Why are there so few modern fantasy settings?

Why are there so few modern fantasy settings?

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It's gay as hell.

Well, let's see: Kult, Delta Green, Cthulhu 90, Over the Edge, Unknown Armies, WOD/nWOD, Demon City Shinjuku, Sailor Moon RPG, Nephilim, INS/MV, Chill, Conspiracy X

There are a lot of them, it's just that most are modern fantasy horror games.

Part of the problem with a modern fantasy game is probably the number of changes you need to make in order for it to even make sense. Either you need to set up an entire secret organization to explain why magic is not well known, or you need to rework most of society to adjust to people randomly being able to cast flamethrower whenever they want. Plus, "modern" tends to assume real world, which means needing to represent real world politics and societies at least somewhat accurately. By contrast, a medieval fantasy setting doesn't need to do anything realistic, precisely because the entire thing is made up whole cloth.

You typically don't see otherwise medieval fantasy settings get into more technological advances because these settings are typically based on swords and sorcery: aspects of personal empowerment. Guns and cars and motors tend to depower the individual, more or less bypassing that whole requirement of personal skill, and games based around leveling up personal skills generally don't handle firearms all that well.

Modern horror tends to get around the common problems with a modern fantasy setting by making the horror more personal and local. You don't need to restructure society entirely just because the house down the street is (actually) haunted or because there is something scary stalking around the neighborhood at night.

Urban Fantasy isn't the same thing.

And probably because it can be hard to make magic & technology exist in the same setting without one of them feeling redundant.

FF15 did it pretty well, but perhaps only because the story was focused enough that you didn't have a lot of time to notice all of the dumb things.

I just think most people trying to do Fantasy are probably actively wanting to get away from anything contemporary.

Honestly, because the two clash like a motherfucker which is why I got incredibly turned off of FF15. I don't mind like, steam trains and shit like that, but the minute I see modern cars and giant turtle monsters, I fuck off.

Not saying 15's bad; it's just..for me, the dissonance is too much. Sci-Fantasy is fine, because in a lot of ways technology is kind of like magic, and if you do it well it can really add to a setting.

But, to be honest, I do honestly think it's because the clash is so just there that, unfortunately, it probably turns a lot of people off. FF can get away with it because of the brand, honestly, but if this were a new IP I honestly doubt it'd be selling amazingly well. Urban fantasy, I think, is one thing, but modern fantasy..you have to do a lot of work to make it, well, work.

It's certainly not impossible, but you do really have to do a lot more than most folks probably want to spend on their fantasy worlds and settings without risking potential audience alienation, or at least making it mesh well together enough that your audience won't immediately pass on it.

The cars were the weirdest thing to me, in FF15. Everything else was standard overdesigned Final Fantasy style, but the cars were just cars. Nothing that streamlined should exist in a Final Fantasy setting. At least put some unnecessary fins on it.

I don't think that the target audience of Final Fantasy XV (young Japanese men age 15-25) are even familiar with what a 1950s car looks like.

I run moé-fied, monstergirl/boy-ified Planescape campaigns (refer to the image to the left) wherein technology is effectively modern-day by way of enchanted items.

The Society of Sensation's recorder/sensory stones can record data, so they are used as the basis for computers, digital media, audio/video/smell captures, and the like.

The Harmonium desires to connect everyone together in harmony, so they have tapped into their musical affinity to transmit data via magical sound waves that pass through the Astral Plane. This is called the "Harmonet."

In the streets of Sigil and other planar cities, one can frequently see celestials, fiends, cordians, elementals, faeries, and mortals walking around with little crystals, bones, or shards of metal. These trinkets produce holographic, programmed illusions that respond to touch and serve as the interface for what amounts to smartphones. The Siri equivalent is called "Mimir."

Belief is power in the planes, and thus Harmonet memes are extremely serious business.

In the average planar creature's household, there might be a scry-levision that receives feeds from the Harmonet in the Astral Plane, a refrigerator and a cooling system powered by eternal ice from the Paraelemental Plane of Ice, and a computer with a quad-soul processor.

