Heroes in the modern world

[Meloncov]

I've toyed with the idea of running a campaign about King Arthur returning to aid England in WWII. Never did it, though.

 

[riprock]

Around 1984 or so, I ran a campaign modeled on Adams' "Horseclans" series. The main character was "Bili the Axe," a fighter with considerable psionic abilities of danger sense and telepathy. Only the danger sense really gave him an edge: the telepathy was only useful for role-playing.

The "Horseclans" setting is post-Apocalyptic America, so a considerable amount of the setting was giving out details like distorted place names and scenery and seeing how long it took to figure out where in America the action was taking place.

"Thundarr the Barbarian" had a similar gimmick: about 60% of the shows featured an identifiable American landmark -- Mount Rushmore, etc.

 

[Falkus]

(D&D monsters magically appear on Earth for no apparent reason; ordinary folk can't see them for what they are, also for no apparent reason. This no apparent reason is a mystical force called Shadow that is very mystical and very mysterious and ignores the PCs, again for no apparent reason. Shadow. Woo.)

The explanation was adequate enough, and allowed me to set adventures involving fantasy elements in a modern world WITHOUT having to write up the complete social, economic, political and religious ramifications of said elements being publicly and widely known.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The setting I use -- Ptolus -- has gunpowder, but no planar travel (yet). Once planar travel becomes available later in the campaign, I think I'm going to have whichever nefarious wizard the group deals with most often establish a secret lair on Earth, complete with D&D monsters and such hidden in the population of modern New York or Los Angeles. Thus, if the player characters go there, it'll be for a very specific purpose, and will be up against a powerful enemy who will likely know they're coming and be directing both magical and mundane forces against the heroes.

Given the difficulty of getting large quantities of guns, I'll just use the modern gun stats from the DMG and let the player characters have their fun. (Of course, there are fairly unscrupulous sorts in Ptolus obsessed with technology who are likely to go after whatever the player characters go back with an insane passion, which will help if things get too out of hand.)

 

[genshou]

I like to call it Urban Arcana (because that's its name), and I'm currently running two games: one online, one offline. So far in the offline game, two PCs are earth-born humans, one PC is an earth-born tiefling, and two PCs are former denizens of Aber-Toril--one a goblin ninja (fast hero), and the other a sun elven bard (charismatic hero). In the online game, at least one player plans to replace his PC with a shadowkind (drow) once the party level gets high enough to allow races with LA.

It's a blast having former fantasy PCs in a modern setting. The goblin has thus far discovered "plastic" (I can buy without having money?!), tequila, refrigerators, automatic sliding doors, coffee, and guns.

 

[genshou]

Urban Arcana is exactly this concept, but done in a horribly contrived way that I don't care for at all. (D&D monsters magically appear on Earth for no apparent reason; ordinary folk can't see them for what they are, also for no apparent reason. This no apparent reason is a mystical force called Shadow that is very mystical and very mysterious and ignores the PCs, again for no apparent reason. Shadow. Woo.)

Sounds to me like someone formed an opinion without even reading the product, then looked for only the things that would confirm that opinion, while ignoring the rest. I mean, seriously. :\

I've run several Urban Arcana games and it's worked out just fine. Shadow is supposed to be enigmatic, so the GM has fodder for serious investigation over the campaign.

 

[The Shaman]

How many of you have played in or DMed an adventure where fantasy heroes (of any sort) ended up in the "real" world?

The Shaman raises his hand.

Was it any fun?

Not particularly.

The dungeon master really invested a lot of effort in making the mundane modern world seem mysterious and foreign to us - not knowing how a television worked and fireballing a police helicopter actually turned out to be quite boring.

I like modern fantasy a lot - I don't like it mixed with my medieval fantasy, however.

 

[tzor]

I've never done it in a straight fantasy campaign, but in general there was no particular reason for me to do so. (I have done lots of scenario hopping, but generally from settings like Lankhmar to AlQuadim for example.)

I did run a stand alone campaign based on the 2E variation on "Mask of the Red Death" which created an 1890's atmosphere of horror. Personally I would love to see a variation for 19th century modern ... d20 pre-modern or industrial perhaps?

The 18th century and the 19th century would have a interesting synergy with most fantasy world settings. Gunpowder is a major factor, but on the other hand one can actually argue that the optional rules for gunpowder in the DMG are actually superior to the firearms of the 18th century (both in terms of range and speed) and slightly superior to the firearms of the 19th century.

Combining both worlds brings in the matter of genre cross-contanimation, how will magic impact the technological world and how will technology impact the magical world. Balance these days demands a "balanced" solution, so the notion that "well magic simply doesn't work here" puts a greater pain on magic using characters (remember this is more than spellcasters ... some abilities are supressed in an anti-magic field or area) than on non magic using characters. Gone are the old days when the Lankhmar scenario would mess up spell casting so badly that no one in their right mind would want to play eone. ("You mean it takes how many rounds to cast that spell?")