The Campaign Builder's Guild

I've been asked by my group if they could play a D20 Modern campaign, but in a D&D type setting. They described it as 'if the modern world had D&D instead of its middle ages,' or soemthing like that.

Myquestion is, what kind of difference do you think that would make to society and technology?

Assuming magic were as widespread and available as in most standard D&D settings and was actually handled with a bit of logistical common sense, there should be little or no need for the advancement of technology - it'd just be a case of magic taking place of advanced tech in all of the important areas, i.e. construction, medicine, business, etc. Resources would be readily available with a couple of gestures, and I can see universities being built with the intent to train wizards for very specific functions - and pretty much every "commercial" spellcaster would have access to Permanency.

Conflicts in this case would most likely arise over knowledge and ideology - one faction desiring a magical secret another holds, or strong disapproval of another's laws and ethical codes. Territory is a possibility, but if there is any access at all to infinite planes...

I'd just take a look at a lot of utopia/dystopia books/movies combined with various tales of magical might in settings (such as Netheril in FR), take the "best" features, and run with those.

I agree that a vast amount of technology would be different in how it works, but I don't believe it would be too different in it's application and possibly even appearance. People could have long distance communication devices (cell phones), personal storage devices (pdas), personal conveyance vehicles (cars).

The potential for it making a true utopia is pretty large. Most fighting in the world is over resources; the rest is over ideology. If magic is infinite (if you aren't tapping into some source of power for instance), you're going to avoid resource conflicts.

But, people will always try to profit. Magic would probably be heavily regulated. I see many countries running magic universities. These institutions could be very expensive. Even without government control, I foresee magical guilds/unions which would tax and regulate practitioners, and who would try to limit non-union practitioners.

I'm not sure if you are thinking of using the D&D system for it. D20 Modern made a number of changes to facilitate modern playing (wealth system, professions, ect.)

Now, another thing to think about is the affect of monsters on the modern world. Many monsters would have probably been driven extinct unless they advanced as well. Dragons would be difficult to kill off, due to their intelligence, but they would still have to advance to counter the growing advancements of the humanoids.

Now, since magic can do everything that technology could do, and more, maybe the power curve wouldn't jump quite so much. Magic would be more readily available, especially magic items, but it would still take a 30th level wizard to make an atom bomb.

I think it sounds like a lot of fun.

I'm using the D20 rules, so somewhere in the backstory, there will be a sundering and loss of magic, allowing me to seriously scale back the amount of power wizards and clerics display between D&D and the D20 Modern rules.

What I've got so far is a greater integration of traditional 'monsters' into society. For example, dragons and other flying creatures have largely taken the place of freight and small aircraft, with the result that fixed-wing heavier-than-air machines never caught on. Zeppelins are used for larger passenger flights, and heavy freight.

Automobiles are largely internal combustion (the lack of any really powerful magics would allow steam and the industrial revolution to be largely on-schedule), but pressure from the ecologically-minded elves is ushing new, magically-powered automotives. The power required to make these is immense, and they are still very expensive and labor intensive.

Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, most of the more prestigious schools are arcane universities.

Slavery, Racism, and hate-crimes are perpetrated between members of the traditional 'big five' races and lower, traditionally 'monster' races. The Civil Rights Movement in this universe was largely to secure equal rights for segregated Goblinoid races.

Look into Eberron for a D&D take on 18th/19th century. Of course Eberron is still D&D at it's heart so it's not quite what you're looking for BUT it does have some nifty ideas on progressing the D&D world forward.

Quote from: Elemental_ElfLook into Eberron for a D&D take on 18th/19th century.

I don't see  that at all.

Quote from: Luminous Crayon

Quote from: Elemental_ElfLook into Eberron for a D&D take on 18th/19th century.

I don't see  that at all.

Really? The Victorian sludge of sharn doesn't ooze out of your book? What about the themes of colonization in Q'barra? Native rights in Droaam, Dargun and Valenar? The slow march of corporate pre-eminence (supported by ever more common magical devices) toppling the ancient regime of Feudalism? The ideas of Democracy in Breland? The last ditch effort to form 'faithful' societies in Thrane? What about the expansion of Khovairic societies into new continents and how the more advanced societies dominate and exploit weaker ones?

