Planes and Guns

Haphazzard · November 09, 2007, 08:22:19 PM

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.

Polycarp · November 09, 2007, 08:33:21 PM

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.

Epic Meepo · November 09, 2007, 10:13:08 PM

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."

Polycarp · November 09, 2007, 10:52:36 PM

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?

Polycarp · November 09, 2007, 11:58:39 PM

So much for the ultimate showdown :(

;)

Epic Meepo · November 10, 2007, 12:49:06 AM

Quote from: MithySo much for the ultimate showdown

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

Higgs Boson · November 10, 2007, 12:51:05 AM

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

Polycarp · November 10, 2007, 01:02:55 AM

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.

Polycarp · November 10, 2007, 01:05:33 AM

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.

Polycarp · November 10, 2007, 01:16:36 AM

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.

Epic Meepo · November 10, 2007, 01:37:22 AM

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."

Epic Meepo · November 10, 2007, 03:03:16 AM

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.

Wensleydale · November 10, 2007, 07:03:59 AM

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?'

Gwaihir Windlord · November 10, 2007, 01:12:05 PM

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.

Wensleydale · November 10, 2007, 05:41:52 PM

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

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