The Campaign Builder's Guild

This rather entertaining debate began on Gwaihir Windlord's Airborne D&D (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?40361) thread. Essentially, that thread described a word wherein a small, isolated island of Guildsmen possesses WWII aircraft technology, while all other aspects of the world were largely Medeival.

Despite the fact that I seem to be the only one (other than Gwaihir) holding the opinion that such a thing could, in theory, be possible, I was nevertheless having fun arguing my point. The debate proceeds as presented herein. Enjoy.

Quote from: MithridatesI guess this just doesn't feel organic to me.  For one, thing, how have we gotten to a place where the internal combustion engine has been mastered, but people still fight with swords?  Sure, the Guild conspiracy to keep the knowledge from the people and all, but that's an incredible leap of the imagination.  One invention - gunpowder for instance, or Greek Fire, or the printing press - I can see that being invented secretly and being kept that way.  We're not just talking about that here, however.  You are asking your players to believe that the internal combustion engine, aluminum processing, hydrogen synthesis, high explosive ordnance, machine guns, and the simple aerodynamics of flight are all present, as well as the myriad technologies that these technologies depend on - modern steel production, machine tools, replaceable and standardized parts, chemistry, physics - were all not only invented by this guild, but kept secretly.  These are products of an industrial revolution that took societies of millions of people hundreds of years to develop; I just can't wrap my head around a guild that does all these things and still keeps them a secret even when the technology is in common use.


You're going to run into problems with players, too, who will see the glaring and tremendous gap between the Guild and society and wonder, quite reasonably, if it wouldn't be too difficult to cross it.  Would the MGs on the planes simply stop working if taken off the planes?  If not, why is everyone still fighting with swords and spears when there are machine guns?  Sure, Guild property, but planes crash and people blab, especially in a d20 world where a high level adventurer who fancied a machine gun could conk some serious heads to get one. Couldn't the players just strip a Pratt&Whitney out of a plane, make a metal chassis, throw a few MGs in and invent the first tank?  Would stealing a single plane really be that hard?

Maybe some players wouldn't be bothered by all this, but it's a bit too much for me to swallow.  Call me a history purist, but I need my anachronisms to be at least borderline plausible.  It's not that I don't like the idea of Stukas dive-bombing formations of pikemen, but it takes all the fun out of it when there's no plausible rhyme or reason behind it.

Edit: For example, what if the Guild had a total monopoly on oil?  This doesn't really solve the whole machine gun problem, but it creates a reasonable explanation for why they have planes and nobody else can.  It's entirely reasonable that if only one remote area of the globe has oil, the people who live there will be significantly more advanced than others.  That's a far more plausible way to approach the technology gap than to use the idea of an incredibly massive conspiracy.

Quote from: Gwaihir WindlordOk, lemme try to defend this.  First off, I'm not going to change the WW2 part, but if you guys argue me down to point where I have to say "It's magic let it be!" so be it.

Ok, I like the idea about the oil.  I think I'll use that, thanks Mithridates for that.

The Guild hasn't taken over the world yet because they simply don't have the manpower.  They've got a few hundred engineers and a few thousand workers, but that pales in comparison to the military of the two other nations.

As for the rest of the world, I'm leaving that alone for now.  Maybe I'll get to it later, but as of right now any other civilizations are more than 3,000 miles away.

The planes are somewhat magical in nature.  The mechanics of it are all mundane, but there are serious magical enchantments on the aircraft.  If two parts of a plane are separated by an inch or more, the smaller piece is destroyed (as if touched by a Sphere of Annihilation).

The Guild doesn't control all air travel.  Lighter than air travel is open, although non guild airships tend to be powered magically instead of mechanically.

Quote from: Mithridates

Quote from: Gwaihir WindlordThe Guild hasn't taken over the world yet because they simply don't have the manpower.  They've got a few hundred engineers and a few thousand workers, but that pales in comparison to the military of the two other nations.

That's exactly the problem - it seems impossible for a few hundred engineers to singlehandedly accomplish what it took 500 years and in industrial revolution to accomplish on earth.  Even if they magically came up with all that knowledge, which came out of hundreds of years of trial and error in a population of millions on earth, there's no way that a society of a few thousand workers could possibly provide the industrial base to make this stuff unless they ran super-futuristic robot factories or something.

The bigger question, however, is one of comparative intelligence - why could a society of thousands come up with so much technology - effectively 500 years worth - while much larger societies can't?  Are the Guild people just naturally much, much smarter or something?  Unless the other societies had a tremendous dearth of all important resources - oil, iron, aluminum, rubber, coal, and so on - it seems more likely that they, not a few thousand people on a lonely island, would come up with those inventions.

QuoteAs for the rest of the world, I'm leaving that alone for now.  Maybe I'll get to it later, but as of right now any other civilizations are more than 3,000 miles away.

