The Urban Fantasy Problem

1. Technological paradigm / consensus of collective unconsciousness about absence of magic is a magic in itself, making all unwelcome evidences and memories fade.
2. There is only so much magical power to go around and it's essential for everyone involved to concealing it. Because introducing new magic users would redistribute mana pool, degrading everyones magic abilities.

Setting it in the past would help, as would creating a powerful agency, perhaps with its own magic, dedicated to keeping the supernatural secret. The supernatural should also be pretty rare; having a handful of vampires in the world is much more believable than having hundreds of them in every city.

Also, there are already thousands and thousands of "paranormal" videos on the Internet, and the vast majority if not all of them are fake. If someone did get footage of the supernatural almost everyone would assume they faked it.

Which, to be fair, is a pretty reasonable response.

I completely believe this is how it would go down.

I remember on a bright spring day going to the train, some asshole seemed to materialize out of a cloud of smoke. Dude looked like a rugged black vampire in the middle of the busy side walk with an oversized trench coat and some tough “dont notice me” strut.

No one was sure who he was, where exactly he or the smoke came from, we all stared thinking. Then somebody mentioned “A street performer maybe” and we all just nodded and went about our days.

Am I an NPC Veeky Forums?

>t. New Yorker

Do it like BPRD. The supernatural is a thing and people know about it.

>the major problems with urban fantasy
I think the biggest would be that it's shit.

>in a world with smart phones, the NSA and the internet, how could magic, monsters or other staples of urban fantasy remain secret?

A few days ago on my facebook feed someone posted a video of what was supposedly the earth from space, meant to show that earth is actually flat. It was a halfway decent fake but even with expert production values I wouldn't believe it.

You can easily find people online who will show you "definitive proof" that Obama is a reptilian alien, or that crystals can cure cancer, or that the moon landing was faked. You personally have no way of verifying them but based on your knowledge of the world such things are completely impossible, so you ignore them as complete bullshit. It could be the same in the urban fantasy world; any concrete evidence of the supernatural is just some guy with too much free time and really good editing skills.

There's an ongoing magical effect that erases the memories of muggles after they witness any magical event, even through recordings.

Supernatural elements are very new to the setting, not fully understood, and widely known. Joe average understands that magic shit has started appearing, but even the most knowledgeable people on the planet don't totally understand it.
Focus less on the "masquerade" shit and more on how society breaks down when random people gain the ability to throw fireballs.

Magic exists, and is fairly well-known to modern civilization. Most people just don't know much about it and don't care. It's seen as quaint, old-fashioned, not particularly useful, and a little dangerous. Magic is just generally more trouble than technology. A bicycle is safer and more reliable than a flying broomstick. Medicines and surgery are slow, but they usually work better than potions or rituals.

A good comparison in real life would be horseback riding. It used to be hugely important to everyday life, from farming to the military. Today, it's mostly a niche hobby. A few police forces still employ horses for practical uses. But in the military, horses pretty much only only exist for ceremony. Horses are slightly more popular in the developing world, but you're still much more likely to see a bicycle or pickup truck instead of a horse.

>I completely believe this is how it would go down.
TBF it was even a little more believable then. The late 80's NYC of ninja turtles was a noticeably freakier place than it is today, especially in lower manhattan and midtown. In that neighborhood in 2017 (not 100%, but it looks like the edge of central park at E 65th to me) a turtle in a trench coat would probably draw a couple cops.

Now how those cops would REACT to a giant turtle in a trench coat is anyone's guess.

>how could magic, monsters or other staples of urban fantasy remain secret?

The government is keeping them secret to maintain control of the population. Done.

>TFW the most fantastical aspect of your fantasy setting is the idea of a competent central government.

Really the only sensible way to do it

pic related

>ascended tier bants

I hate how his art style turned to garbage over the years.
Star Platinum went from swole to... That.

> either that or the nature of magic prevents it from being perceived properly by normies
You mean Like those Noice dubs

The government is collaborating with the supernatural to hold the masquerade in place to keep normies from panicking and rioting everywhere.
either that or the nature of magic prevents it from being perceived properly by normies
First two answers are the best ones.
Both can also lead to some interesting situations if the pcs try to expose it (if the GM responds well - I reckon it'd require a bit of talent not to turn the latter especially into a suspension of disbelief ruining shitshow)

As long as you don't describe even the most vague sketch of the setting, you are going to get shit. Like how much "fantasy" is in said urban. Are we talking Harry Potter style bullshit? Neverwhere maybe? Or something in tune of modern versions of Deadlands? How long the fantastic part of the world is around - was it always? Does The Man know? For how long? And so on and forth.
Instead you throw some retarded question that can be best answered by "Depends on the setting". Which is fucking annoying, because there are so many ways to sort this shit out, depending on internal details, but you provided none.

