I would love to see a solid space/techno-fantasy game, where magic and technology are both well-integrated into the system and the setting.
For a long time it felt like magic and technology were the oil and water of RPGs. Even when they were allowed to interact, the interaction was often antagonistic. The more advanced your tech, the less effective magic is against it, and vice versa.
I think Mage: the Ascension and GURPS Technomancer are the best games in terms of modern magic. The setting for Mage does have antagonism between magic and science, but it's a conflict that is as much about people and ideas as it is about natural forces. Whichever version of reality you believe in is the one that is true for you, so getting more people to believe in magic makes magic more effective.
Also the Sons of Ether and the Virtual Adepts were able to do magical things with technology. The Sons of Ether believed in ether science, which had been "disproven" by the Technocracy, the big bad of the setting. So even though they believed that what they were doing was science, it was technically magic. The Virtual Adepts were so "bleeding edge" that they pushed technology to do magical things. You know, like all the stuff hat movies and TV tell us that computers can do, even though people who know how computers work know that they can't.
GURPS Technomancer posited modern world where magic was a known and public force, replacing atomic energy as the driving force of the latter half of the 20th century. It did some pretty solid world building, looking at how modern people would use and view magic.
But something like either of them taken to the stars is what I would really like to see. Magic and technology working together to explore space. I've got some ideas that I may or may not develop, and the upcoming Starfinder RPG looks like it might scratch my itch, but we'll see.
For a long time it felt like magic and technology were the oil and water of RPGs. Even when they were allowed to interact, the interaction was often antagonistic. The more advanced your tech, the less effective magic is against it, and vice versa.
I think Mage: the Ascension and GURPS Technomancer are the best games in terms of modern magic. The setting for Mage does have antagonism between magic and science, but it's a conflict that is as much about people and ideas as it is about natural forces. Whichever version of reality you believe in is the one that is true for you, so getting more people to believe in magic makes magic more effective.
Also the Sons of Ether and the Virtual Adepts were able to do magical things with technology. The Sons of Ether believed in ether science, which had been "disproven" by the Technocracy, the big bad of the setting. So even though they believed that what they were doing was science, it was technically magic. The Virtual Adepts were so "bleeding edge" that they pushed technology to do magical things. You know, like all the stuff hat movies and TV tell us that computers can do, even though people who know how computers work know that they can't.
GURPS Technomancer posited modern world where magic was a known and public force, replacing atomic energy as the driving force of the latter half of the 20th century. It did some pretty solid world building, looking at how modern people would use and view magic.
But something like either of them taken to the stars is what I would really like to see. Magic and technology working together to explore space. I've got some ideas that I may or may not develop, and the upcoming Starfinder RPG looks like it might scratch my itch, but we'll see.
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