Friday 8 October 2021

Magicpunk

Let's make some initial clarifications. I am not a fan of '-punk'. The only context in which I can see a use for it is in the manner obliquely referred to in Bruce Sterling's famous introduction to Burning Chrome - as fiction concerning the 'victims of the new'. Cyberpunk is about those left behind by advancing cybernetic technology; steampunk is about the have-nots of industrial society; in both cases, the task of the writer is to describe how these so-called 'victims' stick it to the man and get theirs anyway. 

A magicpunk setting, then, is one of high magic, but whose PCs have no access to it. Reliant only on their physical strength and skill, they rage against a world they hate and fear, a world dominated by distant wizards, mighty sorcerers, sinister cabals, and magical bureaucracies - and they try to get their hands on wealth and glory regardless.

In short, it is Iron Heroes, but a version that doesn't make your head hurt just to read it.

A long time ago I posted these pictures to describe a particular Sword & Sorcery tonal palette that I absolutely adore. This is what I imagine a magicpunk setting to look like. You either get it or you don't,  I suppose.














14 comments:

  1. "A magicpunk setting, then, is one of high magic, but whose PCs have no access to it. Reliant only on their physical strength and skill, they rage against a world they hate and fear, a world dominated by distant wizards, mighty sorcerers, sinister cabals, and magical bureaucracies - and they try to get their hands on wealth and glory regardless."

    Amusingly, that pretty much describes the setting of Thundarr the Barbarian. Not hugely far off from both the Black Company and Garrett, PI books from Glen Cook, either.

    Myself, I tend to imagine the kind of tyrannical magocracy you're describing as having a lot of floating architecture drifting around the skies. Airborne wizard's towers and implausible castles and whole aerial cities are a signature element of that kind of high fantasy to me. And of course the post-apocalyptic version of same has the ruins of fallen structures everywhere, like Lawrence Watt-Evans' With A Single Spell writ large.

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    1. Yeah, I love that Laputa motif as well. And actually Miyazaki's "Laputa" (Castle in the Sky) has a bit of the tone of what I'm suggesting as well.

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  2. Isn't that ... sword & sorcery? Conan et al? Which I love, don't get me wrong, but it has a name.

    I don't know why some people are so resistant to the common usage of "-punk" meaning "mashed up with cyberpunk". Steam punk is the era of steam technology mashed up with cyberpunk, magic- or dungeon- or wand-punk is generic D&D fantasy mashed up with cyberpunk. And yeah, maybe the focus is on class alienation, but maybe it's on cool robot limbs. Nothing wrong with cool robot limbs.

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    1. I think I object to it because it doesn't have a meaning. In my experience it tends not to mean "mashed up with cyberpunk"; it tends to mean "a bit edgy and cool". I suppose you could say I'm not a fan of self-consciously trying to advertise oneself as being "cool" through the way one labels one's genre.

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    2. On the Sword & Sorcery point...fair enough, but I think Sword & Sorcery is a broader genre than just the "magicpunk" elements I'm talking about here.

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    3. Most of the sword & sorcery I've read (including all of Conan) portrays magic as rare, dangerous to everyone involved, and unreliable. Wizards definitely don't rule the world the way the post describes "magicpunk" and mundane opponents generally beat spellcasters in the end. It is pretty common for your average S&S warrior facing magical baddies to get an assist from some helpful mage or magical artifact when facing magic, but for the most part using magic is "cheating" for the good guys.

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    1. That is such a good question. What genre is Warhammer? This is a matter of profound importance - a comment reply is more than is required.

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    2. If we're talking about the "Old World" setting of the original Warhammer RPG and minis game, it's definitely not. More of a fairly grungy low-fantasy setting with a lot of European historical inspiration. The only society I can think of that's explicitly controlled by spellcasters are the lizardmen, who are ruled by immortal frog-wizards following prophecies left by their long-vanished creators. The minis game shows a lot more fantastical stuff (magic, monsters, artifacts) in use than the RPG generally does.

      If we're talking the more recent Age of Sigmar stuff, the setting is closer to D&D's elemental planes than anything. Magic and monsters are everywhere, physics are prone to sudden alteration with little warning, and planar travel is the basis for some whole economies. It's still not a universal magocracy and guys with swords matter, but it's a lot closer to the definition assigned to "magicpunk" here than the Old World ever was.

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    3. Jonnie's question seems really apt - by the second image in your very evocative gallery above, I was thinking "this feels like Age of Sigmar!" Interestingly, the new-ish Age of Sigmar rpg ("Soulbound") aims for a brighter feel than traditional WFRPG, with very powerful, 'heroic' characters. What you're describing as magic-punk strikes me as, perhaps, the experience of the 'lesser folks' in that setting who haven't been handed amazing powers, but still set out to change their fortunes.

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    4. I can sort of get behind the idea of Soulbound. If only the execution wasn't so railroady.

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    5. I think the broad Old World setting meets this definition of "magicpunk". As a setting, the upper bounds of what magic can do are almost limitless. The are at least two functionally immortal necromancers commanding empires. Elves, space frogs. Chaos. Rats pull down the moon. Gamers call it "low fantasy" because the RPG usually is, but the setting as a whole isn't. There's also a cachet to the term "low fantasy", its more serious/adult/grungy/cool etc, which may be why it's claimed for Warhammer.

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  4. cyberpunk to me has always felt like a retrofuture, tho not of the type where you have steam-powered blimp-cities but where the characters are never on the cutting edge of their current tech level, but left with the scraps.

    maybe put better, -punk seems to be focused on the streets where yesterdays cutting edge is commonplace, or at least available to those with plans but not means.

    unsure how that would be replicated in a magical scenario haha maybe something like how distilling happened on earth: the alchemists used it to learn the higher mysteries and then some schmuck figured out an alembics other uses

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    1. Hum, hum. How about an explicit and very sharp divide between "low magic" and "high magic" where the street-level stuff the PCs have access to all have very limited effects, strictly limited uses, unpleasant side effects, and/or significant chances to misfire and go awry when used? The elites who have access to "high-magic" get more bang for their buck with every spell, every item works perfectly and has multiple functions, etc, etc - but the PCs can't easily use the same tricks because of some innate (or perhaps deliberately imposed?) divide between high-magic users and everyone else? And of course the elites are too busy or too much in the eye of the public (and their rivals) to do the dirty, dangerous, and outright terrible jobs they hire our magicpunk runners for, right?

      That sound about right? The PCs' long term goal might be to overthrow the whole dirty system, or just to earn enough (in money or leverage) to join the elite themselves. Kind of like a slightly more magical version of Glen Cooks Garrett, PI stories?

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