'The Magicians' again -- time period?
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Would you play it in the forties?
In '72 and wear short-short shorties?
Nineteen-twenties swapping charms for liquors?
Beatnik mage in winklepickers?"... you'll find the story doesn’t end how you think, and the most important characters aren’t who you expect.” - Penny 40 to Derek, The Magicians S04E07 ‘The Side Effect’
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I rather modern times, frankly. Not sure I would dive into another historical-era game.
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Magicians works best set in modern day.
Part because of its theme in general and part because there's specific plot devices that would easily allow your PCs to visit other time periods.
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Also chiming in to say modern day.
I think one of the weaknesses of a 'historical-era' game is that the Magicians as a setting goes out of its way to point out the olden times were real bad times in terms of civil rights and social politics. I'm not keen on a setting that enables racist themes to be more acceptable by dint of it's historical context, etc.
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Wait, did I miss out on a Magicians game?
I don't think I'd be terribly interested in it set in the past, but I'd play the hell out of a modern or even slightly futuristic setting. -
@SixRegrets I keep not completing the build for one, yeah.
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100% modern times.
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@GangOfDolls said in 'The Magicians' again -- time period?:
Also chiming in to say modern day.
I think one of the weaknesses of a 'historical-era' game is that the Magicians as a setting goes out of its way to point out the olden times were real bad times in terms of civil rights and social politics. I'm not keen on a setting that enables racist themes to be more acceptable by dint of it's historical context, etc.
Yeah, it's a hyper-social-realism that would make it very jarring to play down the stuff that was way worse back in the day.
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Another vote for modern
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If you're looking for a way to get rid of the canon characters (which I would highly recommend), there's already a convenient plot device to do that without having to go back in time. Use one of the timelines where they didn't succeed in killing the Beast and all died. Or say they all died after a different point and use that as your jumping off period.
I would go modern, or a few years into the future only.
I'm gonna go one step ahead and say don't base your game in Brakebills. The interesting part about the Magicians wasn't the magic university, it was Fillory.
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Fillory was interesting but on a MU you would have a ton of created worlds the characters can go to.
I found Brakebills to be plenty interesting, too, and would serve as a much better RP hub than just setting it in some random neverland.
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I like the idea of having a hub and then places that people could go and sandbox in. I'm starting to narrow down some of my dysfunction on other games being that I have to like, get things approved, and then STAY within the confines of that approval (to be clear, I'm pretty sure I have more freedom than my mind will let me believe I have, but I haven't figured out how to get my brain to shut the fuck up and let me be free). When I don't have to get approval I would GM things WAY often and intend to do so cuz running things for other people to have fun at is MY type of fun.
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@silverfox said in 'The Magicians' again -- time period?:
I like the idea of having a hub and then places that people could go and sandbox in. I'm starting to narrow down some of my dysfunction on other games being that I have to like, get things approved, and then STAY within the confines of that approval (to be clear, I'm pretty sure I have more freedom than my mind will let me believe I have, but I haven't figured out how to get my brain to shut the fuck up and let me be free). When I don't have to get approval I would GM things WAY often and intend to do so cuz running things for other people to have fun at is MY type of fun.
That's the appeal of games where you can create an innumerable amount of alternate/alien worlds, especially ones with laws of magic/physics that don't need to match the ones in the main world.
The Strange is almost a perfect setting for this sort of thing, for example, since the shard worlds literally have different laws of physics/magic/existence, so a GM can just build their own worlds without stepping on staff's toes in any way. A Magicians game could easily hit the same notes.
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Jazz Era / Prohibition.
All the extravagance you could want, lots of seedy plots, and a bootleg culture pre-built and flourishing for that dangerous magic and weird artifacts.
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My only advice is, if you choose a non-modern period or a geographical location other than contemporary north America then please do not even try to make it realistic. Your players won't have the same idea of... anything about it - social conventions, technological levels, everyday lifestyle, dress codes... anything.
Any choice can still succeed wildly, mind you, just as long as you Hollywood-ize the shit out of it.
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@bear_necessities said in 'The Magicians' again -- time period?:
If you're looking for a way to get rid of the canon characters (which I would highly recommend), there's already a convenient plot device to do that without having to go back in time.
Yeah, no canon characters. I don't find it necessary to do anything to explain why they're not present, though. "I don't like canon characters so it's an alternate-reality to the source material even though it's the same place and time" strikes me as perfectly adequate.
Keep in mind that if I ever complete enough to open it, it'll be a Gashlycrumb production, and I happily let a lot of 'theme' rulings hang until it's actually relevant to the game and make the rule to suit the players involved. So a bunch of other questions that might seem like they need to be resolved really don't.
I was just toying with the historical idea, and/or with having a sort of double-grid where the students have, say, set up a semi-permanent time portal so they can go party for hours in 1968 and return three minutes after they left.
I think the contemporary setting folks have good points. The question that leaves is how much so -- setting it five years in the past strikes me as more flexible (doesn't ask for a 1:1 rl:mu time ratio) than setting it at now-now. Though the show was set in the near-future relative to filming so the last season is set in 2020 but with different disasters, and I don't think this wants doing anything about either.
"... you'll find the story doesn’t end how you think, and the most important characters aren’t who you expect.” - Penny 40 to Derek, The Magicians S04E07 ‘The Side Effect’
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How would magic be handled?
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I generally like Gray Harbor's feelings. "We just don't deal with the present geopolitical stuff and RL outside events" so I can play like it's now with what I'm most familiar with, but I DON'T have to deal with all the nonsense that is ACTUALLY happening.
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@il-volpe said in 'The Magicians' again -- time period?:
@bear_necessities said in 'The Magicians' again -- time period?:
If you're looking for a way to get rid of the canon characters (which I would highly recommend), there's already a convenient plot device to do that without having to go back in time.
Yeah, no canon characters. I don't find it necessary to do anything to explain why they're not present, though. "I don't like canon characters so it's an alternate-reality to the source material even though it's the same place and time" strikes me as perfectly adequate.
Keep in mind that if I ever complete enough to open it, it'll be a Gashlycrumb production, and I happily let a lot of 'theme' rulings hang until it's actually relevant to the game and make the rule to suit the players involved. So a bunch of other questions that might seem like they need to be resolved really don't.
I was just toying with the historical idea, and/or with having a sort of double-grid where the students have, say, set up a semi-permanent time portal so they can go party for hours in 1968 and return three minutes after they left.
I think the contemporary setting folks have good points. The question that leaves is how much so -- setting it five years in the past strikes me as more flexible (doesn't ask for a 1:1 rl:mu time ratio) than setting it at now-now. Though the show was set in the near-future relative to filming so the last season is set in 2020 but with different disasters, and I don't think this wants doing anything about either.
Lots of people don't like time passing at a different pace than 1:1 for a lot of reasons, but chiefly, my aversion to it is that I just... feel left behind, constantly, because I may am not logging in every day. It's hard enough to keep up on games that have 1:1 a lot of the time.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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@Coin Yeah, I feel the same. I don't know if the MUSH player base as a whole agrees, though, and if a major part of setting is a school from which you graduate, people may want time to go faster so it's conceivable to ICly complete the program within the MU's lifespan.
@Misadventure -- FS3, with a lot of odd prerequisites.
"... you'll find the story doesn’t end how you think, and the most important characters aren’t who you expect.” - Penny 40 to Derek, The Magicians S04E07 ‘The Side Effect’