Some of those I'll grant you; in other cases, I think you're really reaching. I think that whatever Victorian flavors are present are overpowered and overwhelmed by 1950's/60's elements, which is how I think the setting reads overall.

Consider: The Last War is WW2. The Cyre/Mournhold disaster is Hiroshima/Nagasaki-- nobody knows who or what caused it, but the effect is the same: a halt to hostilities because everyone's panicked and nobody wants to be next. Meanwhile, the five nations still hate each others' guts and strive against each other on the down-low, Cold War style. During all of this, the warforged are reenacting the Civil Rights movement. (They are also another atomic bomb parallel, in the "holy crap, we've created a weapon without fully considering the implications, now what?" sense.)

Politically, Khorvaire is increasingly influential superpowers United States and Soviet Union smashed together. Sharn owes more to NYC than to Victorian anything at all, corporate pre-eminence (by this I assume you mean the dragonmarked houses) is equally relevant in both eras, and Thrane's Culture War is a mirror of reactionary politics that never, ever go out of style.

Moving back a little on-topic here...

Is there anything major I'm missing as far as major influences? Remember, I'm shooting for Modern day with a fantasy past, not a fantasy's future, if that makes sense.

Quote from: Stargate525Moving back a little on-topic here...

Yeah, ah, sorry about that. :erm:

I take it what you want is a way to end up with more-or-less the modern status quo, only reverse-engineered so that fantastic elements replace/cause the stuff we take for granted, yes?

I'd take a hard look at wireless internet and bluetooth telephone earpieces as divination/information magic on a huge scale, with most of these personal connectivity gadgets (smartphones and such) marketed as do-it-yourself missive kits: Telepathy for Dummies.

Do you plan to tackle the space program at all? What about splitting the atom, nuclear power, the Large Hadron Collider, and other technical applications of the sort that alarmists are always claiming will result in scientists accidentally erasing the universe? (Do they have magical analogues? Will they potentially erase the universe?)

I've never felt Eberron was 1950's/60's.

If anything the Last War is more akin to WWI than WWII. The political structure of Khovaire post-war is much more akin to 1920's Europe - old empires broken up, new countries being founded based on the racial majorities that live there. The world fell apart after the war and now all these nations, and corporations (DM Houses) are all viewing to gain the upper hand. Just look at how much the Flying Boats issue has had on the structure and profits of House Orien.

Of course in the end, Eberron is a mix of themes ranging from 1930's pulp, Victorian era, Final Fantasy, Frontier-themes, Points of Light, post-apocalyptic, WWI and WWII all wrapped in a 3.5 D&D package.

EDIT: Sorry, I was posting while the call for :ontopic: was called

Quote from: Luminous CrayonI take it what you want is a way to end up with more-or-less the modern status quo, only reverse-engineered so that fantastic elements replace/cause the stuff we take for granted, yes?

Yes and no. I'm fine with some things, but I definitely want it much closer to real-world modern than D&D taken to its socio-economic extremes.

Quote from: Luminous CrayonI'd take a hard look at wireless internet and bluetooth telephone earpieces as divination/information magic on a huge scale, with most of these personal connectivity gadgets (smartphones and such) marketed as do-it-yourself missive kits: Telepathy for Dummies.

Hmm. The Modern setting actually has surprisingly few divination spells with that kind of power. I do like the idea of it though...

Quote from: Luminous CrayonDo you plan to tackle the space program at all? What about splitting the atom, nuclear power, the Large Hadron Collider, and other technical applications of the sort that alarmists are always claiming will result in scientists accidentally erasing the universe? (Do they have magical analogues? Will they potentially erase the universe?)

Space yes, probably a bit earlier than in real life, and the other technologies are probably held up by a significant amount of magic (containment via wall of force, emergency contingents for teleporting the fuel into a sealed area, etcetera).

If you do still have magic, you could have techno-wizards who can block the circuits of cameras or send emails with their minds (I'm sure there are rules for that somewhere).
If you don't have magic, consider the implications on magical creatures who can't access their powers anymore. Many might have been driven to extinction over the years, or ostracised.

Read up on Urban Arcana, the d20 Modern supplement for a heavily magical modern world. That should really help.