Modern Day Fantasy World

What if from the very beginning magic has been known to Humans. As in magical creatures, gods, angels, everything. How would this play out in a modern day setting? Would we be celebrating the first Vampire President? Would there be tips in magazines for fairies to get their shine just right? It's certainly an interesting idea and i'm surprised i haven't found anything that covers this.

The mention of a vampire president reminds me of a note from the GM in an online game I played in:

Okay, let's see, yes you could have an idea of war fought with magic and guns.

Just a suggestion,

Imagine what would happen to Youtube! The number one kind of video would be monster hunting and dungeon crawling!

"Hello there, my name is Markiplier and today, we're gonna slay this dragon!"

I have a sci-fantasy space opera that's a bit like this. It's actually an Unmasked World, though, the Men-in-Black expies decided to go public and reorganized themselves into the protagonistic government.

The protagonistic faction uses Magitek batteries as their primary source of electricity. They also treat "dark magic" sort of how our society treats drugs, so you get cheesy PS As along the lines of "talk to your kids about necromancy and demon summoning. For more information, visit: Dark Arts Resistance Education.com"

Lolwut.

Plenty of people have had this idea already. So many people, it's listed as a trope: The Unmasqued World

A lot depends on how technology and magic interact. I mean, being able to throw fireballs isn't very impressive if you've got an app on your phone that does the same thing. On the other hand, if you can't apply science to develop magic then magic only goes so far.

D20 Modern / Urban Arcana has game rules for that. Such as an extra-dimensional enchantment that lets a gun's magazine hold hundreds of bullets while not weighing any more than standard. Of course, it would take a helluva long time to load beforehand, but personally I have this intense dislike for running out of ammo...

We probably wouldn't use fossil fuels in such a world. Magic is the ultimate renewable resource.

Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series is essentially this. Not the greatest or most imaginative use of the idea, but it does have supernatural beings co-existing right out in the open with reg'lar folks, and talks about there being movements for Vampire civil rights and suchlike.

That does depend on the nature of magic,though.

How have you not encountered modern-day fantasy in some way? Harry Potter, Anita Blake, Twilight (*throws up*), and there's at least a few more high-profile stories that deal with exactly what you've said.

In addition to The Unmasqued World that someone mentioned where magic used to be secret but gets revealed during the story, there's a thing called Urban Fantasy that's about modern-day society ALWAYS having magic.

Hell, I'm writing TWO Urban Fantasy stories right now—Moonflowers and Takotsubo. The first is about The Wild Hunt trying to slaughter an American family, and the second is a Genre Deconstruction about an Asian-American gangster who acts extremely heroic, and how his life changes when he takes a witch into his gang who helps him through his Internalized Categorism.

@6: I'm not saying that's an original idea, I'm simply stating that's what my setting is like.

Hi

I'm trying to do my own urban fantasy universe thing about a branch of the FBI that surreptitiously deals with supernatural threats (original I know) but I wanted to actually work out how to apply US penal code to thing like controlling someone's mind with black magic (it's technically already covered in Title 18, Chapter 113c governing torture). Seeing as I'm from England I have no idea how you verbally quote or refer to the US code with the mannerisms that US law enforcement would use, the way I know how English police would quote English law. If anyone with a background in American Law or Law enforcement sees this I'm hoping you could reply and give me a few pointers in how to realistically deliver it.

Thanks

In regards to the use of fossil fuels, it would depend on how pervasive magic is in the world. If it's like it is in Avatar:The Last Airbender then sure. However, if it isn't quite THAT common, then ordinary folks would probably still have found alternatives. One can also see perhaps why an ordinary type possibly might not want to depend on a magical type to generate power.

There's also the possibility of the magical folks looking on their abilities as their own personal advantage, rather than wanting to use them to benefit everyone. Unless they're being coerced in some way, of course.

That's.. not really how societies work. If you have a unique advantage, you don't keep it to your self or get coerced into providing it to everyone, you get *paid* to employ it on behalf of others. Sometimes in cash, sometimes in kudos, or other privileges.

