Modern fantasy - your experiences?

[RangerWickett]

Who here has played in or run modern fantasy games? Not just D20 Modern, but anything like GURPS, Shadowrun, even Call of Cthulhu, where magic existed in a modern (or neo-modern) world.

I'm running such a game now, and have a storyhour about it (stalled due to hurricane issues, but I'll get back to it soon enough), and have been writing a modern fantasy rules supplement, so modern magic, in all its iterations, is on my mind.

What was the tone of the game? Was it just a modern game where magic was another toy to play with -- turning invisible, fireballing, and flying your way through a spy thriller? Or was it more mysterious, like Indiana Jones or Constantine, with the magic being a driving force of the plot?

What kind of characters did you have - villains and heroes?

How'd the game go? Did you have any trouble with the ruleset not matching your expectation ? For instance, as much as I love Call of Cthulhu in concept, the rules don't work quite right for the tone I want. And I personally despise having a boatload of D&D staple spells be the only sort of magic available in d20 modern.

Got any cool plot twists? Plays on real-world myths or legends? Interesting cameos? Big explosions? Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll?

 

[Desdichado]

Yes; I played a fair amount of by-the-book Dark•Matter back in the day, and Call of Cthulhu is still one of my favorite games ever to play or to run. My games tend to be gritty, dark, conspiracy type games; kind of like a Rated R (for violence and horrifying images, although occasionally for nudity ) version of the X-files, with more focus on the occult and less on E.B.E.s.

If you haven't already, I definitely recommend Jon Roger's "Drunk Southern Girls" Dark•Matter Story Hour--it's very similar in tone and feel to most modern fantasy games I've run or played. It's a good fit for my tastes.

Oh, and my sig has a complete Story Hour of a Dark•Matter one-shot (the famous "Exit 23" module from the Campaign Setting book) that I ran at the Chicago Gameday a couple of years ago.

 

[GlassJaw]

I love Shadowrun. I've always had a great time playing and luckily, the GM's I've gamed with have been great.

For me, the key with modern games is not making them just fantasy games with guns. For example, I actually prefer Shadowrun when combat is the expection not the rule. I want the world to be dark and deadly. Combat is something to be avoided and used as a last resort. I also prefer the villains to be less fodder-like, if that makes any sense. The villains (even lowly guards and henchmen) should still be formidable.

The world that exists around the characters is also very important to capture the tone of the campaign. As a player, I like to feel that the world is not revolving around me. What are the major happenings in the world? The good GM's give little tidibts of news stories during the game, even if they have little to do with the actual story lines (like who won the recent combat bike championship ).

 

[The Shaman]

I ran a d20 Modern game that featured a cabal of necromancers as the primary badd'uns.

The adventurers were contacted by the executor of a friend's estate and asked to find the friend's missing niece - in the process of investigating the disappearance, the adventurer's stumbled across the minions of the cabal, both living and undead. The rest of the game, right up until the TPK on a German autobahn, was attempting to rescue the niece and then cure her of a mysterious affliction while avoiding the cabal.

The "magic" in the game was largely in the background - the necromancers cast a total of two incantations directed at the adventurers, the only magic items were "alchemical" in nature, and there were no spellcasters in the traditional sense (cf. Urban Arcana).

I think Modern is a perfect system for running a "magic light" game.

 

[Troll Wizard]

Who here has played in or run modern fantasy games? Not just D20 Modern, but anything like GURPS, Shadowrun, even Call of Cthulhu, where magic existed in a modern (or neo-modern) world.

I'm running such a game now, and have a storyhour about it (stalled due to hurricane issues, but I'll get back to it soon enough), and have been writing a modern fantasy rules supplement, so modern magic, in all its iterations, is on my mind.

What was the tone of the game? Was it just a modern game where magic was another toy to play with -- turning invisible, fireballing, and flying your way through a spy thriller? Or was it more mysterious, like Indiana Jones or Constantine, with the magic being a driving force of the plot?