The planes are somewhat magical in nature.  The mechanics of it are all mundane, but there are serious magical enchantments on the aircraft.  If two parts of a plane are separated by an inch or more, the smaller piece is destroyed (as if touched by a Sphere of Annihilation).

fireballs[/i] are much, much better and already discovered?  Most fantasy settlings deal with this by making magic very scarce - the common people can't shoot fireballs, so they use guns.  P-51 Mustangs, however, are not an item of the "common people," which makes one wonder why a few hundred engineers would seclude themselves on an island and spend hundreds of years single-mindedly pursuing technologies they knew nothing about when magic to accomplish roughly the same thing was already available.  Or did magic develop alongside technology?  If so, why didn't technologies spread more widely before the "sphere of annihilation self-destruct mechanism" was invented?
[/quote]

Quote from: MithridatesThe bigger question, however, is one of comparative intelligence - why could a society of thousands come up with so much technology - effectively 500 years worth - while much larger societies can't?

People developed planes because they wanted to fly - so if they already can fly with magical/monstrous means, why did planes come about in the first place?  Why invent muskets when fireballs are much, much better and already discovered?[/quote]In fairness, you previously claimed that any society with a monopoly on planes and guns could conquer the entire world. Now you're saying that existing magic is already better than both planes and guns. So which is it: planes and guns conquer all, or planes and guns accomplish nothing?

Quote from: Strgt55

Quote from: Epic MeepoIn fairness, you previously claimed that any society with a monopoly on planes and guns could conquer the entire world. Now you're saying that existing magic is already better than both planes and guns. So which is it: planes and guns conquer all, or planes and guns accomplish nothing?

No, he's saying existing magic already exists. If humans had the innate ability to fly, do you honestly think we'd have built airplanes? You need the progression, you're comparing two end-products and removing the chain of events.

What he's saying is that without the desire to build a wright flier, you've got no reason to assume the progression up to Mustangs.

Quote from: Mithridates

Quote from: Epic MeepoSimple demographics. Assume each island contains the same number of monsters that need killing. XP earned divided by one thousand is much greater than XP earned divided by one million. So those thousand people on the Guild island are much higher level than those million people on the other islands. :D

In fairness, you previously claimed that any society with a monopoly on planes and guns could conquer the entire world. Now you're saying that existing magic is already better than both planes and guns. So which is it: planes and guns conquer all, or planes and guns accomplish nothing?

contingency[/i] sphere of annihilation effect.  Also, if magic is really that advanced, surely the non-Guild people could replicate any resource they were lacking, including oil, through magic, or dispel the self-destruct effect on planes, right?  Or just wish for a machine gun, or the schematics for one?
[/quote]

Quote from: Mithridates

Quote from: Strgt55What he's saying is that without the desire to build a wright flier, you've got no reason to assume the progression up to Mustangs.

Exactly.  It's not as if the Engineers would have known what a Mustang was back when they were inventing the steam engine.  If they could already fly with magic long before they had even conceived of the idea of an airplane, why would they devote so much time to "re-inventing the wheel," as it were?  As they say, "necessity is the mother of invention," so if there's no necessity, why the invention?

Quote from:  less armor than flying warrior surrounded by flying hunk of the heaviest material you can make fly.

[quoteYou need the progression, you're comparing two end-products and removing the chain of events.

It's not as if the Engineers would have known what a Mustang was back when they were inventing the steam engine.[/quote]See my previous paragraph for my response.

Quote from: Strgt55

Quote from: Epic MeepoYes. We have the innate ability to walk, yet we still have Segue scooters. Name almost any human faculty, and I'm willing to bet there's a product that does the exact same thing, with no added efficiently, for those who are too lazy to do it themselves.

The thing is, the segways are faster than a walking pace. If I came up to you and said, 'look! it's a thing that lets you grab, you stick it on your hand and it slows it down, but five hundred years in the future, people using something based on this will be able to crush titanium!' You'd think I was a nutcase. The invention, in order to catch on, must be superior in its first incarnation than that which already exists.

Quote from: Epic MeepoPlus, flying warrior = less armor than flying warrior surrounded by flying hunk of the heaviest material you can make fly.

I could point out that that is still, by definition, armor...

Quote from: Epic MeepoIn a world with divination magic, why not compare end-products? If I can commune with God and He says, "If you build that musket, your grandchildren will have more firepower than an army of warmages in a fort made of fireball scrolls," I'd be apt to listen.

The thing is, that's not true. It's saying 'if you build this musket, and make everyone else use it, then if the mages don't kill you, your offspring will be powerful.'

Quote from: MithridatesThe thing is, the technology to build a Segway already existed when what's-his-name invented it.  Electric motors, plastics, metallurgy, gyroscopes, computers - these were already available, and he just threw them together in a novel way.  We're talking about a 500 year jump with a really significant investment of time - even if the original Guild engineers could cast commune to figure out what a P-51 Mustang was, they would have to work in the knowledge that not their children, or their grandchildren, or their great-grandchildren would see the fruits of their labor.  They and their children could spend their lives in drudgery, awaiting a future weapons advantage to come hundreds of years down the line - or they could just hop on board the magic train and be powerful now.  What would you choose?

