Something like Forgotten Realms meets Star Wars?

Ashrem Bayle

Explorer
I've been working on a fantasy campaign setting for a while now (see my sig) and it's coming along great.

However, I've also been fighting the urge to start work on a sci-fi setting. My initial thought was a setting already written, like Star*Drive or Traveler, but now I'm considering taking my fantasy setting 1000 years into the future.

Anyone ever done something like this before?
 

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I did a Buck Rogers kind of scenario once where, after the big final battle, the PCs were trapped in a time bubble and when they got out it was 500 years later. The world was overrun by undead and other nasties and they had to find a time travel device to get back and fix everything.

Are you talking about mingling future tech with a fantasy setting? Or just what would a typical fantasy setting look like after a 1000 years?
 

Dragonstar?

Or Shadowrun or Unearthed Arcana without the real-world implications?

Not only has it been done, there are actually d20 supplements that will help you do the precise thing you're talking about. :D

Now, thinking specifically of FR, I don't think tacking 1,000 years onto it would get you Traveler or Star*Drive tech levels (or Dragonstar, for that matter). Going by real-world progression, you'd probably be looking at something nearer-future, more 2001 than Star Trek, more Tales of Known Space than Mote In God's Eye, more Shadowrun than Dragonstar.

Realistically, such a high-magic setting is going to advance much more slowly in other ways, because the rich and powerful already have access to most anything technology could deliver. Elminster doesn't need a ray gun because he is his own ray gun. That's not to say innovation won't occur; the priests of Gond already invent new tech by religious directive, and even those ubermages would likely fiddle with it from time to time, just to alleviate the passing of eons. However, the new tech would move forward in fits and starts, and it would likely not see widespread use. It wouldn't be unusual to stumble across 'Elminster's Magnificently Mundane Flight Apparatus' (an ornithopter or even a working jet plane) in 1,000 years - but you wouldn't see the Cormyr Royal Air Corps taking on Zhentil Aerospace, nor Drizzt's descendents popping on a jet liner while dual-wielding the laser pistols Blazingdeath and Sparkle.

More interesting scenarios for a tech-magic hybrid, IMO, are what you see in some of the Final Fantasy worlds.

In FF6 (steampunk tech level) and FF7 (cyberpunk tech level), the world basically advanced *without* magic, explaining where the tech came from, until someone in the already technological society *discovered* the use of magic. In FF6, the discoverers used it to advance from steampunk to pseudo-cyberpunk and tried to take over the world; in FF7, they used it as a power source for their existing technology, by and large using it for economic rather than military purposes.

In FF12, magic was used for centuries to *power* what we would normally think of as technological advancements. So you get the sleek looking modern technology, but its development in a magical world makes sense.

Keep in mind that most of the FFs are *much* lower-magic settings than a typical D&D setting, which is part of why the magic and tech hybrid works. A humanoid with innate magical powers in FF6 or FF7 is vanishingly rare - a focal point for the story even if not exceptionally powerful. A 6th level D&D sorcerer's existence would be a world-shaking event; a wizard, simply impossible. It makes sense to use magic to power a vehicle in FF12, because a spell cast by the world's most powerful human wizard is vastly weaker than what the vehicle can do with the same amount of power. This doesn't apply to artifacts or monsters, of course.

Shadowrun works largely for the same reason. Its tech developed in the 'real world,' sans magic, for all of our recorded history. It continues to develop in the awakened world because magic is not nearly as safe, widespread or reliable as in D&D. While a dragon is the president of a major arms corporation, he doesn't pioneer the development of new guns for his own use - he does it to increase his hoard, knowing that all the guns in the world won't be able to scratch him.

In Urban Arcana, magic at least starts out hidden from the wider world. Since it is safe, reliable D&D magic, it would probably supplant technology over time if it was revealed and popularized. Urban Arcana's Earth is more likely to look like Abeir-Toril in 1,000 years than Abeir-Toril is to look like Urban Arcana's Earth.

Or, you could handwave the development of the tech and get down to the important bits: dragons in rocket ships!
 