Businesses and buildings are likewise rather modern. There are department stores, beauty salons, nightclubs, and more. You might be attended to by a lesser guardinal store clerk (those compassionate Elysians simply love to help people!) as you go about shopping for a lightbulbs powered by Continual Flame spells.

There are no cars though. Intra-city and inter-city portals are a more convenient method of transportation, and for when people do need vehicles, they can always take spelljammers (which work more like 4e's spelljammers in that they can traverse the planes).

Is this a good job of modern fantasy?

Too much effort to calculate geopolitics and how everything would get to that point. It's like writing a novel just to jump from the middle ages to the early modern era to an era where you get cars while still trying to aim for the aesthetic you want, such as swordsmen driving motorcycles. It's why Shadowrun opted for the "Lol you humans are suddenly elves now!" route. Furthermore, modern settings happen on a global scale that is easy to lose track of, making it very difficult to railroad and forcing the GM to account for more things that arise from easier transportation that would otherwise keep the players restricted to, if not a single region, at least a single Europe-sized continent.

Of course, if you lump horror with fantasy, then the amount of modern fantasy settings is roughly the same as non-modern fantasy settings, though I think the OP meant modern settings that aren't derived from Earth. Stuff like modern Warcraft and Eberron where soldiers are using radios, the cobblestone streets have started to give way to primitive automobile traffic, and air transportation has become the norm, and mass media is a thing. FF15 is a bit of an outlier in that it goes for an almost 90s aesthetic for automobiles in specific, wheres the rest of it is firmly rooted in the 20s technologically.

Having cars and chocobo both acting as transport options alongside each other was a bit strange yes, but it made at least a little sense. Chocobo are intelligent and nimble, both things you'd want when off-road in monster country.

The Regalia is pretty overdesigned, under the surface. It can fly for fucks sake.

Harry Potter.

I mean there are people who still ride horses in the real world for that reason.

There's Technomancer, which does a fantastic job... and that's about it? I don't know any other Earth based setting where there's open magic, technology, modern sensibilities and industry.

Shadowrun skips forwards to a point where it's a cyberpunk hellhole, and puts a lot of separation between magic and technology to reduce their interaction.

The most modern thing in Harry Potter is a train that takes them to and from school once a year.

Because most tabletop fans dont want to leave the hugbox for anything different.

Shadowrun always got shat on for having fantasy stuff blended in with cyberpunk (Its not like they did a good job with that either). Most campaigns hardly touch upon anything bit the magic, if rarely. I dont know why but people are okay with the bare ingredients but the moment you try to make a soup its just autistic screeching all the way down.

I hate that most of it is """horror""" because its such an wonderfully untapped aestethic. And while I dont think by voice can really do it justice.

Tl dr: people got shit taste.

People have their autism triggered at the idea of modern fantasy because when they think modern they immediately think it has to be exactly how our world is instead of something that has modern looking aesthetics similar to our world without it having to be built up in the same way.

>Part of the problem with a modern fantasy game is probably the number of changes you need to make in order for it to even make sense. Either you need to set up an entire secret organization to explain why magic is not well known, or you need to rework most of society to adjust to people randomly being able to cast flamethrower whenever they want. Plus, "modern" tends to assume real world, which means needing to represent real world politics and societies at least somewhat accurately. By contrast, a medieval fantasy setting doesn't need to do anything realistic, precisely because the entire thing is made up whole cloth.

Why? It doesn't have to be Harry Dresden or something like that. The fact that there are people who can conjour fire is a known and understood thing in the world and contributes towards it being able to do the things it does. I understand people may not like the look and feel of it but really that sort of back flipping to justify it is unnecessary

Because most people half-ass it in a way that isn't fun. See for someone who knows what the hell they're doing.

Aren't most superhero settings modern fantasy?

Harry Potter setting also doesn't make any sense since wizards don't rule the world, for some reason.

>Harry Potter setting also doesn't make any sense since wizards don't rule the world, for some reason.

You sure about that? As I recall, the few times the minister of magic met the prime minister in the books, it wasn't the prime minister giving orders.

