WotC Why WotC SHOULD Make A New Setting

[Reynard]

Urban Fantasy comes in two flavors- teen and adult. Percy Jackson would probably count as Teen UF whereas the Dresden Files would count as Adult UF.

Sure. I was just trying to drag the thread sort of back on topic. But even so, I think Percy Jackson would be more likely than Dresden.

 

[Remathilis]

Most people in Ravnica take the Subway (page 109). Thing is the equivalents to what you are talking about are not combat based, so don't appear in the card art...bit they are into he Urban Fantasy tie in novels WotC published and in the text of the RPG book.

The lighting, like teher HVAV, is magic. Still Urban Fantasy because the amenity is familiar to a modern person, even if the occult mechanics are different (how many people fully understand their HVAV system?).

Urban Fantasy is about modernity, not specific technologies. Modernity is a whole, big stichy thing beyond that sort of detail

Again, equivalent =/= actual. That's the point. Familiarity is important. It has to look like our world. And im 1000's of actual mtg art, the best you can name is a few offhand references in supplemental sources tells EVERYTHING about how flimsy your premise is. Find me actual proof that Ravnica resembles our world but with magic or take the L.

 

[Remathilis]

That would require finding a port key and a walk-in wardrobe closet.

Sorry, my closet is guarded by too many skeletons.

 

[Reynard]

Sorry, my closet is guarded by too many skeletons.

Guarded? Mine just hang out in there, smoking, drinking and doing unspeakable things...

 

[Corinnguard]

The point of the urban enviroment is to immediately understand and have expectations for the magic to subvert. It being our world is not a requirement.

True. However, there aren't that many Urban Fantasy stories that don't involve an alternate take of our world.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I can also hop on a plane and physically visit Tokyo. Please advise on how to physically visit Narnia.

How is that pertinent to anything? Being potentially able to visit a place doesn’t make you familiar with it. You are showing a marked ignorance about places you could potentially visit by assuming things like McDonalds and Sneakers are part of general modern experience.

 

[TwoSix]

I have a hard time getting behind this.

True, I have never been to Tokyo, and Japan is one of the least familiar cultures for east-coast North Americans like me. All I know of it is from movies, the odd documentaries and articles I've seen and read, and second-hand knowledge from friends who lived in Japan or visited the city. But Tokyo remains a real city on planet Earth, inhabited by humans keeping animals as pets, driven by cars and working the technologies I know. The cultural differences are huge, but still very thin compared to how a family of beavers would live, let alone a society shared by intelligent animals

That alone makes me a lot more familiar with Tokyo than Narnia even if I had written it.

I mean, I don't mind grouping up stories set in modern-like areas in a fantasy world as falling under the umbrella of "urban fantasy" (although strict genre definitions are pretty meaningless). But it's definitely an meaningful distinction from other stories set on Earth.

The idea that if I don't have meaningful experience with some region of Earth, then it's essentially fiction, seems a bit too solipsitic for me to meaningfully engage with.

 

[Corinnguard]

Sure. I was just trying to drag the thread sort of back on topic. But even so, I think Percy Jackson would be more likely than Dresden.

I know. It's like herding cats. Once something catches a cat's attention, it's hard to keep them going in the direction you want them to go.

 

[Corinnguard]

How is that pertinent to anything? Being potentially able to visit a place doesn’t make you familiar with it. You are showing a marked ignorance about places you could potentially visit by assuming things like McDonalds and Sneakers are part of general modern experience.

Aren't there McDonalds in Tokyo by now?

 

[Remathilis]

How is that pertinent to anything? Being potentially able to visit a place doesn’t make you familiar with it. You are showing a marked ignorance about places you could potentially visit by assuming things like McDonalds and Sneakers are part of general modern experience.

Urban Fantasy is about the modern world. If you cannot point to things that are in the modern world, you aren't doing urban fantasy.

You know what, I'm going back to arguing Dragonlance is gothic horror. It makes as much sense as the arguments you and @Parmandur
are making. Everything is everything and nothing is everything. Up is down, right is wrong, black is white.