New Fantasy Setting Seeds.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Wizards as superheroes seems like a fun thing. Around 1940 you could run into Doctor Occult, Doctor Fate, the Spector, Zatara, Merlin (no relation), Johnny Thunder and his Thunderbolt, Phantasmo, Fantoma, Green Lama, Green Lantern, the Black Widow, and Starlight the Superwizard! That's a very incomplete list.

Picture building Supers with the Super Normal rules but add in Ritual Aptitude and Ritual Adept and also IQ+2 in Ritual Magic. Two fisted Mages in a Hard Boiled setting.

Reactions?

Seems related to this thread, so you might want to have a look.

[Astromancer]

A very useful heads up Prince Charon.

[Astromancer]

The Elizabethans thought they were on the verge of a fuller understanding of magic. This attitude was maintained until the 1670s. The Restoration wanted to discredit magic. Although the Royal Society was founded by a practicing ritual magician it helped to associate "magic" with fanaticism and superstition, and to label "magic" a lower class thing.

Why not place a magical revolution in the time period when people were looking for one?

Both the 1590s and the 1640s are great periods to just add in magic. Assuming the breakthrough to a fuller understanding of magic takes place in England there would be a storm of spies coming to steal the secrets.

Read Phil Masters' Thaumutology:Age of Gold. The "rediscovery" of magic can be made to be something that comes from improved classical studies. Many people, including John Dee, thought and improved understanding of classical antiquity would lead to a return of magic.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The Elizabethans thought they were on the verge of a fuller understanding of magic.

This works pretty damn well. Phil Masters ran a excellent GURPS campaign using the Mage: the Sorcerers' Crusade secret history background. The log is here. Sadly, it ended because one of the players' multiple sclerosis got too bad.

[Astromancer]

Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest would also make a good sourcebook.

[dcarson]

The Lord Darcy series by Randall Garrett are a world where Richard the Lionhearted lived and magic was worked out and is common. That might have some inspiration also. Set in the 1960s but with magic as the main technology.

[Astromancer]

The Healed Lands

This idea rifts off of the ending of the film Wizards by Ralph Bakshi. The child Blackwolf had by the elf woman has grown to maturity. Like his father and uncle (Avatar) he is a wizard. He's unlike his father in NOT being evil. He's unlike his father and uncle in rejecting the notion that science/technology and Magic/nature need to be in conflict.

To the land of Scortch Duairc (Blackwolf's son) brings the cults of several gods. The two most important are Flora who heals the land and renews it's fertility and Bona Conceptio who allows the mutants to have children with reduced birth defects, and fewer each generation.

Finding the remnants of Blackwolf's technology, Duairc works to rebuild the city his father ruled. But he isn't interested in war or conquest. Duairc wants to build a city that supports his people without burdening and polluting the land.

As the mutants have healthier children (those that follow Bona Conceptio's rituals of faith conceive children who didn't get their parents bad genetic traits) and the land heals further with each festival of Flora, the new prosperity of Scortch come to the attention of Weehawk. Weehawk's memories of Blackwolf's wars are bitter and his emotional wounds still raw. He fears the changes in Blackwolf's old city now renamed Maidan (morning).

More later...

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The Healed Lands

(SNIP)

More later...

I don't have much interest in straight fantasy, these days (been there, done that...) but I might play in this one.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

I don't have much interest in straight fantasy, these days (been there, done that...) but I might play in this one.

I'm always interested in doing things in Ralph Bakshi's Wizards setting...