Tropes
In the real world, Magic and Supernatural are at best rare events, esoteric and poorly understood even by those who practice, investigate, and are immersed in them. Many choose to believe they do not exist at all, or withhold judgment due to lack of or seemingly contradictory evidence. In many works of fiction set in an analogue of the real world, the Supernatural mirrors these conditions.
However, some varieties of fiction assume that the laws of Magic and the Supernatural were instead codified and methodized. The resulting world looks much like our own, with these added elements interacting reliably and replicably, or actually replacing technology with functionally identical magic.
In a Magical Realism world, hard boiled detectives try to get the goods on Demons who manipulate the stock market, paranormal investigators and eliminators carry nuclear powered weapons to trap and contain entities the same way our world calls insect exterminators, and most of us have an iTome app on our phones for those handy day-to-day Hedge Spells.
A group that wants to play a Magical Realism campaign needs to understand the following tropes common to all subgenres.
Elves Need Not Apply
Much as in the “Beyond Those Of Mortal Men” Trope from Column #1: Superhero Comics, a Magical Realism world includes the fantastic and unusual as everyday and commonplace (But see “It Was Old Man Applecline All Along!”, below). The kindly foreign gentleman who runs the corner bodega may in fact be a Rakshasa, there is likely a sad-looking Sasquatch doing manual labour at the lumber yard, and the Crazy Chupacabera Lady on the corner is constantly in trouble with Animal Services for not cleaning up the goat blood around their feeding pen.
Uses:
Spreading little bits of magic throughout the setting is the default of Magical Realism. In most cases, something that exists in our world as “near future” technology is common as “slightly older” magic. Harry Potter's moving newspaper photos and sentient portraits are our world's Android Tablet News Apps and digital photo frames. The trick is to make it cool, make it magic, and make that fact utterly irrelevant to the way we live our lives in the real world. It is nothing more than just a skin on existing technology. Until it goes wrong.
The ugly side of the setting is the same as usual. In our world, people are prejudiced, discriminate, and exploit those different from them when any power imbalance is present. A Magical Realism setting begins by assuming human wizards and psychics are the White Male Patriarchy of the greater Supernatural reality. All of the excesses and injustices of the human world are magnified into the non-human.
Pitfalls:
As always, take special care to avoid transferring ugly and unfortunate real world prejudices and stereotypes to the supernatural. It becomes all too easy to find yourself doing blackface Sasquatches, drunken Leprechauns (most of the media portrayal of Leprechauns is horribly racist pastiches of 19th century Irish immigrants) or similar.
Also be wary of letting the magic fade. While nine times out of ten Magic works as reliably as technology (iPhone and Android users may now begin laughing maniacally), when it fails, Things Go Really Wrong. Harry Potter and crew's misfortunes are a good guide to magical failure fallout, and Sancturay is a guidebook to Cryptos Gone Wild.
It Was Old Man Applecline All Along!
In some Magical Realism worlds, the Supernatural is generally accepted to exist (But see “Accio Neuralyzer!”, below), much like the CIA, Ball Lightning, and cab drivers who work major cities at 3 AM, but most people never directly encounter them. While those who deny the actual existence of magic and the paranormal are considered to have a debilitating psychological disorder, those who see them everywhere are treated like Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory.
Uses:
Much like the “I Watched C-Beams Glitter In The Dark Near The Tannhauser Gate.“ Trope from Column #9: Cyberpunk, this kind of campaign benefits from the Flash Factor of the Supernatural colliding with the mundane reality of most folks in different ways. On the one hand, most people will never have seen a genuine monster, but they know a guy who knows a guy who served in the war with a Merman. And their mom said that her damn uncle who never sent them a dime when the kids were born and her husband lost his job can sure as hell afford to have one of those new cars with a manitou in that knows how to drive itself. On the other, those guys are on TV all the time, and a half-Dryad was running for Vice President that one time, and damn, that new magically sterilized milk is expensive. So.
In this type of setting, the PCs definitely need to be the ones who live between those two strata, working for and against wizards and cryptids, having access to powers and items, while still needing to find the money to fix their car the old fashioned way.
Pitfalls:
If the PCs don't have access to magic or meet monsters every session, then this is an entirely different genre. On the flip side, if the magic and monsters are always behind it, and it never turns out to be clever con men or coincidence, it gets old fast. A balance must be maintained.
Accio Neuralyzer!:
In other types of Magical Realism settings, the worlds of the mundane and the magical are kept separate by agreement from the majority of the population. These are the kinds of worlds inhabited by Harry Dresden, Harry Potter, Angel, Buffy, the agents of Warehouse 13, and the officers of Special Unit 2.
Uses:
The logical roles for the PCs to play in a campaign like this are either the MIB of the magical world, defeating and containing wizards, cryptids, spirits, and the like before anyone can see them, and/or the CSI/Cleanup team who goes around making sure no one remembers anything and/or planting all kinds of hoax evidence, or else Shadowrunners of a kind who skirt those authorities to operate and profit from both sides (Although, for Shadowrun itself, see next month's column).
Pitfalls:
This can quickly become Us vs. Them. c. ref Muggles, Mudbloods, and Squibs. There's nothing wrong with this, but make sure this is where you want the campaign to go. Similarly, fatigue might set in when moving between worlds too frequently. Allow a fully mundane adventure with no magical complications, or a fully magical and fantastic romp once in a while to refresh the game.
I Want To Believe
The world may be full of powerful wizards, magic potions, faeries, shapeshifters, and curses. But aliens? Little green men from other planets? Seriously? Get outta here.
In a Magical realism campaign, as with any game where the outlandish is commonplace, something still has to be mockably outlandish and fringe. The more tangible paranormal phenomena of UFO sightings, Alien Abductions, and Crop Circles tends to serve this purpose in the genre.
Uses:
UFOs and ETs make good scapegoats for magical effects that someone is trying to hide. Crop Circles that are ritual glyphs. Magical battles in the sky? Tomorrow's newspaper will be all about the UFO sightings, and quickly forgotten by all but a handful of old men with unbelievably colourful accents and speech patterns endlessly rehashing the most famous incidents on internet radio.
On the other hand, sightings that cannot be explained by everyday magic or hoaxes can lend mystery to a campaign, and the Fox Mulders of the setting provide interesting semi-useful extreme personalities for NPC fodder.. or believing in aliens might be a delightful quirk for a PC.
Pitfalls:
Decide at the outset if aliens really do have a place in your world or not. In a magical realism world, aliens change the game, either by altering the balance of forces, or expanding the horizons past where you intended. If aliens do exist, make them alien, have them use purely technological devices, or else have their magic be forbidden, strange, powerful, and incompatible with the balance of Magic and Technology on Earth.
Sources:
That wraps up this installment of Tropes. I look forward to those of you who will wish to take me to task for not calling this genre Urban Fantasy in the comments, as well as those who will sic the ghost of Franz Roh on me. Next time, We'll celebrate our anniversary column with a look at Mixing Genres. Meanwhile, here's a list of some past and present published games that deal with Magical Realism gaming. Look them up in RPGNet's Game Index.
Aletheia (Abstract Nova), Chaos University (FireWater Productions), D20 Modern: Urban Arcana (Wizards of the Coast), Dresden Files (Evil Hat Games), Fireborn (Fantasy Flight Games), Heaven & Earth (Abstract Nova), Kult (Paradox Games), Mage: The Awakening (White Wolf Publishing), Scion (White Wolf Publishing), The Whispering Vault (Ronin Arts), Unknown Armies (Atlas Games).
