Editing Magipunk:Setting (section)

= Setting Concepts =

The setting of Magipunk is set up to facilitate two different goals. The first is an aesthetic one: the game is intended to be set in a dirty, grungey urban dystopia. The second goal is thematic: the game is intended to be one of constant change. To an extent, these goals can work against each other. 

It is easy, when presenting an urban hellhole like Atathorn, and particularly when that urban hellhole is controlled by powerful forces like the Alliances, to fall into a mood of stasis -- to portray the city as timeless and unchanging. Remember that nothing could be further from the truth! Atathorn was a noticeably different city just ten years ago, and twenty years ago, it was almost unrecognizable. The slums of the New City are dingey and broken-down not because they're ancient and decrepit, but because they were cheaply made and hard-used. 

Atathorn, in fact, is probably the most rapidly changing, and most "advanced," location in the setting. It can help set a mood of change if this is acknowledged in the game -- if the PC's occasionally meet newcomers to the city from parts of the world that the high-magic economy hasn't transformed, yet, or if they hear from older friends about times in living memory when there were no Alliances, just Guilds and Nobles. The atmosphere of Atathorn, though desperate, is not hopeless or stagnant, and the supposed movers and shakers are at least as concerned about the future as the workers in the streets.

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