Harry Potter+Narnia=Me Caring

[erik]

it's problematic for the setting if a child who inherits a wand from a dead relative gets to use adult-strength magic with it and a child without magical relations doesn't get that.

I don't think that necessarily follows. Anyone can get uber powerful magic items, just because.

Ohmygod. Chamomile is still sticking to his guns. Oy.

[John Magnum]

Why are you allowed to change the reason there are no guns in the setting, but not whether or not there are guns?

[erik]

Because no True Scotsman would allow guns of course.

[Sashi]

You can put guns or no guns in the setting. The argument (as far as I understand) is that if you're going to have no guns in a world where guns exist there needs to be a reason beyond "because".

[Chamomile]

Why are you allowed to change the reason there are no guns in the setting, but not whether or not there are guns?

Because whether or not you pull out a magnum to deal with Voldemort makes a big difference to the stories you can tell and the feel of the setting you tell them in, but whether or not the reason is because they're banned by treaty, author fiat, time period, lack of packing time, or wonky anti-physics fields affects the story comparatively little. Yes, even though two out of the five listed either don't make sense or aren't actually explanations at all, they will still affect the stories very little because in all cases the characters end up dealing with similar conflicts and have similar resources. Note: similar does not mean identical, but the difference between having the treaty with the Satyrs come up now and again and having the solution to all problems requiring violence be to whip out the assault rifles is hopefully something I do not have to elaborate upon, although given the incapability of people to process very basic concepts in this thread so far I'm not going to bet on it.

Also note that the average Harry Potter roleplaying fan gives no fucks about the geopolitical implications of Hogwarts. Harry Potter is so pervasive that I can think of two people off the top of my head who I might be able to convince a hypothetical finished game just by saying it's kind of like Hogwarts. Both of them will lose interest if the only similarity is that people are learning magic instead of calculus, and it is otherwise a regular modern high school. The actual people who might sit down and play this game with me consist mostly of people who don't care if the lack of cell phones has no explanation whatsoever, but do care if there are cell phones at all.

[codeGlaze]

Chamomile has a point about people who'd want tp RP in an HP-type 'verse.

Which is why I think what deanrule, emerald and I have outlined/touched on is an acceptable middle ground. It both gives a basic reason why the vast majority of wizards are backwards while simultaneosly ignoring specific rulings on guns, planes and ipods.

A middle ground that creates a solid outline can support a GM who wants to drop in MOAR GUNZ(!) or MOAR POTTERZ(!). Or just run it as-is and enjoy the new spin on the notwarts notnia-verse.

It'd also be nice if we could move on to things like:

• Poking at Grekkian magic more
• Figuring out if non-humans can be wizards
• Working on monsterous races and non-humanoids
• Developing schools/fields of magic

[tussock]

So aside from Reverso Bulleto Perpetuum, you also need the anti-lightningbolt spell that got put on the whole world to stop the Dark Wizard of Lightning from winning, which centuries later turns out also stops electricity, radio, and computer chips from working at all, bummer.


Anything else you people need magic to stop? Because this is kinda easy. Obviously they have steam-powered trains but not steam-powered boats, so there's a global enchantment on the seas that stops boats burning, and how inconvenient it stops steamships working centuries later. Nukes? Fuck no, e=mc^2 showed up on the radar and fission was immediately taken off the rules of physics locally. Exposives in general? No, some dick in the 12th century didn't like them, so that's that, global enchantment, only magical explosions explode, everything else is just fancy fire. Plays havoc with camera film for some reason, so only magical 4d monochrome cameras work.

[Foxwarrior]

also stops electricity, radio, and computer chips from working at all, bummer.

You forgot neurons.

[Voss]

Chamomile has a point about people who'd want tp RP in an HP-type 'verse.

No he doesn't. He barely has a point if he's talking about the Officially Licensed Harry Potter Roleplaying Game [and only barely because it means that every player and DM must take Rowling's indifferently created plotholes as unalterable Word of God]. For an idea that wants to take the best bits of inspiration from Narnia and HP and leave the stupid behind, it has no traction whatsoever. Regardless of what the creators of Hogwarts and Narnia may or may not have intended, it constrains players of Notwarts in Notnia not at all.

This is his own personal bugbear, and this stick up his ass has no effect on the rest of us. Ignore it and move on, the same way you would any other crazy ranting about how it 'Must Be Done.'

