The Campaign Builder's Guild

Alright here we go, I was kinda discussing something like this with Polycarp and Vreeg last night, how would technology evolve from a setting with magic. This will mostly look at a technological view-point. Now if any of these comments do not apply, disregard them.

Alright, first off if you can conjure stuff out of thin air, that's going to affect pretty much everything. So keep that in mind.

First off, Robotics are going to be essentially non-existant, these will be replaced with golems. And the "assembly line" will probably be invented a LOT earlier.

Anything with electrical circuits is going to be junk. If you have people that can conjure lightning, your electrical systems are essentially super-fragile. They'd be ridiculously easy to frag by anyone with a little magic.

Now, let's talk automobiles. Why internal combustion engine? Why would personal vehicles even be invented? Why wouldn't public transit be a lot more developped? High efficiency trains like in Europe to criss-cross North America. Why use crude-oil based technology? It's a non-renewable resourced, compared to the (hypothetically infinite) magic. Doesn't have to "run on magic" but on some kind of conjured fuel.

If you have teleporting, why would long-rage transportation be invented at all?

That being said, if all "air transport" is replaced by animals, all these animals have to eat. That's a LOT more food that needs to be produced (potentially solved by the "conjure anything" magic).

Another thing, why would dragons want to become glorified couriers? D&D Dragons are prideful to the extreme, no way in heck would go from being the biggest badasses around to courier planes. They might not like people crowding their airspace ether.

Zeppelins and airships make sense, the main reasons they were discard in the real world is because of their low speed (fixed with magic?) and the flammability of hydrogen combined with the difficulty of keeping hydrogen/helium contained. Both of those could potentially be solved by magic.

If there are "fly" spells, maybe heavier than air flight would never have been invented at all.

Politically speaking, with resurrection spells and the whole undead thing going on (liches, vampires, mummies) I don't think the current political climate would look anything what it does like for us.

If there's alchemy of some kind (transforming materials), then material science is going to be affected a lot. Maybe stronger materials will be cheaper or non-existant. This would also change resource gathering sectors, like mining. Why mine for gold if I can transform lead into gold?

Quote from: Stargate525Space yes, probably a bit earlier than in real life, and the other technologies are probably held up by a significant amount of magic (containment via wall of force, emergency contingents for teleporting the fuel into a sealed area, etcetera).

Re: space, consider that in the kind of setting you're describing, "getting into space" might not be the point. Space is the final frontier, and it's always had that "vast new wilderness to be explored" allure. But in a crazy-magical world, maybe that frontier is more than just space. If you have crazy alternate dimensions, parallel universes, black holes that take you back and forward in time, "elemental planes", etc., maybe all those things are up in space, and reachable by spaceship.

Also consider that part of the impetus propelling early space exploration was the desire for a military advantage against Cold War foes: we dreamed of sattelite-guided weapons, moon-missiles aimed at hostile countries on earth, all that sort of crazy thing. Maybe there's some similar magic-inspired reason for the space program (someone discovers that moon rocks are a very valuable magical fuel or something), and there's a race for resources or to gain a technological edge?

Llum, good suggestions, but the majority of those are limited by level. D20 Modern magic only goes up to fifth level, and those are reached at a much later level. This is pretty much the level and scope of magic I'm working with. As you can see, no teleportation, no flying, and limited 'create out of nothing' spells (though create water would solve a heap of problems in Africa).

As far as automobiles, you get those for the same reasons we did here; a more efficient engine, not based on steam. We got the steam engine because we needed a long-running, powerful, regulated source of energy that we didn't have to pay. I've yet to see a saturation-level spell that can solve those problems as well as a steam engine.

Dragons, I realize might not be the couriers, but eagles, griffins, those kind of animals might.

I agree with the electrical idea; computers are magic, rather than electrical based. This shouldn't change a whole heap; programming is merely done via very complex ritual rather than entering code.

LC, good ideas. Gives me something to think about.

Hear me out for a second re: computers/electronics vs. lightning magic.

Frankly, I'm not sure it would totally eliminate viable electronics (though it would probably relegate it to a quirky li'l niche.) On the contrary, the existence of lightning-flinging wizards might make the understanding of electrical principles even more important to understand, as a countermeasure. (The guy who has pissed off a thundermage is probably going to want to surround his house with heavy-duty lightning rods and other grounding measures, for example. And he's always going to wear rubber-soled shoes, and he's never going to play golf in the rain.)

Electrical technology seems like a logical way to marry circuitry and magic together (if that's something you wanted to do)-- imagine a magic-user who could (carefully) power/recharge his own powerful electronics by pumping them full of lightning. (I just realized this is basically half the plot of Back to the Future. You may count that as a pro or as a con, I guess.)

I see trains powered by a golem-like construct. Kind of a hamster wheel on a grand scale. Make a construct that just turns the gears for a train. It requires a large influx of magical energy to get it started, then it would be self sufficient.

I think you need to decide on where magical energy comes from. Is it something theoretically unlimited. like Earth's magnetic field? Is it generated by the practitioner (and thus a Golem would need regular infusions of energy from spellcasters)? Is it a force of nature (and thus would be depleteable?)

