Live in a setting where magic constantly happens and literally tens of thousands of people can scientifically perform...

Fuck off you faggots, I see you two dipshits do this with literally ever thread about magic. You try to derail it into some pseudo debate on the nature of magic as an observable phenomena and how that works out in fiction. STOP IT. This is a thread about the Dresden Files RPG setting and why its masquerade is fucking shit.

>It's because something or someone evidently spent three centuries sabotaging our attempts to verify its presence through experimentation, making it so that whenever we did find something that was real we couldn't make the process repeatable.
Gee, like the White Council, which has gone out of its way to sabotage magical rituals that muggles can do, and has written books that reframe very real things as fictional and/or tell you how to kill monsters? Or the Vampire Courts, who have a vested interest in keeping the kine off-guard? Or the dozens of other factions who have their own reasons for wanting the muggles kept far away from magic?

Bullshit, people don't want to believe. Every single human being on the planet wants to believe that there's something more out there than just the material universe. It's hard-wired into our psychology, a natural result of the same processes that lead to pareidolia. We all think on some level that the world around us is alive and capable of reacting to us as a sapient being rather than an inanimate process, and that will and symbolism and ritual have tangible effects. If anyone doesn't believe that, it's because of lack of evidence, not because we're pigheaded. Harry needs to stop blaming the mundanes and start blaming the very real supernatural enemies of mankind that want us to not know about the ways to fight back against them.

I wasn't phrasing it as a plot hole, user. I know those things exist, the worldbuilding is fine. I'm just saying that Harry is a dumbass (at least in this regard) who's falling for the same confirmation bias that he's accusing everyone else in the world of.

>why its masquerade is fucking shit.
All masquerades are fucking shit. Any time you have a supernatural world of tens of thousands or more supernatural beings who have always existed, and not one rogue actor has EVER managed to cause a catastrophic masquerade breach, no one has EVER pierced the veil without becoming part of it, basic fucking deduction hasn't revealed this massive conspiracy in centuries? By definition that is basically impossible and wildly implausible. 99% of urban fantasy settings have a Masquerade, and it is ALWAYS nonsensical once you start picking at the threads. Just fucking relax and enjoy the books/game/movie and ignore the giant plot holes inherent to the genre. It's like FTL and ubiquitous humanoids in scifi.

Seeing how they don't have any direct head chopping policies surrounding it, and they aren't that financially powerful. I don't see how they would do that. We are talking about tens of thousands of "Paranetter" that can create Wizard level magic work. You know. The shit strong enough to flip over cars and burn down buildings. This isn't something that would just be "ignored," we are talking about a direct threat to your health here.

I don't go on Veeky Forums much but the OP literally ask "what would happen if magic was like X" and we told him what we thought. If you don't like the thread then hide it, you add literally nothing to the discussion.

NO!

>Live in a setting where magic constantly happens and literally tens of thousands of people can scientifically perform said magic as an observable phenomenon that is repeatable.

>No one believes in magic...

While showing a Dresden Files Picture. I think the implication is pretty clear.

In some settings yes. But the way Dresden Files works, you can't just show someone a magical formula and have them replicate the spell. Magic is force of will, while the trappings of magic are just tools for focusing it. And it changes through time. Basically M:tA-lite. You could only do science about the effects of magic, not the practice of it.

It worked better when magic was this quiet thing that hid in the shadows and generally didn't try to draw attention to itself. I lost my suspension of disbelief when it was revealed that half the world was run by VAMPIRE DRUG BARONS WHO SUMMON LOVECRAFTIAN HORRORS TO KILL THEIR OPPONENTS. And somehow no one noticed this. Plus you can't swing a dead cat without hitting some kind of supernatural goon squad. Part of that is harry is the protagonist and that shit naturally gravitates towards him, but...

After a while it's less "magic is hidden, yo" and more "I'm too much of a hack to think about the effects that working magicalness would have on the world and extrapolate the consequences it'd have on real-world institutions." Dresden files has been steadily sliding to the latter since about book 3.