Quote from: MithridatesWe're talking about a 500 year jump with a really significant investment of time...

might[/i] happened. Does the OP need to further justify his inclusion of airplanes? Yes. Does he have to assume that the 500 year course of real-world technological development is the only possible way a society could have invented airplanes? No.

Also, recall that when Germany invaded Poland, the German tanks were fighting against sword-wielding cavalry. Vast technological differences between disparate cultures do exist, even in the real world.

QuoteThey and their children could spend their lives in drudgery, awaiting a future weapons advantage to come hundreds of years down the line - or they could just hop on board the magic train and be powerful now.  What would you choose?

Additionally, if you're going to let people get the P-51 from communing with the gods, it still begs the question as to why the other cultures haven't done the same thing.  Do the gods only answer the questions of the Guildsmen?[/quote]Perhaps the Guildsmen were the only ones to ask the right questions. The same way Einstein was the only one to ask the right questions when discovering the principles of relativity. He was working with knowledge that the rest of the scientific community had already known for decades when he made his breakthrough.

Quote from: Strgt55

Quote from: Epic MeepoI disagree. The first incarnation of the computer was the size of a small house and was less efficient than the several-thousand-year-old abacus. Yet people invested time and effort in developing computers because they knew what computers might look like decades down the line.

Your example is flawed. The computer is the end of a long line of devices built to make calculations; the features we have now were added on as side bonuses. The line principle as laid down still stands.

Quote from: Mithridates

Quote from: Epic MeepoThat assumption is based on anecdotal evidence; only one example of that technology being developed exists. The entire point of creating an alternate world is to imagine what might happened. Does the OP need to further justify his inclusion of airplanes? Yes. Does he have to assume that the 500 year course of real-world technological development is the only possible way a society could have invented airplanes? No.

something[/i] to make it reasonable.

QuoteAlso, recall that when Germany invaded Poland, the German tanks were fighting against sword-wielding cavalry. Vast technological differences between disparate cultures do exist, even in the real world.

Of course[/i] there can be fighters attacking swordsmen; think of Amazonian tribal people in the modern day.  What doesn't work is not the gap itself, but that the gap was created by a society of several thousand people.  Barring divine/magical intervention of a massive scale, how is it conceivable?

And keep in mind that the Zulu and other colonized peoples very quickly got a hold of their own guns.  Players will want to know how the Guild can keep their monopoly not just on planes, but on every piece of technology between gunpowder and advanced aviation.

QuoteBoth! Train mages, then summon a work-force to do the drudgery.

Perhaps the Guildsmen were the only ones to ask the right questions. The same way Einstein was the only one to ask the right questions when discovering the principles of relativity. He was working with knowledge that the rest of the scientific community had already known for decades when he made his breakthrough.

Quote from: Strgt55Your example is flawed. The computer is the end of a long line of devices built to make calculations...

first[/i] in a long line of electronic devices built to make calculations. And the first electronic device built to make calculations was less efficient than existing non-electronic devices that made calculations. By the logic cited in precious posts opposing my viewpoint, no one should ever have built the first electronic calculating device.

Allow me to provide an example that doesn't depend upon drawing an electonic/non-electronic distinction:

Right now, scientists can grow (and have grown!) living, beating, disembodied hearts in labs. But lab-grown hearts are not fit for human transplant, whereas mechanical valves that mimic hearts are fit for transplant. It will likely takes decades, if not centuries, for lab-grown hearts to become more efficient than mechanical valves that mimic living hearts.

But theory tells us that, down the line, lab-grown hearts have the potential to be better for patients and cheaper to produce than mechanical valves used in place of hearts. Does this mean that we should abandon research into lab-grown organic hearts, with their pay-off for generations down the line, just because mechanical valves provide an immediate benefit to our generation?

(And, incidentally, as we speak, fewer than a thousand people in the entire world have the knowhow necessary to grow hearts in laboratories. Had they chosen not to communicate their accomplishments to medical journals, they could very easily have convinced us - well, me at least! - that no human being had ever grown a functional, disembodied organ before.)

Quote from: Mithridates

Quote from: Epic MeepoBut theory tells us that, down the line, lab-grown hearts have the potential to be better for patients and cheaper to produce than mechanical valves used in place of hearts. Does this mean that we should abandon research into lab-grown organic hearts, with their pay-off for generations down the line, just because mechanical valves provide an immediate benefit to our generation?

We possess the technology to grow organs out of the body - or at least, a few scientists do.  It is natural for people to see an existing technology and wonder how it could be improved.  It's reasonable to think "hey, a real heart could do that even better, what's say we grow one chaps?"

But this assumes a basic level of biological knowledge where "let's grow a real heart" seems reasonable, and achievable at some future point.  Without this basic level of understanding, it's never an issue.

Why did it take so long for people to go from the bow and arrow to the musket?  It's not as if people weren't trying to think up new ways of throwing things at each other - the huge proliferation of various bows, crossbows, siege devices, and so on are all testaments to man's willingness to re-invent the science of throwing things to hurt somebody better.  I imagine that no one area of knowledge has received more attention in human history than ranged weaponry.  It took a basic level of alchemical/physical knowledge, however, before people thought "hey - what about using gunpowder?"  Certainly early natural philosophers and alchemists hadn't been working for centuries on a gun; they didn't know what that was.  It was inconceivable to them, just like guns were inconceivable to native Americans who first encountered them.  I mean, come on, firesticks?