I'll have to check into Dragonstar.
I'm thinking I want to focus more on the sci-fi techy stuff and assume magic has become more rare as technology has replaced a lot of the need for it.
 

Ashrem Bayle said:
I'll have to check into Dragonstar.
I'm thinking I want to focus more on the sci-fi techy stuff and assume magic has become more rare as technology has replaced a lot of the need for it.

Dragonstar magic is still quite common, FWIW. Mages have their spellbooks on PDA. :D

If you're using D&D or d20 Modern, understand that you'll have to come up with some strong in-setting justification for magic being replaced by technology. D&D magic considerably more powerful than modern technology; it's at least on par with Star Trek technobabble in general utility and convenience.

You'll be hard-pressed to find someone willing to mass-produce firearms in a world where scorching ray can wipe out an entire company of musketeers - or an entire ammo dump. True, modern or futuristic guns would get past this at least partially - but those had to come from somewhere.

You'll be hard-pressed to find someone willing to shell out millions of dollars for a private jet when paying a wizard to greater teleport you is much cheaper, faster and safer. A private starship is even worse - not only is it more expensive, it will take weeks/months/years (realistic) or hours (space operatic) to planet hop, whereas the same wizard who instantly tellied you between your office in Waterdeep and your subsidiary in Evermeet can do the same between your office in Waterdeep and the company's HQ in the city of Greyhawk, countless light-years away. (Crystal spheres would stop this, but then you're adding a magical cosmology, which would seem to go a different direction from where you want to.)

You can get around this by making magic dangerous (d20 Call of Cthulhu magic, anyone?), weak (nothing d20 leaps to mind offhand; even 1st level spells trump any pre-20th century tech), or rare (sorcerers only, and only a handful of them).
 

There was a back Dragon (back, back, well before 3.5) that had an article about modern Forgotten Realms. As I recall, firearms were all magical in nature, but its been a year or so since I looked at it. I'll pick it up next time I hit my library.
 

In some settings, magic interferes with technology. The example I'll use is from Jim Butcher's novel series The Dresden Files.

In that world, the more complicated the technology, the more likely magic is to have an impact on how well it functions. As the main character, practicing wizard Harry Dresden explains it, "magic can't usually interfere with basic physics," so simple machines, even normal chemical reactions, usually go off without a hitch. But wizards using technology or having it used around them, tend to be walking manifestations of Murphy's Law. Lightbulbs blow out, electronics short circuit, telephones have interference, TV tubes blow, computers fry, complex automobile ignitions short out, and so on. The basic theory is that magic produces an energy field, and the more powerful practitioners "radiate" one even when they're NOT casting spells. So a wizard like Harry can't use a cell phone, and having a modern gas furnace in his house might be taking his life in his own hands. But lesser practitioners have no trouble with such things.

Something like that could make for an interesting discrepancy in a future campaign.

This is mildly off-topic, but I've actually thought about setting a near future campaign where the Force has begun to be recognized as a real thing (and is called magic, psionics, and various other things by people on Earth). Some people even call it "the force" in honor of a certain very popular late 20th- and early 21st-century science fiction series.

I will probably pursue the idea further after Star Wars Saga Edition is released. From what I've read of the previews, those rules (especially the Force rules) should be portable to d20 Modern without TOO much effort.
 
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JohnSnow said:
I will probably pursue the idea further after Star Wars Saga Edition is released. From what I've read of the previews, those rules (especially the Force rules) should be portable to d20 Modern without TOO much effort.

Actually, the SAGA force rules seem, from what we've seen so far, like they would make a decent 'magic system' for a campaign of the sort the OP is talking about. Contra Darth Vader's assertion that the power to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the force, the power to destroy a planet is pretty sweet justification for technology - because the force sure can't do it in-game. ;)

Change the names of the force powers to reflect a more magical bent and you have a system where magic is useful but not overwhelmingly powerful, available but not ubiquitous.
 

Actually, I'll be using GURPS for this game, as I do for the fantasy version of the setting. Magic will be rare. Psionics will be a bit more common.
 

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