What kind of characters did you have - villains and heroes?

How'd the game go? Did you have any trouble with the ruleset not matching your expectation ? For instance, as much as I love Call of Cthulhu in concept, the rules don't work quite right for the tone I want. And I personally despise having a boatload of D&D staple spells be the only sort of magic available in d20 modern.

Got any cool plot twists? Plays on real-world myths or legends? Interesting cameos? Big explosions? Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll?

Game System/Books: D20 Modern/Urban Arcana/Green Ronin D20 Modern books

Setting: Started out earth-based D20 slightly-future tech, then morphed into Star Gates....world exploring

Magic Type: Mage class (my character)...The source of most magic comes from the elf world(s), so most of our items comes from elven sources. No other worlds seem to be have any "magic/arcane" history unless they were visited by elfs.

My experience and feelings about D20 Modern "magic", is that is very utility-tool based/focused. Damage and combat-wise, my experience has been that it is weak versus modern guns and once you get into future tech - very weak. With few exceptions I have rarely cast Fireball and maybe once lightning bolt. My best offensive spell came from a Green Ronin book - "rocket launcher." There is no "ancient" or cthulhu feel to magic, at best its a technology that no one can explain. I guess I feel that it's very sterile in its' application because of the spell names (autopilot, prot versus bullets, machine invisibility, etc.).

What was I expecting? I don't know but something is missing within "magic" to make it mysterious, occult or just supernatural besides the spell names. On the other hand it could just be me.

Not exactly "Modern", I really enjoyed Deadlands' (original system) magic system, its mechanics made it "feel" very occult.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I've played quite a few, looking back:

Shadowrun was a lot of fun. We pretty much played it like one big action movie. At the time, a good deal of Shadowrun's appeal was the novelty of it all. I played a tough but cultured street samurai, who just wanted the good things in life, and an easy way to get them. The rules worked fine, until they came out with another edition. Magic worked just fine, adding a touch of the fantastic and the horrific in just about equal parts.

Call of Cthulhu (Chaosium version) was pretty spooky, though it we didn't play it with quite the lethality that it's known to have. There was a heavy emphasis on occult exploration, so that the game was in many ways focused on the struggle to retain one's sanity.

Marvel Superheroes; I was a big fan of Dr. Strange, so I incorporated a fair amount of eldritch threats. But other than that, it was pretty much comic book super-heroics as normal.

TORG was pretty much one giant pastiche where anything goes. It was really chaotic; we had fun, but I think the GM could've kept a tighter rein on the thematic elements.

 

[Pants]

Has anyone else wanted to run a Modern game based off of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere? I think it might be cool.

 

[Ethernaut]

Who here has played in or run modern fantasy games? Not just D20 Modern, but anything like GURPS, Shadowrun, even Call of Cthulhu, where magic existed in a modern (or neo-modern) world.

I've been running a Buffy game for years. Before that, my longest running game was a GURPS Voodoo/Vampire: the Masquerade Hybrid that emphasized the fantasy (somewhat) over the horror. In fact, modern fantasy could be considered my default genre if you expand the definition of modern to include near-future and recent past.

What was the tone of the game? Was it just a modern game where magic was another toy to play with -- turning invisible, fireballing, and flying your way through a spy thriller? Or was it more mysterious, like Indiana Jones or Constantine, with the magic being a driving force of the plot?

It varies. My Voodoo/Vampire game was about subtle and creepy spirit magic. The Buffy game, obviously, has a lighter tone and mimics the TV show.

What kind of characters did you have - villains and heroes?

I won't bother with the characters in the Buffy game, since you can click on the link in my sig file. For my Vampire/Voodoo game we had:

A demi-human "Eternal Champion" character from a pseudo-Victorian alternate earth. He was a master of dream magic and chased the main villain into this world from the previous campaign. He was the most outwardly fantastic character, but even he couldn't do too much showy stuff in the real world unless conditions were right.

