Elves Pop Up in Times Square: Wat Do?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat May 31, 2014 5:26 am

Since the thread I started to get thoughts on rehabbing d20 Modern has been taken over by a Frank and K debate (I'm taking bets on when "debate" becomes "fight"), I figured I'd start this one for another thing I'm thinking about.

Honestly? Not even working on rules at this point, just the setting. I'd like to hew close to D20, but it'll probably look something a bit more like M&M, minus "Tons of discrete powers" plus something like a vague class system where every class has a single level, but you can take as many as you want, and multiclass, and gain level appropriate powers in whatever order you want.

So, the question is- Let's say we have two "realms"--Our World, and D&D World, and in between is a metaphorical ocean of metaphysics and darkness. Occasionally, something from one world gets caught in the currents of The Shadow, and pulled out in this ocean. Most things that do so wash up in the other realm, but some things just get washed out to metaphysical Pacific Trash Vortices.

So we have a set up where elves and dragons and magic swords occasionally pop up in our world. Let's say that this ocean is also the source of magic in general, so magic swords can draw on it and continue to work, when it's "high tide" there's more magic, etc.

What are the practical concerns of creatures from D&D Land in our world, assuming that there's a desire for a masquerade, because I'm writing Buffy/Angel/Grimm/Supernatural, not Marvel Comics.

I want to stick to the idea that creatures from D&D Land are concealed, whether it's a perception filter in normal humans, an effect of Shadow, or they all just walk around with Hats of Disguise. So, Joe Schmoe sees an ogre in Time Square and just thinks "Damn, that's a big dude, lets not piss him off." And of course there's the question of cameras, and other recordings. What else is there that needs to be considered?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat May 31, 2014 5:56 am

This is an unanswerable question because the set of physics that "D&D lands" might have is very large. The connotations for interacting with Birthright and Forgotten Realms are very different. Hell, the connotations for interacting with 2e FR, 3e FR, 3.5 FR, and 4e FR are very different.

So you have one unknown unknown (what the magic world setting is like) and a second unknown unknown (how much contact there is between the two worlds). So... no. I can't solve that equation for you.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat May 31, 2014 6:02 am

Ok, let's go from the assumption of 3.5e Greyhawk/Generic Books, if you want specifics.

But really? I mean, I'm looking for stuff like "So you have 9' tall dudes, short guys who are literally on fire, and chicks with 6" long ears that can take someone's eye out" or "So what happens if someone takes a pic of an ogre in a trench coat?"

Really I'm just needing general "this is what a sudden incursion of odd creatures needs to handle if they want to stay hidden."

spongeknight · Post by **spongeknight** » Sat May 31, 2014 6:26 am

A masquerade isn't going to happen under those circumstances. The very first time something mindless like an ooze or something retardedly stupid like a pyrohydra gets transported to the real world people are going to realize something is up when the monster starts eating everyone in sight. And then a chain devil or something pops up and is almost unkillable because of DR and the goddamn army needs to be brought in to kill it. Or something actually scary like an aboleth mage takes over the entire planet with magic and psionics.

Basically D&D Land is a terrifying place that absolutely requires adventurers to function, so transporting random elements of that setting to our world doesn't allow our world to stay the same.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat May 31, 2014 6:27 am

Well for starters, the magical beings in Greyhawk have no history of hiding their magic and no knowledge that it might be a good thing to do were they to go to a different world. So if you have Ogres pretending that magic doesn't exist, that's already basically not like Greyhawk at all.

-Username17

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Sat May 31, 2014 6:35 am

Remember that every human being in the advanced world, and a large percentage of human beings in the developing world, carries a camera that is connected to the internet with them every moment of their lives. Instagram is going to kill any masquerade within hours. The first time any person sees an ogre, they'll take a picture and that picture will end up on the front page of Reddit. Probably as an image macro, too.

In order to have a modern fantasy game work, you have to dispose of technology, because technology is completely incompatible with the idea that things are going on that people don't notice even though it's all around them.

