That's what it's looking like, yeah. Wouldn't be quite nearly as fun if we're limited to the Mundane, at least in my eyes(for what little that means).

@catchamber

Not necessarily the case if the fantasy world has had centuries of experience with magical warfare and magitech. Jets might have a hard time taking down a fortified magocratic city-state that's armed to the teeth. Would definitely apply to most of the world, if the average polity is a bunch of pseudo-fuedal village-dwelling mud-rakers.

I hate magitech so damn much. I say sure to the odd heroes with vorpal swords and +5 armor, but I swear to god if I see an army of dudes with full-auto wands of destruction and armors of negate kinetic damage I will kill myself. I don't mean to say resisting would be impossible, but rather difficult and laughable if a nation decided to really flex its muscles and consider this a real, industrial scale, war.

In the original interest check, I mentioned the possibility of zones where the two worlds are physically merged. Also, I think there was some support for there being more than one contact point.

Well, it just goes with the question of who would host if its a single point. Again, unless we go with the multiple point of entry idea, I'd suggest the host to be a weaker nation that can be bullied by others so that it can't just turtle up and say 'Fuck off, we're full' to anyone who wants to go on the other side.

I'm for this too. This would be a little less political, and more unified in terms of sending some sort of international force (like a UN coalition of sorts). My reasoning being that regardless where that portal appears, everyone would more realistically react like "Holy shit guys! The hell is this?" Maybe later down the line when things settling, bases are established, ect, do we see countries trying to pull shit like Japan did in GATE.

I'm also for having an alternate world for the Modern nations. I'm thinking along the lines of Ace Combat or something, just so we can have a bit more creativity.

I think its just important to make reasons to go there and shed blood: crippling lack of resources, overpopulation, all the scenarios that usually breed war, so this isn't just a meet and greet and everyone agreeing together that they should do the good thing and leave the people on the other side alone.

As for setting, I still vote for 'In the near future' with outlandish events that reshaped the world. That way we have a frame of reference for history and relations.

I'll have a cleaner post up soon, but I wanted to address the whole nukes debate:

I don't think the ability to threaten people with nukes is necessarily an advantage. Sure, you can nuke someone and even threaten to nuke someone. But at what cost? Yes, it can get your country some respect points, but if you actually plan on using the nukes, you're putting your country in a perilous position.

@SpookySquid

Well, I see it has an important option to fight back against the powers that be. Without nukes, the moment the enemy makes an alliance against you, providing were more or less evenly matched, you're screwed. With nukes the entire world can be against you and you'll still have the argument 'If you take me out, I'm taking you all with me'.

I think it would be interesting for the fantasy world to slowly become aware of the scenario of Mutually Assured Destruction that plays out in the tech world and realize that the key to success is to antagonize them against one another, form alliances and get in on the high stakes game of mass destruction. Create incidents between the newly coming nations to pit them one after the other.

Now that I think of it this could make for an interesting start!

The tech nations initially agree that, for the sake of preventing a war they should cooperate, UN troops and all that, but its still obvious there are tensions and that the tech world is here to stay and exploit resources.

How?

By allowing only 'Neutral' corporations without military power (Or at least less than a nation) to do business at first. So we start with this being a fertile ground for the non nation players.

Slowly however everyone gets more involved as things don't go the way they want and the natives use something that technology doesn't improve to fight back: Scheming and psychology.

What do you guys think?

I hate magitech so damn much. I say sure to the odd heroes with vorpal swords and +5 armor, but I swear to god if I see an army of dudes with full-auto wands of destruction and armors of negate kinetic damage I will kill myself. I don't mean to say resisting would be impossible, but rather difficult and laughable if a nation decided to really flex its muscles and consider this a real, industrial scale, war.

I have to disagree here-not with your specific examples per say(full auto wands and armors of negating kinetics and whatnot sound dumb, at least until a cultural exchange occurs and people start experimenting with our our science interacts with their magic), but at the core all that quote-unquote "magitech" would really be is applying the scientific method to magic. Learning to harness it and utilize it in ways to the benefit of their society as a whole, although with magic as a force the need to technologically advance in a more traditional sense would be much lower(hence their status as medeival technologically, since they wouldn't need to scientifically advance nearly so much in order to improve their standard of life; they don't have microbial theory, but they don't need to in order to know 'Cure Disease' spells make sick people better, ect). I also disagree with the notion that a Magical nation couldn't compete realistically with a technological one. They might not have anywhere nearly so sophisticated mundane weapons, but in our terms any individual mage would have the potential to be equivalent to if not greater than our own primary weapons of war(tanks, artillery, ect) and weapons of mass destruction in and of themselves at the absolute most powerful. Not even mentioning the fact that with magic you could pump out armies on a industrial scale as well(golems, undead, ect), as well as (again, all things being potentially and dependent on how powerful magic is considered) ludicrously easy logistics if Mages can either teleport or just conjure food and resources. We know that instantaneous or at least near instantaneous travel is possible because Portals, so it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that Magi know how to use magic to transport supplies or armies quickly-an advantage we wouldn't have almost at all.