>the pcs try to expose it
If your setting allows for bunch of random nobodies to change the course of how things work globally, there is something wrong with it.
If your setting allows a situation where bunch of random nobodies sway the public opinion of modern world by exposing government conspiracy, at best they are going to hit conspiracy circles or start a new one.

Why people are so dead-sure any sort of conspiracy is going to be revealed when their game is set IRL or something IRLish, while living themselves in a world where conspiracies are equal with lunacy is beyond me.
People don't care. Nobody does. The best way of maintaining any sort of cover is plausable deniability. You can always just shrug things as someone simply being insane or having no proof whatsoever.

Seriously people, I know 90s ended almost 20 years ago, but it was entire fucking decade running wild with conspiracies. Just like mid-70s did. And the general reaction of the public - regardless if said conspiracy was true or fake - was open ignorance. That of course assuming conspiracy in question hit mainstream at all in the first place. Flatearthism is more than century old in its current form and yet it didn't hit mainstream until few years ago.

>911 what's your emergency
>There's a giant turtle in a trench coat and ninja swords walking down the street

That'll certainly have them send a couple of patrols

Not an ambulance for the hallucinating caller, possibly on drugs?

This user's got the right of it. No one gives a shit and if there's ever a breach in the Masquerade, the first response will likely be to throw a shit ton of noise its way and bury it all in some mundane scandal. If, for example, the powers-that-be catch wind of an imminent breach or one in progress, a mindfucked average Joe going on some rampage does nicely to cover shit up.

The only caveat to all this is that no one that can exist on Earth has the power to casually erase cities, call down meteors with a hand wave, raise armies of the dead by mumbling a few words or do any similar feats near-effortlessly.

I like this explanation the best.

>I took a lazy root as "The same history as us, with magic", without magic items ala DnD and such.
I absolutely hate this in settings. Like in Marvel comics where demons, aliens, and superpowers have been a thing since the dawn of time but their Earth is basically identical to modern day. At least have the supernatural occurrences begin relatively recently so timelines haven’t had a chance to diverge.

it's part of why the masquerade ended up falling wayside in my collaborative story.

Plus it opened up a shitload of interesting plot threads.

>Russia, who had been a supporter of a secret supernatural UN taskforce immediately steps up and claims responsibility for founding the task force and being massively openly supportive to pretend they're on top of things while all the other governments were still reeling that the lid's been blown.

>massive pagan revivalist worship throughout the world (including Egypt becoming a warzone as Aten Revivalists, Classic Pantheon Revivalists, Muslims, Christians, and GrecoRoman Revivalists are all duking it the fuck out in the streets wars that make Ireland and North Ireland go "Fuck. Least we're not that dumb and drunk")

>Roman Catholic Church restarts/combines the Knights Templar and the Spanish Inquisition to hunt down any and all super natural entities before nations can give them citizenship status and fan hatred of the paranormal

>Mordred with the help of Queen Mabh of the Unseelie court, has Excalibur, and just nuked the fuck out London after publically executing the royal family 90% of Parliament and declared himself King
>Corollary to this, King Arthur's woken up and is depressed and angry as fuck.

Only if he's not a wizard

The Percy Jackson YA series handled that pretty well. People would generally just misperceive magical things, like a magic sword gets blurred to look like a baseball bat or a cyclops just has kind of a funny face.

DM 101 kid, let your players do your job - don't explain or justify.

>they manage to get a video recording of a grobblewobbin or whatever
>when they try to upload it, its gone
>no explanation
>pictures turn blank
>or maybe a hole burns in them
>their harddrives get corrupted
and so on. let your players throw theories around like mad, just smile and tell them you can't disclose potentially important information when they demand information.

or if you are feeling mean;

>they check it right after, it looks different
>half an our later it looks almost human
>within an hour its them murdering an old lady
>happens to all copies
>hope they didn't post it to the interwebs
>guess they know what it's like to be the crazy man screaming at the police that the old lady in the video was a demon witch as they get dragged away

Embrace your schadenfreude, young apprentice.
You provide the framework, let them drive themselves mad fitting the pieces together. Just stay (internally) consistent, even if they can't see/understand it.

I've been reading John Dies at the End and it's sequels, which just explains things in one of two ways

A) Everything is covered up by Them with a capital T, who aren't human at all, fit pretty much every conspiracy theory ever made and rewrite reality repeatedly to keep everything a secret.

