In the process to design a world to adapt Iron Gods, I have found a problem.
I want to make this a postapocalyptic world, closer to Mad Max or Fallout than Thundarr the Barbarian or John Carter of Mars.
I'm going to make magic just high tech. The androids, and some humans, will be sbloe to control nanites in their bodies or in the enviroment, to get all kind of magic effects. The technic League is good at mágico because of this.
Then, the problem comes with divina mágico, I think. Parte of the core appeal of Iron Gods is how a machine can achieve godhood. I think part of what makes Unity a cool villain is that.
Then the problem is how to contrast that with regular divine magic. I feel using normal Gods, like Golarion has, somehow breaks the inmersion I want to produce.
How could I dodge this problem?
Maybe something like The Force? It is scifi enough (or close to, is magic in disguise), but it feels more space opera than postapocalypse. Warhammer 40k "tech priests" would work but it is a bit redundante, isnt it? If we already have machine God, the ascension od Unity is much less climatic.
What else could be? How to make divine magic feel different than arcane, something that Unity can give to his faithful, and contrast it with already pre-existing God/Gods that is flavourful and makes sense in a non-fantasy (maybe even Earth) world?
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Have you decided yet why your world is postapocalyptic? The unexpected emergence of regular divine magic could be what destroyed civilization.
The classic 1956 science fiction movie Forbidden Planet featured a planet where the high-tech alien race had gone extinct. By the end of the movie, human explorers learned that the aliens had invented a world-wide wish-granting machine that failed to screen out petty grudges that people usually suppress before acting on them. Oops. Imagine that that happened on your world, except that the inventors put a serene-thought filter on the machine before everyone went extinct. Now, only people with high Wisdom scores can tap into that wish-granting power, and not very well at low levels. Religious belief helps with the serenity.
The wish machine would be non-sentient. One risk would be that if Unity gains enough power, it could take over the wish machine to become omnipotent.
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What else could be? How to make divine magic feel different than arcane, something that Unity can give to his faithful, and contrast it with already pre-existing God/Gods that is flavourful and makes sense in a non-fantasy (maybe even Earth) world?
Well, you could handwave in restrictions on who gets to cast divine magic.
Unity's priesthood has to be cyborged (or something) to cast its spells, or whatever. Maybe other sources of divine magic simply do not exist, and the guys who are can heal you also demand that you become connected to the brain / cyborg network or whatever.
If it's only cyborgs and robots who are casting divine spells, and serve the all-consuming AI-GOD, that's pretty different from Golarion right there.
Or maybe others can (or cannot) cast divine magic, but healing magic has to have a robotic source.
Just a few ideas.
Interesting ideas.
@mathmuse well, my idea was the crash of the Divinity is what produced the Apocslypse. Your idea is good, though. Might want to think about it. Maybe it was a human being (of other sentient cresture, maybe an alíen) the "prophet" that granted divine magic, pre-apocalypse. Similar in some ways to The Emperor in WH40k, thereis a cultura for him. Maybe the apocalypse killed him,but he saved people and they still remember his sacrifice. Maybe he is still being animated, like WH40k Emperor?
@Yakman my idea is that Arcane magic is robotic in nature: nanites, controlled by androids, robots and cyborgs (non androids spellcssters (humana, etc) get the cybertech that gives you glowing tattoos for free). It is dirty, because it comes from what caused extinction, and technological in nature. Justo a tech so advanced that seems magic.
Divine magic is diferent. It is pure, natural, human in nature. It comes from faith, not science. That's what I want to use as shock vslue. If faith is the only redeeming thing for us, humans, and the last standing bastion to defend our moral high ground vs machines, and Unity becomes a GOd and he gets robots and android clerics and Oracles... then humanity is hopeless. Machines are better and we are doomed, even if Unity dies, their rise is inexorable. Their evolution is measured in months, ours in millenia. They can be upgraded, they have magic, they are stronger, dont get sick or hunger of die. Our god(s) are dying, theirs are being born. We have no way to win in the long run. Unless, maybe, we get a machine god ourselves, that is built as benevolous with humanity. Like Cassandalee.
