icefractal
2016-08-29, 08:33 PM
It’s often fun to imagine what would happen if D&D characters ran into present day Earth. But when you get into details, there’s a lot of questions that need to be answered regarding how the two interact. This is an attempt to solidify and present the options for that.
1. Planar Status
Option A: Standard Plane
Earth-1 is a normal plane within the great wheel, which can be travelled to/from by the normal methods. Once discovered, it will be changed massively as various outsiders flood in.
Option B: Sealed Plane
Earth-1 is a special plane like Ravenloft, which can’t be travelled to or from. Teleportation, etherealness, and summoning won’t work. Wish probably would, however, which means that once a single Solar or Pit Fiend gets onto the plane, things go like in Option A, but more slowly. If Wish doesn’t work, then D&D creatures won’t flood in, but you could still Polymorph into them or make Simulacra of them. And you could still make things like constructs and undead from local “materials”. :P
Option C: Separate Multiverse, with the Trimmings
Earth-1 is in it’s own multiverse with an (empty) set of basic planes - Ethereal, Shadow, and Astral (and maybe others like the Plane of Mirrors). Teleportation and etherealness work, but attempts to summon or otherwise reference D&D creatures just don’t work. Polymorph into a Displacer Beast? FILE_NOT_FOUND. Simulacrum of an Efreet? FILE_NOT_FOUND. Contacting Pelor? FILE_NOT_FOUND.
Option D: Separate Multiverse, Single Plane
Earth-1 is in it’s own multiverse that contains no other planes. Like Option C, but you can’t teleport (except via non-astral means like Master Earth) or go ethereal.
2. My Physics or Yours?
Even setting magic entirely aside, there are a number of differences between real-world physics and the D&D rules.
Option A: Resolve things by D&D rules, handling modern people/technology with the d20 Modern / d20 Future rules. Even without introducing any other changes, this would have massive effects.
Option B: The D&D rules are abstractions, resolve things according to RL. The tricky part here is that D&D magic is very vague in how it functions, so extrapolating what off-label uses you could put it to is difficult to answer.
3. The Populace, Why No Wizards?
Option A: They just haven’t. Once you show up, you can start training people as Wizards (or whatever) and setting up fighting tournaments so they can reach 20th level.
Option B: They can’t learn magic. Everyone native to Earth-1 is incapable of possessing magic/supernatural abilities. You could still train them to be 20th level Warblades (skipping certain maneuvers) though.
Option C: They can’t learn most of it. Earth-1 natives are capped to E6 and can only take d20 Modern/Future classes/feats.
Option D: They can’t learn any of it. This goes with Physics Option B - normal people just straight-up don’t use D&D rules at all, and you can only teach them things the same way you could IRL.
Option E: They can learn it, but in their own way. This goes with Physics Option B - normal people don’t use D&D rules at all, but they can learn magic now that there’s someone to teach them / they’ve seen it done. How they learn it wouldn’t correspond to D&D class levels though, so you’d need to brew something up yourself.
4. Magic Item Materials
In D&D, you just pay gp for “raw materials”, but what does that really represent?
Option A: You need stuff like unicorn horns and owlbear feathers. You can’t make jack **** on Earth-1 without calling in stuff from other planes - so if you’re going with Planar Option C or D, you can’t make magic items at all … unless you have alternate means like Liquid Pain / Distilled Joy.
Option B: Literally gold, at the rate of 50 gp = 1 lb of gold. I like this because it’s straightforward to resolve, and the total amount of gold on Earth is something we can estimate. Plus, it gives a reason for magical asteroid mining.
Option C: Stuff that’s renewable. If herbs and spices count as crafting materials, then problem solved, you have an unlimited supply.
5. Metaphysics
D&D has a fair amount of stuff relating to souls / gods / the afterlife. This gets rather awkward when you move it to a RL setting.
Option A: Punt It. If the Earth-1 multiverse has non-mortal beings, they’re not somewhere you can travel to or contact with any known spell. People who are brought back from the dead don’t remember anything, and/or it doesn’t work.
Option B: Decide something specific. I think forum rules prohibit going into any more detail on this.
6. Other Planets
Interstellar travel gets a lot more practical with magic involved.
Option A: There’s no other life in the universe. We’re already trying to figure out what RL+magic would entail, and you want to add aliens to the mix? Forget that.
Option B: There’s life, but nothing intelligent. You’ll have to decide what life, but it could be an interesting element - Wizards sending out exploration missions so they can discover better things to Polymorph into, for instance.
Option C: There’s intelligent aliens. You’ll have to decide what kind / how many / etc. And whether any of them know about magic, etc. I wouldn’t recommend it for thought experiment purposes, but it could be fun for a setting.
