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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 9885632" data-attributes="member: 467">NOTE 1: This thread is mostly just musing and theorycrafting; I would not actually use 5E for contemporary fantasy, but it came up in another thread so i thought it might be fun to discuss.NOTE 2: I called it "contemporary fantasy" in order to avoid the "urban fantasy" argument happening in the other thread. And "contemporary" here can mean anything from, say, post WW2 to the near future, but where magic and magical creatures exist.NOTE 3; It is an important distinction that this is a SETTING for 5.5E, and not a whole new "modern 5E" ruleset. That is intentional and part of the design challenge. Of course you can add new subclasses, etc, but no fundamental changes to the core rules.Okay, with all that said, what do you think would make for an interesting contemporary fantasy setting for 5.5E?I think the first real question is whether magic has always been a part of the world (Bright) or whether it is recently returned (Shadowrun)? And then the next question is whether it is in the open, or a hidden "secret world".My own contemporary fantasy setting is a recent "return" (sorta) and in the open: on a parallel earth with a very "D&D vibe" (elves, orcs, etc) the Blighted Queen is about to destroy the world. Archmages across that world are able to open gates to our Earth, and millions of refugees (along with lots of magical creatures) flow into Earth before the archmages are forced to shut the gates to keep The Blighted Queen and her armies from following -- sacrificing themselves in the process.Our world lack a "manasphere" and so wizards and such cannot cast spells UNLESS they draw magic out of a magical creature or magic item. And if they aren't careful (or don't care) those spellcasters can drain the creature or item completely of magic.It has ben 10 years since the initial rush into our world and just now the refugee camps are opening up and denizens of that world are starting to integrate a little with Earthling culture. Shades of Alien Nation and District 11 here are intentional.If I were to use this world for a 5.5E setting, the biggest thing would be to defined how channeling works (which would be a variant of the spell casting focus rules) as well as create new arcane subclasses around channeling. I am not sure what I would do with divine casters, since Earth also does not have their gods, but for ease I would probably just call it a different style of magic and those casters would need divine relics to channel from.thoughts? How would you design a contemporary fantasy setting for 5E?</blockquote>

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