Nebuchadnezzar · Post by **Nebuchadnezzar** » Sat May 31, 2014 8:25 am

Non-sapients should be kept limited to shielded private reserves, if not banned entirely. A handwaved spot fix, e.g. Earth natives and their tech. can't help but see bulettes as hippos, becomes absurd almost immediately.

Variant hats of disguise with sufficient extra functionality could serve as a highly available magico-electronic countermeasure suite (colloq. called Hammocks). Using Urban Arcana as a spring board, Machine Invisibility combined with Major Image would largely suffice for normal use (excluding digital scales), with contingent (EMP/Shutdown)/(Word of Recall/Teleport) for accidental exposure. Since the value of a Hammock would be above the limit of a Wish spell, a possible setting convention is that they are custom-made items for agents of an expeditionary force. A likely early objective for such would be a media-led mockery of the pseudoscientific Pauli effect. so as to help discredit eyewitness accounts.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Sat May 31, 2014 8:35 am

A handwaved spot fix, e.g. Earth natives and their tech. can't help but see bulettes as hippos, becomes absurd almost immediately.

Even if it's a hippo, it needs to stay in a shielded private reserve. Especially if it's a hippo, in fact. Hippos are fucking lethal, you don't want them roaming free.

Nebuchadnezzar, your scenario sounds like a pretty awesome "aliens are secretly among us, infiltrating the world and planning to take command" espionage game more than a classic Urban Fantasy masquerade game. Which isn't a bad thing, actually. I could get behind that.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat May 31, 2014 8:36 am

Yeah, I'm working on adapting Urban Arcana/Shadow Chasers to be something usable, and trying to make sure I can at least try to answer as many questions about the masquerade as possible. Of course, this is starting to feel like a fool's errand. I need to think more on what specifically I want the game to be, and then work from that. All I have now is "D&D creatures in the modern world, hidden from humans. They were brought here by an mysterious force called the Shadow that superficially mimics an ocean (waves, tides, mist, currents) between realms"

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Sat May 31, 2014 8:39 am

Yeah, I'm working on adapting Urban Arcana/Shadow Chasers to be something usable, and trying to make sure I can at least try to answer as many questions about the masquerade as possible. Of course, this is starting to feel like a fool's errand. I need to think more on what specifically I want the game to be, and then work from that. All I have now is "D&D creatures in the modern world, hidden from humans. They were brought here by an mysterious force called the Shadow that superficially mimics an ocean (waves, tides, mist, currents) between realms"

The first question your players should ask, and you should have an answer ready waiting for it, is "why are they hidden? What's so important about being hidden?"

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat May 31, 2014 9:03 am

Yeah, that's one of the big problems.

Another part of the problem is that there's a lot of aesthetic or symbolic things I want to happen with shadow, which are difficult to actually reconcile--things like darkness showing creatures' true forms, so that when you have goblin hooligans or vampires attacking a mundane, you can describe them seeing the creatures in flashes. This isn't a horrible thing, because if any amount of light activates a glamour which hides their forms, then it's really hard to actually catch them on film.

Then there's the idea of tech and magic having difficulty defeating one another, so even an old camera from the 1800s can't actually show a Shadow Creature's true form (and if tech advances enough to have cloaking, True Seeing can't penetrate it). Which has the implication that natural light might penetrate the glamour, leaving 9' gnolls furry and toothy in broad daylight. It gives a great bit of aesthetic where monstrous humanoids are making like ninja turtles:

Aesthetically awesome, but logically impractical
Which is great and all, but it'd be ridiculously easy to break the masquerade if all it took was knocking a gnoll's hat off.

Then of course there's that first question: why the hell are they hiding?
There's also the attendant question to that of, if humanity has a weirdness censor that is keeping them from recognize the high weirdness running around... why the hell is any effort going into hiding? If a weirdness censor is in play, gnolls can walk down the street naked, and worst case scenario, people see "a really hairy naked dude," and more likely, they see this:

Side note: I totally want one of these.