[Grek]

It'd also be nice if we could move on to things like:

• Poking at Grekkian magic more
• Developing schools/fields of magic

I feel like that second one is the best way to start on the first one. As mentioned several pages back on the original proposal, magic under my proposed system is powered by emotions. So a good starting point for trying to figure out what spells to have is to decide how much granularity those emotions need and what sort of spells each of those emotions can power. As an initial stab at the idea, I'd go with eight emotions:

• Joy
  
• Anger
  
• Sorrow
  
• Pride
  
• Love
  
• Hate
  
• Serenity
  
• Concentration
  

Also, since magic is powered by feeling strong emotions, a person who feels emotions more strongly has stronger magic. Small children, while "emotional" in the sense that their moods are unstable and quick to change, have shallow emotions compared to those of an adult. Their magic is weaker as a direct result. Growing as a person makes you a better wizard, and the sort of growing up that you do decides what sort of magic you end up being good at.

---

Another thing that should be on the list is classes.

Mandatory Classes at the UN School of Magic include:

• Geography: Basically a combination Geography/Survival/Self Defense class as taught by Wizarding Steve Erwin. It teaches you about Notnia's geography, where various Notnian countries are located and what they're like and how to survive and establish a settlement in the middle of the Notnian wilderness. Taught by a different teacher every year, because all of the teachers are also explorers and adventurers who wander off in the summer to go explore places.
• Biology: Specifically, Magical Biology. It teaches you about the various non-human species in Notnia, both plant and animal. This covers both the crafting uses for unintelligent magical stuff, the basics of the culture and anatomy of various intelligent non-humans and how to handle dangerous wildlife. In 4th year, you get Sex Ed and learn how little witches and wizards are made.
• Spell Design Theory: The Exposition Class, where your character learns how magic works and how to make spells happen.
• Artifacting: This is where you practice making magical items and enchant your wand to do stuff. Every week, you're assigned a new thing that you're supposed to learn a spell to do magically, and you're graded on how well your spell lets you do that thing. It's expected that after the test, whoever got the best grade will share the winning spell/potions recipe/enchantment/whatever with all their friends and gloat about how clever they are.
• Foreign Language: This is an international school program designed to prepare you to move to what amounts to an totally new country. As such, you're expected to leave school able to read and write in a minimum of three different languages, at least one of which has to be from Notnia.
• Academics: Reading, Writing and Science and Maths up to the level of High School Biology and Algebra. Because you'd be fucking retarded not to teach your would-be colonists and explorers how to do science and write coherently before sending them off to go colonize the new world.
• Sports: Yep, even at Wizard School, you still have PE. In addition to mundane activities like running, tennis and football, you also have spell tag and broomstick racing.

There's also a long list of electives that cover more specific topics. Ideas include:

• Potions: Learning to get around the "spells are once per person" rule by using magical plant and animal parts for magic.
• Magizoology: Learning how to get along with unintelligent magical creatures and what uses they have.
• Historical Spell Studies: Learning about spells invented by Notnians in the past, both famous and obscure. Includes how to cast them.
• Flying: You too can be on the Quidditch Team.
• Wilderness Exploration: Every weekend, you go out into the Forbidden Forest and be Survivorkid.
• Transformation: This is the class where you learn to turn into a bird and then turn back with adult supervision. Because expecting children not to want to learn that and not supervising them while they do so is a terrible idea.
• Dueling Club: Learning to fight well with magic. Also an ethics class, because the sort of kids who would sign up to turn other students into newts are also the ones that need good ethical advice.

[Username17]

Chamomile's argument would make exactly the same amount of sense if he was arguing that we had to ban *avocados* and *banjos*. Seriously, just go through any of his arguments at all, and replace all references to specific firearms like AK-47s with specific avocado preparations like guacamole or California rolls and the logic (such as it is) remains completely unchanged. Anyway, let's talk about things that actually make sense.

The thing about schools is that while there are schools that have ancient origins (I graduated from a school that was established in 1348), these schools didn't remotely resemble their modern form until the late 19th century. The British system underwent a massive reorganization after the Public Schools Act of 1868, and the only thing that really carried over from before that point is buildings and bragging rights.

As such, there really isn't anything to be gained from having the schools actually be organizationally old. If they are supposed to be recognizable as a school in the modern sense of the term, they really can't have been operating as such for much more than a hundred years. While there are certainly advantages in the building being much older than that, and advantages in there being wizardly traditions that are much older than that, neither of those are in any way contingent on Notwarts as an organization having been set up before 1948 or even 1998.

