Modern Fantasy

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That's all

That was really neat.

Modern fantasy, like sci-fi fantasy, is a kitchen sink, and people tend to like kitchen sinks because it gives them more leeway to pull off shit you wouldn't normally see in a purebred setting. The trick is just how that kitchen sink is thrown together.

>thoughts
boy oh boy, i do love me some modern fantasy. not fantasy with a modern theme and design slapped onto it, but the modern world (at least modern earth recognizable at a glance) with fantasy elements blended in. Dresden Files, Percy Jackson series (greek and egyptian story lines only, with minor adjustments to roman and cutting the nordic part) WoD, high school dxd (the tits are just a bonus for the setting) etc etc. give me a setting set in the american west shooting wendigos and skinwalkers while dealing with the devil at a crossroads or an IT guy finding out his neighbor is actually a vampire trussing him up for dinner and trying to figure out how to save his hide over any fantasy setting (barring Endless Legend)

really, if i could just get Supernatural as a campaign i would be happy as a pig in a truffle farm

I have the exact opposite opinion. Couldn't care less for fantasy elements jammed into modern day, but a fantasy world advanced to the point of resembling modern times? Fuck yeah

I understand, accept and respect your different opinion

Thanks for sharing these!

Depending on how late it is, monsters might or might not have been driven to near extinction by bored militaries who have nobody else to whomp on due to globilization frowning on wars of conquest, leading to a low-fantasy esque age of legends where only unmolested parts of the world/and or criminal underworld still contained them.

That's pretty terrifying.

Does modern fantasy always have to be dark, though?

Perhaps, then I imagine you'd have monsters that adapt to such a world or at the very least some unscrupulous wizard is still making monsters for the military or criminal types and they get out.

So a few are natural (like dire bears/owl bears and shit like that) and then you have Resident Evil level monsters.

In my opinion, no.

There's a bunch more, let me see if I can find them. It's a really cool concept.

no. Percy Jackson isn't dark at all compared to the other ones. highschool DxD is an echii anime that just happens to have stumbled onto the fine grey line of being set in an interesting world that can easily be turned into a semi-dark setting by a very simple few minor adjustments.

Usually, when I think modern fantasy, I think Trailer Park Fae. Pic related.

Ultimately I wouldn't imagine that 2017 in a fantasy world would be anything like 2017 in the real world. At that point, you'd end up with, well Final Fantasy.

I'm not saying that like it's a bad thing, mind - magitech is still neat as hell. I just don't think outright fantasy and our own definition of modern would make sense. The fantasy elements would have to remain a secret.

>Fullmetal Alchemist
The only fantasy element in that is alchemy itself, and the entire story revolves around it. It works for FMA, but if I'm playing a setting, I'd rather it not be all about that setting's particular flavor of magic.

I can't stand that style of modern fantasy. Strikes me as pointedly lazy, just chucking old myths into down town Chicago. Trying to build a fictional, fantastical setting that has made it to a modern or near modern technological and societal level is a lot more interesting and uncommon.

...Why is that guy's head so big in proportion to his body?

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He's asian

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>Iberian country
>Using an old norse name
>Not even changing out the letters they don't have

The paperwork will lead to mutiny, people will get lynched, and when the dust has settled the courts will find it all justified. There will probably be an auto da fe for the guy who choose the name.

And that's the end of it. There are more, but it's mostly the author talking about his OC.
Shame it hasn't updated in more than a year.

>a modern fantasy setting with some elements taken from Full Metal Alchemist.

So you're going to fill a generic steampunk setting with Mary Sues?

Seriously though, kidding, if you're having fun playing in the setting it's a good setting and who cares what I think?

Thanks user, totally stealing the fuck out of these in a modern fantasy campaign I plan on running soon.

DmC is a pretty good take on contemporary fantasy, if simple.

Sounds fun, do you have examples?

The 'theres magic but everything is the same' is a bit shit. I'd expect IT workers but not ww2 or the British empire

Really the idea of war being frowned upon in our modern culture is due to WWI and WWII. Otherwise war would be very much a regular occurrence in the world.

World wars seem inevitable once things get to a global scale

Really the element of FMA that catches my eye is the idea of state funded magicians.

