Question

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Define magic.

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That's up to you kiddo.

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I imagine that colonies of uploaded minds would become artificial deities

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So that's where robocowboy comes from

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I would have it so the civilization don’t define it as magic. In all likelihood it’s simply extra dimensional energies or materials interacting oddly with our own dimension. These interactions, once mastered, create “magic” in the most basic sense.

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You can't just say it's up to me because it's really hard to define magic so that it's not just another yet undiscovered natural phenomenon, in which case it won't be called magic, but something like "electricity" or "quantum mechanics". Then again, maybe it is just a natural phenomenon, but it just defied explanation for a very long time, and no theories could be proposed, and that's why it became known as magic. Or maybe the culture of the 71st century is so different from our modern culture that for some reason they call it magic even though we wouldn't. Or something else.

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Any "post-humanist" society isn't human, full stop. They're xeno scum that needs to be destroyed.

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Now question is are there still any space gardners around?
That refers to people or entities who would bring life to lifeless planets, which would make them almost god like.
Perhaps one of those entities or even creature survived and is worshiped on that world, and perhaps they abuse it or perhaps they protect there children?

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Would definitely need some BLAME!-style megastructures.

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Surprised nobody's posted this pic yet.

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it's an edgier Swamp of Despair

Ever heard of the Orion's Arm Universe Project? It's a posthuman megacivilization that may help you to construct your setting.

About the magic: I think one group may try to monopolize it and use it exclusively for them. They may conceal it for others like the Technocore of Hyperion Cantos. The Technocore uses souls as its fuel and hardware, while humanity largly is ignorant of that fact.
Also Teilhard de Chardin Omega Point may be an inspiration how magic may develope.

Yes, actually, Orion's Arm is a huge influence on my setting, perhaps too much, I'll look into those other things you mentioned.

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My help: the magic they have found is simply the human soul and they also have found a way to applicate it. For the soul is the only force that can beat entropy because it can create new matter instead of simply transforming energy. That's why baseline human still exist, souls are the new currency. The baseline have no idea that their souls are being slowly stolen from them.
You could also create several cultures and worlds created for shaping a desired soul form. Some human live in paradise while others in hell for this reason.

That may simplifiy player characters, most posthumans aren't aware what's going on so they may them as well.

that's just ignoring his whole description in the book

It's called artistic license

>How would you do a bullshit scale bullshit society that had discovered bullshit was real? I'll post inspo bullshit from my own take on this bullshut until I get some bullshit

Fixed that for ya OP. With parameters like these everything melds to nothing and bullshit and you can do whatever the fuck you want with your anime.

Hey, Princess Mononoke is one of the best anime's ever.

It is and not in small part due to the fact that it has nothing to do with 71st century galactic scale posthumanist societies that discover magic wankfests

I could see two schools of thought forming:
1) Scientist types will insist that it is just natural phenomena and can be explained rationally and logically.
2) Religious or spiritual types, if any exist in the setting, will take it as proof of the divine, a limitation of the logic of Science to describe the nature of the universe.
The actual practitioners of magic will fall somewhere on the spectrum between the two.

Transportation is teleportation - instantly go where ever you want.
Virtual reality is a thing, and people can easily move between it and hard reality.
Hard reality is actually just as malleable as virtual thanks to nanomachines everywhere.
Everything has its own AI with magic powers. This means there's no such thing as accidents.
There are no knowledge checks, because everyone has a Google brain implant.
There are no Intelligence or Wisdom checks either, because the implant allows situational awareness and thinking to be delegated to supercomputers, possibly implanted within your body.
The only thing that really matters is how much the AIs like you and are willing to bend the rules in your favor. And spending most of their time online has made them addicted to social media. So this game is about making bitching Facebook updates - every like you get IRL is a vote in favor of making you the new DM and tilting the game in your favor until the next player grabs the reins of power.

Glad to see your in the minority here and Veeky Forums appreciates some good posthuman sci-fantasy

And Mononoke could totally be on a protected world in a posthuman society, seeded and terraformed thousands of years ago and left to grow with programmable matter forest gods posing as "Nightwalkers" along with Giant talking Wolves and Boars. SOunds like it fits into a posthuman setting just fine.

As a rule of thumb I genrally think as most Disney movies as taking place in the far future. Including the Goofy Movie.

You had me up until the end there user...

The discovery of magic is just the main hivemind giving up on trying to explain magnets to plebs.
Shortly thereafter fanatical scientists start an insurgency to overthrow the complacent hivemind and shit is really crazy.

>Implying that that user had bothered to post in your bullshit thread if he did not care about good posthuman fantasy settings.

I'd imagine it to be kind of anarchic but not in the violent way, just that its very complex. Lots of focus on odd rituals by certain beings. The court of the machine cloud arrives on the dark side of a slowly rotating planet and builds a palace of ice. As the palace slowly rotates into the sun the palace melts into a lake. The shape of this lake is recorded and the court of the machine cloud leaves the planet for their next destination.

