What's your favorite elements to include in Urban fantasy?

The fantastically mundane (like God's hanging out at a laundromat)

And the mundanely fantastic (magic and shit getting commercial usage to the point of soullessness, like a basic healing potion in every first aid kit, DARPA building golems, etc.)

I'd say that second one is more modern fantasy than urban fantasy.

poverty

>deleting a post because of a typo
you know you're limited to something like 5 deletions a day, right? Save them for when it's actually important, like dropping a post in the wrong thread.

Fairies/ The Fair Folk.
For some reason to me it equates to evil and worse magic that can't be avoided by just not going down the rabbit hole (like lovecraft stuff).
I guess I always love scarier reasons to avoid the park after dark.

Pimps with magic hoes

Bearded homeless men babbling about magic and being wizards. They're just normal crazy homeless men.

Streets that lead to tight alleys that lead to Other worlds.

On the other hand, the old man yelling at birds actually knows what he is doing and if you follow him you'll find out he's the local Pidgeon King.

while i agree with you, where exactly is the line? what delineates urban fantasy from standard science-fantasy?

Pidgeon King's a total prick, though.

A lot of people know about it but won't admit it.

A world where magic exists

AND GUNS

Also its easily relatable.

That's what the Pretender is saying. You can often see him rablerousing in the park trying to get more followers by giving them stale bread.

Cities being alive.

HE GIVES US BREAD, WHAT HAS THE FAT FEATHERED FUCK GIVEN US BUT HOGGING TYSON TO HIMSELF?!

I saw we revolt and cast down the TRUE Pretender!

You know about the Bus Line 66 ? You can see some passengers, but people are rarely seen getting in. Those who get out say that they had a really uneasy feeling inside.

I wonder where this go.

Urban Fantasy is more in the shadows, a secret world that overlaps with ours. A world that could for all intents and purposes be our world, except for this secret lurking in the dark places.

But the Pidgeon King has the druids' backing. The Pretender could be working for the mayor for all we know.

I prefer to keep things low key and avoid mystical conspiracies

>working for the mayor for all we know

Fucking liberal wanker, invoking the Mayor's name like we don't all know he's just a fucking myth.

>implying the mayor doesn't exist
>implying he isn't opening a new tramway line on a leyline to please the fey people

But I've seen him! Lurking in the shadows of the laundromats, the parks, the race track! His many briefcases, each for a different supporter that funded his terrible ascent......I ran when he started to open one, I have no shame in that.

tons of Neon lights and an eternal night.

The Demon. The Monster. The Nightmare that used to be a nobody. I feel like that sort of thing works better in urban fantasy. You have all this modernism and technology, and then a nearly setting-ending threat from the distant past or a psychotic murderer, or even just a loosed monster walks by and throws everything for a loop.

And thus Veeky Forums just makes Nightvale.......Is there a homebrew for that yet? Feel like there has to be one by now

Literally my setting right now. It's set in a city outside of our dimension where it is always night time and all the guns and cars are made of scrap metal. Also has tons of aliens from other worlds who end up 'lost' and end up there too, just like humans.

SCRAAAAWWWVMUDMEN DO NOT RULE US!!!
IT IS THE SKYFATHER WHO BLESSES US WITH BREAD!!!!
DEATH TO THE MUDMEN SCRAAAAWWWW!

Does the setting's armor consist of white suit jackets and pastel shirts?

Once played a Nightvale brew but it was just a talkers game with no real stats and minimal dice rolls. It was pretty good since i hadn't listened to the podcast yet.

Keep the focus on 1 weird, out of place person or item. I'm not a fan of crazy escalation, where there are so many groups and conspiracies you start to wonder how they have not been exposed

Nightvale?

Sounds more like your standard Unknown Armies game.

Simple little charms/curses/spells that interact with daily life.

Buying a good luck charm before asking for a raise, cursing the guy who stole your girlfriend, etc

I just like seeing such things interact with modern society

podcast

I don't understand why people listen to it but it essentially describes a setting.

It was really weird and hypnotic at first, but kinda started to spin its wheels and get up its own ass after awhile.

Don't forget the LGBT shit.

Drastic and sudden incursion of magic/fantasy/what-the-fuckery

Last one I made was the entire city growing legs and slowly began to walk toward the ocean.

Nah, dude, I don't give a single shit if Cecil is gay, I care about his relationship with Carlos being given absurdly more focus and time than the interesting happenings.

Also the "wierd of wierd's sake" style they drifted into.

Fantastic Racism, Prejudice and Stereotypes.

The Dwarves turns out, make great bankers because they always got that little part of their brains that appraises anything by their weight in gold (including a man's life)

The Drows, being much much blacker than your typical niggers, go far overboard over its own perceived class racism by claiming EVERYTHING including the sun in the sky exists to oppress them.

People keep thinking Aasimars are inherently good-natured people.

etc. etc.

Out the gates I found the storytelling medium to be pretentious and boring.

The "LGBT shit" is basically everyone treating a gay couple like it's no big deal. You could honestly replace either character with a female version and nothing would change except people would quit bitching about it. Honestly, it's the most popular series inspired by Lovecraft since Fringe finished, and it does a good job of showing people how to do Dark Humor in an Urban setting.

What's the reference here? I don't get it.

I'm not exactly sure of the timing, but I delete *at least* 15 posts a day.
Often more.

>What's your favorite elements to include in Urban fantasy?
Intermixing folklore elements with the mundanity of modern daily life. I think I was influenced a lot by growing up in a the characteristic grayness of a post-socialistic country while being simultaneously fed with classical fairytales, folk stories as well as classical mythology and of course Tolkien.

I find the idea of a fairy in the vein of Goldberry or the more child-friendly versions of Rusalka's living in a small flat with a in a bath-tub filled with water-lillies, against the backdrop of endless grey concrete blocks of flats. I like the idea of a satyr drinking away his sorrows in company of a bunch of blue collar workers in a dirty 70's pub with plastic chairs and plywood tables. Or a Faun watching through the edge of the forest children walking to a modern-day, glass and concrete school building.

I like urban fantasy where it's not just "let's take generic fantasy clichés and speculate how they would look if they reached urban level" and more of a what if all the folklore ideas still existed in modern day."

Post Modern Magic: Neon Gods, city spirits, rituals that use equally esoteric but urban elements.
-The Deeper you go in magic, the harder it is to be normal.
-Weirdness: The Dumpster that eats garbage, the little boy that blows out the streetlights at dawn like they are birthday candles, the bar down the street that you swear you've seen dead celebrities sharing a pitcher.

A kebab shop run by the secret mastermind behind the plot, whom makes and sells kebab because he think people are interesting.

Oxygen.

A mundane, comfortable place where you get to rest between your adventures. Bonus points if it doubles as a front for badass headquarters.

The nitrate cycle