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Champion
 
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This fell into my head the other day, so I'm sharing it here so I can move on.
Take a solar system with two planets who are in matched/symmetric orbits such that the sun always just obscures each from the other. I.e. so that you can't really see one from the other with a big telescope etc. (It also means each world can have a year of the same length...)
Planet A develops tech, like Earth and eventually space flight, certainly rocket probes.
It can tell there is another planet there by science and might well send an Probe.
Planet B develops magic. So it never picks up the radio messages from Planet A.
Either
A sends a rocket probe to B and B invades A with teleports
or
A sends a space fleet to B and eventually lands an invades.
Perhaps eventually both are invading each other?
Thus you have invaders using [ tech | magic ] and defenders using [ magic | tech ], take your pick.
Matt Pennington (4/26/2007)
But I do think LRP is a hobby best enjoyed in a positive state of mind.
If you approach a game with a positive attitude then you're more likely to enjoy yourself there.
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Knight
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Interesting idea, but potentially difficult to balance the two sides. It would requires some pretty powerful magic to match the weaponry designed by a technology capable of staging an interplanetary invasion.
Might be better to have the two sides existing on different continents of the same planet, that way you could have your tech level anyware from sailing ships and muskets, up to modern warships and assualt rifles, depending on where you want to set the balance.
Maelstrom - Thomas Blunt, Archon of the Apple Cartel (Until I can con someone else into doing it  )
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Initiate
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I'm bored at work so I'll bite this particular cherry.
As was stated, this fits as a situation where the two are on equal footing in some sense, or at least not too overbalanced. Ideally, you'd want them both to be encountering the other "mysterious" powers first hand without much warning, and for neither of them to be too directly on the offensive.
I'm envisioning that Planet A (which could well be a slightly different form of Earth) sends out some form of colonisation ark which seeks habitable planets, and starts assembling the colonists in a region of the world. Local scans reveal conditions to be livable, but scans for more specific details throw up "divide by zero"s and "does not compute"s, with some very weird readings in a local area. Lacking better detail, a group of the colonists set out across the world to examine these anomalies.
Meanwhile, some of the greatest priests and mages of the Kingdom gather in a retreat to discuss the meaning of dark portents and prophecies: of dragons flying down from the moon to change the world, and the stars vanishing.
Of course you want each group to have enough background, internal faction and ulterior motivations to keep them occupied before they meet each other.
It would need to take a bit of time to consider what options are available for the Technology group, and a lot of thought would need to be put into how they interact. For example, what quality would the astronauts have in terms of:
Guns (not just how good, but how many, and are they using other tools as weapons)
Medicine (Just good first aid, or nanotech-type regrowth)
Overland travel (and if it's so good, why are they even walking)
Communication (Short range radios are doable, but not )
Scanners of some sort
AI ('cos, well, playable androids)
Armour (forcefields)
And what sort of magic is available to counter this, or is there a wide range of variants. Ideally, you want magic to do certain things technology just can't, although it should be different enough that the whole affair doesn't immediately become either a massacre, or a game of "who has the most calls", where your "electro-dispersion ion field" does exactly the same thing as my "Salahanza's Chant of Shielding."
Which does raise what could well be a major logistical issue with the game, which is the seperation of rules knowledge and history between the two sides. Each character should only get the background of his side of the game, but they should also, ideally, not know the rules about how the other side work, while being fully aware of their own, and being affectable by it (ie, you don't need to know how to fire or recharge a plasma gun, but you do need to know what happens when it quad knockbacks you). On the other hand, you would need to give enough detail for someone to make a decent choice on the matter of which side to sit on.
Actually the idea of setting up both groups seperately, and not letting them know that they're really playing the same event would be really neat, if completely impractical.
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Champion
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As much as I'd envisaged any details, I was thinking that the two "sides" show have a [small] number of Abilities to which the others had no real defense. Which means they would have to be countered by Thinking not just counter-stating.
Running two "teams" at one event would be great. I supposed I'd imagined running two campaigns, one where people played Planet A chars and one where they played Planet B folk.
Perhaps there could be a counter-invasion from the other planet?
Hmmm...
And how would they speak to each other?..... [moohaahaa]
Matt Pennington (4/26/2007)
But I do think LRP is a hobby best enjoyed in a positive state of mind.
If you approach a game with a positive attitude then you're more likely to enjoy yourself there.
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Champion
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Separate continents would be better. With separate planets the magic users would be unable to launch a counter-offensive against the technology using planet (short of mass inter-stellar teleportation), but if the only obstacle stopping them was a great big sea they could build boats and the two powers would be on more equal footing.
Shven
------
PD - Machupa Kivull - Sandy coloured great-coated Gnoll
Shards/Ascendancy - Crew
FOIP is short for 'torture me for more info'
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Wag
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Spelljammers. Planar travel. Mass teleportation. "Islands In Space" (chunks of the planet lifted out to be used as microcosm-ships). Magically enslaved space monsters. The list is only really limited by imagination, as that's the Big Advantage of magic - it doesn't have to make very much sense.
PD - Brother Farael of the Ordo Dictum Dominus
EOS - Lord Nasir Suran
6P - System creator (now retired), Andrei Treune of Clan Suner
RL - Will Robinson
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Champion
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I don't think just being on separate continents would give the separation in communication.
They would meet too soon.
You are reduced to Conquistadors vs. Aztecs with fireballs.
If the Tech people fly to the magic folk, the magic folk then have a reason to develop further reaching transport powers.
And stow away on returning rockets in order to seek teleport locations to memorise, etc.
Hmmmm, as I type that I imagined a variant: add Planet C, which has neither tech nor magic but Other Resources??
Kinda Martian Mages fight Venusian Androids in Ancient Egypt.....
Hmmmm... Planet C is definately only "an option" not The Way Forward, I think.
Matt Pennington (4/26/2007)
But I do think LRP is a hobby best enjoyed in a positive state of mind.
If you approach a game with a positive attitude then you're more likely to enjoy yourself there.
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Knight
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This is SUCH a cool idea!
BUT
The thing with Tech is that it developes. You would have to let characters with the know-how make stuff better. Bigger/better/faster etc.
Its quite easilly balanced though
Cybernetics- Enchants
Guns have ammo - Magic needs mana
Mages cant cast in armour - Armour is fairly useless against magic (or entirely the opposite)
It would then be a case of numbers. How much damge a laspistol does verses a magic dart.
Think what would happen if a Space marine fleet invaded the warhammer world.
At first they'd kick ass untill the fantasy guys realised the extreme lack of magical defense they had and suddenly the war bogs down as the high elf mages and human wizards kick in with massive magic death.
Also the dwarfs start stick big nasty runes on everything and then the marines have to call in the thunderhawks to even stuff up.
Im thinking the Dark elves would have a me-against-my-brother-but-us-against-you mentality and suddenly they have to deal with immensly powerfull demi-god on his dragon AND Nagash is making a return apparantly. I'd like to see them deal with him.
So on the surface whilst the marines should walk al over them the complete lack of magical ability means they suddenly loose there technological advantage
Of course if it was the Edar it'd be different. Eldar rock
Sorry thats a bit of a ramble hope you see what im getting at.
Edit: Actualyl i know what would happen. The marines would go "ooh bugger" and bomb the plave from orbit 
I do try and spell things right...
Dark Millenium: Unofficial Larp based on Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000.
"MADE OF SOLID MING"
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