If you need justification to have modern aesthetics in an otherwise fantasy setting how's something like this:

The two major soverign governments have decided to build their relationship with each other and increase trade. To do this they decide to take an old trade path and modernize it to make it easier for trucks to haul goods between the two countires. Not only that, it's a massive public works project that will generate jobs in a number of fields.

Egineers are tapped to start drawing up plans for the construction of several bridges aided by Druids who are familiar with the local people's in the lands between the two countries and help work out an optimum route that won't cause massive disruption to the surrounding nature. The various Wizard/scientist set to work integrating an anti-monster system into the lamp post posted every 10 miles to create zones to keep most of the creatures away from high traffic areas as these are already employed to keep monsters out of rural villages and to protect infrastructure like generators.

Warriors and mercenary groups bid on contracts to provide security for the construction workers and to occasionally go out and hunt for monsters sigted near the work areas to minimize their disruption to the work.

With Way stations being built along the road they act as safe havens for travelers to stop and rest for the night as well as actiong as stations that can send out magic probes to get a good lay of the land and watch for any signs of monster incursion or even illegal activity such as smuggliing and roadside bandits.

Even with the occasional monster here and there the economy is booming and the PCs are able to catch a bus to the next town which is covient because this one will let you carry your big ass sword with you as long as you have it peace tied in it's sheath for the duration of the trip.

One option to pull this type of thing off is actually using stargate/GATE themes. You know, some time after first contact, people are starting to know what's on the other side, trade of material or info, ect.
Essentially 'the frontier' with a twist. Which can start off from wither side. And you will never have to worry about running out of materials because you can just open another gate that leads to a world with a different gimmick.
Hell, isn't there a system/setting for this already? I remember it being related to gurps or some other ting, but my brain doesn't function well past midnight.

I like this.

Because smartphones would ruin Seinfeld.

It all ends up as you driving your Magic Mercedes up to ''MC Druids's'' to order a burger from a Dumb as a Brick Orcish worker.

I'm actually trying to find a system for running a game like this. Right now I'm leaning toward D&D 5e since I'm at least familiar enough with it to houserule it.

Give us some tidbits about the setting

I don't actually have much, sadly. I try to built the setting around the system rather than pick a system to go with a setting.

That said, something in the same vein as Final Fantasy XV would be pretty close. Modern day technology, guns and swords and magic side by side, etc.

I wish I knew

Almost all modern fantasy is restricted to urban fantasy

What do you want out of Rural Fantasy?

How are you going to explain so many races?

Not urban fantasy as restricted to cities

I refer to the "secret/hidden world" definition

i came in here to post this too

Gods did it, maybe? Or they were just always around, same as any other fantasy setting. Even different Final Fantasy games have more races than just humans, after all, even if XV doesn't as far as I know.

As for how they'd react to each other in a modern setting, maybe a less dystopian, non-cyberpunk Shadowrun.

People don't like mixing non-Fantasy with Fantasy.
Almost the entire point of Fantasy is to escape the humdrum of modern life.
When an elf is sitting on a bus, looking at his smartphone it's too real.

Actually, Shadowrun would be a great example of what I'm looking for. I want Shadowrun with the magic but without the cyberpunk.

Isn't that WoD, both versions? Keeping up appearances is important to most games there.

But it gets fun when you start throwing in other races. Is it mandatory for all seats to have a tail slot on buses? Do Pixies push for greater NFC acceptance so they don't have to haul around bags bigger than they are?

I've done some of that. How the old fantasy races start reappearing works pretty well.

I disagree. Your immersion is ruined because you're used to pre modern settings. In the middle ages people made stories about what seemed contemporary to them.

The fantastic intruding on the mundane whether it's a dragon or wizard was part of what made it "fantasy". Things like knights and castles are part of the furniture because THAT was the mundane reality bored peasants lived with.