It's not how societies work, but it is frequently how individuals think. Again, it depends on how common the magic is in society. Go back to small tribal societies and the one guy who could read the runes and knew herblore was the shaman, and he was afforded all kinds of power, influence, and prestige. The traditional image of the witch or wizard is a hermit who lives apart from society and who people have to go on a quest to find and beg for help, and who generally demands service or arcane objects in order to secure that help (and magical folks frequently don't want stuff that makes sense to normal folks). If you have folks who have their own genuine magical powers, they might decide to keep what they can do on the downlow and just use their magic to quietly get what they want, without having to barter with anyone.

edited 6th Sep '16 10:16:40 PM by Robbery

Much of this would depend on the versatility of the power. If all you've got is the power to heal people then you probably aren't going to sit in your tower a million miles from civilization. On the other hand, when you can create anything you could possibly want from the ether then you really have no need of anybody else.

Anyhow, it's a bit of a false dictonomy. Monetizing an ability is the simplest way to take advantage of it. Sure, you could work outside of society but that's a hard way of living.

The Unmasqued World is a trope, sure, but it's not really a popular trope.

A big reason why it doesn't see that much use is that, well, real world blows low-level magic out of the water. In worlds where magic is concentrated primarily through individuals, it's difficult to keep up with things like mass industrialization. Sure that charm might set a house on fire, but you can only make like twenty a day while we can pop out thousands among thousands of guns on the daily. That is to say, unless you want to roll with uber powerful magic (wherein magic was somehow strong enough to keep up with modern tech on a national scale), national politics remain generally the same, if not a bit more interesting.

Where this would change things is on the state and local levels. Suddenly you need laws to govern a lot of weird and quirky happenings. Insurance becomes a hell of a lot trickier when dragons can just come barging into your garden at random. In addition, there will need to be lots of precautions taken to keep public safety high, so that people don't just randomly get picked off in the night. All sentient humanoids will be almost certainly forced to comply by the laws of modern society, which should keep other things under control.

On the whole though, while the historical context might change things heavily, with regards to the modern day it will likely work more as an extension of modern life than an actual merger. Real life, but cooler.

I would have figured that the umasqued world would be uncommon mostly because you normally want a society where magic is secret or isn't. I myself use it because I wanted to write a society where The Magic Came Back. Amusingly, though the main reason it was covered up in the first place was largely to accelerate technological advancement among humanity (other species became over-reliant on magic and became somewhat stagnant).

Espionage and magic terrorism are gonna be a big deal. Maybe mages can't quite keep up with mass production, but spies who turn invisible and can mind trick people, terrorist mages who can't be caught by metal detectors, a teleporting special forces squad. Even with significant countermeasures, International politics will be skewed towards nations with the best mages and small rag tag rebellions are going to get pretty dangerous.

Although likely the strongest mages will congregate to the strongest countries, sort of like what we see irl.

You are right though, magic terrorism is a hell of a lot more dangerous because of just how much destruction can be caused.

Did religion/ ideologies actually matters on these settings? Since it would kinda fun (but complicated) if ideologies actually matters in spellcrafting, just like religion.

Yeah, it would! Maybe "light" and "dark" magic have nothing to do with the act itself, just whether YOU, the caster, believes it to be right or wrong. Also: What gadgets would law enforcement members have to help them counter magic? Are magical people employed by government agencies for specific purposes? Can they even be coerced - can an agent just show up one day and say "We've noticed your unique and skilful talent, and on behalf of _______, you now work for us. Sign this form"? And what about non-government corporations? Is a certain number of magic users in one place outlawed? What about the potential for mind control? Gah, I have so many questions. This whole concept is just too fascinating!

Ok, let put it here: HOW maigc in this setting works? because every "modern magic work" need to acount what type of magic it is.

edited 18th Sep '16 12:52:48 AM by unknowing