B) The various monsters also tend to either be invisible to the naked eye, very good at hiding/passing for human, or have mind control/memory altering abilities, which helps cover things up.

Even then, the town the books are set in are known as bad areas where weird shit goes on, to the point people will deliberately drive out of their way to bypass it.

>Mordred with the help of Queen Mabh of the Unseelie court, has Excalibur, and just nuked the fuck out London after publically executing the royal family 90% of Parliament and declared himself King
Did nothing wrong.

Well at least you didn't die

Dresden Files is pretty good though.

Jotaro did stop exercising.
Other than that, I admit it's a pity he changed the looks of established characters, but god the art style in part 6-7 is just so fucking good

in England's defense, and most of Europe, the Middle Eastern Refugee crisis thing and ISIS basically ended up not happening in the setting due to various circumstances.

Including Muslims being too busy trying suppress non-Islam religion revivalists like Zoroastrianism, Mesopotamian, Mirthraism, Atenist, Ancient Egyptian Polytheism, Greecian Polytheism

And radical individuals who might have followed ISIS joining up with a Resurgent Nazi Remnant (run by basically Nazi Darth Sion.) and a resurgent Imperial Roman Revivalist group (or killed by said group)

They're really not. It's entertaining in a lowest common denominator way but far from good.

Reading this thread makes me want to play a DnD campaign set in not-Colonial Africa, like some Heart of Darkness shit

But then I realize I don't actually have anyone to play with

While not technically for this topic, I like the idea of in a Super Hero setting a specific Super Hero who either has some kind of mindjack power to enter the internet or incredible memory or something who hacks all data and digital stuff to control and end all information before it spreads. This is more for a setting where everyone knows Super Heroes and villains exist, just to hide their identities and movements.

>>>SCP-wiki.net

I always liked the way it's handled in Unknown Armies.

>One of which was suspension of disbelief,
Checked.
That problem goes beyond magic. How can you have (frequent) firefights in a modern setting? Without hordes of cops and reporters descending on you, making global headlines?
Answer: just ignore it.

Set it in a third-world country. Unless the body count reaches triple digits, it will be on the local news for about a day or two at most.
The US is a third-world country that should work fairly well

Why bother with keeping it a secret?
Just make it out in the open.

With stuff like comic books the explanation is easy enough; their world DID diverge (their basic tech level ya significantly higher), but basically the weird shit in settings like that is so unusual and so inconsistent that it doesn’t really affect everyday life in any meaningful way.

I mean in the Marvel Universe the chances of you even SEEING a superhero drop a ridiculous amount by doing something as simple as leaving New York and it’s environs. Move up to Seattle or something like that and suddenly superheroes are definitely a “somebody else’s problem” thing.

...

That's what the patrols are for

No masquerade, no problem

>How can you have (frequent) firefights in a modern setting
Keeping it low and place-apropriate? Pick America for example. Nobody gives a fuck about 3-5 robbers having a shoot-out with patrol car or two. Nobody. Because that's just how things roll. But in the same time 3-5 robbers having a shoot-out with patrol car or two would make national news in Germany and probably serious repercussions for entire country for next weeks, if no months. That goes without mentioning new laws being passed.
There is also how well you hide the whole thing. It's entirely possible to go to some provincional town in a middle of nowhere, murder someone there and leave, without being caught or even related with the event.

tl;dr a fuckload of factors contribute to how much attention is given to something.

>Neverwhere maybe?
Neverwhere did the whole thing alright. Normaly people just sort of forget you exist and ignore you unless you get right in their face, then it's only until they move on and forget you again.

The illuminatis are hiding everything through total control over the internet. Plus, everything happens in shitty slums/sewage pipes/wild nature where few people are watching.

It being entertainment doesn't make it bad. It avoids most of the flaws urban fantasy is usually plagued by, shows few inconsistencies, and generally handles characters and character growths pretty well.
One of the things that indeed bothered me is that the structure is pretty identical from one book to another, and some characters feel a bit ham-fisted. But as far as fantasy go it's certainly above average.

The standing human government runs preventative precog campaigns ordered and paid for by those 'in the know' about magic, sorcerers and the associated creatures.

Their clairvoyants view local/national news days/weeks in the future for stories of confirmed/suspected magical events/sightings, they then send highly skilled and specially trained teams of government sponsored ex*insert CIA/FBI equivalent* agents to dispatch the offending werewolf, wizard, witch or Will-o'-the-wisp.

Which leads me to where the player side of your urban fantasy will be, noir style detective agencies run by whatever World of darkness playable race you want who use refined scrying/good ole' fashion detectiving to prevent these magical citizens from experiencing the consequences of getting caught breaking the masquerade.