<Snipped quote by Wernher>

I have to disagree here-not with your specific examples per say(full auto wands and armors of negating kinetics and whatnot sound dumb, at least until a cultural exchange occurs and people start experimenting with our our science interacts with their magic), but at the core all that quote-unquote "magitech" would really be is applying the scientific method to magic. Learning to harness it and utilize it in ways to the benefit of their society as a whole, although with magic as a force the need to technologically advance in a more traditional sense would be much lower(hence their status as medeival technologically, since they wouldn't need to scientifically advance nearly so much in order to improve their standard of life; they don't have microbial theory, but they don't need to in order to know 'Cure Disease' spells make sick people better, ect). I also disagree with the notion that a Magical nation couldn't compete realistically with a technological one. They might not have anywhere nearly so sophisticated mundane weapons, but in our terms any individual mage would have the potential to be equivalent to if not greater than our own primary weapons of war(tanks, artillery, ect) and weapons of mass destruction in and of themselves at the absolute most powerful. Not even mentioning the fact that with magic you could pump out armies on a industrial scale as well(golems, undead, ect), as well as (again, all things being potentially and dependent on how powerful magic is considered) ludicrously easy logistics if Mages can either teleport or just conjure food and resources. We know that instantaneous or at least near instantaneous travel is possible because Portals, so it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that Magi know how to use magic to transport supplies or armies quickly-an advantage we wouldn't have almost at all.

Well, that's one way to do things, but if magical nations are functionally the same as moderns or even better (Teleport in, cast spell of mass destruction for an even better thing than a nuclear missile) I'm just not interested then as since if an opponent is too strong there is no will or reason to try and conquer it. The moment the mages show they also have the ability to obliterate cities at will is the moment everyone sits down on a table and make friends with each other since even if one side could win, the damages done would be so astronomical it would defeat the purpose. I'm just not interested in RPing a cultural exchange program.

I don't mean to say anyone playing a fantasy realm should be automatically weak, just because, but I suggested a power dynamic that forces cooperation and betrayal while making the use of force a real and even good choice rather than something stupid and suicidal. It would still leave many ways for the fantasy world to fight back and win, but I just don't think it would be entertaining if this meeting of worlds, rather than being an exceptional event that would forever change both worlds, politically and socially, was still just some guys, sitting on their asses but now on a table that's two times bigger with their finger on the red button that either launches the nukes or sends a telepathic message to the mages to teleport and obliterate everything.

I think I have a way to balance the nukes:

First of all, regardless of how the fantasy nations enter our world, they're probably going to end up in a country that doesn't belong to them, regardless of whether it's one "portal" several "portals" or a sort of overlap of the worlds. So, nuking a magical nation you don't like that's sitting in or near a country that either plays an important role in your nation's economy or would kill millions of innocents wouldn't necessarily be an easy option.

Then, the alternative. Let's say you're India, and France is really pissed you off by taking a magical, rare resource you wanted. Sure, you could nuke them. But they have that resource you want, and destroying France could destroy most, if not all of that resource. Not to mention all of the innocent dwarves and elves that may be living in or around France.

So, saying "we'll nuke you if you don't..." is going to be different, because you're threatening a countless number of innocent people that happened to be teleported there or happened to have people teleported there. Not to mention all the repercussions of nuking a country that's your ally just to get the magical guys inside of it. At that point, it's not MAD. Because after you fire those nukes, every single country in the world is your enemy. So, instead of all of the countries blowing up, it would likely just be two.

Here's another straw poll, regarding how the worlds should cross over:

http://www.strawpoll.me/11903429

Also, I may make a legit sample country sheet. Perhaps two, one for a magical country and another for an "IRL" country.

In regards to "IRL" countries, I feel that they should have similarities to the countries we have today, but have slight differences.

For example, the United States would still be one of the wealthier countries, but perhaps they are led by a different president, or maybe they split in two because there was another civil war, maybe they sold Alaska to Egypt. Slight altercations like that.

For nukes, I'd still go with MAD and them being the last resort button for deterrence.

If you push it, you lose everything automatically. But so does everybody else! So that means you shouldn't use it for random reasons because hey, even if the enemy is dead so are you. But that also means people can't bully you in the corner since the menace is mutual. You nuke me? I'll nuke you!

I think this could and should be used as a deterrent but the option should still be there.

Likewise if you nuke a magical nation which can't (I hope) nuke you back, there would be the fact that for everyone everywhere you will be the big bad guy for ever and ever, expect to be treated like north korea is today, etc. I think its reasonable and that we don't need fancy reasons to make the use of nukes worst, its already the worst case scenario to start with.

For nukes, I'd still go with MAD and them being the last resort button for deterrence.

If you push it, you lose everything automatically. But so does everybody else! So that means you shouldn't use it for random reasons because hey, even if the enemy is dead so are you. But that also means people can't bully you in the corner since the menace is mutual. You nuke me? I'll nuke you!

I think this could and should be used as a deterrent but the option should still be there.

Likewise if you nuke a magical nation which can't (I hope) nuke you back, there would be the fact that for everyone everywhere you will be the big bad guy for ever and ever, expect to be treated like north korea is today, etc. I think its reasonable and that we don't need fancy reasons to make the use of nukes worst, its already the worst case scenario to start with.

I'm just saying, there are plenty of reasons not to use them, this just makes MAD a bit less prevalent and nuking someone far less realistic in this RP, to appease anyone who doesn't like that RP style. However, it would still be an available outcome, as you already stated. Just trying to compromise, is all. I don't know, how big of a role do you RPers think MAD/ Nukes should be? I can make a straw poll if necessary.

So is it just made up realistic nations? Or private groups deus ex/ undergroup societies/ pmcs/whatever I missed.

So is it just made up realistic nations? Or private groups deus ex/ undergroup societies/ pmcs/whatever I missed.

It's a mixture of the two. Some people may play moderately realistic nations and then people will have the option to play as a fantasy nation or private organization.

Also, the results are in- fantasy nations will enter from one of several portals, which means I'm pretty much ready to post some legitimate sample Country Sheets. At least something better than the garbage that was the Koalaminican Republic.

Just a country that may or may not be incorporated into the RP. Let me know if you think anything else should be added.