Agreed. You normally see magic users being indepdent sorts which would make sense in a time when a centralized governing body wouldn't even be considered or difficult to maintain.

Any setting that advanced into a modern-ish era would no doubt centralize and control the way magic is used and who can use them.

WWI really wasn't if you look at the circumstances leading up to it. Really what caused it was Otto Von Bismarck's political chess game where he got everyone to make political alliances with one another in order to keep Germany safe from distruction, and since he wasn't at the head of the nation any longer his political chess game fell apart and the world went to war. WWII was inevitable just because of WWI.

Mostly I'm interested in the ideas so that I could steal them for my own setting.

I don't know if anyone has mentioned it yet but The Secret World does it pretty nicely. Though the supernatural elements are kept somewhat on the down low in the setting, you can easily ramp it up for your own.

I would think such political clusterfucks become increasingly more likely as several large and powerful nations interact with each other

Not nessearly, most of the reason why is because Germany was a new state that several nations wanted a piece of because of its abundant resources. Most of the nations at the time where fairly powerful and were mostly focused on fighting one another independently because at the time the major political game was expanding their colonies and Germany was he only nation who didn't have that.

I want the opposit.
I dislike the traditional approach to modern fantasy which is to go with urban legends and horror movie cliches.

Instead i want something like Ivalice, a fantasy setting that HAPPENS to be modern while retaining fantasy elements such as melee weapons, colourfull fantasy races and fantastical terrain.

I do not mind the real world with its history and peoples beeing represented as such a world, in fact that would be an ideal state to me.

Speaking of Endless Legend: you could argue that endless legend is modern fantasy.

Personally i think the two settings that pull off modern fantasy the best are Ivalice and Shadowrun, hillariously enaugh these settings are pretty much the opposit of one another.

Artstylew wise this guys image nails it almost 100% for me, with the exception of fantasy races missing. Have medieval stylistic elements like knights plate and swords mixed with modern materials and processes also modern weapons and gear. Endless Legend does a great job at doing that, especialy the vaulters faction.

What i dislike about common modern fantasy is the "urban" part.
I live in the modern world in a country highly mixed population density, i think focusing on the "urban" aspect doesnt do our modern world justice. Thats what i like about the new Final Fantasy game, theres monsters out there, i think you can go even more Witcher with this: The cities are prosperous and modern, the wilds are dangerous and savage.

Some great modern Fantasy:
>Shadowrun
>Ivalice
>Endless Legends
>Lore Elderscrolls
>Eberron
>Zamonien
>Turok
>Nausicaa
>Mirrodin
>Ravnica

Tho the latter four arent exactly "modern" but have modern elements.

This. I like the brazen kitchen sink more than the secret kitchen sink.

Endless Legend is sci-fi disguised as fantasy. Dust does weird shit and is the epotomie of 'sufficiently advanced technology is no different from magic'

The secret world is more of a setting that used to have a masquerade until it came crashing down a couple moths before the game's story started, when an eldritch abomination came and ate Times Square. And a chunk of Tokyo.

Which might be a good way to handle a Modern Fantasy setting that's set on Earth: All the magic and fantasy elements have either just arrived or revealed themselves, and your stories are all about the two worlds being forced to interact with each other on a global scale.

>when an eldritch abomination came and ate Times Square. And a chunk of Tokyo.
I haven't played through this (probably won't ever), but I blame Orochi.

I have only played up until the completion of issue 10. Is all the secret shit just fully blown open for the hole world to see by the end of Tokyo?

>What i dislike about common modern fantasy is the "urban" part.
>I live in the modern world in a country highly mixed population density, i think focusing on the "urban" aspect doesnt do our modern world justice. Thats what i like about the new Final Fantasy game, theres monsters out there, i think you can go even more Witcher with this: The cities are prosperous and modern, the wilds are dangerous and savage.

Agreed. Final Fantasy 7 did this by having you start within the bowels of Midgar and then after you make your great escape you see the vast world and places like the Chocobo farm and Kalm which was in stark contrast to Midgar yet you walk into the bar and you see a TV hanging on the wall.

I'd have murdered for a Final Fantasy 7 that started and ended in Midgar, just using every sector and heavy urban environments of all varieties to tell the story. I think it could have worked amazingly that way. My favorite parts were always Midgar and the brief return to it.