No one is denying Jim Butcher is a hack, probably not even the man himself. I'm more questioning why this shit tastic literary device keeps getting used.

because "I'm too much of a hack to think about the effects that working magicalness would have on the world and extrapolate the consequences it'd have on real-world institutions."

it requires less thinking on the part of the author and it makes the reader feel more special because unlike all those boring dumb normies in the book they know magic is real.

yes.
early scientists also studied magic.
What we call magic are the disciplines that failed to work because they are not real, and remnants of pre-christian religious rites.

The Technocracy!

So the consensus seems to be any sort of masqerade or veil preventing people from knowing magic exists is unfeasible in a modern setting when you have thousands of mages walking around.

What would you say is the maximum number of people who could work to keep magic a secret, while also having the manpower to deal with rogue elements? People in this case also including vampires, fae, dragons, and other magical creatures.

No amount could keep it secret. You would have half a million or more sightings a year. The rumors alone would make people suspect something unusual is going on. Just look at how large the UFO culture is, and that's based on just a few isolated sightings. Now, imagine people seeing actual fucking magic. Any exposure would fuel a massive subculture. Routine sightings would force it out into the open. No, the best you could hope for is a subdued or even fearful public interest. Due to the supernatural being associated with natural disasters and other unpleasant happenings.

There are people who don't believe there are people that think the earth is flat.

There is nobody who thinks the earth is flat save for an outpatient lunatic or somebody who's been smoking a bowl. However, even then that doesn't constitute a belief so much as a delusion caused by an altered state. The flat earth meme is a direct farce promoted by agencies (CIA) and other corporate interests in order to discredit the communities surrounding their most common critics and detractors. That's why nobody talked about it less than two years ago, that's why it's spread around obnoxiously by retards as fact, when it isn't.

t. Tin-Hatter

>The flat earth meme is a direct farce promoted by agencies (CIA) and other corporate interests in order to discredit the communities surrounding their most common critics and detractors. That's why I only heard about it less than two years ago

Fixed that for ya

Two retards (one?) that think people think the earth is flat. Jesus Christ that is fucking sad. I've only been surfing the Internet and hanging out with people into fucking UFO watching for over twenty years. So what do I know about crackpots and conspiracy theorists. When direct empirical data IE you can see the round objects in the sky with the naked eye exists, there is no one other than somebody highly delusional that believes the Earth is flat. Which, I don't consider a belief because having a belief is assumes sanity or sobriety on the part of the holder of said belief.

I'm not even going to into the fact that it is waived about by faggots like yourself that "people believe in it." As some derogatory slur, further proving that it's a hostile meme and propaganda aimed at an entire subculture.

>their most common critics and detractor
>aimed at an entire subculture.
Quit being a fucking tease and fucking name names you fucking cunt.

I'm not giving bad mojo any more power. There's enough stupid shit floating around in this world. God forbid an actual flat earth group get formed.

Fucking CIA niggers

I'll teach them to pull the trigger

You're a fucking cunt

How about a reverse masquerade? Everybody knows magic is real, we just pretend it isn't so we don't have to deal with supernatural beings' bullshit.

That's a good idea.

If the information doesn't go public and is actively hidden from the majority of the population, then that is totally feasible.

Conspiratards don't need the CIA to make them look stupid, user.

By their very nature as supernatural secrets masquerades are rather easy to keep up and the higher the setting's magical power level the easier that becomes.

Yeah it's dumb. But how many people have you met in the real world who take aspirin but don't believe in science?

Remember that they glow in the dark, so they're easy to run over

I was under the impression that in DF there was a large amount of people who do believe, and even actively practise. Otherwise places like Mac's would go bust.
It's just that it's not in the mainstream yet.

No?

Science - understanding rules of the universe and working around/with them
Magic - intentionally breaking all sort of rules to get your result.
So a scientist would build a device allowing him to shoot laser beam, while magician would just conjure laser beam from thin air

You are confusing scientific theory applied to things (thus making them organised and well-described) with science as such.