Obviously the first instructors were various people who were either born in Notnia and have defected to Earth-Colony or came from Earth on their own before the government program and joined up. So all the first generation instructors learned as apprentices in wizard towers and caves as part of some longstanding Jedi (or Sith) tradition. Indeed, having Notwarts itself put together quite recently makes the influence of millennia old magic traditions stronger because more of the instructors would be the first generation of "old schoolers."

The building of Notwarts is presumably a castle of some kind that was already there and simply repurposed after SG-1 got a hold of it. Either by buying it from locals who had limited concepts of property rights and a great interest in glass beads, finding it mysteriously abandoned, or taking it over after a human adventure slew the resident dragon/evil witch/whatever. We know it had to be that way, because if reasonably competent humans built a school from scratch it wouldn't look anything like a medieval castle. And note: the more recently the castle was taken over, the more undiscovered secrets it is reasonable for it to have.

So perversely, you actually get more of an ancient magical feel from the school the more recently it was founded. A Notwarts that is a brand new pilot program started in the last decade can be expected to have instructors ranting about truly insane ancient magical traditions and have a castle that still has significant "unexplored areas." The drawback of course, is that gives no time for graduates of the school to have gone on to do things (like become administrators or instructors that the player characters can interact with). I think a good compromise date would be some time in the late sixties or early seventies. That way some of the teachers can be crazy old witches who remember the "old ways" but a majority of the teachers can be more normal than that to establish better contrast. Also, some students can have parents or even grandparents who attended Notwarts.

Alright so what if the history looked something like this.

Ancient History: The Great Wizard Marduk gathered all the magic in the world and placed it outside the plane of ordinary men, naming it Notnia.

I think you're off to a terrible start. There is really nothing to be gained by having a shared creation myth for Earth and Notnia. Further, there is nothing to be gained by having had there ever have been any native magic on Earth. Native Earth magic having ever existed creates a whole bunch of questions and sets fire to a bunch of willing suspension of disbelief but produces exactly zero stories that couldn't be told by having people bring some magic from Notnia to Earth.

There is literally no advantage at all of even hinting that there was a point in time when magic was wild and free on Earth. Settings like WoD Mage and Shadowrun use up an enormous amount of their willing suspension of disbelief budget on having a previous age of magic that is in no way consistent with the fossil record, and having a distinct magic world means that you don't need to do that and can spend your suspension of disbelief budget on other things that are more immediately relevant to the story.

-Username17

[Omegonthesane]

I don't see any problem with this (besides that Durmstrang doesn't really have any good place to put "not" in the name; Notstrang? Durmstranot?). I don't especially want to see the Stargate angle banned, because I can just not play it.

EDIT: Well, actually, not quite. Because if Durmstrang only accepts Notnian-born wizards, there is no culture shock.

That's why I included Notwarts as sort of the middle-ground where Earthside students who don't want to interact with SG-1 are allowed to study in addition to SG-1 effectively having its own Notwarts.

Naturally, they'd be seen as the "bad guys" school under Grek's three-school proposal, as they're explicitly trying to train wizards who are warriors as well as explorers, and they're completely willing to flout cultural norms to achieve their ends, but I don't much like the idea that there is literally a School of Evil Magic For Evil People which sees itself as such in any way.

[codeGlaze]

(...) came from Earth on their own before the government program and joined up. (...)

I guarantee you just lost the interest of the majority of John Q Publics that were previously interested right there.

Strict adherence to reality jn a fantasy game built on children's fantasy is not going to appeal to the majority of people who would otherwise want to play that game.
I absolutely think there's room for that l. But moving ahead with the assumption that people even want to READ about a Federal W.I.Z.A.R.D.S program, let alone ignore it and/or refluff it, is disingenuous.

I think you sometimes forget that we are all nerdy geeks, who appreciate stuff like this, but the majority of thr gaming sphere are "just geeks". People who largely don't give a fuck if they have to ignore historical accuracy in order to place wizards in medieval history. e.g. White Wolf.

The majority of design for game like this can, I believe, be completed with out adhering to specific setting details. Such as whether or not Notwarts is a Federally funded school or not. That could be left to a setting supplement.

Clearly there are at least two schools (more than likely three) of thought on setting specifics, and most of the difference is background detail. Getting stuck in this infinite loop is not going to help, when (by this point) I don't think we're going to advance the narrative much further.

[Username17]

I guarantee you just lost the interest of the majority of John Q Publics that were previously interested right there.

