Why is all high-fantasy medieval? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

SiuiS

2015-01-18, 09:53 PM

Science fiction is not the opposite of medieval.

You do see elves defaulting to techgnostic weapons. Electrified swords. Vibranium swords. Bolt shooting ranged weapons that deliver plasma payloads. The force. The trappings are different that you expect – it's not all sleek metal and glowing diodes – but it is there.

What qualifies as medieval to you? Would Conan (preclassical if I recall?) count as medieval? Do settings that take place in tribal societies or focus on Bedouin desert dwellers count? A lot of my fantasy fiction tastes involve less Europe and more Arabia, more Africa, more Sumer. Would you place these as medieval?

You don't want to know "why medieval", you want to know "why not more futurism" and the answer is 'different conceits'. Science fiction tends not to be labelled fantasy because it has a different focus. Science fiction ("sci fi") looks at existing possibilities, fantasy looks at ideas instead, and focuses on things that aren't strictly possible or even rationalizable.

gutza1

2015-01-18, 09:54 PM

SiuiS

2015-01-18, 10:00 PM

gutza1

2015-01-18, 10:58 PM

Then it's a self answering question. Fantasy isn't science fiction because science fiction already exists, and fantasy is a different category that covers different things.

High fantasy means deep into fantasy. Fantasy means the fantastic; impossible and improbable species and powers. Technology and science based not on reason but on force and faith. Concepts existing as discrete entities in dimensions which overlap our own.

Ironically, old style cliche stuff discounts modern settings; Bedouin horse nomads wear the same clothes, live the same lifestyle and rear horses in the same tradition as back when they were actually medieval; they just carry rifles now.

But nobody said anything about high fantasy in a modern-tech level setting (with actual technology, not Eberronian-stlye magitech). It's still about the fantastic, but now instead of the kingdom of Gondor you have a fantasy equivalent of the USA. Plus, there always science fantasy (which TBH is much more pleasing to my technophilic mind than medieval-tech fantasy)...

SiuiS

2015-01-18, 11:19 PM

But nobody said anything about high fantasy in a modern-tech level setting (with actual technology, not Eberronian-stlye magitech). It's still about the fantastic, but now instead of the kingdom of Gondor you have a fantasy equivalent of the USA. Plus, there always science fantasy (which TBH is much more pleasing to my technophilic mind than medieval-tech fantasy)...

That still includes the old cliche stuff you don't like.

That genre also exists. It includes stuff like Twilight though.

gutza1

2015-01-18, 11:23 PM

That still includes the old cliche stuff you don't like.

That genre also exists. It includes stuff like Twilight though.

I mean an actual high-fantasy world like Middle-Earth, but with modern tech. Not just monsters and fairies and wizards.

Eldan

2015-01-19, 04:48 AM

So, you want something very specific. Modern technology, not set on Earth, with fantastic creatures. If you allowed futuristic technology, I'd point out Star Wars, which is high fantasy with spaceships and aliens. But you want modern.

How about New Crobuzon, as the first example that comes to my mind? Humans, insectoids, humanoid plants, water spirits, daemons, right alongside railways, computers, steam engines, oil platforms.

Or all the myriad stuff people mistakenly call Steampunk? How about all the Gothic Horror? Fallen London/Sunless Sea? What about the Sword-and-Planet genre? How about newer discworld, which has featured at various times, a movie industry, modern economy, steam engines, computers, etc.? How about the entire superhero genre, which seems only loosely based on our world? How about various manga, too many to list them all? How about Sanderson's fantasy books, especially Allow of Law, which is a kind of fantasy western? Are you familiar with the RPG setting Dragonstar, in which dragons rule an interstellar empire? Warhammer Fantasy, which is somewhere between the Renaissance and the Illumination?

Andrian

2015-01-19, 07:56 AM

I've been working on a thread that tries to figure out how a standard medieval fantasy world might progress all the way to a sci-fi interplanetary age, and one thing that I realized immediately is that unless magic and complex technology are utterly incompatible, they WILL integrate. It's very easy to imagine a low-tech society with magic because it's just a matter of adding magic to a setting where its integration with the existing technology is no big deal. If, however, magic has been around for a long time, and technology has advanced, then magic will have to have done one of three things: 1) Advanced along with the technology, creating a very sci-fi looking setting in a much earlier period of history (looking at you, steampunk), 2) remained fairly constant with technology, eventually becoming irrelevant (looking at you, Harry Potter), or 3) declined, eventually vanishing from the world (which is the direction Tolkien took his world, I believe).

Ultimately, magic IS a kind of technology, so if it exists, it will have to keep up with the rest of the world's technology, and history no longer resembles ours in any way after magic has been abundant for long enough. Now, low-magic settings, where magic is scarce and/or fairly weak, are affected much less by the existence of magic than settings where magic is abundant and/or powerful.

Magic and technology overlap quite a bit, too. Teleportation exists in many medieval fantasy settings and many sci-fi settings. Both are equally fantastic, but have different explanations for how they work. Golems and androids are basically the same thing, just made of different stuff and with different explanations for how they work. Don't believe me? In Pathfinder, there's a Mithral Golem, which can change itself into a liquid state, then reform itself. Sounds a lot like the T-1000 from Terminator, doesn't it? So when trying to figure out how a magical universe would advance into modern and futuristic ages, you have to realize that many of the problems which our modern society has had to work hard to solve have already been solved by magic in this fantasy world's medieval period. Who needs refrigerators or microwaves when there are spells for preserving food and for cooking it instantly? Especially if such spells can be enchanted into cupboards and cooking utensils. Even if they're expensive at first, people will save up for them, and market forces will start to take over. Wizards will begin to compete to produce their high-demand products more affordably, and suddenly there's enchanted objects in everyone's home. This leads to economic prosperity, with less effort needing to be put into food production and preparation, freeing up labor for other tasks, and this is just one relatively mundane example.

