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Old 07-25-2017, 12:16 PM   #31
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: my new campaign ideas

Quote:
Originally Posted by Irish Wolf View Post
In Waldo and its followup, Magic Inc, the introduction of magic didn't eliminate technology, or cause civilization to crumble - it supplemented technology, enabling devices to do things they couldn't do before (like the flying cars, using an antigravity spell). And honestly, I think I'd rather play in a campaign where magic is supplementing and replacing tech, not causing it to fail - there are still going to be those opposing the process, those seeking to accelerate it, and those who just haven't adapted yet to, say, spies who use crystal balls and have to be stopped by antimagic spells. (Just avoid the high levels of pessimism that permeated Shadowrun... :) ) Oh, and occasional surprises as someone combines things that haven't been combined before, like say a Fireball spell imbued in a BB to give you the world's smallest grenade launcher.
I don't see Magic Inc. as a followup to Waldo. They were published in the same book, and both had themes relating to magic, but Waldo showed magic being discovered in a world of advanced technology, one where Tesla's ideas about beamed or broadcast power had been realized and space travel was possible. Magic Inc. had no such advanced technology and was basically the United States of the 1930s, but magic seemingly had long been around and was well integrated into technology; in fact I believe this was the first work in the genre that also included Anderson's Operation Chaos and Turtledove's The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump.

In any case, optimism is fine if that's the theme you want to explore. In this particular case, it isn't.

Quote:
Which also reminds me, that was my only issue with oWoD - it was so very pessimistic. Every metastory in the entire line seemed to be bending toward the End Of the World - which was coming Very Soon. I far prefer nWoD's meta, where there's hope for the future even if you're undead - sure, as a Kindred you're living a life of despair preying upon your former loved ones and only ever able to experience shadows of the emotions you once felt, but there might be a possible way out, and if you want to pursue it you've got centuries to work with (as long as you can avoid Final Death).
On one hand, I did my best to ignore the metaplot stuff. I was playing MtA for the sense of wide open possibilities; in fact, I bought 2/e revised, saw the narrowing of possibilities and the closing off of the Umbra, and when I was ready to thin my gaming shelves, it was the revised version that I let go and the unrevised one that I kept. I didn't even try to follow the final stage material.

On the other hand, I bought two nWoD books, Mage and Promethean, and detested both of them. Mage: The Awakening in particular left me with a bad taste, because it basically said that the Western occultist tradition was right about everything and that no other culture had any magic worth mentioning. And over and above that, it had a really strong formalist aesthetic, in contrast to the romanticism of Mage: The Ascension—I suppose that fits with the Western occultist stuff, but it wasn't to my taste. And I didn't like the way everything had to fit into fivefold patterns; it felt artificial.
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Bill Stoddard

I don't think we're in Oz any more.
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