In the same way, the knowledge base has to exist before people think "let's make a powered flying machine that shoots bullets" or "let's grow a heart for this guy."  You have to be at the point where growing a heart or flying in a heap of metal seems possible, even if it only seems possible in the distant future.

Once people knew about gunpowder and could visualize how it could be used, it didn't take long for the first crude guns to appear, even though early ones were pretty inferior to bows and siege engines of the time.  They could see that this technology had promise in the long run.  Other technologies didn't; Archimedes invented the steam cannon, but it wasn't really practical and nobody saw any promise in it.  Either way, however, that threshold has to be reached first.

When you are in the medieval age with only the most crude understanding of how steel is formed, are you really capable of imagining a Mustang and working towards it?  Probably not - and just like with gunpowder, you'll keep working on that better bow or better crossbow until the knowledge base is such that a cannon is conceivable.  In the case of the Mustang, this will probably be once things like combustion engines and aluminum processing come around - suddenly, it occurs to the dragon-riding people of the world that you could do something interesting with this stuff, even if it's not better than a dragon... yet.  Such a visualization in the age of knights, however, strains believability, lacking some divine inspiration or something.  Maybe your deity came down and said "Lo, here are the sacred blueprints; retreat to an island, study the arts of metalworking and alchemy, and verily, one day your children shall be awesome."

Quote from: Strgt55

Quote from: Epic MeepoThe first computer ever built was the first in a long line of electronic devices built to make calculations. And the first electronic device built to make calculations was less efficient than existing non-electronic devices that made calculations. By the logic cited in precious posts opposing my viewpoint, no one should ever have built the first electronic calculating device.

You're being too specific. It was the first electronic device in that line, but certainly not the first in its own line. Before that you had analog addition machines, the aformentioned abacus, slide rules, etc.

Woah... lotsa stuff.

I've got so say, that in general I like the mixing of tech and magic.

I sort of agree that tech shouldn't be so ridiculously out of step as renaissance (or before) and WWII (or after). Now, Victorian alongside WWI maybe. Or WWI alongside early WWII maybe. The only justification I can see for more than 50 years disparity is total isolation of one society from another (such as when Europe came to the Americas) or a dearth of metal in a given location.

Quote from: beejazzThe only justification I can see for more than 50 years disparity is total isolation of one society from another (such as when Europe came to the Americas) or a dearth of metal in a given location.

I agree, and I'll have to go back and add clarification to the OP. The one advanced society was described as being so isolated that no outsider even knows the location its homeland. So, presumably, there wasn't much interaction between different societies until this one culture's aircraft came along.

Though guns and airplanes are scary, my biggest concern would actually be the navy.  In a world where navy matters (as in, not all countries are land-locked next to each other), having a couple WWII battleships next to rennaisance or medieval warships would be devestating.  A single WWII battleship could probably take out the entirety of Napoleon's navy.

Then, hey, let's throw in submarines!

Ok, first off cannons do exist. Gunpowder weapons are very prevalent, and catapults and trebuchets are not used as much because of cannons. There are muskets, but they are crude and bows are more effective and cheaper. For that reason, they generally aren't used, although non-Guild scientists are continuing to improve upon them.

The Guild is so much more advance because they are all much smarter. Hundreds of years ago, lighter-than-air travel was developed and was quite prevalent. Heavier-than-air travel, however, had not progressed beyond Wright fliers because there was no need for them to. The original Guild members, however, saw enormous potential in heavier-than-air travel, but because no one else had yet seen that potential they also say enormous potential for profit. Everyone who believed in the potential power of heavier-than-air travel got on a blimp and headed out to an island where they would attempt to develop it. Only genius visionaries were on that blimp. As plane became more and more sophisticated, the Guild members realized that they would need something to power it. Crude oil reserves had been found on the island already, and while the internal combustion engine had not yet been developed the oil was already being used to power things. Soon the engine was invented, and eventually it was miniaturized enough to put into a plane.

The internal combustion engine is in use all over the world. Zeppelins and build by the Republic and the United Islands as well as the Guild, but the Guild controls all of the crude oil yet discovered. By now the Guild has so much money that whenever someone find more, the Guild will simply buy it. Six million gold now is a lot more appealing then 10 million 30 years from now.

Quote from: JharvissThough guns and airplanes are scary, my biggest concern would actually be the navy.  In a world where navy matters (as in, not all countries are land-locked next to each other), having a couple WWII battleships next to rennaisance or medieval warships would be devestating.  A single WWII battleship could probably take out the entirety of Napoleon's navy.

Then, hey, let's throw in submarines!

No monster battleships.  Naval technology is Napoleonic.  Naval travel isn't cost-effective because of all the monsters in the ocean.  That's why air travel developed as fast as it did.