Quote from: Luminous CrayonHear me out for a second re: computers/electronics vs. lightning magic.

Frankly, I'm not sure it would totally eliminate viable electronics (though it would probably relegate it to a quirky li'l niche.) On the contrary, the existence of lightning-flinging wizards might make the understanding of electrical principles even more important to understand, as a countermeasure. (The guy who has pissed off a thundermage is probably going to want to surround his house with heavy-duty lightning rods and other grounding measures, for example. And he's always going to wear rubber-soled shoes, and he's never going to play golf in the rain.)

Electrical technology seems like a logical way to marry circuitry and magic together (if that's something you wanted to do)-- imagine a magic-user who could (carefully) power/recharge his own powerful electronics by pumping them full of lightning. (I just realized this is basically half the plot of Back to the Future. You may count that as a pro or as a con, I guess.)

I can see where you're comming from, but this disregards that the voltage and current (amperage) inside a lightning bolt is orders of magnitude higher than what nearly all electronics can handle without frying.

Also, on that list of spells that Stargate gave there are several spells for both divine and arcane (starting at 1st level) that completely wipe an electronic device. If you cast that on a modern car it would literally become a piece of junk. Most things literally cannot function without computers, and that just isn't a viable option in a world where those kinds of thing exist.

Quote from: XeviatI think you need to decide on where magical energy comes from. Is it something theoretically unlimited. like Earth's magnetic field? Is it generated by the practitioner (and thus a Golem would need regular infusions of energy from spellcasters)? Is it a force of nature (and thus would be depleteable?)

I think these are the most important questions in the thread so far.

Quote from: Luminous Crayon

Quote from: XeviatI think you need to decide on where magical energy comes from. Is it something theoretically unlimited. like Earth's magnetic field? Is it generated by the practitioner (and thus a Golem would need regular infusions of energy from spellcasters)? Is it a force of nature (and thus would be depleteable?)

Agreed. I'm inclined to rule it as a renewable resource, tied into the Earth's magnetic field or something similar; you can deplete it locally, but it regenerates relatively quickly.

Quote from: LlumI can see where you're comming from, but

anything like[/i] as simple as "welp, magic's in, so electronics are obviously, automatically out." In fact, I think that's pretty dismissive of some potentially interesting possibilities!
[/quote]

This is true, there are ways around it. Sphere of Invulnerability gives immunity to spells from levels 1-3. So most of the electronic wiping things are safe, also it's a 4th level spell. But that means you need bigger magic guns then them just to use electronics.

Now as for the hardware issue, lightning strikes cause us tons of problems on a hardware level, and we've been using eletronics for a long ass time.

Now, dismissing it out of hand is kinda ignoring stuff. But I'm going to say that in a world where those data erasing spells exist that nothing close to our level of electronics could exist. Not even close, anything that depends on computers would always be in potential for causing catastrophe/becoming junk by any chump with access to these spells. This isn't even taking into account magic items.

So yes, raw electricity in very rugged applications, could probably be finnagled. Anything that involves computers or micro-circuitry is a pipe-dream in this world.

Quote from: LlumNow, dismissing it out of hand is kinda ignoring stuff. But I'm going to say that in a world where those data erasing spells exist that nothing close to our level of electronics could exist. Not even close, anything that depends on computers would always be in potential for causing catastrophe/becoming junk by any chump with access to these spells. This isn't even taking into account magic items.

Unless the major systems (the ones that run lots of things across a large area, etc.) are protected by some form of magical or antimagic shielding.

You could consider implementing more urban magic as the cities grew in size, like in the book A Madness of Angels.
It could be things like melding into a crowd, crafting magical graffiti, or conjuring spirits of the city.  

Quote from: LlumNow, dismissing it out of hand is kinda ignoring stuff. But I'm going to say that in a world where those data erasing spells exist that nothing close to our level of electronics could exist. Not even close, anything that depends on computers would always be in potential for causing catastrophe/becoming junk by any chump with access to these spells. This isn't even taking into account magic items.

Yes, I addressed that, if you already out-gun everyone magically, you're set. Why are you using electronics then? Who knows.

This also means you can't have any kind of data in the actual machine itself. Really limiting what you're doing as well.

Quote from: LlumYes, I addressed that, if you already out-gun everyone magically, you're set. Why are you using electronics then? Who knows.

Perhaps because not everyone is a magician?

Just a random thought: One possibility you could have for magic is that it works through intense force of will.  In large cities magic becomes complicated because of so many wills working at cross purposes.  In this sense, TECHNICALLY, everyone is a magician, but only those who are really talented can actually affect reality with it.  Magic items (including magic-technology) take a lot of magical energy to run, etc.  It's understood that to actually possess the magic to be able to affect the working of an existing system is very rare.

Just a thought.  May or may not work for you.

Well, if magic were real and it could do things better than muscle, then humanoids would naturally evolve to either be better than magic or to all be magical. 4E D&D creates a world where this doesn't happen because magic is just as good at killing than martial is, and anyone can really learn rituals (which is the real magic).

I really like the way 4E did things in that regard. Rituals are like cooking: anyone can do it, you just need the ingredients and to follow directions, but not everyone can do it well. Then some people have innate magic (wizards, clerics, ect.).