Yeah, it was a waste to never be able to explore all the other sectors and go between the upper and lower plates. More so when you consider there were areas that were apparently exposed to sunlight and had natural growing plants in them such as Aeris' Mon's house. Imagin if you had to trek through urban jungle that was literally covered with vines and vegetation with the associated monsters therein?

Urban atmosphere needs a counterpoint or it loses its own significance.

Likewise a dense population centre needs a landscape it ties within to give itself an identity. a city is only truly alive with what lies beyond and how that influences it.

I love modern fantasy stories where magic is just another fact of life and it fills niches for certain technologies or improves them

>We will never see ninjas in space with Seals allowing easy interstellar travel or zero-g fights with posthuman soldier/warriors.

When you get down to it Seals are pretty gamebreaking in a sci-fi setting.

Yes, but you can still limit the sphere of influence and scene easily to keep the scope and content a lot tighter. Midgar could have been explored fully, invested in and seen as both the source of the sickness and the only place to find a way to stop it, following mission and mystery across every sector as the seat of power in the world. The country around it and other locations could be seen in brief events, like a venture to the ranch, or a flight to Wutai, a return to the hometown, or a much more frightening finale of having to fly to the crater, after surviving the Weapon attacks on the city you spent all game in. Make the world feel a lot more lived in if it's just a reasonably sized and heavily populated locale that feels like part of a much bigger world.

Yeah, exactly. Midgar was a lot of cities and things in one magitech whole - the urban theme would be frequent, but you had a whole ecosystem and wild variety. Like the the Empire from FF6 if it won and went to modern times.

I generally see the distinction made that what you describe is called urban fantasy, with the term modern fantasy usually being reserved for worlds where magic and whatnot are overt parts of the world that exist outside of shadows and secrecy. Of course this isn't a hard rule and terms are always vague and rarely used strictly like this, but I find such delineation to be useful since they have entirely different appeals.

The hand-seals that allow them to do their techniques or the literal seals used to do various things from sealing away objects to performing other techniques? Or both.

Remember in one of the movies there was an enemy nation that had a modern navy with Carriers with gliders powered by their own chakra with shuriken machine guns.

I love urban fantasy, but my flavor is more like Buffy/Neverwhere/Dresden Files than Final Fantasy.

Really wish there were more novels that were urban fantasy without romance bullshit, but hey.

The Secret World saddens the hell out of me, because it could have been the Vanpire: The Masquerade spiritual sequel I've been aching for... then they had to make it a fucking MMO. God damnit.

Still tried it during a free trial, and the character I made that fends off magical baddies with just a shotgun and a sledgehammer still makes his way into my games.

I think a lot of people in this thread are confusing Urban Fantasy like V:tM, Dresden Files and the cavalcade of Buffy imitators with Modern Fantasy that OP is talking about
I think what OP wants is a fantasy setting that isn't locked in medieval stasis, a typical fantasy world that has progressed to what is considered a modern standard of living and possesses what we would consider modern technology even if it is powered by magic

Personally I took Eberron and advanced the timeline a little over 200 years so you have elemental cars, modern guns and guys with swords fighting monsters because it's still fantasy

There has to be a better name for this sort of thing. Science fantasy isn't really appropriate and like you said modern fantasy implies more Underworld/Dresden/Buffy then a fantasy setting that has modern day contrivances

You have no idea how much of a fucking cock-tease all of this is!
There is just the scant bit of worldbuild, two characters in various poses, lots of little tidbits that hint at a bigger whole, all over on the tumbler site thing that these are from.
But there is nothing else! There is not enough explanation or story!! Grahh!

>blame Orochi
You're right, and nine times outta ten, you're also right without even trying. The remaining one outta ten it's the dragon.

Contemporary Fantasy maybe

Contemporary fantasy

It's hard to forget that knights & castles were "contemporary" and "boring" to medieval storytellers

The "fantasy" was the intrusion of the fantastic into mundane life

I think in a setting with magic on the level of something like D&D, it's kind of hard to make a case for technology advancing as far as it has in our mundane world.

Magic fills so many needs that we've developed technology to deal with. Why develop that technology when magic is accessible? It'd presumably form an industry of its own pretty quickly.