So now I'm thinking about the setups in B/A/G/S, and that really doesn't help:
Buffy/Angel The masquerade is maintained by status quo plot and willing disbelief. Mundanes notice weird shit is going on, but a little voice in their head says "Keep walking, ignore it."
Grimm One Part "Muggles only see the monsters' true forms when they're about to die anyway" and one part "quantum state magic mumbo jumbo"
Supernatural There is no fucking masquerade. I can only assume that society is unchanged because some high powered angel/demon is sitting around making it stay static.

Even Hellboy and BPRD don't help. In the movies, the masquerade is halfhearted, and only one man cares about it, and it's treated as a joke. In the comics, there is no masquerade, and Hellboy is seriously a semi-famous paranormal investigator.

Clearly I need to put more thought into this. Unless I want to say that every sentient Shadow Creature washes up here in a library full of Alien Invasion and Pitch Fork Wielding Mob movies and fear for their very lives because they watched a bunch of them before doing anything else.

I'm toying with the idea of the Shadow not being a new thing, that creatures have come through in centuries past, so that there can be conspiracies and corporations that are secretly run by polymorphed dragons and such. This could help provide an answer, if maybe in the medieval ages some powerful creature of shadow worked a spell that made it so that every creature who came through the shadow was impressed upon that they needed to hide lest they be killed by angry mobs with torches and pitchforks.

Needless to say, this needs a lot more thought. Which is why I'm bouncing questions off the Den, because it's better to have a sounding board and some other input than to do everything on one's own.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Sat May 31, 2014 9:14 am

Prak_Anima wrote:I'm toying with the idea of the Shadow not being a new thing, that creatures have come through in centuries past, so that there can be conspiracies and corporations that are secretly run by polymorphed dragons and such. This could help provide an answer, if maybe in the medieval ages some powerful creature of shadow worked a spell that made it so that every creature who came through the shadow was impressed upon that they needed to hide lest they be killed by angry mobs with torches and pitchforks.

One of the recurring themes of Vampire the Masquerade is that the Masquerade isn't actually there to keep vampires hidden from the mundanes. They say it is, but that's euphemistic. The truth is that it's there to keep them hidden from each other because vampires hate and fear each other, and the most dangerous thing to a vampire is another vampire.

(There's also layers of symbolism about hiding from oneself, which was put in because Mark Rein-Hagen liked to feel that he was writing something angsty and meaningful. But that doesn't come up in play much.)

Therefore, you could say that the monsters that come in through the Shadow are from a world where they compulsively learned to hide and blend in. A world where anyone who didn't maintain excellent camouflage all the time never made it to adulthood. A world where there are predators, and those predators are everyone else, and so when they arrive here they naturally keep the same habits going and this has a side effect of keeping them hidden from humanity.

Also, be aware that no matter what you call the other world, your players are going to call it the Nevernever.

Prak_Anima wrote:things like darkness showing creatures' true forms, so that when you have goblin hooligans or vampires attacking a mundane, you can describe them seeing the creatures in flashes.

This is a magnificent idea and I'm stealing it.

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Sat May 31, 2014 9:18 am

There's always the Harry Potter style of masquerade. Namely that there is a nearly instant suppression response to a threat to the masquerade. Combine that with the ability to control any mundane and you might be able to hold it.

You could also just go the Weirdness Censor route. Most of the population doesn't want to see it so they just don't.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Sat May 31, 2014 9:45 am

There's always the Harry Potter style of masquerade. Namely that there is a nearly instant suppression response to a threat to the masquerade. Combine that with the ability to control any mundane and you might be able to hold it.

A supernatural police state, in other words? Cool, but that changes the nature of the game dramatically. In particular, it sharply reduces the amount of adventuring you can do because police states do not like criminals and raiders and other such people.

You could also just go the Weirdness Censor route. Most of the population doesn't want to see it so they just don't.

