"People from Earth exploring a fantasy world" is a trite by this point.
How would you run a campaign about magical people from a high-magic fantasy world making forays into our own modern world?
This would begin with establishing the fantasy world first and just how different it is from Earth. It would advance towards hearing wild rumors and investigating small planar breaches from Earth, then progress into exploring small towns of our world, then finally the big cities of glass and steel.
I imagine that it would be a more diplomatic and investigative campaign than a combat-based one.
How you would you present an atmosphere of wonder and "a different from of marvelous magic"? There are many things we take for granted in our world that would be outright mind-blowing even to someone from a high fantasy world.
For example, fantasy magic typically does not allow the average commoner to have in their palm an akashic library of all worldly knowledge and the ability to transmit sound and imagery across the world; that seems everyday to us, but think about how a fantasy wizard would view such a thing.
>>43771583
So you want to run an "Overlord at Work" campaign?
>>43772482
No.
>>43771583
I would go full 90s.
Players would be teleported to the real world, preferably downtown Los Angeles.
They will marvel at things like cars, payphones, televisions, and fast food.
They will be guided by a spunky teenager NPC, who constantly asks the players things like whether or not they have 7-11's where they're from.
Most of the adventure will take place either in a car or in a produc--I mean, NPC's house.
The main quest will probably involve something like the villain from the players' reality coming over and causing mayhem.
All the while I will play the greatest hits from the 90s.
>>43771583
>>43773310
This might be what >>43772482 was talking about when they said "Overlord at Work," but anime The Devil is a Part-Timer (Hataraku Maou-sama!) is more-or-less an exploration of exactly what you've described, although it's a bit different in that it depicts a powerful fantasy figure -- in this case, a stylized Satan who has more in common with Sauron than with the Biblical Satan -- stripped of his powers and trying to get them back by working his way up the corporate ladder in our world. The original light novel (waitcomeback) examines this concept in even further detail.
The first question you'll want to ask is how much supernatural power will the fantasy characters retain upon traveling to this world. In Part-Timer, Satan, or Mao Sadao as he calls himself in our world, loses all his magic upon traveling to this world, because of spoiler reasons. He can pick up smaller quantities magic here and there in the real world, but he always ends up spending it on things rather than saving it up to open a portal back to his homeworld.
Do you want to do that sort of thing, where magic is still accessible to the PCs, but significantly less so than in their old world? Do you want to let them keep all their magical power, but by doing so risk shifting the focus away from exploring the real world and towards exerting their influence upon the real world? Do you want them to lose their magical power altogether? Just how much do you want them to explore this Different Form of Marvelous Magic, and how will you go about encouraging them to do so? What are some possible directions for the campaign to take from the different possible starting points, and which ones do you like the most? Knowing your players, do you see your PCs building a magical empire in this world? Taking this world's technology back to their own world? Developing magitek?
>>43773504
That removes the point of starting in the fantasy world and then gradually introducing our world.
>>43773541
Preserving magic is more or less necessary, because unless the party gets forced into the real world, they will be reluctant to explore the new world.
I think the biggest thing you'd need to do would be to describe all the modern-day things in terms of how a fantasy-world character would understand them. Never use the actual name for a thing unless they've learned it in-character from someone in the modern world. A lot of things would just be described in terms of simple physical appearance that they can't make head nor tail of without examining it in more detail. For instance, as the wizard and knight stroll through the portal onto the city street, they may find many people holding little rectangular plates up toward them. A local greeting custom, perhaps? Who knows? And some things may be fairly comprehensible in principle, if a bit baffling as to how widespread they are. A refrigerator is a cabinet enchanted with ice magic, stoves conjure magical flame or produce heat directly with no flame rather than burning wood, magical flameless lamps enchanted to light by simple physical manipulation with no need for fiddling with flint or tindertwigs -- probably things not unheard of in the fantasy world, but there usually the privilege of the very wealthy rather than standard features of every home.
Really, the sheer prosperity of the modern developed world would be as much a culture shock as the gadgets and tech. Just the simple matter of food: Meat is a reasonably affordable centerpiece of most meals, fresh produce is available year-round regardless of the growing season, exotic spices and produce that would be extravagantly expensive wares brought by months-long voyages and accessible only to the very rich are available in abundance to most anyone.
>>43774058
Presentation and description are the most important things here, and also allowing interaction and describing the results in an evocative yet foreign way.
I'd go full fables.
Those who have travelled to our world have underworld communities hiding in plain sight.
Some figure they'll use their different abilities to make a living, others to seize power.
>>43773541
Player agency is important. Maybe the party can, in fact, use their magic and other superhuman abilities to make a mark on our world and bring together their magic and our tech.
>>43774126
So it's like the Dustmen from Planescape?
>>43774511
What?
>>43774532
I swear that somewhere in the lore you could sell your body to the dustmen after death so that they could reincarnate you and use your corpse for hard labor.
>>43774577
O... Okay?
>>43774643
Right looks like I responded to the wrong thread. Have no idea how it took me this long to figure that out, my apologies for my retardation
>>43771583
Letting them make their mark on the world is a cool idea and all, but how hard do you want them to work for it? You can limit the player's use of magic in the real world without limiting their agency, and I think it'd make for a more interesting campaign if they had to supplement their magic with modern technology in order to really leave their mark on the world. Maybe they use their technology to augment their magic. Maybe they use their magic to augment their technology. Maybe they use technology to solve the problems magic can't, or vice versa. If all their magic works the same way in our world, there's not much stopping the PCs from solving their problems in our world the same way they would solve their problems in their world.
Maybe, if you don't want to force the players to use technology, you could put some magic in the real world already and encourage the players to look for it. Maybe once they find that magic, they could build their powers back up to what they once were without returning to their home plane. I just think giving the players unlimited use of magic even in our own world could lead to them being overpowered, since no matter what sort of fancy technology you've got, the only thing that can directly counteract magic is more magic, which this world doesn't have anywhere near enough of to challenge a PC with unlimited access to it.
Maybe I've got the wrong idea in my head. Maybe I'm imagining 20th-level 3.PF wizards when we're actually talking about 3rd-level 5e wizards. Either way, though, I think that some sort of change to the way magic works when the PCs come to our world is in order. Maybe it doesn't happen right away, maybe the wizards enter our world at a low level and their character progression has to take a different route because they don't have access to the same resources for learning magic in this world. I don't know.
>>43774850
>I think it'd make for a more interesting campaign if they had to supplement their magic with modern technology in order to really leave their mark on the world
As long as you're not running with high-level 3.5 wizards, that shouldn't be a problem.
>>43771583
I'm reminded of the old Mini-Series "The Tenth Kingdom" Where it had your fairy tale mythological realm parallel to the modern realm. With Magic mirrors bridging the gap between the two.
While the majority of the story is people from our world exploring the fairytale world. But the first part involves Three trolls and a werewolf exploring New York looking for a prince that got polymorphed into a dog.
>>43771583
I'd rather a campaign where beings from a fantasy world go and explore a cyberpunk world.
Depending on the fantasy setting, I bet they'd be horrified at the condition of such a world.
