Take a somewhat realistic fantasy world -  i.e. it's intended to be simulationist, not about big damn heroes. Throw in some magic. I'm thinking RQ or Rolemaster magic in style and power level here, rather than D&D, but there's no need to be system-specific.

Knead, and let the society rise for as long as you wish.

Now, magic is a significant source of personal power. Does this translate into political power? Is magocracy the norm? Do the nobility claim a monopoly of the transmission of magical knowledge? Or are sorcerers who can fling arcane power from their fingertips content to be under the law of mundanes with titles? Perhaps there is fear and loathing between, say, a warrior class and the magic-users.

Look at it this way: just how does the local lord, with his half-dozen men at arms, claim taxes from the 200 year-old elementalist in his tower? And exactly who is the lord of the region after that elementalist has shaped and trained a couple of generations of apprentices?

I think part of it depends on rarity.  If a wizard is as powerful as 20 men but is 1 in 10,000, then wizards would likely play into politics but are not likely to hold all the keys.

Wizards are likely to play a role in the military and espionage.  Somebody as powerful as 20 people is a great assassin.  Things like scrying change information gathering.

It hinges on the capabilities of sorcerers. In MRQII, sorcerers have strong but narrow powers unless they're really ambitious. They also need to find ways to get MPs to cast extremely powerful spells.

In Moragne, I treat the psychology of sorcerers as fairly similar to other people, and their capabilities as a kind of special knowledge and power similar to any other skilled person's. Your average sorcerer wants to get rich and, be respected and live a life of comfort, and you don't have to be an obsessive, power-hungry jerk to learn or even master the discipline. It's about as difficult as engineering, and for his spells to take full effect, a wizard really needs a base of relevant knowledge. You may be able to summon up a wall of stone, but without any idea of how it should be braced, it's going to fall over just as soon as you stop concentrating.

So, sorcerers are organised into monopolistic sodalities that are half-educational, half-economic and located in major urban conglomerations. The goal of any given sodality is to cast as few spells for as much money as possible and to protect their privileges against freelancers. Each one specialises in certain kinds of magic and knowledge, and strives to present its members as respectable individuals.

Depends on the political views you're expressing in the setting. There's no way of knowing "what would really happen" and it's silly to concern yourself with it.

Well, really the answer comes down to "how do you want it to work." For example in contrast to Pseudo I tend to ascribe obscure or eccentric motivations to wizards, increasingly so as they advance in their craft. I just find that more interesting in play. They may like money, sex, power - but increasingly I have that become eclipsed by esoteric or petty obsessions. So a mighty sorceror isn't likely to be a good "company man" and probably also isn't going to be that great at governing a mundane world. But this is all just my personal preference - "somewhat realistic" might not even apply to a game I was running. I'd also note that I wouldn't necessarily try to enforce a bizarre personality on a PC magician - but he would, as I ran the game, be an exception to the "rule."

I usually forbid wizards from having political power in my games. I like the idea that to do so much as light a candle with your mind you need to spend some eight hours a day in meditation. The occasional super being and player character may have a mythic past that lets them get away from some of that, but in general, any wizard that gets political power is going to lose their magical ability very rapidly.

If we assume a traditional apprenticeship system, it seems likely that a powerful, insular, multi-national Guild would exist, concerned primarily with maintaining the power of the Guild, resolving disputes internally, and preventing rogue mages from spreading the Mysteries outside the Guild.  The extent to which wizards control everything or can get away with anything would be a function of the total power the Guild could wield as a whole.  It would make sense for every country to be ruled by a wizard, but it might be to their advantage (as well as fulfilling traditional stereotypes) for them to exercise power behind the thrones.

Other than being an apple cart waiting to be overturned by Big Damn Heroes, Dark Sun was/is pretty good - magical power concentrated in a very small number of Godkings.

In fiction, I like the relationship of magic and politics in Earthsea.

I agree with Cole: it depends on the sorcerers' motivations.