Don't bite my head off, but does Naruto kill your immersion? Kings, video cameras, yakuza, hand to hand combat dominance, movies, ox drawn carts, DNA testing, giant monsters, tap water, zombies, airships, barbaric childhood initiation rituals, computers, niggers walking on water, messenger birds, and hermit sages all rubbing elbows

I mean shit, even Middle Earth is full of glaring anachronisms

>But it gets fun when you start throwing in other races.

I disagree. Most races work on only a few stereotypes, and those typically translate badly into modern settings.

>Is it mandatory for all seats to have a tail slot on buses? Do Pixies push for greater NFC acceptance

This is the kind of thing most people do not care about.
It would be the kind of thing that was a visual gag in some talking animal movie.

I want to explore, know more of this world setting.

I even want to see a webcomic of this. Or even I dunno, me drawing a webcomic of this. Of course, to be legalese-friendly, you'll need to strip out more of the obvious planescape cues.

GURPS would do very well for this. It already has Technomancer, which is a modern Earth with a magical-industrial revolution occurring when the first atomic bomb tests brought magic back.

But more importantly, it has excellent support for modern technology and a whole book on creating magic systems (and another for how magic effects urban societies).

You don't have to necessarily explain it scientifically. A fantasy setting in modern times still could be creationist.

Thinking about what such cultures would work like is actually rather interesting to me. Language, fashion, food, accommodation...

Naruto was interesting setting, despite the hodgepodge. It is such a shame that the series went the direction it went.
Setting doesn't necessarily have to be really immersive - I can accept some fractures in it if the concept is entertaining.

I can't even think of that many examples in media that fit the requirements. Early Dragonball is closest thing that comes to mind.

Here are two harder curve balls:

What type of Culture would Dragonborn and Tiefling's have in a modern setting?

I think Star vs. the forces of Evil counts. I've been reading a manga about a Maid Dragon, so that might count too.

I think it comes down to storytelling. Even if you have an immersive and extensively thought out setting a shit story is a shit story.

Tribal African legends gleefully thrown in modern stuff without regard for "immersion" because the heart of the tale is timeless. Go to Mandinka villages now and you'll hear about how Sundiata used not an arrow but a magical bullet to vanquish Sumanguru. The Fang people changed their epic by adding modern soccer, and villains who instead of enslaving people as zombies to make cloth in the underworld they use zombie slaves to build railroads to the spirit world.

Kind of working on that...
About this issue with UrbanxModern, i'm handling it a bit like Dresdenverse, weird stuff is out there for most people to see, but unless they experience something by themselves they will ignore this world of "magic" and on top of mass midia works very well.

tl;dr:everyone knows someone that had supernatural experiences, but people usually don't buy it.

Well, about different races, they are either so human that they fit in without much disturbance (you wouldn't call someone shorty and bulky a dwarf in the literal meaning)
Or they are so different they usually "hide" in order to avoid pursuit from curious people (think about people breaking in your house just because they think its haunted).

Hard to say, since I am poorly educated on tieflings and dragonborn to begin with. You'd need to figure out how such species are spread out and how emergence of modern technology and ideals affected them.

I am more on stance that in such setting the cultures would heavily depend on geographical location rather than species, although there would of course be a species-identity of sorts. And the composition of population would be dependent on the history.

I am not very good at worldbuilding, either way...

Interesting stuff.

Yeah, let's ignore the flying car.

Modern fantasy is (or used to be) really big in YA literature.

People over complicate fantasy worlds.

If magic is a known thing then the typical Medieval fantasy setting is actually equivalent to the mid Age of Exploration where some technologies never advanced because there simply wasn't the same interest. Ships and armor and such all did, but other things like guns lagged behind because of fireballs and lightning bolts. When you think of it that way it is easy to make a 2001: the fantasy game by changing some basics.

- The pace of technology is greatly reduced by magic
- Magic develops in the same way technology would, but at a slow rate because the need is reduced
- Every new generation of people are much smarter than the next still, and have better magical ability
- The driving force of scarcity is government (borders, wars, etc) or environmental (monsters are a natural response to human expansion)

Just keep to retrofuturism of your choice with magic. I would use the 70s and 80s: modern day looks like Stranger Things with much more magic, the future is cyberpunk on Earth and Alien in space, the far future is more Star Wars than Star Trek. If you like dieselpunk you make things a bit more grim and militaristic present time with magic more focused on improving life, if you inflict your players with steampunk then technology and magic all all interwoven cog bullshit. Atomicpunk stuff would be more like John Carter or Flash Gordon present day, and the future would be more optimistic.