Will expand if there is interest in this

That really does sound cool. More ?

>That'll certainly have them send a couple of patrols
Most of the residential on that block and going north, today, costs about 40x my yearly take home. They don't need to send anybody, the cops are already there just to keep the riff-raff in check.

One of my favorite World Of Darkness characters was a late-night radio host conspiracy theorist vampire. A lot of the stuff he broadcast on his show was legitimately true, but he was a locally-known crackpot, so no one believed him. His superiors knew this and would feed him stories about breaches in the Masquerade they couldn't cover up to discredit them.

He wasn't as crazy or as stupid as they thought he was, and behind the scenes he was trying to amass so much evidence that people would HAVE to believe him and blow the lid off the whole thing.

It's great that you were able to take over after Deb left, Gomez.

Men in Black is literally the only good “and it’s all kept secret by some organization” urban fantasy setting I can think of.
Probably because it draws upon modern folklore.

>The only caveat to all this is that no one that can exist on Earth has the power to casually erase cities, call down meteors with a hand wave, raise armies of the dead by mumbling a few words or do any similar feats near-effortlessly.
They'll probably blame Russia.

Dresden Files is mindless and not supposed to be seen as anything more than a flimsy shack made up entirely of crutches.

Except it’s generally internally consistent. This being a collection of mystery stories, internal consistency means setups for reveals later. Like a sexy bondage scene with your ex, where there is not a condom to be seen.
There are some problems with the earlier books tho, like the idea that Harry had to charge up his staff and stored energy there to use later.

That depends on what he meant. "same history as us, with magic" could mean that magic exists, it is just secret.

If it works like that, one could assume we DO live in a world with magic. Right now. And we're all too stupid to see it.

Dresden Files works like that. Krakatoa eruption was done by a wizard and the Arkhangelsk bombings were done by vampires attacking wizards. Same history, different behind the scenes explanations.

You just have to do it properly.
Like, you know, Johnatan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
Magic has always been a part of the world, it just comes and goes as it pleases, takes what it wants, messes with people, and most folk can't really comprehend it more than old people look with amazement or skepticism at new technology. Magic does great things, but the common man is slave to what he can actually see.
Also even if magic is real and well-known but very, very few can use it (and it's not just any power-hungry faggot murderhobo as it happens in most campaigns) it doesn't fuck up the setting too much. It's like the most wholesome of cape comics. Superman won't rule us, he'll just be a friendly hero.

>Except it’s generally internally consistent.

There are so many retarded asspulls that the only way to understand the series is that he does the very simple trick of writing the book backwards, and it's done on such an amateurish level that it's practically insulting to the readers.

And, he breaks own rules so often that you can't really call it a setting, but just a vehicle for him to superficially bully his main character only for him to asspull his way to success and power.

It's one of the worst popular fantasy series in recent memory, a symptom of a rather corrupt and ailing industry that's still feeling the after shocks of Harry Potter's and Twilight's success.

Disagree. Considering Dresden Files took the time in several books to explicitly point out factors that back up the point that humans are stupid.

Butcher cites missing persons reports every year. 80,000 children go missing each year, that's not including adults. And nobody knows where they go. And nobody seems to really care that tens of thousands of people just disappear each year.

He brings up human psychology, like walls and breaking line of sight makes humans less likely to engage, more likely to write off a gunshot as a car backfiring.

In one of the books, there is explicit video footage of Dresden fighting a werewolf. And nobody believes it. Because the film was grainy (because magic fouls up technology) and it could've been a bear (rationalization) and the original tape went missing (cover up).

There are issues. Like how in Summer Knight a shootout in a Walmart results in a ghoul bleeding everywhere and even a cursory sample examination would reveal it to be non-human. But, again, that's sorta what suspension of disbelief is about, to put in as many explanations so that the reader themselves can rationalize why something wasn't exposed.

Only a small number of people have access to the magic, they have a vested interest in keeping the magic secret, and magical means to keep normies in the dark (eg memory charms, anti-muggle wards).

Provide examples, please.

Butcher routinely takes information and butchers it, showing more of his own ignorance than supporting any point he's trying to make.

He's literally a wikipedia-educated writer. Also, that statistic you have is way off (you might be thinking of active cases), and trying to use it as an explanation why people dismiss very obvious evidence of magic is such a stupid attempt at pseudo-psychology that it's genuinely insulting to any actual psychologists.

These books are written by someone who's not very smart. In fact, you could easily argue that he's a moron. But, at the point where you're pointing out how retarded his fantasy series happens to be and how investing any suspension of disbelief requires shutting off your brain entirely, you're misconstruing the point and purpose of the series.