Quote from: MithridatesOnce people knew about gunpowder and could visualize how it could be used, it didn't take long for the first crude guns to appear, even though early ones were pretty inferior to bows and siege engines of the time.  They could see that this technology had promise in the long run.

When you are in the medieval age with only the most crude understanding of how steel is formed, are you really capable of imagining a Mustang and working towards it?[/quote]A Mustang in particular? Probably not. But the idea of a flying machine that could prove exceedingly useful? Certainly. Recall that Da Vinci drew crude blueprints for both helicopters and submarines. Presumably, he wasn't sketching them for aesthetic reasons, but because he thought such things, once properly developed, might be useful.

The fact that no one worked on helicopters and submarines as a result of Da Vinci's vision was entirely a result of Da Vinci not being born into a position of authority. Had he been born a king, it is entirely conceivable that he might have assigned engineers to the task of developing flying machines, to impress visitors to his court with novel toys, if nothing else. And if he achieved even modest results, it is entirely conceivable that the research would have continued unabated.

Then, there's also the fact that history is full of discoveries that lost forgotten before they could be put to better use. Just based on documentaries I've seen on television, I can list a handful of "modern" inventions that existed before the birth of Christ: hang gliders (built by certain American Indians of the Southwest); ships capable of trans-Atlantic journeys (built by Egyptians); the basic principals of calculus, upon which all of modern physics depends (in a recently unearthed manuscript penned by Archimedes); seismographs (built by the Chinese and used to track the movements of enemy sappers).

And since the ancient Greeks conceived of the ideas of sub-atomic particles, it's not even beyond the imagination to conceive of an ancient alchemist accidentally discovering the electrical properties of certain chemicals, thereby leading to an early discovery of crude electronic circuits. To say nothing of theories of a technologically advanced Atlantis.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that technological leaps and bounds need not follow the progression that they did in real world history. It's entirely conceivable to imagine a world in which something was discovered much earlier than it was in the real world, entirely by accident. So why not have one culture that happens to have vastly advanced technology?

What if, for example, European monarchs considered complex technological gadgets to be greater economic drivers and status symbols than coffers full of gold? Instead of immediately colonizing the New World, they might have invested in engineering, arriving in force in the New World only after developing aircraft. A situation not unlike that in Gwaihir's world.

Quote from: Gwaihir Windlord

Quote from: JharvissThough guns and airplanes are scary, my biggest concern would actually be the navy.  In a world where navy matters (as in, not all countries are land-locked next to each other), having a couple WWII battleships next to rennaisance or medieval warships would be devestating.  A single WWII battleship could probably take out the entirety of Napoleon's navy.

Then, hey, let's throw in submarines!

No monster battleships.  Naval technology is Napoleonic.  Naval travel isn't cost-effective because of all the monsters in the ocean.  That's why air travel developed as fast as it did.

I like this element, for two reasons.

1) Balance. A single ironclad during the Civil War was almost indestructable. Put a WWII battleship? It'd be the god of the ocean.
2) It makes the development of air travel that much more realistic. There would have to be a way to transport goods over long distances, and without safe water transport, air would be the next best thing.

I think the WW2 thing is going a bit far, personally. I can conceive, however, slightly MORE developed versions of the Wright Flier, or working Da Vinci flying machines. Development of a crude combustion engine is not TOO out, and I can see that advancing. But you'd need a VERY politically powerful group of engineers to keep it a secret. You'd have to keep all your workers locked away, all your blueprints in the most fearful security, and make your aircraft repairable only by members of the guild (which in turn would increase political influence).

Not at all.  The Guild has a total monopoly on oil.  Anyone can make a plane, but the Guild is the only group that has fuel.

Quote from: Gwaihir WindlordNot at all.  The Guild has a total monopoly on oil.  Anyone can make a plane, but the Guild is the only group that has fuel.

Well, we can all go back to the argument again.

If flight magic exists, why would people want planes in the first place?

Because a plane can get you from one place to another faster.  While flight is already a possibility though magic, a plane is far more efficient.  You can carry more stuff in a plane, and go faster.

Just like cars and trains were invented.  We can already walk and run, why invent a car?  Because the car can get you somewhere faster than walking, and it can carry more stuff than you could on your own.

Quote from: Gwaihir WindlordBecause a plane can get you from one place to another faster.  While flight is already a possibility though magic, a plane is far more efficient.  You can carry more stuff in a plane, and go faster.

Just like cars and trains were invented.  We can already walk and run, why invent a car?  Because the car can get you somewhere faster than walking, and it can carry more stuff than you could on your own.

That can be solved rather easily with a bag of holding. I bet you I could fit more in a bag of holding than you can in a one-seater monoplane. Heck, you can CARRY more. And I think fly can actually take you up to pretty high speeds, although I may be wrong.

Anyway, why not just teleport, then? :P

Quote from: Epic MeepoAs I understand it, the Chinese had gunpowder hundreds of years before the Europeans, and though they created crude rockets used to signal or intimidate troops, they never created guns. Just having the basic ingredients of an invention does not guarantee the imagination necessary to create it; sometimes, a culture just gets lucky and has the right inspiration to propel its technology forward while other cultures fail to make the leap.

