Magical realm

Well, dare you?

The original comic.

An individual's Magical Realm is the domain of their sexual fetishes, especially in relation to roleplaying games. When a game starts developing or introducing elements of the player or GM's fetishes, either accidentally or deliberately, it is said to be entering their magical realm.

The origin of the phrase is the skit "Piss World" from KC Green's webcomic Gunshow, where the players of a tabletop RPG react violently to their GM repeatedly trying to get them to play to his urine fetish. A panel has an NPC (presumably a DMPC) called the "Whizzard" asks "Dare you enter my magical realm?" The skit ends with the players punching him out. Amusingly, the "Whizzard" looks a bit like Ed Greenwood, who is notorious for doing this in his writings and has a Magical Realm self-insert in Elminster.

When the phrase "Magical Realm" is used to describe a work (usually a setting or adventure module), the implication is that the author either let their fetishes bleed into the work sufficiently to make it very obvious what gets them off, or even created the work entirely for the sole purpose of sexual gratification without explicitly saying so. Bonus points if they insist otherwise despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Similarly, it is possible for a player or DM to try and force their magical realm onto a setting by acting upon their fetishes, or having particular reactions to something as mundane as, say, lizardfolk. A more basic version is simply hitting on every tavern wench from Mendev to Absalom in an attempt to get laid in a way that the player cannot in real life. This is considered bad form because it puts the gratification of their fetish before the fun of the rest of the group. A DM who habitually forces his Magical Realm upon the players is called a /d/M.

Drawing the Line

It is inevitable that GMs, being at heart storytellers, will let their desires and interests bleed into a narrative without trying to get off. A horse loving DM may not constantly pimp-out centaurs with big dicks or beautiful female bodies, but he will very likely pay great attention to mount mechanics and try to sneak in a centaur character or two wherever they can plausibly fit the game, or in the very least make many horse references. These are not the DM's that have a magical realm. Despite what /pol/ may (read: will) tell you, caring about something is not a crime.

A /d/M is someone who only dotes on the concepts that get him (let's be honest, they are almost always male; women who would otherwise /d/M tend to write terrible fiction instead) off, and try to draw other players to appreciate his fetishes via quests and requests. (see the piss comic above)

A lot of threads about magical realms on /tg/ are anons trying to find the precise line when something goes from "fantastical" to "perverse". As with debates regarding furries, beastfolk and monstergirls, the primary keys are context, context, context, and the sanity with which the concept is approached.

For a specific example, take Empire of the Petal Throne. One of the potential PC races are the Mihalli: shapeshifting alien wizards whose "default" form is a humanoid lion with 4-6 breasts and who are reputed to be hermaphroditic. And, to be honest, "multi-tittied herm lioness wizard" sounds like something straight out of a deviantArt page... but here's the thing: all the non-human PC races are similarly strange in one way or another. One species faces four directions at once and has eight biological sexes; another has members who resemble glass sculptures and act as a eusocial hivemind. The writers don't spend twice as many paragraphs describing their mysterious girl-dicks as the other races, they don't get the Mary Sue treatment (they have, in fact, been nuked by the local humans in their recent past and haven't recovered) and are otherwise treated as just another weird detail in the very weird place that is Tekumel.

Another thing to consider is the intent and nature of the work. Something that is openly and explicitly about sex (e.g. Cybering) is not considered magical realm by default because the sex is what you're there for, so complaining about it is like ordering a sandwich then complaining that it has bread on it. You're a willing participant, not having something forced onto you. The exception that proves the rule, of course, is when the erotic content is very much not what you signed up for. There's also something to be said for the interests of the group as a whole: one gaming group may laugh as the Bard has hot steamy sex with a Beholder, the next may get uncomfortable just from some light flirting with an NPC. This is why it's a good idea to have a session zero to set expectations before there's any chance for hurt feelings to develop.

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle!

See Also

• /d/
• /d/M
• Gor (John Norman). Rape, arson, murder, and rape. Norman likes rape.
• Forgotten Realms, the original Magical Realm of Ed Greenwood. It only seems tame because of TSR/Wizards putting the kibosh on it in printed material, but read some of the oldest material (or Ed's blog) and you'll find good-aligned life/agriculture deities blessing married couples having sex in the fields, rampant bisexuality, public orgies, rampant incest and lots of NSFW festivals.
• Monster Girl Encyclopedia: an interesting example, as it has an awful lot of worldbuilding for a commercial hentai product intended to appeal to as many fetishes as possible. Some people on the internet (see also: faggots) misunderstand the point of this and wrote a lot of grimderp fan fiction for it, which escalated into death threats and the creator issuing a C&D to the primary English "fan"site.
• FATAL is about five or six stillborn magical realms stitched together with quadratic equations and terrible polynomial-based combat. Yes, it's mindbogglingly awful.
• Wraeththu: From Enchantment to Fulfilment, for an example of a work that qualifies as a Magical Realm twice over, being one reader's Magical Realm RPG version of an already existing Magical Realm series of novels, and an excellent example of what happens when you go two Magical Realms deep, i.e. sheer horror. Hell, it even has one of the eponymous horrors' dicks in the cover.
• Magical Realm CYOA, a popular CYOA that can be overlapped with the /tg/ meaning of "Magical Realm", but also can just be taken in a non-sexualised direction.
• FAPP, a furry tabletop game about what happens when the magical realm enters you. The few who have stared into the abyss claim the mechanics are a surprisingly competent form of rules-lite, but are you really going to bring this thing to the table?
• CthulhuTech, the game that railroads your Evangelion pilots and Kamen Riders into getting raped by beastmen.

Gallery

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  What a /d/Ms goal is when introducing the Magical Realm.
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  Rogal Dorn dared. But then again, he's a masochist like that.
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  Boonta's mercy upon those that enter the temple of scum and villainy.
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  A Magical Realm in action. Note the /d/M, complete with a quote from the original comic.
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