jebnotjib
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 30
Preferred Game Systems: GURPS, baby!
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Post by jebnotjib on Feb 13, 2018 9:07:59 GMT -8
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”—Arthur C. Clarke “Bingeley Bingeley Beep!”—Dis Organizer Mk II, Discworld
What modern technologies could we replicate in a fantasy world using magic as found in RPGs?
How would the modern world be different if we used magic instead of tech?
What repercussions or problems would you predict or expect in such worlds?
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lightningcat
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 29
Currently Playing: Pathfinder, D&D 4e
Currently Running: Transformers, Pathfinder
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Post by lightningcat on Feb 13, 2018 13:05:35 GMT -8
This depends way to much on what kind of magic is available, and how it works. The Eberron setting is a 1920s equivalent using D&D rules. They have trains, airships, robots, telegraphs, and other stuff. While the Tippyverse is taking magic as technology to the most broken extreme in D&D. I still have a D&D setting on my hardrive that uses magic to produce mechas, power armor, and other high tech items, and still uses swords and spears to deal damage most of the time. Dwarves used fire elementals to power underground trains. It is a magic-tech kitchen sink world. Might be fun to go back to, but not the point. I am sure GURPS has at least one setting that is modern-like but magic instead of tech. The terms spellpunk, runepunk, and spellnoir have been used to describe versions of this idea. While I have not seen it, the show Avatar: Legend of Korra looks like it uses their version of magic to reproduce modern life.
In almost every game, magic replaces normal medicine, so medical technology would be absent or reduced to first aid. However, magic also seems to be better at medical aid then tech, so people would live longer, have easier times during childbirth, and have have lower childhood mortality rates. So there would simply be more humans around.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Feb 13, 2018 17:25:31 GMT -8
Good points on the medical aspects, but I don't know that it would apply across the board everywhere. I think even if magical healing keeps kids alive through childhood, lowers mortality rates, etc, I think you would also see a system of hospitals show up, and before long, something akin to modern medical administrations.
Let's say a large city - Free City of Greyhawk, for example - of population 160,000 citizens. How many magical medical people do you need to keep that functioning? Even supplemented by traditional suturing and first aid/trauma treatments, you might need a sizable chunk to keep that up and running, I would figure.
I was born and lived most of my life in Muskegon, Mi - as of 2016, population 38,349. We had three major hospital campuses to cover the city and outlying areas (say less than a 10 min drive). Even then, wait times in the ER could be atrocious. In all fairness, for example (thanks Google again), there are 8 Catholic churches in the same area. What level priests are we looking at there and their levels? Usually it'd be one priest to a church, maybe a nun or assistants, but one 'spellcaster'.
I do think magic gets us to a smoother world, but it doesn't solve everything. Again, just on healing magic, if healing magic is around, it becomes harder to kill soldiers. The arms tech will need to accelerate to win wars. If low level magic is more common, in times of war I think we see what we're seeing now in America: better field medical care leads to more survivors who would have bled out in WW2 or Vietnam.
TLDR - I think technology and magic don't replace the other, but find new and unique ways to compliment each other. I think also magic allows things that technology does -- technology allowed Las Vegas to open in a desert; the ability to summon water or open one portal to the Elemental Plane of Water would do the same.
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Post by ericfromnj on Feb 15, 2018 18:15:04 GMT -8
There is a book about medieval magical society that really looks into how a feudal society would be effected by magic. I can’t remember the name of it to save my life though.
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