It could also depend on just how magic works. Consider today; the average ruler of a country (whether elected or not) hasn't got a very good idea how to manufacture high technology. But to do anything big, scientists and engineers need access to a lot of resources. A random schmoe with textbook knowledge might be able to make a fertilizer bomb or a sten gun. (Cartridges for the gun might be harder; then again, in the US he can just buy a firearm and ammo.) They might be able to make ricin but chances are they'll just poison themselves like Roger Bergendorff. More resources might be able to produce nerve gas like Aum Shinrikyo. But despite the threat posed by terrorists & nuts, they've all been brought to heel, and none of them really stand a chance of opposing the state at home. (Overseas, insurgency is another matter, although it's fairly low-tech.)

In short no matter how common magical knowledge is, if the resources to do anything big are hard to come by and capable of being regulated by the state, then (a) mages will be dependent on kings, and will probably help curb "rogues", and (b) "rogues" will have trouble getting the stuff they need in the first place.

I haven't had time to answer this, but I appreciate the sentiment behind it.

Magic is power, personal power.  What it translates into in a setting is determined by many things.  

First I have to know the frequency distribution of magic along 2 axis, power and absolute population density at that power.  
Second, I would have to know about other power sources and the ability to negate magic.

In all things, personal power and the ability to control a resource (magic in this case) can equal personal power.  
If you are equating religeous magic (or magic the population thinks is deity-inspired), this can mean even more power.

But without this data, it is hard to tell.

Quote from: The_Shadow;460780Now, magic is a significant source of personal power. Does this translate into political power? Is magocracy the norm? Do the nobility claim a monopoly of the transmission of magical knowledge? Or are sorcerers who can fling arcane power from their fingertips content to be under the law of mundanes with titles? Perhaps there is fear and loathing between, say, a warrior class and the magic-users.

Look at it this way: just how does the local lord, with his half-dozen men at arms, claim taxes from the 200 year-old elementalist in his tower? And exactly who is the lord of the region after that elementalist has shaped and trained a couple of generations of apprentices?

I thought about these issues for the Majestic Wilderlands and concluded it hinges on religion.

There are two basic scenarios; one where magic is part of the natural order, a force like electricity, magnetism, etc but accessible to low-tech societies.

The other is where divine magic and divine beings exists and are a force in the world. This is the case for my Majestic Wilderlands.

Looking at the first scenario, turn back to the history of our own world. At the start of civilization there were just hunter-gatherer tribes moving out of Africa into the rest of the world. Several thousand years later changing climate and terrain allowed some of these tribes to settled in one area. Eventually how to systematically grow and harvest their own food.

The regions where the first civilizations appeared require the use of irrigation for optimal agriculture. The technology didn't result in a society dominated by engineer but rather the technology was controlled by the priesthood devoted to the tribal god (or gods).

Magic in such a case would be no different. The first mages and the early priesthood would be synonymous with each other even without the presence of divine magic.  Also many RPG magic system require the practitioner to spend a great deal of time studying to master the basic and advanced spells. Time that can only be spent by those who don't have to farm, or hunt. At the dawn of history the only class of people that had such time was again the priesthood.

And we find in early civilizations that priesthood dominated their societies to where their leaders were king and priest. I.e. Sumeria, Egypt, etc. In a world where magic existed the king-priest would also be a mage as well.

But it was also a time where magic was in infancy. Only one or two steps removed from the barbarian shamanism from which it sprang. So there room for a warrior to shine. The margin that society had to support a non-productive class is marginal and this would put a limit on the number of mages even a special gene wasn't required.

Eventually increasing sophistication of civilization and pure chance would have resulted in something like a magical greece happening and the appearance of independent mages who study magic for magic's sake. However for the vast majority of the population their imagination and loyalties will be given to religion.

The independent mage who dares to take control would be opposed by the mages of the priesthood. Who not only have the power of magic but the faith of the populace. Not to say that for a time and a place that circumstances combine to allow independent mages to rule.