Butcher writes for dumb people. It's fantasy shlock. He very likely tries to reinforce the idea that humans are stupid so that its readers don't feel alone.

The Xenotechnology Control Agency is an international organization dedicated to the containment and study of dangerous technology that defies our current understanding of physics. Unlicensed possession of xenotechnology is both illegal and incredibly dangerous. This is all the public knows about the world of magic.

So please provide evidence, specific evidence of Butcher's hackery.

Because I provided reasons why he helps people's suspension of disbelief. It is called a handwave, it is meant to keep people's disbelief intact. All you've done is say "it isn't good enough".

There's Roll20 and the Gamefinder threads. I'd be down.

Are you that guy who thought the end of Changes was a deus ex machina?

MiB turned the Statue of Liberty into a neurolyzer. So nah.

Throw the Masquerade out the window entirely. Magic, monsters, and other staples of urban fantasy AREN'T secret, any more than they are in typical high fantasy. Everyone knows that there's elves, because they probably have elf neighbors. Everyone knows about ogres because the guy who owns the gas station is an ogre. Everyone knows about magic because magic has been studied and harnessed to the point of science (or perhaps science has proliferated and expanded to the point of magic?)

I want to see a setting that's the typical fantasy world +700 years or so of development. Not something like Shadowrun, which was our world until it changed. More like "Faerûn 2020" or something.

I liked the fact that it does the unreliable narrator well, in regards to how other characters are portrayed.
Michael is described as flawless in the narration, despite his actions showing otherwise, because Harry genuinely doesn't see his flaws. Same with characters like Murphy and Luccio having their personality flaws drastically played down because Harry makes excuses for them.
It's a nice touch that you notice more when the PoV shifts in side stories.

>Masquerade
Always falls short, or is poorly done. Or is upheld so well, it basically mirror some good 90s noise, but nothing of value.
The better version is that there is no masks, but its somewhat segregated from the public, so it might not be public information beyond the obvious.
My personal favorite is when its done in 3 layers:
1. Public Knowledge
2. Internal knowledge of groups
3. The masquerade is intended to stop spreading of non oral tradition, but nothing more

Reread /listen to the series again and take note of how long Harry's been without sex. Then take note of how he describes women during his dry spells.

He gives more physical descriptions of women when he's been without physical intimacy for a long time.

He also comes across as a massive 'sperger when anyone else has the PoV

Didn't Murphy explicitly say that his behavior was like kids with Aspergers?

Wizards don't exist user, don't be silly.

Yes. I think it was because he almost never meets anyone's eyes out of fear of triggering a soul gaze.
Oddly he's always avoided doing that to Murphy, now I think about it.

>Magic is known about by the government, and the government helps keep it secret
>the government controls/attempts to control magic
>magic is so rare that it can't be confirmed
There's occasionally some kind of supernatural whatever the fuck somewhere that no one can explain.
Does it cause a whole freak out and world wide upheaval?
No, most people don't even hear about it, and if they do either dismiss it as a fake among 1000 other fakes, or just assume there's some explanation for it we don't know yet.

>how would you fix this problem
Telecommunications are stuck at the 70s or 80s levels because [handwaving intensifies]. Also mass media remains centralized enough that shadowy conspiracies actually could control it.

There you go. No modern technology to foil the horror.

One would imagine that they remain secret by using fucking magic. Or maybe magic shit just doesn't get captured by camera.

>One of which was suspension of disbelief, where in a world with smart phones, the NSA and the internet, how could magic, monsters or other staples of urban fantasy remain secret?
Let's compare to real life. Let's say it's all real: Ayys, 5th dimensional machine elves, meme magic, Hillary Clinton's reptilian cloaca, all that shit. With all the smart phones, internet, and NSA bullshit, how would we not know? What about all the people that push these theories, who have their own evidence, sometimes even very convincing evidence? You straight up just don't believe them, right? Because folks like the NSA and the CIA and the FBI and MI6 and MJ12 and the FSB would put in as much effort as possible to make sure nothing is unveiled and wouldn't make people go insane from the existential terror caused by it.

Might be too late but I do want to see more

Wizard detected.

Save it, the dude's just a hater that has no other arguments than general claims he could have made without reading the series whatsoever.

Holy fuck I never noticed that.
I'm a sucker for this kind of details

Shit, now you done it.
You've given him an opening to sperg out about fanboys oppressing the opinions he holds as fact and never backs up.
You'd have thought he'd have learned to change his habits from the past 50 threads, but he never does.