The Paranetters aren't that strong. The strongest of them might be able to shift a car, but not enough to burn down a building or throw a car around.

That's the whole point - they're the little fish of the magical world. So they created the Paranet to watch out for each other and get warnings of the big fish.

Do you know what's worse than that, OP?

>Magic exists
>Superscience exists
>Aliens exist
>Magic, superscience, aliens, and any and all combinations of the three exist
>These things are widely visible on a national, global, and GALACTIC scale
>People still say "that's impossible" and deny it exists up and down

fuck the marvel movies

Because the people who can do magic actively try and preserve a masquerade, because they know that sheer numbers means that in Everyone Magic vs. Mundanes, the Mundanes will win every single time. Especially given how unlikely it is that Everyone Magic would actually be willing to team up at all.

It could well be argued that if Magic can "break the rules", then in fact that's happening is that we simply don't understand the rules as well as we thought it did.

No one in Marvel denies the superscience or aliens. The government might have been able to cover up Thor and the Destroyer's throwdown, but they didn't cover up the Chitauri invasion (because they couldn't).

Likewise, no one denies the superscience. Everyone knows and accepts Iron Man's existence, for example. Ditto Hulk, and of course Captain America has an entire museum dedicated to him and the super-science that created him.

With regards to magic, you have a point, but then again there hasn't been any major sign of magic being a thing until Doctor Strange.

I've only seen the show and just getting started with book one, and, my god, please don't tell me it's less of an Occult Detective and more of a dnd in modern setting.

Generally every book has a detective/mystery slant in some form.
It just gets less noir over the series, and there are a few quiet retcons that start around book 3.
Also, bear in mind that book 1 and 2 are significantly worse than the rest, though the author did manage to wrangle some of the flaws to his advantage later.
>I've only seen the show
You poor bastard.

Am I the only one who thinks the show wasn't that bad? I mean sure >scify but otherwise it was decent if you haven't read the books.

It was unfortunate enough to fall into the pitfalls of a bad adaption, but without any of the malice or incompetence of a bad adaption.
Things like swapping Susan and Murphy were done for a relatively good reason, but on the face of it, it would seem like incompetent casting by people that didn't know the source material.

It peaks at the book White Night, then steadily goes downhill from there. Eventually culminating into a full blown action adventure setting with minimal detective work going on.

But Skin Game was much better than Cold Days and Ghost Story

oh my, too bad. I was really expecting some really simple and consistent Occult Detective, I enjoyed the Hellblazer comics and the tv show and i thought the dresden files will have that same atmosphere of paranormal detective work.

I mean, at least Dresden Files ATTEMPTS to explain it with even people who have seen something supernatural preferring to either shrug and ignore it or attempt to come up with a "rational" explanation. If you get involved, supernatural things have a tendency to get you killed. And then you have all kinds of instruments that could be used to prove it just malfunction whenever lots of magic gets thrown around.

And fundamentally, the series is pretty pulpy, you're not supposed to think too hard about things like that.

>No there isn't. Lean when you are getting trolled by the CIA.
Something something "when you pretend to be a fool you will find yourself surrounded by fools who believe themselves to be in good company" something something.

>bad adaption
Granted, I only watched the first episode, but my impression was less "adaptation" andmore "Let's pretend we're doing an adaptation by giving the characters same names, then do something else with similar themes instead"

Not everyone knows Dresden Files, user.

then just use a camera from farther back, zoom is a thing y'know?

fuck that man, it gets worse not better as the series goes on.

>No amount could keep it secret

1 is a number

>Society is based around mundanes taking pity on the magical world.
>"Nonono, don't worry. I didn't notice you were magic because you stuffed up. My great aunt was a witch so I have a small resistance that occasionally peaks every few months."

There are, there's a ton of minor talents, talentless neo-pagans, and conspiracy theorists.
For the latter two, they exist in real world numbers and no one takes them seriously.