It's just an easy guide to gove a distinct look and feel to your choice of present day.

When doing modern fantasy you can go basically 3 ways:

-Fantastic stuff may be big, but it's a well secret. (WoD, Harry Potter)
-Fantastic stuff is not big enough to change the world situation. (Dresdenverse, U.A, , )
-Fantastic stuff is big and the whole world is different. (Shadowrun, FFXV, )

Also, bump

>Fantastic stuff is not big enough to change the world situation
>Dresdenverse

Are we talking about the setting where the summer lady nearly caused a new ice age, where Merlin put some "oh shit" countermeasures in Demonreach that were big enough to destroy Chicago, and where the Red Court of vampires basically ruled South America for centuries?

Because modern life is an existential hell wherein your body is so fulfilled that it will likely become obese but your soul is so malnourished that you sit in your office phoneposting on Veeky Forums.

Yes, but all-in-all your everyday man lifes does not change a bit due to magic (mainly because there are always someone to fix the crap that would really fuck up the world), and even when stuff does splashs out they blame someone else (the fall of the red court made many other stuff stir to take up their places, the police/midia blamed it on an violence spree from mobs/gangs territory fighting.

So yeah, their magic and fantastic stuff is very relevant, but it does not affect your everyday life, just like dragons could wipe out kingdoms, but unless you were directly related to that you would harddly notice and could say that the dragon was crap and they probably went through a blight (or divine retribution)

That's true for any fantasy though, and it's why high fantasy being high magic is so retarded.

Anyone ever heard of Unsong or Ra? I think those would make cool tabletop settings, Unsong on the "Magic is real and has profound effects on day to day and global life" and Ra for "Magic exists but its seen as cutting edge science and doesn't really for the most part change day to day life for most people"

fpbp

It influences the everyday life of most people more than magic in, say, Potterverse does.

I believe they would be in nearly same level of effect in the lives of most people. (Muggle hunters, magic creatures on the loose, wizards blowing up bridges, etc.)

The main point here is secrecy and segregation, in one you have two whole different worlds where people try to keep boundaries up and usually one side bars the other, on the other you have an open world, where people tend to stay on their sides of the lines, but "anyone" may step up (see Johny Marconi and Karrin Murphy)

>Too much effort to calculate geopolitics and how everything would get to that point
And yet people still do that for medieval society.

Makes me think why people don't look to FF12 more for ideas on how to have modern concept in a fantasy setting

>You have airship terminals that mirror Airports. The only thing they are missing are fancy magitech billboards to tell you what flight your on and overpriced vendors selling you food and shit on the side.

>Understand and utilize AC/DC generators and have lamps and light bulbs except the light bulbs are made from a special stone that absorbs magic and releases it as light and heat

>Even though they have highly advanced airships they know and have looked into the study of ground vehicles but have to deal with micro mimics that can damaged them.

>Have modern medical and scientific facility as well as healer doctors who cast Cure but also do modern surgery

>They have wards and shields to keep monsters away from populated centers.

If you already have modern day morales in your fantasy settings you can have other modern concepts dressed up in a fantastic sort of way that doesn't mirror regular stuff.

>Modern Day Moralés
Sounds like an interesting NPC.

Dumping a few semi-related pics from a new project by Reno. Since the man is friend with Boulet, that made modern fantasy comics with the Ragnarok series and the War of the Worlds short story,my hopes are up.

He's best with sci-fi stuff IMO, but I really like his style.

War of the Worlds comic:
english.bouletcorp.com/2009/04/24/war-of-the-worlds/

...

Ivalice is an Amazing setting for this sort of thing, it also introduces fantasy races in a nice way, some live among humans, some less so.