I can actually see this being implemented in a couple ways: Sacred Geometry based puzzles given by pissed off malevolent AI god BBEGs in their throneroom to the PCs, launch trajectories for planetary weapons, hacking. The only thing is, this is an ttrpg, and math is already a big part of this type of game, do the players really want more of it?

Some could be in collective cryosleep/astral projection as they await the coming of a New Dawn.

This is what I was thinking already, higher dimensional, bulk space "angels" basically led humanity to find magic.

It wouldn't just be higher dimensional though, it would have to do with the spiritual idea of Onesness and non-separation from NAture, total communion and synchronicity with all of Reality. I figure that's what the singularity was for the first AI gods. Or something like that, I'd love for ther eto be more substance to it though.

But yes, self actuation through Nature seems like a good starting point.

I like your style ace.

They are the keepers, the huggers, the lethal and the loved, they came from near and far in time and watch over the spheres like a mother over her suckled bosom. They are the Caretaker gods.

They are not without their troublemakers though. Those who would take and take from their children, so often from the Shade, hallowed and yet jeered at by the Zealots whom they destroy with great lust and furious anger, all for the hand they play. Washed clean?

Forgot to reply to these:

Yes, If you read my previous post I think this is the general idea, I had the idea of Light
Magic and Shade Magic. But the soul selling, thats fucking awesome, I'll have to include that. At least on some worlds. Baselines as the stock huh, geez you must have seen some shit huh?

Yeah this is my thought too, I'm just not sure how to present it in the rulebook/fluff. As a matter of fact, or more like, "this seems to work, but we arent sure why..."

Yes. Arcane and vast, technological works of art basically. Like they are playing. I've thought of this before too. Utopia worlds where there is only dancing, all day everyday for thousands of years, if you get bored, you are instantly teleported to the nearest world in the Utopia Sphere where you would be most comfortable. THis type of action wouldn't really be available outside of the utopia sphere, where telortation would be in smaller distances (until you leveled your teleport move up to the highest level).

Sorry user anime/sci-faptasy with practically no limitations is just not my cup of tea. Most of those themes I generally like but when mashed up like this it sounds a lot like masturbation and overcompensation to me. But if you like it that's fine with me; I do like some of the images posted (Moebius), that's the main reason why I entered to shit up your thread and satisfy my ego. Thanks for activating my almonds I guess.

Bleargh, ideas like that make me wanna vomit. Everything forever with magic and Shrek. At least the Time Wizards were just fucking around and not taking themselves seriously.

What if absurdism is my way of taking myself and my ideas seriously?

See pic related: a virchperson lays back in a realtime sim of the End of Evangelion as the people Old Earth turn into crosses, an early attempt at depicting collective messianic planetary activation.

Check this out, it might give you some ideas about a weirder post human future.
youtube.com/watch?v=FrNEHCZm_Sc

>the guy that have seen some shit
Have you already thought up some Factions in your setting. Personally I would make it that there is a war going on between three alliances. The benevolent Multivacs, malovent AMs and the opportunistic Durandal's.
The Multivac alliance is a concordium between several idealistic cultures trying to make the greatest possible potential. Can become quite creepy sometimes with the hive minds.
The AMs are solipsistic sociopaths trying to become the last being ever. These are the guys who create souls farms. Many AMs pretend to be Mulitvacs but then reveal themselves.
Durandals are the guys at the fringe and are trying to escape the universe instead of making it into paradise or killing everyone. Paranoids and pragmatist live there.
Write down what you already have thought of.

I'll check it out.

I have thought up some factions, but only those of "modosophonts" people just above baseline. No factions for transapients, hyperturings, Ai gods, etc. If you want, I can dump the link for the gdoc, but I don't wanna showboat in a thread that's doing so well without it, so I'll only drop it if people wanna look at it/what I've got so far.

Those are cool as fuck factions though. Do you mind if I steal em/work into em?

Sure. My factions may make the pantheon of your setting.

I would like to see some what you thought off.

Here you go brudda, here the most finished version: drive.google.com/open?id=1jSJT0Jf5Yh3nw5lVXdOzVhAgwICELX9l4LRSIX9XDKo Feel free to crit me/it, I'm all ears. That goes for anyone willing to wade through that shit.

Is this the Monado wielded by both halves of Zanza?

Now thay you've mentioned it, roleplaying games tend to be a bit (or a lot) UNINTENTIONALLY absurdist, at least in my experience. Mostly due to players not taking the game seriously, memeing and cracking jokes all the time around the table, generating images like that or worse in GM/players heads. I love that aspect of tgs. Though I never played an entirely INTENTIONALLY absurdist game. Not sure how that thing would pan out.

Nice pic.