… AND THERE’S MAGIC

Magic. Sorcery. The supernatural. So many of our most imaginative settings involve some kind of mystic, occult, or paranormal powers or beings. Next time you’re developing a new setting, consider these ideas:

• A modern, real-world setting where the characters keep to the shadows, concealing the fact that magic is real and that they can use it to fend off the dangers of vampires, werewolves, and worse.
• A far-future science fiction game that includes actual sorcerers, and the alien gods they serve power their faster-than-light starships.
• A setting using some of the elements of the real world’s eighteenth century, but significant individuals each possess a crystal from an ancient asteroid that allows them to conjure the ghosts of dinosaurs.

What do these all have in common? Obviously, in each, magic is real despite being in settings where you wouldn’t expect it. Magic, as a broad concept, can transform a setting into something truly unique. Maybe it just gives the player characters (and the NPCs) more options, or maybe it reshapes the setting entirely.

If you’re wondering how to craft such a setting for your next game, simply take a genre you like and say, “…and there’s magic!”

Creating a Setting With Added Magic

Although a non-fantasy setting never needs magic, it can be like a seasoning that makes a good meal into a great one. Perhaps the best way to understand all the possibilities is to browse a number of different examples—but this is just a starting point. There are so many more options.

Magic Replaces Technology

Take elements of a non-fantasy world and replace them with fantastic ones.

• It’s the modern day, but cars, electric lights, guns, and computers use magic rather than gasoline, gunpowder, or electricity. Conjured ghosts control the internet, and divinations are used to solve crimes. What separates this setting from a traditional fantasy game is that the setting has the appearance of our familiar surroundings, but the rules are different. It’s not just the commonplace world with something different providing the impetus. Now, the best defense against a gunman is a bit of dispelling powder tossed on his weapon. In this world, engines don’t run on gasoline; they run on demons’ blood. The point is that it’s a setting that’s familiar but with a distinct twist.
• People have colonized other worlds. But they didn’t do it with science and technology. Teleportation spells took explorers to distant planets. No one bothers with firearms or even laser blasters, because they have wands and spells. Each new planet discovered reveals new occult secrets that the explorers can attempt to master. The advantage of a setting like this is that PCs can experience the kinds of challenges and adventures usually associated with science fiction but as a fantasy game.
• A cosmic shift occurs. The laws of physics change, making much of what people have built their world upon crumble. Machines stop working. Then someone discovers that the new rules of the universe can be applied in a different way. Chemistry has no meaning, but rituals and spells work. This kind of game is about rebuilding the world in a whole new way.

Magic Stands Alongside Science

Mixing streams that are often kept separate leads to fun and excitement. In a world like this, you can choose which elements you want, or you can take them all and combine them.

• In the near future, a portal to a world of elves, dwarves, and wizards opens and these fantastical folk come through. Now the world is a bizarre amalgam of the familiar and the strange. Each element—the things of magic and the things of science—finds the other bewildering. Tensions heighten. Is a peaceful coexistence possible?
• It’s the world as we understand it, or at least it appears to be. There is, however, a pervasive occult underground operating in the shadows. Perhaps it always has been present. Wizards use sorcery that actually works, and those in the know understand the truth about what others consider fable: witches, ghosts, and monsters are real and exist alongside the mundane world.
• It’s the far future, and science took us a long way, but it could take us no further. The scientists had to turn to the occultists to achieve the future humanity sought. Demonic rituals and sacrifices grant starships the speed to cross the galaxy, and magical wards allow humans to operate freely in the vacuum of space. Megastructures built around planets and stars are possible thanks to magically treated materials. Human consciousness can be uploaded into neural networks, protected and stabilized by conjured spirits. Energy weapons and shields can be powered with both scientific principles and sorcerous energies.

Magic Enables Adventure

Maybe you’ve got a fun idea, but reality just gets in the way. Magic is your friend.

• You want to have a game of near-future conflict, but you also want dinosaurs engaged in the war? A bit of magical time travel enables just such a thing.
• You want to have a game that is basically the real world, but at night people travel to a land of dreams while they sleep and have strange adventures? Done.
• You want your space opera heroes to wield swords rather than firearms? Centuries ago, the defensive decree of an ancient space god afraid of nuclear weapons instantly rendered all technological weaponry useless, but that doesn’t mean people still won’t find a way to fight.

