Why the "shadow"

[Henry]

And they certainly get a lot more slack from the audiences than your players will give you:

"What? We're trying to free humanity from VR chambers where they're being used as living batteries for a world-wide AI regime?...I dunno, buddy, this seems like too much for any intelligent person to accept on face value!"

To bring a turn of phrase from another Forum:

WHAM! *dig*dig*dig*"



Seriously, I've seen such arguments, but they can usually be explained to a modicum of belief, as long as the players are exercising at least a small amount of suspension of disbelief. For instance, nutrients can be synthesized from processing other human beings into nutrition, at least for a while - it might not last over more than a few millenia or so, but a couple hundred years wouldn't be a problem.

As for cyber-downloading, who's to say how such a process would work, because it still doesn't exist yet. It's far more immersive than mere VR goggles - in the Matrix, it's implied that you are downloading yourself as raw data into the stream.

Finally, for phoning in and out, it's a metaphor, then all the stream of consciousness is doing is looking for an actual data port out of a gigantic computer network. Who's to say that you could be uncautious, accidentally get the wrong body, and wind up imprisoned in somebody else's body, still jacked in in the soup?!?!?


(OTOH, I get Felon's point. The Shadow is the simplest MacGuffin to use to avoid tons of complexity that comes from a worldwide belief in the supernatural. I myself have a harder time with the way comic books do it, than I do assuming there's a force that prevents widespread knowledge.

 

[Soldarin]

Second World

In the Second World campaign setting the First World (our own) rejects magic. It is hard to perform magic in the 1st world, and those who do it find that the world is pushing them out (people around them start forgetting them, until eventually even your mother doesn't know you exist, and doors start opening unto the 2nd World, at first only when opening a real door, or turning a blind corner, but near the end blinking too long will open the portal and dump you on the 2nd World (which is an interesting mix of standard D&D and modern influences (especially organisational ones)). Those that witness the supernatural (and penetrate The Shadow) find that their memories of the event start to fade/get rationalized away. Cling to those memories too strongly and YOU will be rejected (same as practitioners).
Magical beings (elves, bugbears, goblins, etc.) CAN live in the 1st World as long as they keep a low profile magic-wise, and have either fallen for the modern conveneinces, becomming model consumers, or are hiding from someone/something. Return to the 1st World is possible through magic, but is always temporary (number of days) and you can't do it too often or the world will kill you (strange accidents, like brakes on a bus suddenly not working are mentioned).

Great setting, BTW.