I partially agree with this, but at the same time, if you put 40 people in a modern-day AU and have a global scale catastrophe strike... It's still not the same. And probably not very believable, either.
Well, if you think about it, even in the setting of FE, where armies regularly got into the tens of thousands, 40-50 normal people themselves wouldn't be able to swing the momentum completely. I think we're supposed to just accept that our characters are more powerful and more "mythic" than the "Average person." They might not be privy to the world leader's decisions as to grand strategy but if you suited up 50 FE chars for modern combat I think they'd have a similar impact on the outcome just on merit of being, well, FE chars XD
But it doesn't necessarily have to be something as large as a world war, IMO. Mark's examples of business and political conflicts are good ones, and also the plot of most thriller flicks released in the last 10 or 20 years where the heroes take on gangs, or domestic terrorists, or runaway trains. It just has to be a situation where something is at stake. For example, say there was an AU where our heroes have to save a group of ten hostages; it may not be the same as a war where hundreds of thousands of people die, but it's still a pretty big deal and a big source of conflict.
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Date: 2011-09-30 07:30 pm (UTC)Well, if you think about it, even in the setting of FE, where armies regularly got into the tens of thousands, 40-50 normal people themselves wouldn't be able to swing the momentum completely. I think we're supposed to just accept that our characters are more powerful and more "mythic" than the "Average person." They might not be privy to the world leader's decisions as to grand strategy but if you suited up 50 FE chars for modern combat I think they'd have a similar impact on the outcome just on merit of being, well, FE chars XD
But it doesn't necessarily have to be something as large as a world war, IMO. Mark's examples of business and political conflicts are good ones, and also the plot of most thriller flicks released in the last 10 or 20 years where the heroes take on gangs, or domestic terrorists, or runaway trains. It just has to be a situation where something is at stake. For example, say there was an AU where our heroes have to save a group of ten hostages; it may not be the same as a war where hundreds of thousands of people die, but it's still a pretty big deal and a big source of conflict.