A blind girl who could see spirits. She was the most powerful ritual magician in the party. She was also the target of some nasty vampires who thought she should be one of them.

A vampire who ran a casino. He was also a serious player in the diamond trade before his Embrace and his business connections made him the party face man.

Another character was a former vampire who has achieved the seemingly impossible task of becoming human again. As a result, he had the knowledge of centuries with little in the way of actual powers (at least initially).

Another character was a young woman with seriously dangerous pyrokinetic abilities.


The campaign ran for many years and these PCs were ones who saw the most screen time. I started them (as I did with many games set in the same universe) as (mostly) normal people and took them through their origin stories. I love origin stories and the real challenge was weaving all the characters' origin stories together in such a way as to provide a rationale for adventuring together. I used the same technique for other campaigns set in different time periods in the same world (1920's and 1790's). Cthulhu's Librarian and Nakia were able to play in that 1790's game. CL played Haitian spirit-warrior for a real fish-out-of-water experience (the game was set in and around Prague).

How'd the game go? Did you have any trouble with the ruleset not matching your expectation ? For instance, as much as I love Call of Cthulhu in concept, the rules don't work quite right for the tone I want. And I personally despise having a boatload of D&D staple spells be the only sort of magic available in d20 modern.

Well, the ruleset matched my expectations mostly because the campaign was created after reading the games that were it's main inspiration (GURPS Voodoo and GURPS Vampire). The first incarnation of the game was mostly just vampire with standard GURPS Magic. That didn't suit my tastes at all. When GURPS Voodoo came out, I did a big RetCon and switched over to ritual magic and never looked back.

In the Buffy game... I actually love how it's magic system works so well with how magic works in the show. Combat's ok, but I wish it were a little easier to put characters in jeopardy.

Got any cool plot twists? Plays on real-world myths or legends? Interesting cameos? Big explosions? Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll?

I could go on and on, but I will mention that my main source of inspiration for the Voodoo/Vampire game were the stories of Charles De Lint. I stole freely from him for plot, character, and flavor.

The Buffy game (again, see link in my sig file) has tons of episode writeups. You may be able to find something useful for your game.

 

[The_Universe]

In a modern fantasy, magic either has to be so ubiquitous so as to make the world nearly unrecognizable, or so subtle that most people can continue to believe that there's no such thing.

In the first option, teleport, fireball, etc. are all viable options. You've just overlayed technology on the assumptions of D&D. I think this is more difficult, as functional, powerful magic should have a drastic effect on how people view the world, its history, development, and other various issues. For example, technology has developed in this world because it makes peoples' lives easier. If magic is achieving the same purpose, why would technology have developed? Is the reason cultural? Economic? In short, you have a great deal more world building to do if you choose this basic idea. Common magic is simply not part of the real, modern world, so you have to remove many of the basic assumptions that make the real world familiar.

In the second general option, you've got Indiana Jones, Constantine (as you mentioned) as an example. The core assumptions of the world remain familiar, as there's just enough magic around to let those at the edges of the secret world know that they can't take its absence for granted. Science, in this case, can only explain some things - not everything. Religion, in secret circles, takes on a strange new validity. In this case, you don't need to rebuild the whole world from the foundations, up - you simply layer in your secret world, and make sure that things never get so far out of hand that it ceases to be secret. It usually helps, in this case, to determine why magic (since it apparently exists) has not made its presence more fully known, as this will likely guide what kind of plots and foes you can include. Monsters, if they exist, have got to be mostly human-like, so that they can blend in with their prey. Non-humanoid monsters have got to be both rare and well-hidden, so that the normal disblief can be plausibly maintained.

I generally prefer the second option, but I think the first is an interesting exercise in world-building.

 

[The_Universe]

Oh - I'm running a game currently using the second option, although it's not exclusively fantasy. It's got more in common with Dark*Matter and the X-Files than Constantine, in that a lot of the weirdness isn't magical in nature.