Strict adherence to reality jn a fantasy game built on children's fantasy is not going to appeal to the majority of people who would otherwise want to play that game.
I absolutely think there's room for that l. But moving ahead with the assumption that people even want to READ about a Federal W.I.Z.A.R.D.S program, let alone ignore it and/or refluff it, is disingenuous.

The fuck?

Hogwarts is a public boarding school that answers to the Ministry of Magic. That is what government agencies are called in the United Kingdom, which is where it is set. Hogwarts is and always has been a government program.

This isn't a question of how realistically there's no possible way to test and recruit special children from all over and then secretly feed, house, and train them for years at a time without government funding and oversight. Although that is of course totally true. The source material is of Hogwarts being funded by and answering to a secret government ministry that in turn reports directly to the Prime Minister of the UK.

I really don't even know where you're coming from here. I mean, I don't agree with Chamomile's tirades about how we aren't allowed to talk about papaya avocado salad because it wasn't in the books, but at least I understand his point of view. You're coming out of left field and demanding to purge a piece of source material in open defiance of realism because... what? No seriously, what possible reason do you have for dumping the idea of the secret government program that is both a logical necessity and an important part of the Harry Potter books?

Stargate has shown us that secret government programs exploring alien worlds with "magic" on them is totally awesome. I can't even wrap my head around any objection you might theoretically have.

-Username17

[codeGlaze]

The fuck?

Then I'm clearly misconstruing your meaning about certain things.
My understanding is that The Ministry is a government all it's own. There is a world ministry of some sort that handles international wizard issues and that all of these are completely separate from the Muggle governments. Complete with different borders of control/influence.
Prime Ministers and the like are only ever spoken to when Wizarding issues are in danger of spilling over into muggleverse. They are not subservient to Muggle governments.

They way I've been reading losts about earth settlements and the like conjured up images of Avatar-like Muggle settlements in Notnia. Which my brain sort of rebelled against.

[virgil]

I presumed it to be one of emphasis. Having people in military uniforms wandering the campus, magic accidents investigated by special forces, and the like is counter to the experience. And the impression is that the final product is going to dedicate a fair portion of text to describing the political/technological presence of modern governments. They want dour semi-antagonists like Snape, not military types like The Brigadier.

Take the description of random smattering of humans (including Marduk) that found themselves in Notnia before the founding of Notwarts. If you inflate their importance and influence without actually giving them real accomplishments, that will likely appease them. Hell, go ahead and have the lion's share of the setting's history be written as excerpts of the in-universe propaganda that students have to read in Historical Spell Studies.

[Username17]

The fuck?

Then I'm clearly misconstruing your meaning about certain things.
My understanding is that The Ministry is a government all it's own. There is a world ministry of some sort that handles international wizard issues and that all of these are completely separate from the Muggle governments. Complete with different borders of control/influence.
Prime Ministers and the like are only ever spoken to when Wizarding issues are in danger of spilling over into muggleverse. They are not subservient to Muggle governments.

They way I've been reading losts about earth settlements and the like conjured up images of Avatar-like Muggle settlements in Notnia. Which my brain sort of rebelled against.

That is more like what I'm talking about (and more like the Stargate Program). In actual Harry Potter, the Ministry of Magic really is just a secret part of the British government that gives periodic reports to Prime Minister John Major. My vision would have it be more like the International Space Station or the Stargate Program, where the bureaucrats and personnel are drawn from various specialists from many different participating countries. Because the school is a colony on another fucking planet instead of being in Scotland.

Although I seriously don't understand why you'd freak out about Avatar-like Earth settlements in Notnia. I mean, how the fuck do you expect a school with hundreds if not thousands or even hundreds of thousands of children to function without an attached city full of people with regular jobs? I mean, someone has to wash dishes, produce food, fix doors, do laundry, and all that other crap. For example, Westminster School has 105 adult staff for 750 students, and it's physically in London. It doesn't need to have people guarantying the food supply chain because they can fucking walk to Tesco. It doesn't need to have people cultivating the local park, handling the trash, generating electric power, maintaining a supply of clean water, or any of that other crap because it's in the middle of one of the largest cities in Europe and not an independent colony on a hostile alien world.

Depending on how big of an academy city we're talking about, the required support staff will measure in the thousands or millions. And yes, it's pretty absurd to think that they wouldn't mostly be muggles. Why the fucking fuck would you have magician plumbers and magician construction contractors?

