Post from Mayari: I could be a time traveller.

So, while you dear reader maybe reading this post first, it is the second one I have written. That could make me a time traveler - a robot (barbarian) that leaped through time.

But, where was I?

Or when was I?

I think I was ahead of myself. Talking about Transhumanism and how it permeates the current mainstream philosophy of Sci-fi as a genre. But why would anyone want to wax poetic about that?

I do assume some might, so I won't begrudge them any -

But I have come to you to propose an idea! A project! A new paradigm shift. Well, at least where it concerns Dungeons and Dragons in the Fifth Edition!

Sure, this doesn't sound like anything different, quite frankly, it's not.

I'd like to re-work Dungeons and Dragons into the Sci-fi/Urban Fantasy genre. I call this project "A Pearl in Dark Flow" or something better when it strikes from the future with a laser katana.

I'm sure everyone living in a basement has wanted to be Kirk wandering the universe in search of the perfect green lady. And really there are sufficient games that would emulate that perfectly well - like OVA or BESM (3rd), or Traveller, etc.

Or maybe wanted to play some really hardcore Sci-fi and messy rules like RIFTS or Robotech with giant robots, or maybe go the FATE route and use Mindjammer or Nova Praxis, Yeah all of those systems probably do it better, but they have one thing that they aren't - they aren't Dungeons and Dragons.

Dungeons and Dragons is some sort of strange mistress, I both hate and love it - it's always the TRPG I return to when I'm tired of complicated or narrativist gaming. Something about class structure and levels puts this raging robot at ease. I can play as a well defined archetype with strong a feel of progression, and kill things and take their stuff. Good times, good times.

But, there is an inherent problem to Dungeons and Dragons as presented - it's incredibly difficult to break out the of the implicit genre (Fantasy with a strong Western Bias) to play things I love like
Sci-fi, Modern, or even Urban Fantasy.

Here are some thoughts about it:

• Magic is implicitly strong in DnD, it's vehicle that forces characters to become epic - also it's supposed to be incredibly individualistic and rare. You can't divorce magic from class structures, balance, and game design philosophy.
• Science and Industry are anathema to the same philosophy that DnD uses about magic. Science and Industry - at least as best as we see it in our real world tend to be tied together. Both egg each other on, and consequently magical things become mundane. 
• Seriously, look at cell (God I'm dating myself by saying that) phones - now completely ubiquitous and with the internet! Yeah, given that in less than decades ago that would have been something akin to Cyberpunk and Sci-fi. But imagine that in a fantasy world? Every peasant having a device that connects them to each other and the flow communication is constant? Yeah, no go there buddy.
• Only Wizards and their magical buddies can connect you to grandma in the next town, and if only they feel like it. Or they can charge you the fee of a small castle to make an item that lets your send a short message once a day to one other person who happens to hold the other piece of the same item. 
• Wizards would be genuinely scared of anything resembling technology since it ruins their strangle hold on power and mysticism. They can't charge that small castle when a smart entrepreneur has figured out radio waves, set up radio towers, and is selling ham radios for about as much it costs to live in an expensive hotel for a day or two.

So I think fellow game enthusiasts we have to change some base assumptions and expectations.

• With Technology, Science, and Industry on the dominant end, Magic is rare, expensive, and ultimately inefficient. It does on the other hand have a wow factor. 
• Magic and magical effects are available in tangible, and more importantly, affordable items that anyone can use. Restrictions would be based on laws and safety - things like Fireball grenades are plentiful, but not available. Ray of Frost guns are just that, anyone with enough fingers can shoot it. 
• Quite frankly, casting something as a spell is more draining than it is to go to the effort of acquiring the same effect from a manufactured item. 
• This being a Sci-fi setting, Transhumanism and lack of religions or at least active religiosity is frowned upon - meaning that temples are just places of worship, rarely do divine miracle actually occur. And the activities of god or gods are non-apparent or non-existent.
• This effectively neuters almost all casting classes. 
• "But this is Dungeons and Dragons!" you say. "You can't remove casting classes! What will become of my Bard?"
• "Your Bard is spoony and dead." I would say. But! But! Okay, I won't neuter magic all the way, just make it less useful. 

Anyway, here's my Introduction to my new Campaign Setting (more like universe) of "A Pearl in Dark Flow".  

Tell me what you think. I'll be sharpening my laser ax.