inducing uses of Wish without...

So Gandalf (wiz23) agreeing to teach Dresden (wiz13) Maginificent Mansion but requiring Dresden to create a Gandalf-Simulacrum as payment is verboten? That last part is a setting decision. There's no benefit to not leveraging those people with potential. I see no reason there wouldn't be...

Sure. So let's cut those in half and compare to jobs that people have a feel for their frequency 5% - all the active and former members of the military, minus the coast guard, or the entire healthcare industry (physician down to medical record specialists) 2.5% - every physician, nurse (nurse...

10% is a huge number. In comparison, 0.8% of Americans are active military and 6.2% are veterans. Then 4% of Americans are employed in healthcare. Which means your exemplar country could have a military that was 100% casters plus an all-caster health care system. Alternately, 8% of...

A Treant can animate two non-sapient trees for an entire day. So 10 Treants can move 20 normal trees up to 30 miles a day (assuming huge trees aren't concerned about making perception checks while fast traveling). Or more accurately, can move 20 trees 30 miles every other day after walking...

Unless you do cheese like a Simulacrum to Wish for you, these quasi-immortal casters are only going to burn a Wish that way if it is truly life and death. Each non-spell use of wish has a 33% chance of losing the spell permanently. So one third of casters lose Wish the first time they do it...

As long as they understand it. Had GMs pull out some monster combo they got off Reddit, we blow through it without breaking a sweat, then hear the GM say "oh, dang, forgot to use the special! That would have gone completely differently!" And the flip side, some "invulnerable annihilator" that...

Is it all society, or "adventurer society"? Per OP This implies that there is a non-trivial number of people who are 17+ casters in each region. Those 9th level spells ought to be cast. This does bring up probable trait of high level casters: they don't cast high level spells on request...

This is "adventurer society" where you don't get in until 20th level. The party wizard, sorcerer or bard can cast Wish.

Extending on the "Reliable Villains" is "Unreliable Allies", aka "Frenemies". These are other polities to the PCs' that share similar general traits but vary on methods and/or specifics. Thus can be as basic as one side being a bunch of paladins who's foreign policy is "kill them all and let...

I'm a campaign gm. I've run a several multi-year year games; 2e d&d, Mage, Earthdawn. My 3e game started before the 3.0 DMG came out and wrapped up as 4e was being printed. I use the multi-arc approach, with a major plot line I usually don't telegraph to players that has two or three related...

I think this question is getting lost beneath the overall setting discussion. The main character energy is super-hero type "not really dead" immortality, where clones pop up a few months later. (Plus side, Wish makes clones with no material cost) Securing clones is so important but people also...

You probably haven't made it through the thead but all d&d games should be Altered Carbon because of Dwarves (400yr livespan), Gnomes (500yr lifespan) and Elves (750yr lifespan). You should ask yourself why elves don't rule the human realms and then ask if you are sure they don't.

3e had that, and a table of demographics you rolled on to see what the highest level person of all classes, PC and NPC, was. Then there was simple pattern to determine the number of lower level people of each class. By default, most of the population was Commoner-1. The demographics...

Tippyverse doesn't apply as as such because 5e teleportation is much weaker than in 3e. A permanent 3e teleport circle did not require a caster present nor spell slots to operate so it was essentially a permanent worm hole. Meanwhile in 5e land, ten 20th level wizards can, at most, keep a...