A Mustang in particular? Probably not. But the idea of a flying machine that could prove exceedingly useful? Certainly. Recall that Da Vinci drew crude blueprints for both helicopters and submarines. Presumably, he wasn't sketching them for aesthetic reasons, but because he thought such things, once properly developed, might be useful.[/quote]concept[/i] of a chariot that moved itself.

You will also observe that Da Vinci's flights of fancy led nowhere; without the basic level of technology, such "invention" remains laughable.  Both the need and the basic technology is required, and neither existed in Da Vinci's time.  Ironically, it is exactly for this reason in part that he is thought of as a visionary; he conceived of things that were neither feasible nor useful, but were rough analogues to modern devices such that, though operating on entirely different principles, they seemed prophetic.

QuoteThe fact that no one worked on helicopters and submarines as a result of Da Vinci's vision was entirely a result of Da Vinci not being born into a position of authority. Had he been born a king, it is entirely conceivable that he might have assigned engineers to the task of developing flying machines, to impress visitors to his court with novel toys, if nothing else. And if he achieved even modest results, it is entirely conceivable that the research would have continued unabated.

And since the ancient Greeks conceived of the ideas of sub-atomic particles, it's not even beyond the imagination to conceive of an ancient alchemist accidentally discovering the electrical properties of certain chemicals, thereby leading to an early discovery of crude electronic circuits. To say nothing of theories of a technologically advanced Atlantis.[/quote]use[/i] this information - microscopes, spectrometers, and so on - it remains speculation.  Again, the theory itself accomplishes nothing without the neccessary technological base.

QuoteI guess what I'm trying to say is that technological leaps and bounds need not follow the progression that they did in real world history. It's entirely conceivable to imagine a world in which something was discovered much earlier than it was in the real world, entirely by accident.

who[/i] invented the first phone, or hot air balloon, or airplane - people like the Wright brothers were products of their time.

I am a huge fan of the game "Civilization" and all its successors, but they are all fundamentally flawed - no leader things to himself, "I shall endeavor to invent writing," or iron working, or rocketry.  The capacity to understand technology as a big flowchart, continually advancing from pottery and the wheel to nuclear physics and cloning, is an exclusively modern conceit.  That conceit was also developed, as dearly as any invention, as a result of thousands of years of intellectual and philosophical revolutions.  In many ways these are inextricably linked to the physical - gunpowder and the printing press changed not just how we fought and made books, but how we thought.  The "nation-state" and the notion of territorial sovereignty would have been impractical and preposterous to a medieval baron; feudalism worked far better for him in an age where borders were fluid, labor was unskilled, and the discourse of rights was nonexistent.

The point is that these things - from cannons to Communism, printing presses to "progress," paper, and P-51s - are not individual nodules of knowledge that can be plucked at will and thrown into a gift basket of historical "what ifs" scenarios.  They all depend on each other.  Technology and thought build together; they have their own prerequisites of knowledge, science, and necessity.  Saying "what if medieval people had the technology to have P-51s" is no more or less preposterous than saying "what if Neanderthals had postmodernism and dialectical materialism."  If medieval people had modern technology, they would be modern, not medieval.  Everything is a product of its time, place, and neighbors, and removing it from that place renders it meaningless.  It takes fundamentally and wholly different explanations - like "these people just have a +4 intelligence mod" - to justify such juxtaposition of the flow of historical thought and technology.

QuoteWhat if, for example, European monarchs considered complex technological gadgets to be greater economic drivers and status symbols than coffers full of gold? Instead of immediately colonizing the New World, they might have invested in engineering, arriving in force in the New World only after developing aircraft. A situation not unlike that in Gwaihir's world.

they never do[/i].  What would a monarch have to gain from "investing in engineering?"  What would "investing in engineering" even mean to a monarch who lived before the term "engineering" meant anything?  Before there were any "engineers?"  You're injecting a highly modern conception of progress, research, development, and science into a society that had no such conceptions.  It's not as if medieval monarchs were any more short-sighted or greedy than modern politicians, or that medieval intellectuals were any stupider.  "Complex technological gadgets" enable and are enabled by social and political developments; a medieval world without medieval technology simply isn't medieval anymore.

As with the Amazonia example, it's certainly plausible for one continent to be far more advanced than another - but this is accomplished through prolonged isolation, and says nothing about "uneven" development.  It's simply not plausible to have a society that fights in the air with P-51s and on the ground with muskets barring some extreme deus ex machina like divine gifts or magic, or some highly unusual or supernatural paradigm shift.

Perhaps this may help:  The people on the island have no need to fight, therefore that's manpower, physical resources, money, etc. not being wasted on killing one another.  At the same time, the other two nations (from what I gather there are only 2 others) are warring in a medieval state.  If you know anything about medieval times it's that war was an almost constant.  One of the reasons useful technological advances didn't happen often.  Definately not the whole reason for the gap in technology, but perhaps a part.