Hopefully useful as a reference for this kind of thought experiments. Feel free to suggest any other parameters I’m missing, or additional options for the existing ones. Also, what's your favorite setting for thought experiments? Mine would be Planar C or D, Physics B, Populace E, Materials B, in most cases. :smallsmile:
1. Planar Status
Option A: Standard Plane
Earth-1 is a normal plane within the great wheel, which can be travelled to/from by the normal methods. Once discovered, it will be changed massively as various outsiders flood in.
Option B: Sealed Plane
Earth-1 is a special plane like Ravenloft, which can’t be travelled to or from. Teleportation, etherealness, and summoning won’t work. Wish probably would, however, which means that once a single Solar or Pit Fiend gets onto the plane, things go like in Option A, but more slowly. If Wish doesn’t work, then D&D creatures won’t flood in, but you could still Polymorph into them or make Simulacra of them. And you could still make things like constructs and undead from local “materials”. :P
Option C: Separate Multiverse, with the Trimmings
Earth-1 is in it’s own multiverse with an (empty) set of basic planes - Ethereal, Shadow, and Astral (and maybe others like the Plane of Mirrors). Teleportation and etherealness work, but attempts to summon or otherwise reference D&D creatures just don’t work. Polymorph into a Displacer Beast? FILE_NOT_FOUND. Simulacrum of an Efreet? FILE_NOT_FOUND. Contacting Pelor? FILE_NOT_FOUND.
Option D: Separate Multiverse, Single Plane
Earth-1 is in it’s own multiverse that contains no other planes. Like Option C, but you can’t teleport (except via non-astral means like Master Earth) or go ethereal.
2. My Physics or Yours?
Even setting magic entirely aside, there are a number of differences between real-world physics and the D&D rules.
Option A: Resolve things by D&D rules, handling modern people/technology with the d20 Modern / d20 Future rules. Even without introducing any other changes, this would have massive effects.
Option B: The D&D rules are abstractions, resolve things according to RL. The tricky part here is that D&D magic is very vague in how it functions, so extrapolating what off-label uses you could put it to is difficult to answer.
3. The Populace, Why No Wizards?
Option A: They just haven’t. Once you show up, you can start training people as Wizards (or whatever) and setting up fighting tournaments so they can reach 20th level.
Option B: They can’t learn magic. Everyone native to Earth-1 is incapable of possessing magic/supernatural abilities. You could still train them to be 20th level Warblades (skipping certain maneuvers) though.
Option C: They can’t learn most of it. Earth-1 natives are capped to E6 and can only take d20 Modern/Future classes/feats.
Option D: They can’t learn any of it. This goes with Physics Option B - normal people just straight-up don’t use D&D rules at all, and you can only teach them things the same way you could IRL.
Option E: They can learn it, but in their own way. This goes with Physics Option B - normal people don’t use D&D rules at all, but they can learn magic now that there’s someone to teach them / they’ve seen it done. How they learn it wouldn’t correspond to D&D class levels though, so you’d need to brew something up yourself.
4. Magic Item Materials
In D&D, you just pay gp for “raw materials”, but what does that really represent?
Option A: You need stuff like unicorn horns and owlbear feathers. You can’t make jack **** on Earth-1 without calling in stuff from other planes - so if you’re going with Planar Option C or D, you can’t make magic items at all … unless you have alternate means like Liquid Pain / Distilled Joy.
Option B: Literally gold, at the rate of 50 gp = 1 lb of gold. I like this because it’s straightforward to resolve, and the total amount of gold on Earth is something we can estimate. Plus, it gives a reason for magical asteroid mining.
Option C: Stuff that’s renewable. If herbs and spices count as crafting materials, then problem solved, you have an unlimited supply.
5. Metaphysics
D&D has a fair amount of stuff relating to souls / gods / the afterlife. This gets rather awkward when you move it to a RL setting.
Option A: Punt It. If the Earth-1 multiverse has non-mortal beings, they’re not somewhere you can travel to or contact with any known spell. People who are brought back from the dead don’t remember anything, and/or it doesn’t work.
Option B: Decide something specific. I think forum rules prohibit going into any more detail on this.
6. Other Planets
Interstellar travel gets a lot more practical with magic involved.
Option A: There’s no other life in the universe. We’re already trying to figure out what RL+magic would entail, and you want to add aliens to the mix? Forget that.
Option B: There’s life, but nothing intelligent. You’ll have to decide what life, but it could be an interesting element - Wizards sending out exploration missions so they can discover better things to Polymorph into, for instance.
Option C: There’s intelligent aliens. You’ll have to decide what kind / how many / etc. And whether any of them know about magic, etc. I wouldn’t recommend it for thought experiment purposes, but it could be fun for a setting.
Hopefully useful as a reference for this kind of thought experiments. Feel free to suggest any other parameters I’m missing, or additional options for the existing ones. Also, what's your favorite setting for thought experiments? Mine would be Planar C or D, Physics B, Populace E, Materials B, in most cases. :smallsmile: