Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;491436And of course, this stuff would have a feedback cycle. If less of your population is engaged in brutal manual labour, they have more time to devote to technical innovation, and fewer consequences for failures when their experiments don't pan out. Mass unemployment caused by economic and technical innovation is something we've seen a lot of in the West, and one of the things that it does is drive social change (whether for better or worse).

That's an interesting point, but I think in the D&D worlds, the socialization of magic has been it's most limiting factor: the very fact that it's not done by physical labor is what makes it 'scary' to the average person. I mean, if you build a house with your hands, you know it's been done right. If some guy comes along and builds one with magic, the average person would probably not trust it and/or be wary of going inside.

Just because magic is relatively accepted, doesn't mean that it's widespead and available to the common man or that the common man would accept it as a viable means to replace phsyical labor.

To use an modern analogy: martial arts are far superior to untrained brawling as a means of physical attack and defence, and at close range, a trained martial artist can disarm several people rapidly.  So why aren't all gang members / law enforcement officers / criminals / etc trained in martial arts? -- It seems logical that they would be, given the advantages, but they're often not.

I think in the same way, magic in D&D is looked on as something that "those people" use but the common person probably simply wouldn't be interested. Therefore, no magic-based industrial revolution.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;491460The expensive and/or naturally rare portion of that infrastructure, however, is the spellcaster themselves. Theoretically they require years of training.

True, but you need even fewer spellcasters than you do engineers, scientists, lab technicians, machinists, etc. all of whom also take years to train. And a single spellcaster can perform multiple effects a day, and only becomes more and more capable as age and experience kick in.

QuoteWell, there's no mechanic for them to wear out. But that may be largely because the scale on which they wear out is sufficiently irrelevant to PC adventurers. Several early AD&D modules feature magic which has become faulty due to age, IIRC.

But, yes, if you want to look at where magic is going to have an effect, it'll be any place here you get a permanent duration. Particularly permanent durations you get on the cheap.

Yeap. I wrote a setting called Moragne where I attempted to deal with the ramifications of this seriously. It used MRQ2 as a base, but MRQ2's magic doesn't differ that much from classic D&D in the factors we're discussing.

What I decided was that the sorcerers essentially formed a cartel oriented around getting as much money as possible for as little work as possible. They used their power to forbid anyone they could from owning permanent magical items other than themselves, the church and the nobles (the latter two were simple expediency). They made limited use items (and spellcasting services) available at a high price, but just cheap enough that they were reasonable investments to make, and ruthlessly enforced their monopoly. They were not above spreading rumours of scabs being evil necromancers and posting bounties on them for adventurers to take, and you were more likely to suffer a wizard's war for creating a permanently enchanted saltcellar than you were for hiring on with heretics' armies.

Also, they had a somewhat retardant effect on social development because of the entrenched interests of their members in treating but not resolving the problems of pre-industrial society. So they had a guild in the cartel that specialised in putting out fires (a major problem in medieval cities, as I'm sure you know), and so no other wizard was allowed to do something like mass-produce a light source that didn't have a risk of setting things on fire because that would be interfering with the Charred Men's prerogatives & income.

And still, despite that, Moragne was much cleaner and medically safer than the real medieval world.

QuoteThe campaign world I've been running since 2000 is not particularly advanced from a technological standpoint, but is remarkably cleaner and more comfortable than the historical Middle Ages and Renaissance. I don't worry too much about the details, but if you peel back the covers you'll find magical sewers; clerical orders that bless the fields (increasing crops as much as modern fertilizers do); other clerical orders that respond quickly to quash disease outbreaks; a proliferation of continual flame spells providing cheap and universal light throughout the night; and so forth.

The infrastructure (and societal structure) just doesn't exist to, for example, mass-produce magical cars (although you'll find noble families with magical airships). But there is enough magic in the world (and in society) to make people significantly more wealthy.

(With that being said, this campaign world also a short history of civilization. And things are definitely on a cusp where things might tumble into a magically-driven industrial revolution if given half the chance.)

That sounds reasonable. As I said, there's no particular reason that ubiquitous magic would create a society with a similar material culture to Western consumer culture.

Quote from: Blazing Donkey;491463That's an interesting point, but I think in the D&D worlds, the socialization of magic has been it's most limiting factor: the very fact that it's not done by physical labor is what makes it 'scary' to the average person. I mean, if you build a house with your hands, you know it's been done right. If some guy comes along and builds one with magic, the average person would probably not trust it and/or be wary of going inside.

One can declare this about one's world, but I simply don't buy it personally. I don't know how to build a computer chip IRL, but I don't therefore fear and hate computers. Similarly, in real societies that believe magic does exist, the attitude tends not to be fear, but "How can I use this for my advantage?" or at the very least "What is this and how does it work?" rather than "Get it away from me!" When people go out into say, the highlands of New Guinea and deal with uncontacted tribes IRL, the tribespeople are almost never afraid of the strange technologies the outsiders are bringing. They're surprised, and perhaps puzzled by what kind of life the outsiders must live to make this thing useful or desirable.

Distrust of technology is usually really just distrust of the people using or possessing the technology. And while you might distrust wizards, that would really require you to be unfamiliar with them, their operations, and their magic. If that's the case, you need a better explanation than "It's odd," since the actual list of effects that a wizard can accomplish in these games is codified and consists of maybe a hundred or so effects able to be explained in plain language.

Once again, to use an IRL example, while theoretically God in medieval Catholicism could do anything it is possible to do, people were very quick to develop and transmit a list of standard types of miracles and folk magic, so that the ordinary person knew quite a lot of about how and why God would do things. Superstitiousness is actually something that aids this process, as superstition is essentially just what we call this kind of knowledge in the modern day.

QuoteI think in the same way, magic in D&D is looked on as something that "those people" use but the common person probably simply wouldn't be interested. Therefore, no magic-based industrial revolution.

The common man probably does not want to die at age 32 after a lifetime of backbreaking labour. If magic / technology can promise him a way out of this course of events, then the historical record shows that he will gladly adopt it, no matter how much education and adaptation are involved.

D&D style magic is very powerful and reliable but only accessible to a certain part of the population, who at higher-levels become incredibly powerful.

That's why really, I think most D&D settings would be like Mystara, or more specifically, Alphatia.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Blazing Donkey;491459Not sure what game system you're using, but that's not the case of AD&D.

"...If cast upon another creature, the magic-user can levitate it at a maximum movement of 10' per round...If the recipient of the spell is unwilling, that creature is entitled to a saving throw to determine if the levitate spell affects it...", PH, 1rst Ed, page 70

In most other games I've seen it's the same, though in Palladium/Rifts, there is no saving throw.

I just play pathfinder. I'm guessing the 3.5 version was the same, but I could be wrong:

Levitate allows you to move yourself, another creature, or an object up and down as you wish. A creature must be willing to be levitated, and an object must be unattended or possessed by a willing creature.

Quote from: Blazing Donkey;491463To use an modern analogy: martial arts are far superior to untrained brawling as a means of physical attack and defence, and at close range, a trained martial artist can disarm several people rapidly.  So why aren't all gang members / law enforcement officers / criminals / etc trained in martial arts?

First of all, martial arts are nowhere near that effective in the real world, and police officers are trained in martial arts. Quite rigorously, in fact.  Criminals don't bother because knife or gun >> martial arts, and they're easier to get a hold of.

Cf. my earlier posts: the reason why "clever" ideas generally aren't widespread is because generally they don't actually work as well as you think.

Per magic improving the general health and longevity of its citizens: paradoxically, this is likely to significantly retard technological and social progress.  One of the drivers of the rise of the middle class and the shift from the manor-based economy to a town-based economy in Middle Ages Europe was massive depopulation due to plague; the labour of a single individual suddenly became worth much, much more.  When you have cheap widespread sanitation, you're going to have lots and lots of peasants.  Why waste the time investing in technological infrastructure?  You've got lots of peasants.

Lots of criminals box or wrestle, and boxing is the most superior single martial art taught in America. Criminals that box find family karate and point sparing laughable. Family Karate people aren't martial artist: the criminal boxers and wrestlers are.

And the knife and gun are modern martial arts. They aren't fucking magic talismans that suddenly win fights. You have to know what you are doing with it or it is hardly an unbeatable advantage. There is a lot to know about a knife and a lot of criminals know it.

Your comments about martial arts not being good applies to all the nonhacker fake shit, but the world is full of fighters and those fighters practice. An untrained guy with a knife will just get punched in the face.

Quote from: Cranewings;491537Your comments about martial arts not being good applies to all the nonhacker fake shit, but the world is full of fighters and those fighters practice. An untrained guy with a knife will just get punched in the face.

My sensei, who is 1) a cop, 2) teaches cops how to defend themselves, and 3) has multiple 4th dan "qualifications", would strenuously disagree with you.

Quote from: daniel_ream;491543My sensei, who is 1) a cop, 2) teaches cops how to defend themselves, and 3) has multiple 4th dan "qualifications", would strenuously disagree with you.

I'm sure he would. He's selling martial arts.

Think about the implications of what you just said for a moment.

Getting back on topic a bit, some of the "profound social changes" proposed for magic would likely not come about.  We live in a world with magical food cooking (microwave oven), food preservation(refrigeration, freeze drying, flash freezing), purified water, continual light, instant communication over great distances, flight, etc.  And yet, many of the social ills that these would supposedly cure in D&D land are still with us.

As for creative spell use, I was DMing one day and had a first level magic user quite effectively kill a large, adult, red dragon with a single first level spell, and no saving throw. The spell was Unseen Servant.  During a prior adventure the MU had used Unseen Servant to pack several glass jars full of green slime.  When he encountered the dragon he cast Unseen Servant again and had the servant empty a couple of the jars onto the sleeping dragon. then he just sat back and waited.

I got my revenge though....the look on his face when I told him that the treasure hoard was now covered in a dragon sized pool of green slime was priceless.

I always allow, and usually reward, clever spell use. If it doesn't violate the rules of the game, why not?  Of course there is always the chance that an NPC Mage has discovered a particularly clever new use for an old spell...

Quote from: daniel_ream;491567Think about the implications of what you just said for a moment.

I've done martial arts for years, and I think most martial arts are totally devoid of what it takes to stand up to street fighters, knives, or even jocks.

Quality strength training
Impact conditioning: taking hits weekly that drop you due to pain
Striking hard surfaces
Sparing boxers and wrestlers
Sparing strangers and changing your technique to learn to deal with them.
Sparing street fighters
All sparing with minimal protection: fingerless gloves at most, no garbage ass head gear or shin guards.
Sparing hard with painful mock weapons
Sparing in groups
Hard painful sparing with weapon against emptyhand.

If you do these things, then you will become someone that can fight. If you do pain compliance techniques on willing friends and kata all day, then strap on shinpads to fight the same turds again, you are not really doing shit.

Quote from: DavetheLost;491569Getting back on topic a bit, some of the "profound social changes" proposed for magic would likely not come about.  We live in a world with magical food cooking (microwave oven), food preservation(refrigeration, freeze drying, flash freezing), purified water, continual light, instant communication over great distances, flight, etc.  And yet, many of the social ills that these would supposedly cure in D&D land are still with us.

I'm curious what social ills you're thinking of.  Clean drinking water and the ability to reliably preserve food and cook it quickly and safely have HUGE impacts on life expectancy and quality of life, which impacts pretty much anything to do with the value of labour and the accumulation of wealth.

I'm not claiming that unrestricted anachronistic magic Cures All Ills, but I am saying it's going to very quickly turn a stock D&D fantasy world into something unrecognizable and probably incomprehensible.

Here's a nice, simple plot hook along these lines.  Druids and clerics can actually Bless the fields, or cast Plant Growth or whatever you want to make the fields incredibly abundant.  Maybe throw in a Protection from Disease or something the keep the crops from suffering blight.  Lots of surplus food means that the population will very quickly adjust to a size that consumes that food, until within ten years or so the entire local population is dependent on the surplus those spells provide.

And now all you dirty peasants can pay me quadruple what I've been charging for spellcasting or watch your children starve to death.

Cinic

I meant that a world with lots of magic might not look all that different in someways to our own. We do with technology what would have seemed a lot like magic to your average Dark Age peasant.

As for the effect of Blessing the fields, talk to a farmer today about seed and fertilizer cost, corporate controlled markets, etc. Not so very different than the extortion scenario you propose.

I do think that flying, spell casting wizards who can cast rock-to-mud on your castle walls would change the world into something we would not recognize pretty quickly.  I certainly would not live in skyscraper if I knew the local wizard could bring the whole thing down with a single spell.

A simple detect lie would forever change the criminal justice system, not to mention speak with dead, speak with plants, speak with animals, just think of the expanded number of potential witnesses.

Oh jesus fuck, just what we need; an online martial-artist pissing match.

RPGPundit