It also has a nice flair in which yes it feels modern but at the same time it has fantasy and renaissance aesthetics, its a nice mix and i think its what you should steal a lot from if you wanna go for this type of setting.

It also helps that its whimsical nature and its thought out artstyle go hand in hand.

science > magic

Depends on the setting and level.

Also I don't see why you wouldn't be able to apply the scientific method to magic.

Magic functions art/craft and requires creativity and force of will. While there can be theory and history of magic, applying it is more difficult ordeal that requires aptitude for it.

>I don't see why you wouldn't be able to apply the scientific method to magic.
Then it's not magic. It would become some sort of sixth sense or latent ability. Nothing wrong with that, I've played and built settings where magical things happened due to scientific reasons. But it always felt that they lost a bit of the magical feeling (I hope that makes sense).

Because for whatever reason both developers and players hate "Modern." I've heard excesses everywhere from "We dont know how to make guns 'fun'" to "Players dont want to play in a modern setting because its to 'realistic.'"

I would fucking LOVE to play in a modern setting.
Looks fun as FUCK. Just playing an army or SWAT dude when suddenly MAGIC and ORCS and SPOOKY SKELLYS. Sounds awesome.

Wouldn't it be different? Like there would be a shit ton of different cultures for each race just as there is for humanity?

Better to slot various species into propensities for different class groups in different nations

I dont know, the whole "fantasy meets modern" i find boring.

I prefer a fantasy setting that is a modern setting at the same time, maybe not exactly like the modern world, but not medieval, it could ahve some medieval aesthetics , like dune has tons of medieval aesthetics and concepts despite beeing Sci Fi, but not beeing a neccesarily medieval setting.


I would say something like Morrowind lore era Cyrodiil, which was very much a modern place run in a fantasy setting (too bad oblivion had to shit all over that idea)

Also cultures that include multiple races. Again pointing at Ivalice again. There are different cultures and ethnicities, but these do include several races, of course not all races live in these multiracial societies and these societies are not neccesary multicultural, instead some cultures evolved around the idea of different races perfroming different jobs within that cultures confines.

It stretches people's suspension of disbelief too much to be widely accepted.

Traditional fantasy = accept everything, because it's fantasy.
Fantasy magic and monsters co-existing with modern tech = OKAY THATS BULLSHIT I KNOW HOW THAT THING WORKS
Fantasy magic and monsters kept hidden from the majority because MUH SECRECY = Okay, I can sort of accept that.

There's also the fact that 'modern' changes year on year, so you end up behind the curve. This is the problem cyberpunk has, because everything fucking changes every few years when some new game-changing tech comes along.
Like how Shadowrun had to bring out 4ed because of wi-fi, and then had to abandon commlinks because all the players had one in their pocket.

Here's an idea for a campaign:
Year is 22XX, humanity is starting to develop its presence in the galactic sector (tho still no contact). The HSS (Humanity's Space Ship) Triton is on a mission to survey possible earth-like planets.
During such a survey, the crew finds an ideal planet. Only its occupied. By what appears to be human. Which is downright impossible.

The crew sent some drones down to get a closer look.
One drone was destroyed by a flying beast that appears to weight several tons.
A second drone fell after coming in contact with what appeared as two clouds fist-fighting.
The third drone was struck by a spear that was thrown from half a mile away. It was then picked up and brought to a person who looks like what Gandalf would have looked if he had a steady job.

The players are dropped to the planet via escape pods. Their mission is to gather intelligence while the ship starts its year-long journey back to Earth to deliver the news.

>Fantastic stuff is big and the whole world is different.

We need more settings like this then.

Shadowrun I like but my only problem is how closely connected it is with the real world. Why can't you have it in a purely fantasy world that' has cyberpunk/modern aesthetics?

You can find some works like that:
GATE, Reign of Fire (I wouldn't recommend either), dozen of novels whose titles I can't remember.

Raghnarok began as a gag-a-day about a teenage dragon in a magical forest with the occasional mushroom hunter, and ended in a civil war when some corporation decided to dump magical waste in the forest, resulting in a magical overload.

I get a stong Planet of Adventure vibe from that pitch.