Then magic becomes the technology. Instead of cellphones people communicate with mini magic mirrors that let you see who you're talking to. Maybe you can even go as far as using presdigitation to create a UI to help you navigate how to use the spell.

I mean, if any tom,dick, and harry can use a fucking scroll a simple magic item shouldn't be beyond them.

It's still built like a single player game at least. You can easily do anything that isn't dungeons by yourself.

It's interesting to read about African tribes and how their complete and utter belief in magic meant everyone and their mother casually collected fetishes to do everything from keeping away wild beasts, to flying, to having attractive children.

>The setting of I Couldn't Become a Hero, So I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job.

Yeah, this is the more interesting angle to take I think, rather than just transplanting the magic into the real world modern age.

If you want that kinda thing, you'd probably need a situation like Shadowrun, where magic is very new to the world (or at least, has returned after being gone for a fucklong time) so that it hasn't had the chance to replace the need for tech advancement.

>Spend your highschool years mastering the sword and being the top fighter of your class
>Gain your license to wield all classes of weapons and armors including magic arms
>Get picked up for a premier bodyguard position for tourist to the Wyldes fighting off the random Dire Boar and getting contracts to kill the mage experiment gone wrong #345

At least the insurance is pretty good.

You're not wrong, but it still plays like an MMO--ie, big empty world's you can't interact with and combat that just consists of spamming hotkeys. No thank you.

>NATO reporting name
Nice touch.

I like it if the magic is present and most people have the capacity to learn it. But it is not the ridiculously high level, make continents float, mages are actually gods wielding endless power style magic.

Tone it down to more subtle levels and it works out well enough. At least enough to have a good argument for modern technology existing along side it.

I'm also a fan of magic societies being very underground and hidden.

This is the aspect of modern fantasy that I do not like, or the angle it takes that bothers me a bit. Where they try to turn all mystic/magic things or creatures into something scientifically explainable only.

Where they make vampires a virus, or something purely non-magical. And demons are just a drug addiction or something. I don't mind modern but I want the magical to be magical.

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See but that's something that the images you're pointing at don't do. What we've got here is all that the scientific community has figured out about 'demons' but if you read through it and the rest there is a still a whole hell of a lot of 'fuck if we know' that science has no idea about, like crosses and religious iconography helping ward of demon infestation of the body. They're working entirely off the little they can figure out, but a lot of it is still
>spin three times in a circle and call out the name of your first crush, then drink the water that has never seen moonlight
> "But why Mr. Scientist?"
>Because it makes X happen, don't ask me why, and don't ask how many Timmys we went through to figure it out.

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Then quit posting in this thread if you do not like the genre

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Outside of mages and ninjas hanging around, what would be a good reason to keep swords and steel armor around in the modern era when guns are common?

Wizards still using their same old stuff like wood staves and wants with crystals is generally accepted. But would knights and paladins still hang around in a modern fantasy setting?

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>Then quit posting in this thread if you do not like the genre
That's not the definition of the modern fantasy genre.

Probably some bullshit where magical creatures need to be defeated with old enchanted items. Or maybe something where guns can't be enchanted.

Maybe gunpowder just doesn't work in the setting.

Why? I dunno, magic did it. Maybe there's things that look like our guns, but they're magic powered so a lot more trouble than our own.

Steel armour you could say has an anti-magic component that kevlar/body armour doesn't. And you could do something with the symbology of a sword making it some how more magicable than guns.

There's also the rule of cool. How about you just go with that?

>he uses the english names of anime
Fucking kill yourself, faggot

You are literally everything that is wrong with fantasy as a genre.

How about armor that's enchanted to be fucking tough to crack, and so to get through it people use enchanted melee weapons that are unaffected by the armor's protection and hit it like normal? And there could be some rule that, while guns can be enchanted, it'd just be wasteful to enchant the thousands of bullets people use on the battlefield. This leaves the option of snipers or gunslingers who paid through the nose to get special enchanted bullets.

>what would be a good reason to keep swords and steel armor around
Fighters and Monsters can outpace most modern guns that aren't built specifically to counter them
Wizards can fuck up large areas and have more utility but Fighters are basically Revengence level even without enhancement and most monsters laugh at the average man portable firearm but if you swing an enchanted sword hard enough you can still fuck them up