Except that we don't live in a world where there's a Weirdness Censor, and the fun of a masquerade setting is that you can pretend that things are actually happening in our world. Once you posit that all ordinary humans have something like a Weirdness Censor, you lose the ability to identify the ordinary humans in the game setting with the people you know in the real world, and it becomes just another fantasy world but with mobile phones instead of owlbears.

If anything, real humans have an anti Weirdness Censor. We learn to blank out normal stuff and are inherently drawn to the unnatural, even if it's an "ewww! gross!" sort of draw.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sat May 31, 2014 5:56 pm

There's actually a pretty fun alternative:

First, there's a conspiracy of masquerade with a worldwide agency or seven running around MiB style covering up breaches while also defending the populace from darklords. This is an immediate slot for PCs to fit into, or a good place for rival NPCs who can be on either side of this week's conflict.

Second, this agency realized that it didn't have the resources to pursue every single fantasy world leak that pops up in the Pacific Gyre and it can't Modify Memory everyone all the time, so it worked to make the job easier by hyping fantasy entertainment. In your game world, the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and similar franchises are a whole lot bigger than there are in the real world --where we only built one full-sized replica of Hogwarts. Instead pretty much every major amusement park is fantasy themed ( Get the joke? ) and also secretly a haven for magical types. And they all run full-dress LARPs all the time.

So when a 9' troll gets photographed walking through Times Square, it makes the 6 O'clock news, but the tagline isn't "trolls running amok, panic" and is instead "publicity stunt for new ride at 6 flags", or "new movie begins filming here" or "cosplayer gets lost, snarls traffic with amazing costume"

radthemad4 · Post by **radthemad4** » Sat May 31, 2014 10:41 pm

You could go with a 'the paths between worlds open once every thousand years' or something like that. Then, there might have been a few crossovers in the past, before cameras and stuff, which might have led to a few mages and creatures moving into Earth. By now their descendants (or they if they're immortal) are sufficiently experienced to maintain a masquerade (however there are hints to their presence throughout history which could be the stuff of conspiracy theories). Just now, the gateway has opened once more and the Earthly supernaturals could try their best to enforce a masquerade (possible, as long as crossovers aren't too common, sort of like the rate at which kaijus show up in Pacific Rim).

Another option, is to have the masquerade broken with a large scale invasion or something. It'll still be reminiscent of Earth, as it's only just happened.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat May 31, 2014 11:07 pm

Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking with this part

I'm toying with the idea of the Shadow not being a new thing, that creatures have come through in centuries past, so that there can be conspiracies and corporations that are secretly run by polymorphed dragons and such. This could help provide an answer, if maybe in the medieval ages some powerful creature of shadow worked a spell that made it so that every creature who came through the shadow was impressed upon that they needed to hide lest they be killed by angry mobs with torches and pitchforks.

It seems like the easiest way to explain why the shadow creatures are hiding in the modern world.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 1:32 am

Josh is right. Most people will assume there is a reasonable explanation besides 'invaders from another world'. If the visitations are sufficiently rare, most people won't believe that there's something really happening. If the 'intelligent races' are more numerous than pyrohydras, presumably the odds of them getting pulled in are much higher. When something truly monstrous does come through, the gig would likely be up, depending on how effective bullets and government disinformation would be... It could very much be like how alien conspiracies are only accepted by a fringe group.

If I were the government and didn't want this getting out, I'd create a fictional organization that is accused of digitally editing real terror attacks to make them look like monsters. Then when the pictures come out, I blame this group...

Something like that MIGHT work, at least in the short term... But yeah, most people would see an elf and assume that they paid for the ear shaping surgery and were no more 'weird' than people with a tongue-piercing were considered 20 years ago.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 3:37 am

Here's my proposal: Normality

The Shadow is like the Mists of Ravenloft, except less actively malicious and more force of nature. Like a tidal wave it rolls in and sweeps things out to sea, leaving emptyness in its wake. Sometimes you can swim against the current, but that is usually futile. It's best to follow the current to where it wants to take you.

