Ring of Fire - Fantasy Hero style

[Steve]

In the Ring of Fire series by Eric Flint (started with the novel 1632), a West Virginia town from the modern day is dropped in the middle of Europe in 1632.

 

Take that notion, a modern town from somewhere in America, but transport it to a fantasy world with magic. The VIPER sourcebook discussed the idea of taking a VIPER's Nest and doing such a transport.

 

Could cross-world fantasy on such a large scale work?

[shadowcat1313]

Re: Ring of Fire - Fantasy Hero style

 

i dont see any reason why it couldnt, we did something similar at a local gaming club, GM was new to the club and went with your loosely playing yourself. couple of folks were ROTC, most of us had spent time in the SCA or similar organizations, and one of the players was the high priestess of the local wiccan coven, it made for an interesting party mix. most of our modern gear failed, although he let one player bring in a laptop, that was later enchanted to not need a power recharge. this threw a monkey wrench into things, as this person had a really large collection of assorted books in pdf or text format that proved really useful.

[Ndreare]

Re: Ring of Fire - Fantasy Hero style

 

I have always found modern characters into fantasy worlds to be one of the easiest settings run.

 

Players love the power of knoledge right off the bat.

 

The most succesful time I ever did it involved three player who were playing them selves, on game night them and all their gaming books were translated right into the palladium world.

They had all the meta knowledge in the world and everything in the house was a resource for them highschool science book, computer, gamming books the whole lot. Turned out having an AR 14 and close to 1000 rounds is not as useful as you would think in a world without the skill to make new ones.

And unverifiale proof of plots are not very useful either.

 

PS: we used FUZION even thou the setting was Palladium.

[Old Man]

Re: Ring of Fire - Fantasy Hero style

 

Easy to run, and I've played several such campaigns myself. You do have to watch out for players' overestimation of their own knowledge, though. It's one thing to know that gunpowder is made of sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal. It's quite another to locate them, prepare them, and mix it together without blowing yourself up.

 

What's really fun is dropping soft modern American civilians into a fantasy campaign. Realistically, we'd be hard pressed to bring down a FH kobold.

[Blades]

Re: Ring of Fire - Fantasy Hero style

 

I wanted to try a Ring of Fire scenario into 1631 medieval. My problem is that my players are fantacy players with the mentality of kill creatures and take their stuff. In Ring of Fire the players would already have the best gear that they can get and would have no motivation to go adventuring. Most of my players are neutral greedy and not motivated to help the Germans. I got as far as making profiles for about a dozen modern and german archtypes.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Ring of Fire - Fantasy Hero style

 

I could see how this might work. Much modern tech is effectively 'magic' (ex: the M-60 machine guns from the 1st book). I think it just requires the players to buy into playing a 'point team' that doesn't get directly involved with the modernization stuff from the book. Another nice option is the almost 'fantasy race' differences between the natives and the future transplants with regards to toughness and knowledge. Not a huge difference but enough to encourage starting 'packages' at least.

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: Ring of Fire - Fantasy Hero style

 

GURPS Technomancer deals with a Modern world of Real Industrial Light and Magic.

 

A Modern City transported to another World/Dimension where Magic exists could be interesting until thirst and starvation set in. Modern Society depends on Energy and Support Services. Not to mention what the Indigenous People of the World/Dismension think about it. Once the dust settled and the survivors began to rebuild it could get interesting.

 

QM

[Haerandir]

Re: Ring of Fire - Fantasy Hero style

 

On several occasions I've been struck by the similarities between the Ring of Fire books and Joel Roesnberg's Guardians of the Flame series, in which a group of college students are transported to a fantasy world and kick off an industrial revolution.

 

I think a campaign like this could work, but it'd be different from the more traditional crossworlds fantasy setup which features a small number of individuals from the 'real' world who have to adapt to their new environment. With larger numbers and a more-or-less intact tech base, there's much less incentive for the PCs to assimilate with the local culture, and they're far less likely to be the Chosen Agents of the Grand Prophecy du Jour.

 

You'd have to devote a lot of time to figuring out your magic system and how it stacks up against modern tech (high magic v. low magic, commonality/availability of spells/items v. manufactured goods, whether magic is affected differently by/works differently on synthetic materials & modern alloys, whether spells can be used to fill in gaps in the tech base, etc.) Transporting a town with a steel mill into, say, a Bronze Age fantasy setting like Glorantha would be even more world-shaking than if your fantasy world was a more traditional 'medieval-ish' setting. Then you'd have to decide how much tech is transported. Frank Jackson's comments about what would have happened if the Ring of Fire had been slightly larger and brought Morgantown and WVU along with Grantville would apply to a fantasy universe, too.