-Username17

[Mask_De_H]

You need magician plumbers and contractors to fight the sentient mushrooms, turtles, dragons and apes with a thing for blondes in Notnia. :V

E: Y'all keep circling the wagons over the logical implementation of modern stuff in Notnia, when textually most of it is background and the rest can be cordoned off to "higher level" play. You don't need to make sweeping rationalizations for why tech is badwrong when the Larry Bitter portion of the game emphasizes full magical immersion via studies.

[codeGlaze]

That's because, in my imagining, Wizard's had already fled to Notnia.
Instead of hundreds of thousands of kids in one school, there are multiple schools strewn through out Notnia as anchors for consistent portals to Earth. They are scattered because their locations are roughly tied to their point of origin on earth.

So, as in HP, there really is a british school, french school, german school, etc.
There may be one or two 'big' wizard towns or a city, but the wizard population is small and they are spread out... because distance means very little to wizards with access to floo powder.

So you really would have a wizard tower just popping haphazardly out of a forest. Or hanging off of a cliff. Or a small enclave of homes with a wall around it for a family of wizards.

This has basically already been posited a few times, with different historical reasons for the Wizards fleeing to Notnia.
I believe it still allows for exploration teams and Earth relations with out being Avatar.

edit: While keeping more of the HP asthetic.*

[Username17]

I believe it still allows for exploration teams and Earth relations with out being Avatar.

Well, you're wrong. Whether the enclaves are big or small, the simple fact that you can go to the muggle occupied zone out into the uncharted magic world full of magic means that you're basically doing Avatar whether you like it or not. You don't have to do the dances with (blue) wolves plotline if you don't want, but you are moving back and forth between a human world enclave and the magic world, and that is going to make it Avatarish no matter what else you do. Fuck, even if you don't have a proper human enclave in Notnia at all, because you automatically have the giant muggle enclave of Earth that you come from on Summer Break. The motif is unavoidable.

And I'm really not sure why you'd even want to avoid it. If you really didn't want players to pack their bags on Earth and bring Earth stuff to magic land why the fuck have them be from Earth in the first fucking place? That's a question I have yet to get a straight answer to: if you don't want the experience of taking a suitcase full of Earth stuff into magic land, why have the player characters be Earth children at all? You could just have the setting be the Thayan Magic Academy or something. The characters are Earth Children entirely so that they can bring Earth knowledge and Earth stuff when they go to magic land. And that is kind of Avatarish feeling by definition.

They are scattered because their locations are roughly tied to their point of origin on earth.

So, as in HP, there really is a british school, french school, german school, etc.

I think you'd very obviously want to have a lot less schools than there are countries. Setting up a school on another planet is a fucking huge amount of resources and it doesn't make any sense for every country to have done it even if they all knew how.

That being said, there are real advantages to having several different schools in Notnia at the same time. It means you can have competitions between schools. It means that you can introduce new characters who are the same age as the other player characters by having them transfer in, and equally importantly that you can have characters leave the game without dying by having them transfer out.

So you'd definitely want multiple campuses that each have their own staff and some of their own traditions based on the fact that different sorcerers are on staff and they have different magical stuff in their areas and specialize in different potions. But I can't see how having more than ten would be an advantage to anyone. The more campuses there are, the less characterization each one can get.

So you have NATO set up a few campuses, and you have the Warsaw Pact set up a few campuses. And while the cold war was still raging the different campuses were undermining each other in secret, but now the programs are merged. There can be lots of bad blood between individual instructors from Lithuania and France that is mostly lost on the present day students because the cold war ended ten years before these students
were even born.

But you still wouldn't have a German or a Slovakian school. You'd probably have somewhere between 6 and 10 campuses total, and about half of them would have originally been staffed by Warsaw Pact Cosmonauts and the other half originally staffed by NATO Astronauts. The big question is whether you'd have one or more "rogue" schools that refused to join up with the joint mission and thus don't show up for volleyball tournaments or send transfer students back and forth but do act as a source of villains to meet later on. Obvious choices for that dubious honor would be North Korea and the PRC.

Narratively, you want the old Warsaw Pact schools to throw out with at the very least some Eastern Europeans, some Central Asians, and some East Asians. So putting one somewhere in Eastern Europe, one somewhere in Kazakhstan or something, and a third around Vladivostok or the Jewish Semi-autonomous Oblast would make sense. The NATO ones want at least a North American portal, a European portal, and a Latin American portal. Either or both could have an African portal or a Southeast Asian portal. In any case, like in the international space program, the main languages are English and Russian, and it's expected that everyone will learn one or both of those regardless of what their native language is.