When you wash up on the Shore of a World, some of the Shadow continues to cling to you, like water clinging to a half-drowned man. Most of it dripped off over time, but a fine layer stays and hardens. It's both protection and a curse. It hides your true nature, making you seem Normal to the denizens of the World you landed in.

A Giant becomes a very tall man, perhaps best suited for a career in professional wrestling or basketball. A Devil becomes a high proced corporate lawyer or a slimy politician. The Cleric becomes a televangelist. The Succubus becomes a two dollar crack whore.

Castaways that embrace their Normality can forget that they ever where anything but what they appear to be. Those that fight against it find that the illusion is weakest where the Shadow touches the World.

In game terms, Normality does three things.

1)It limits power. The Pit Fiend CEO of Roxxon Corporation isn't soloing the entire planet because it can't. It's powers are limited, outside of certain places where the Shadow imposes itself most strongly on the World. This give you an excuse to adjust monster stats and remove powers so that they don't overwhelm the players.

2)It gives Castaways a history. When Gus the Ogre washes up on the shore of Earth, he'll find that he possesses a Driver's License saying that he's Gus O'Ger, an Irish-American Plumber from the Bronx. He'll have no clue what a driver's license is, or the Bronx, or a plumber, or an Irish-American, but he'll have that record. There'll be people who remember going to school with him, even though he never went to school. Punching holes in the Masquarade requires more than just finding people who have no history.

3)It gives various factions and conspiracies places of power to fight over. Shores, where creatures wash up from time to time. Pools, where the Shadow has stagnated and is easy to harness. Wells, like pools but deeper and more dangerous, where dark and horrible things lurk beneath the surface, and you can easily drown in the darkness.

Creatures that get pulled through often end up on the fringes of society due to the difficulties in adapting. Homeless trolls living under bridges aren't uncommon. But not all do. Some embrace their new lives. Some seek a way to return home. Some seek meaning in this new world. Some seek to dominate it.

Like-minded Castaways sometimes band together and you can easily have shadow wars between opposed factions.

Natives who have been exposed to the Shadow can see through the illusion of Normality to varying degrees, as can most Castaways.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 4:11 am

Damnit, hyzmarca, if I ever start a gaming company, I'm offering you a job as a mind translator. That basically perfectly encapsulates what I wanted Shadow to be.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 6:40 am

Wait. Wat.

hyzmarca wrote:When you wash up on the Shore of a World, some of the Shadow continues to cling to you, like water clinging to a half-drowned man. Most of it dripped off over time, but a fine layer stays and hardens. It's both protection and a curse. It hides your true nature, making you seem Normal to the denizens of the World you landed in.

hyzmarca wrote:Those that fight against it find that the illusion is weakest where the Shadow touches the World.

So the illusion of normality is made by the Shadow and it's weakest in places where the Shadow actually is? There is a major disconnect there.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 7:12 am

Could make Normalcy/the Glamour of Shadow a magical reaction of Shadow Residue to the nature of our world. In areas of high concentration, the Shadow Residue is "moistened" and the glamour falls away until the creature leaves the areas and "dries out."

Hm, with all the water/sea metaphors, and the fact that water is a symbol of change and chaos is mythology, I'm tempted to drop the Shadow thing and go with a more direct water-themed term.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 10:46 am

Yeah. The idea is that it normalizes you to the World you land on. So a modern guy in D&D might have some of his tech disguised as magic (Iphone becomes crystal ball, maybe). It works both ways. But areas of high Shadow concentration are less connected to the World, and thus the template doesn't apply as strongly.

The key point is that the Masquarade is imposed by the physics of the setting so it doesn't have to be heavily enforced by vague omnipotent conspiracies.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 3:36 pm

I'm not sure using "moist" as a game term will ever be a good idea.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Jun 01, 2014 3:41 pm

There's all this talk about 'how' a Masquerade would work, but we're kind of short on the 'why'.

What are all of the various 'whys' as to why you would want to set one up? I can think of a few, but I want to hear TGD's take on it.