Magic Answers Questions

Looking at worldbuilding issues from a different perspective, you can take just one element of a typical genre setting and insert a bit of the supernatural. Maybe in a space opera setting, the tropes that violate hard science (antigravity, FTL, space combat that resembles dogfighting aerial combat, the ability to operate easily in extraterrestrial environments) all involve magical processes.

Alternatively, the “magic” you add might shape the environment more than the action. Maybe it’s a world of swashbuckling privateers on high-masted ships, but you want it all to occur in a setting of floating islands and endless atmosphere without seas or even a planet. You can easily accomplish this in a supernatural realm without also including sorcerers and monsters (but you can include those too—nothing’s off the table).

One thing you might do is examine various mystical beliefs or superstitions and present those alongside science. Cameras really do steal the souls of those they photograph. A four-leaf clover really does bring good luck, so the wealthy employ huge numbers of people to collect them on their behalf. Breaking a mirror, conversely, brings misfortune, and the concept is weaponized so that one'ss enemies are forced into doing it.

Running a Game With Added Magic

The scope and theme of a game with magic likely depends on the genre that you’re building from. Magic can change the feel of a setting, sometimes dramatically, but that change may come from the addition of whimsy, mystery, sinister darkness, or epic grandeur.

Unless you’re completely replacing science and technology with magic in your setting, you’ll need to think about how it all works together. Who uses technology and who uses magic? Do they get along, or are they rivals or enemies? Do some people rely on both equally?

More than anything, players will want to understand the difference between sorcery and science and how those things interact. Do they coexist easily or cancel each other out? Is one more potent than the other? Can a character have a normal pistol loaded with mystical bullets? Can a genie be fitted with cybernetics?

The Player Characters

You decide to craft a setting using a genre and there’s also magic. This decision affects the world, the NPCs, the creatures, the politics, and so on. But most important, you probably need to make new options available to the players. You might create a setting wherein the characters begin with no knowledge of the paranormal aspects of the world. They’re normal people (for the genre) at the start, and they discover the existence of spirits or wizards or whatever magical elements exist in the world, either because such things are secret or because they’re brand new.

However, most settings with added magic allow PCs to have access to the paranormal forces in the world. One PC in your science fiction game might be a starpilot, while their closest companion is a witch. Or maybe the pilot is also a witch.

You can also turn the concept around and have the fantasy genre be the baseline of the setting but add something extrinsic to it, such as alien invaders with incredibly high technology.

Depending on the setting, you might make some fantasy species options, like Elf or Dwarf, available to PCs.

Types and Genre Abilities

Select one or two magic-themed types from one of the fantasy genres and make those available in addition to the types for the base genre. Mages, Necromancers, Witches, Sorcerers, Wizards, or even Clerics might be interesting choices, but use whatever is appropriate to your setting. These types—again, unless you’re segregating them for setting reasons—should have access to the genre abilities available to all characters in the setting.

Further, these characters (and probably all characters) should have access to some of the fantasy genre abilities—again, as you see fit. This enables even an Engineer character to also know a bit of magic.

Foci

Certain foci, probably not normally available in the given genre, represent magic abilities and knowledge and thus could be used in this kind of game. The players could use some or all of the following to create their characters.

Suggested Foci for a Game with Magic

Abides in Stone	Blazes With Fire	Casts Spells	Commands Mental Powers
Consorts With the Dead	Controls Beasts	Crafts Illusions	Howls at the Moon
Masters Telekinesis	Reveres a Supernatural Force	Rides the Lightning	Speaks for the Land
Strikes With Mystic Might	Wears a Sheen of Ice

Equipment, Cyphers, and Artifacts

Although equipment for a given genre likely doesn’t change much by adding magic, artifacts almost certainly do, with the fantasy artifacts in this book (or those like them) being added to the existing genre options. Likewise, you might strongly consider using magical items in the form of manifest cyphers to your setting.