Also, as for the gunpowder thing: China had gunpowder rockets that they shot off of sticks during parades.  One went astray and killed their emperor.  Only then did they decide to use it to kill people and things.  This happened, by the way, long before Europe even had the chance to think about gunpowder.

If they don't need to fight, why are they wasting their time with WWII fighter planes?  Presumably there's some more useful invention to spend their time on.

Quote from: Incidentally...Archimedes' half-finished text that might have revolutionized physics was disregarded in its time because contemporaries didn't see where Archimedes' argument was going. Out of respect to Archimedes, the text was filed away in a library somewhere, but was rarely viewed until some time in the Middle Ages. That was when monks spotted it and decided that the paper in the priceless scientific artifact could be better used for religious purposes. The first treatise on modern physics was then bleached and recorded over, only to be recovered by modern x-ray imagining techniques.[/spoiler]

Quote from: Mithy

Quote from: Epic MeepoAnd since the ancient Greeks conceived of the ideas of sub-atomic particles, it's not even beyond the imagination to conceive of an ancient alchemist accidentally discovering the electrical properties of certain chemicals, thereby leading to an early discovery of crude electronic circuits. To say nothing of theories of a technologically advanced Atlantis.

use[/i] this information - microscopes, spectrometers, and so on - it remains speculation.  Again, the theory itself accomplishes nothing without the neccessary technological base.

If one man didn't invent something, somebody else would have.

The capacity to understand technology as a big flowchart, continually advancing from pottery and the wheel to nuclear physics and cloning, is an exclusively modern conceit.  That conceit was also developed, as dearly as any invention, as a result of thousands of years of intellectual and philosophical revolutions... Technology and thought build together; they have their own prerequisites of knowledge, science, and necessity. [/quote]In many ways these are inextricably linked to the physical - gunpowder and the printing press changed not just how we fought and made books, but how we thought.[/quote] Saying "what if medieval people had the technology to have P-51s" is no more or less preposterous than saying "what if Neanderthals had postmodernism and dialectical materialism."[/quote]It's simply not plausible to have a society that fights in the air with P-51s and on the ground with muskets barring some extreme deus ex machina like divine gifts or magic, or some highly unusual or supernatural paradigm shift.[/quote]I agree. But from what I understood, no one even knows what the Guild is like beyond the fact that traveling Guildsmen provide access to their flying machines. No one has even seen what society is like in the Guild homeland, because no one even knows where that is. If aliens came down to a primitive planet and said, "Anyone who wants to provide us uranium mining rights will get this big shiny metal thing that flies when you push this button," that doesn't automatically mean that everyone to whom the aliens provide ships will immediately bust out laser beams and start disintegrating people.

In fact, by your own argument regarding Da Vinci's flying machines, a culture lacking the prerequisite knowledge will be incapable of implementing good ideas until their knowledge catches up with them, no matter how useful the ideas may be. What changes this argument when it comes to reverse engineering? If one culture with medieval metallurgical knowledge comes into contact with a second culture than manufactures planes with modern machine guns, how is the first culture supposed to reverse engineer the machine guns, even if they can pry those machine guns off the planes? They lack the prerequisite knowledge to replicate machine guns, even when staring right at one.

Again, recall that we are discussing a world in which one advanced culture visits primitive lands and provides residents with access to their flying machines. The residents of this primitive region have access to planes because technologically advanced benefactors have provided them with planes, and lack tanks and handguns because technologically advanced benefactors have chosen not to outfit them with tanks and handguns. The guys who lack tanks and handguns are not the same guys that invented the planes to which they have access!

EDIT: Note to self: Archimedes is not spelled "Aristotle."

I don't really disagree with much of what you said, and the things I do disagree on are fairly abstruse points on my own understanding of history, which is far from perfect.

Of course communing with the gods and high magic can change all of this.  What I'm arguing is the "default," as it were; my point is that there have to be significant deviations to change this norm and keep the universe believable.  How exactly did the Guild achieve what it achieved, how did they do it with so few people, how do they maintain their advantage, and why does the technology not leave aerial applications?  I'm sure that with the proper application of magic and other fantasy elements, they could be - you lich example is an especially good one.  Those things, however, need to be explained, otherwise the players  will wonder, quite reasonably, how the heck this happened and why can't they pry a machine gun off the plane.

So basically, I agree - I just want to see some explanations, because I think not having them would negatively impact the setting.  I suggested an oil monopoly in the original thread as a "physical" reason that would help; your proposed magical ones are also helpful.


Edit: Someone should really write a gaming article on how standard D&D magic affects the veryday world view of humanoid residents.  The magic communication point you made is a great one - how does society change when, essentially, the telegraph is invented in the year 1200?

So much for the ultimate showdown :(

;)

Quote from: MithySo much for the ultimate showdown

x. Dag nammit! And I was just getting warmed up, too. ;)

I beleive this is entirely possible, and likely to happen sometime when creating worlds. My argument:
Anyone seen Stargate? I rest my case.

I think the important thing here is to observe the way that the supernatural influences the campaign.  Magic, like technology, will have influence that is in some way proportional to the number of people to whom it is actually available.  Naturally low-magic worlds will tend to follow the historical pattern more closely; a 10th century peasant probably thought witches could communicate instantly over long distances, but it didn't exactly affect his world view.  It was an aberration, an exception to divinely ordered world.