-Username17

[RadiantPhoenix]

The more I hear people's arguments against "the Stargate version", the more I dislike them.

[Stinktopus]

In a stereotypical fantasy world where only the rarest fraction of people can do magic and they jealously guard their power, it makes sense for technology to continue developing.

In an HP-verse where NOT doing magic is like the equivalent of having Down's Syndrome, then it doesn't make sense for people to bother with technology beyond a certain level.

Nobody gets a gun and goes after Voldemort because the step of actually getting a gun (and a bullet) is redundant in a world where you can just wave the wand you already have and fire death rays at Voldemort. Especially when you don't have to reload your wand with anything besides your constantly replenishing personal well of Fucktastic Magik Energy.

"But what about getting a sniper rifle and dropping him from a mile away?!"

If the DM is letting you play a Navy SEAL or Army Ranger who can reliably take out a target from a mile away with a sniper rifle, then you already aren't playing Potnia right. The problem with sniper rifles and attack helicopters is that they require skill to use, and, if your character concept is "magic school student," your character doesn't have those skills.

"But... but... an NPC with a helicopter..."

Nobody living on Earth with their own attack helicopter is going to take that helicopter to Notnia. Notnians can conjure surface to air missiles from nothing. At least if another Earthling is going to shoot down your helicopter, they have to spend money. Notnians will just wave a stick and make a downdraft knock you out of the sky.

[Fuchs]

And I'm really not sure why you'd even want to avoid it. If you really didn't want players to pack their bags on Earth and bring Earth stuff to magic land why the fuck have them be from Earth in the first fucking place? That's a question I have yet to get a straight answer to: if you don't want the experience of taking a suitcase full of Earth stuff into magic land, why have the player characters be Earth children at all? You could just have the setting be the Thayan Magic Academy or something. The characters are Earth Children entirely so that they can bring Earth knowledge and Earth stuff when they go to magic land. And that is kind of Avatarish feeling by definition.

That pretty much killed all the "but there should be no tech at all" Argument.

In a stereotypical fantasy world where only the rarest fraction of people can do magic and they jealously guard their power, it makes sense for technology to continue developing.

In an HP-verse where NOT doing magic is like the equivalent of having Down's Syndrome, then it doesn't make sense for people to bother with technology beyond a certain level.

Nobody gets a gun and goes after Voldemort because the step of actually getting a gun (and a bullet) is redundant in a world where you can just wave the wand you already have and fire death rays at Voldemort. Especially when you don't have to reload your wand with anything besides your constantly replenishing personal well of Fucktastic Magik Energy.

In HP verse, Technology did develop. It is our world, after all. It makes no sense not to deal with tech - but HP wizards have no sense.

Also, guns are superiour to wands. They fire faster, have stronger effects that most spells, and much better range.

Finally, you don't need sniper training to hit a stationary target at 300 meters. A 12 year old child can do that after 5 minutes of instruction with a modern assault rifle. I know that because that happens every fall over here at the "Knabenschiessen".

[Cyberzombie]

And I'm really not sure why you'd even want to avoid it. If you really didn't want players to pack their bags on Earth and bring Earth stuff to magic land why the fuck have them be from Earth in the first fucking place? That's a question I have yet to get a straight answer to: if you don't want the experience of taking a suitcase full of Earth stuff into magic land, why have the player characters be Earth children at all? You could just have the setting be the Thayan Magic Academy or something. The characters are Earth Children entirely so that they can bring Earth knowledge and Earth stuff when they go to magic land. And that is kind of Avatarish feeling by definition.

In the stories, the characters are Earth children to connect to the reader. Kids reading it can think the characters could easily be them. They might find a mysterious wardrobe that transports them to Narnia, or they might discover that their parents were really wizards.

The story is about kids fighting with magic and swords, not about Harry Potter using his invisibility cloak to steal modern military hardware and take out Voldemort with a drone strike.

While the fight of technology versus magic may well be an interesting story to tell, it's not the story that HP or Narnia tells at all. The enemy is an evil wizard or an evil witch, it isn't an invading general from another world armed with future tech.

[hyzmarca]

The biggest argument against heavy muggle involvement is that you want the PCs, who are generally going to be children, to actually be important.

Narnia works because there mostly are no competent adults.
Harry Potter works because there are very few competent adults and none of them are as capable of solving the crisis as the kids for various reasons.

In a world where the adults are aware and competent, you won't have children saving the day all the time. And that does restrict potential stories.