This is what I want to achieve. This feeling.
In the process to design a world to adapt Iron Gods, I have found a problem.
I want to make this a postapocalyptic world, closer to Mad Max or Fallout than Thundarr the Barbarian or John Carter of Mars.
Post-apocalypse by itself doesn't really say much. Remember that Golarion itself, as presented, is a post-apocalypse world. If you adventure in Numeria, you pretty much have a Thundarr-style setting as is. With the Technic League and various robot types as Thundarr-style antagonists.
Post-apocalypse by itself doesn't really say much. Remember that Golarion itself, as presented, is a post-apocalypse world. If you adventure in Numeria, you pretty much have a Thundarr-style setting as is. With the Technic League and various robot types as Thundarr-style antagonists.In the process to design a world to adapt Iron Gods, I have found a problem.
I want to make this a postapocalyptic world, closer to Mad Max or Fallout than Thundarr the Barbarian or John Carter of Mars.
That is true, there are several post-apocaliptyc worlds, and that is why I added that I want it to be Mad Max of Fallout style, not Thundarr/John Carter.
I dont think Golarion is postapocalyptic, unless we count Earth as postapocalyptic too. Both Golarion and Earth apocalypses are too old, the world has healed. Golarion was apocalyptic right after the Star Stone destroyed half the world, during Times of Darkness. Not now, 10000 years after that
One of my players gave a good idea. Divine magic could be similar to Dark Sun setting in AD&D: given by Sorcerer-Kings, dragon-like creatures (aliens?) or other supernatural strong-willed creatures with followers and faithful (like the Templars in Dark Sun)
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I dont think Golarion is postapocalyptic, unless we count Earth as postapocalyptic too. Both Golarion and Earth apocalypses are too old, the world has healed. Golarion was apocalyptic right after the Star Stone destroyed half the world, during Times of Darkness. Not now, 10000 years after that
The timeline is a little weird on Golarion (mostly to account for longer-lived races) but Golarion is definitely postapocalyptic.
Earth didn't have established, globe-spanning civilizations wiped out virtually overnight by a massive world-wide catastrophe, with all modern civilizations built upon their ashes. At least I don't think dinosaurs had cities.
Post-apologetically doesn't necessary mean that the apocalypse *just* happened. It can, and there are plenty of examples of it, but there are also plenty of examples of post-apocalyptic sci-fi that take place centuries after the apocalypse. For example, Hiero's Journey by Sterling Lanier (one of the major influences on D&D, and the origin of AD&D's psionic system). Also, A Canticle of Leibowitz.
If you're looking for examples where magic is just disguised high technology then you could pick up anything from the Dying Earth sub-genre (specifically the trope-namer, The Dying Earth, by Jack Vance).
Fun fact, the idea that magic is just misunderstood technology has been a part of D&D for a very long time. Just look at the material components from the original spells. The components for "fireball", for example, are the major components for gunpowder. The components for "alarm" was wire and a bell. The components for the "friends" spell, which made you more charismatic, was basically makeup applied to your face.
I don't think most people would classify Halo or Mass Effect as "post-apocalyptic" even if the civilizations are ciclyclally wiped by an armaggeddon there, but YMMV. I wouldn't say that Christ's era Rome, following the bible story, is post-apocalyptic because of Noah's flood. Nor I would classify Dragonlance as post-apocalyptic either, even with the cataclysm.
DarkSun, on the other hand, I would.
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Well, Christian Era occurred approximately 9000 Yeats after the flood at the end of the younger dryas period, so about the same amount of time as Golarion and Starfall. Coincidentally, our great flood was believed to be caused by a comet impacting the north american ice shelf, and Starfall was a deep space object brought down by abolethian magic.
And check out info on gobekli tepi in turkey. The supposed 'origin' of architecture and agriculture, and starts out on a megalithic scale, and started immediately after the 'apocalypse' of the ending of the younger dryas. And if anyone wonders why an 'advanced' civilization was existing when everyone else was a hunter/gatherer, we still have hunter/gatherers, and space age civilization coexisting together.