>Too much effort to calculate geopolitics and how everything would get to that point.

Do you really even need to? All you need for a setting is a snapshot of the current situation. The players come in to change the situation, and that's really all that matters to the game. You can develop both past and future through play, so things emerge organically and things become connected in ways not even you as GM would expect.

>Then it's not magic.

Yes it would.

I liked Hunter X Hunter which I think falls under that category, but it's hard for me to say if it really benefited from it

Gay as hell

The problem is magic. You need it if you want fantasy, but at the same time you need it to be different from technology AND from your usual fantasy stuff.

By magic, I intend magical races, gods and every supernatural shit as well.

Is user in still around? It would be nice if he could drop a disposable inbox to talk about the setting.

Most people bunch them with sci-fi, historical fiction, or steampunk. That's how it is.

Not that different than modern combat

True

First post worst post

>Why can't you have it in a purely fantasy world

BECAUSE THEN IT WOULDN'T BE CYBERPUNK, WOULD IT?
Go re-read Neuromancer and the rest of the series.

>BECAUSE THEN IT WOULDN'T BE CYBERPUNK, WOULD IT?

Why not?

It still has corporations that rule society, oppressed lower classes, and the physical combined with the technological.

It's just in Midgard or Gaia or Creation, not Earth. It's in a made up city instead of future Seattle or Hong Kong.

Hey, I am not that person but if you want to contact them then try "abugoflight" on Skype or "Earth Seraph Edna#1648" on Discord.

Exactly. Applying the scientific method doesn't imply perfect understanding but a way to figure something out through observation and experimentation. I.e. I figure out a reliable way to make fire in my hand and after I burned myself a few times I had to channel a bit of magic to help protect my hand and cloths from being burnt.

I mean, just because we don't completely understand the forces of nature and the universe doesn't stop us from figuring out ways to use it and that should be no different with magic as well hence magitech is a natural conclusion of using magic and gradually modernizing.

>B-but muh fantasy

How about this. You have one culture that was so reliant on magic that it never bothered to innovate anything. If it was good for gramps it's good for you. Then you have your neighbors up the way who figured out how to use magic to help build things. Creating Adamantine to build tall long lasting stuctures, Mythril for medical tools that don't rust and are naturally anti-bacterial. Low level mage workers who cast fireball into the furnace for their steam plants that powers their grain mills and eventually someone figures out to put one on the back of a wagon.

At some point, your typical fantasy stasis village is still living like they did for the past several hundred years while their neighbors have since become and new global modern power and don't even bother to crush their neighbor under tow leveraging their economic power to simply buy them out .

I live in farmsville, CT and one day I stopped to get gas. While I was standing by the car getting it gassed up, a woman on horseback galloped right down the middle of the street, went down the road and turned a corner. That was wild lol.

I'd say everything in Lucis/Insomnia is 2015/16, but everything outside of it is all based in the 50s technologically.

Really disappointed there's only Quay and Lestallum to travel to, I was expecting a lot more in the way of cities. But it was an okay game. Kinda short, story-wise. XIII took me a lot longer, and I've been playing VI for quite a bit (just grinding in World of Ruin now)

I'm hoping SE 100% pulls their head out of their ass for XVI, if it's ever made.

Because Western nerds REQUIRE justification. They violently refuse to let anything simply happen 'because'.

They are also convinced this is a virtue.

here's a pretty good one, at least if we count early 20th century as modern

the flying car is literally an enchanted car that pops up once or twice.

I like the idea that science = magic for setting.

Science is a branch on the magic tree that happens to be so successful at what it does where most other branches are so dangerous and unreliable they've fallen out of favor/understanding by most of society.

Cyberpunk is explicitly set in our world, though. That's a defining characteristic of the genre.

Typically escapism is about getting as far away from everyday life and the mundane as possible.

More like RPG nerds. I mean, the people who use pen and paper RPGs.

I don't think SWs ever had problems with the Force, it never needed to be "systematized".

Most people likes fantasy partially or totally because of escapism. Modern = more similar = less escapism.