Quote from: estar;460862Also many RPG magic system require the practitioner to spend a great deal of time studying to master the basic and advanced spells. Time that can only be spent by those who don't have to farm, or hunt. At the dawn of history the only class of people that had such time was again the priesthood.

Would such individuals be a part of the upper classes in their societies?

Or would such individuals be the crazy men with a mental illness?

Having heard this type of question so many times (mostly in regards to D&D play), I can't help but not say anything specific even though I've come to a solution for myself (never have a "low magic" world..ever). Instead I'll say there is a million approaches and all of them is what these types of fantasy worlds are about. Problems and solutions are the adventure at any game. Game imbalance is a misused term that gets bandied around a lot with rpgs but things have to be constantly imbalanced to have a game in the first place.

Quote from: ggroy;460863Would such individuals be a part of the upper classes in their societies?

Or would such individuals be the crazy men with a mental illness?

Technically yes, but specifically they would be part of the priesthood. A simplified division of early civilization would be warrior, priest, peasant, craftsman. The rulers of the early city-states were require to be both a warrior and a priest hence a priest king. As civilization grew more sophisticated, the priesthood would become more specialized. The king is still considered sacred and a priest but focuses more on ruling than religious ceremony.

If you want to get into specifics you need to lay out the assumptions of your magic system. A magic system where a person is born to be a mage and his arcane power grows over time as he ages has different implication than magic system where magic is a skill or field of study. And those are not the only two possibilities.

Generally if you want a fantasy setting grounded in realism you are better off going with at least arcane magic being a field of study. If mages can't study then they die out or at least fail to prosper. If you have divine magic then it gets even easier because the gods not only grants magical powers but also impose moral codes on their priests which limits what they can do with their powers. This acts as a check on the ambitions of arcane mages.

In the Majestic Wilderlands, my assumptions are that divine magic is granted to priests of gods, and that arcane magic is a field of study. The reason there are not mage-kings everywhere is that the various religions of the Majestic Wilderlands works at preserving the traditional order in the cultures they are associated with. The Priesthood is too focused on ceremony and religion to be ruling the various cultures.

Note this is a very simplistic description of the situation. One of my friends doesn't like how mages are not dominant. I feel he has trouble grasping the impact of religion.

The reason that D&D style Magic-users exist in the Majestic Wilderlands is because one of the great empires was conquered by barbarians after a period of civil strife. For scholars of magic they were free of the strictures of the Empire's church to whatever they wanted with magic. The result was a renaissance of magic for my setting.  

By the time, the situation stabilized and the kings and religions reasserted themselves the mages were established enough to survive the change. Over the next several hundred years they spread throughout the wilderlands to become the dominant order of arcane magic.

What made the magic-users different is that they are largely independent scholars. The older orders of arcane magic are dominated by their parent culture's main religions.

In Fantasy Courtesans everyone has some form of magic however it is the Sorceresses who have the most useful applications of it.

They are primarily political movers with the same Strong and Weak Stats as the Diplomats but really they're in the same sort of niche those with higher education were in before it was opened up to all pissheads.

I think it depends what kind of "Political power" you mean. Sure, a wizard has the power to shoot fireballs at people or whatever.  But the reason historically that most rulers (and certainly most politicians) didn't spend a lot of their time personally getting involved in the esoteric, but rather had "people" who did that for them (if interested at all), was because the kind of mentality of intensity and dedication required for the study of the occult usually precludes the kind of intensity and dedication required to gain political influence: making contacts, webs of informants, obtaining interests/monopolies/titles, going through the motions of moving up a ladder of offices, etc.

The wizard would usually be too busy to do most of that.  So usually, you'll see them at the side of the people of power, a peripheral ally.  

Yes, the Church has great influence, but that's because there are people in it who dedicate their lives to the gods and to mystical knowledge, and totally different people in it who dedicate their lives to rising up the church hierarchy and obtaining political connections and influence.

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