In high magic environments this is clearly going to be less true, which I think poses a different kind of challenge for a worldbuilder - how does magic change, on a fundamental level, how people behave?  When any well-heeled child of a merchant or noble can go off to wizard school, how is society altered? This:

QuoteThe existence of skills that violate the real-world laws of physics in reliable ways would change societal dynamics in vastly complicated ways.

thought[/i] witches existed - would their conception of the world have been substantially altered if the witches actually did?

This conversation is really helpful to me for my own campaign (the Clockwork Jungle, see sig, shameless plug), as I'm working with a situation of drastic "unevenness" in technology.  The phrase I used was "renaissance hunter-gatherers," the idea being that the ready availability of high quality steel objects and mechanisms from extensive ancient ruins, combined with the abundance of a forest that makes hunting and gathering a very efficient way to live, has allowed some areas of technology to be bypassed.  Part of what interests me in the world is how a society is affected by such paradigm shifts.

Quote from: Sir VorpalI beleive this is entirely possible, and likely to happen sometime when creating worlds. My argument:
Anyone seen Stargate? I rest my case.

For a few minutes I thought you were talking about the poster Stargate, and I was wondering what in the world was going on.

There is one little historical thing that I wondered about, too -

QuoteIsaac Newton single-handedly created calculus. He literally derived the concept of integration from scratch, using only basic principles that had been known since ancient times.

My background is nowhere near mathematics and I can't really comment on your overall point, but I do remember one of my teachers talking about how Leibniz was integral (ha ha) to the development of calculus as well.  What's your estimation of him fitting into the idea that Newton singlehandedly made the leap to calculus?  If it was contributed to independently and nearly simultaneously it would suggest that social and scientific factors were at work too - that doesn't diminish anyone's genius, but it might be that calculus was another idea "whose time had come."

But as I said, I don't really have any idea.

Quote from: MithyI do remember one of my teachers talking about how Leibniz was integral (ha ha) to the development of calculus as well.  What's your estimation of him fitting into the idea that Newton singlehandedly made the leap to calculus?

Both Newton and Leibniz independently discovered calculus, largely because the popular mathematical issues of the time kept hitting a brick wall without it. The difference between the two was that Newton focused on the scientific applications of calculus (and thus developed classical mechanics) whereas Leibniz focused more on the abstract numerical applications (and thus developed the preferred notation for calculus, as well as various probabilistic applications).

So, in that way, calculus was an idea whose time had come. The questions contemporary mathematicians had been asking couldn't be solved without it. The more germane (and amazing) point  was that Archimedes had, two-thousand years earlier, been making most of the same arguments Newton was making along the road to both calculus and classical mechanics. The idea's time had come in Newton's day, but might have happened much earlier, and resulted in a greatly changed world.

Another course of technological development I often wonder about is that of the biological sciences. In theory, a microscope capable of seeing and identifying living cells can be constructed without requiring modern materials. I often wonder what the Dark Ages would have been like if a few academics had invented microscopes while trying to improve spectacle lenses or whatnot and stumbled across microorganisms several centuries early.

EDIT: Note to self: Archimedes is not spelled "Aristotle."

What have I learned in rereading my last two posts just now: When making an argument based on the historical scientific works of ancient Greek philosophers, it really helps when you refer to Archimedes, arguably the greatest scientific mind of the ancient world,  as "Archimedes" instead of "Aristotle." x.

Quote from: Sir VorpalI beleive this is entirely possible, and likely to happen sometime when creating worlds. My argument:
Anyone seen Stargate? I rest my case.

I don't really see much of a resemblance. There's a gate system invented by a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SPECIES, much older than humans. There's Goa'uld technology - invented by a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SPECIES, much older than humans. Then there's that bizarre human-type culture who developed technology beyond what the other humans have developed. I suppose that's what you could be talking about. But... that's not actually real. It's a TV show. I doubt the writer of that episode sat down and thought to himself 'Wait, could this actually happen?'

Quote from: MithyI suggested an oil monopoly in the original thread as a "physical" reason that would help; your proposed magical ones are also helpful.

I used that oil monopoly idea, and credited you.  Thanks for it, it really goes a long way towards explaining all this.

One of the things I used is altering magic somewhat.  The biggest change is no wizards.  You can't go out a learn magic, if you've got the talent you've got it, and if you don't well, don't waste your money on fake wizards schools.

As for the argument on teleportation and bags of holding, a teleport spell will transport what, 10 max?  You can fit thousands in a zeppelin, along with all their stuff.

And the fly spell give you a 60ft fly speed, which translates to about 7 MPH.  Pretty pathetic compared to anything else in the air.

Right, airships. But that's completely different from monoplanes.

Monoplanes move about twice as fast, if not faster, than a zeppelin.  Monoplanes are for one or two people that need to get somewhere fast, while a zeppelin is more of a liner, although they can and do have varying degrees of luxury.