Most authors don't really think about the practical impact that magic will have on their world, or if they do, they start to run into the problem of having to write an entire history of the world from scratch just to get to the point where they can have a believable setting for their characters to live in. This is why anyone who starts to think about the Harry Potter universe begins to realize that wizards are the most incompetent people in the multiverse, and that Rowling's world would never be able to exist as she describes it.

As for having elves in your modern or futuristic setting, here's something to consider: can they successfully interbreed with humans? If they can, then pointed ears will become a common trait of humanity, barring strict taboos against it, because the two races will merge. There won't be "elves" and "humans" anymore. They'll all be one species with variations within their traits so that some people will be more elf-like and others more human-like, but no one will be purely one or the other. On the other hand, if they remain separated long enough (say by strict social convention or physical isolation), then they will lose the ability to produce fertile offspring with each other and become different species. In a medieval setting, the populations can be relatively isolated, having diversified from a common ancestral population, but still remaining interfertile despite this separation until the two races meet each other again. Then, only on the borders between human and elven territories will mixing occur, and it will happen so slowly that it's negligible for most stories. Still, if you get to a modern setting, with lots of good infrastructure to support immigration and tourism, humans and elves will begin mixing genes so fast it would make a population of rabbits blush.

I dunno, these are just things I've been thinking a lot about lately, and might help explain why you don't see more settings like what you're looking for.

Eldan

2015-01-19, 08:11 AM

Good point about elves, actually. For a real world example, look at Neanderthals. There is no Neanderthal race living in Northern Europe. There are just humans with some 1-3% Neanderthal DNA. The same would happen to elves. You'd have populations of slightly smaller, more slender humans for a while. Once global travel comes along with any regularity, that would at some point probably vanish too.

Solaris

2015-01-19, 08:22 AM

So when trying to figure out how a magical universe would advance into modern and futuristic ages, you have to realize that many of the problems which our modern society has had to work hard to solve have already been solved by magic in this fantasy world's medieval period. Who needs refrigerators or microwaves when there are spells for preserving food and for cooking it instantly? Especially if such spells can be enchanted into cupboards and cooking utensils. Even if they're expensive at first, people will save up for them, and market forces will start to take over. Wizards will begin to compete to produce their high-demand products more affordably, and suddenly there's enchanted objects in everyone's home. This leads to economic prosperity, with less effort needing to be put into food production and preparation, freeing up labor for other tasks, and this is just one relatively mundane example.

This part assumes that the magic items can be made more cheaply. It's entirely possible that magic has a lower limit practically hard-coded into it with regard to how much gold something costs (as is the case in D&D 3E).

Another reasonable assumption is that as mundane technology advances, the average wealth will increase - thereby increasing the affordability of magic and technomagic items.

Andrian

2015-01-19, 08:40 AM

This part assumes that the magic items can be made more cheaply. It's entirely possible that magic has a lower limit practically hard-coded into it with regard to how much gold something costs (as is the case in D&D 3E).

Another reasonable assumption is that as mundane technology advances, the average wealth will increase - thereby increasing the affordability of magic and technomagic items.

Well, and this is true of magical technology as well. Let's say a wizard can make golems that can work in the king's gold mines. These golems are producing wealth for the kingdom, and even if they are extremely expensive, there will be more gold to go around. GNP will go up as a result of magic production, and this will translate to more buying power for someone, and (assuming there's a functional economy) that buying power will eventually be distributed to everyone. Making magical items more cheaply is only one way to accomplish this goal.

Still, in DnD (well, I'm thinking Pathfinder for this example), the cost of magic items CAN go down from their market price. The cost to make the magic item might be fixed, but the TIME to make a magic item can be reduced with the use of valet familiars and wizard discoveries, for example. This means that the market can and will eventually drive the price of magic items in the DnD universe to the cost of materials plus the cost of labor, which, if my calculations are correct, should come out to about 5/8 the listed market price in the books. Now, that's the wholesale price for buying it directly from the wizard. Shipping and retail may drive that price back up depending on your location, but in large cities with wizard's guilds and the like, competition ought to drive that price down to the bare minimum. Combine this with the increased economic productivity that the introduction of any magic item will create, and you have ideal conditions for magic items to be a lot like electronics - expensive when first developed, then rapidly becoming affordable for all but the most impoverished.

Grinner

2015-01-19, 08:57 AM

Well, and this is true of magical technology as well. Let's say a wizard can make golems that can work in the king's gold mines. These golems are producing wealth for the kingdom, and even if they are extremely expensive, there will be more gold to go around. GNP will go up as a result of magic production, and this will translate to more buying power for someone, and (assuming there's a functional economy) that buying power will eventually be distributed to everyone. Making magical items more cheaply is only one way to accomplish this goal.

Still, in DnD (well, I'm thinking Pathfinder for this example), the cost of magic items CAN go down from their market price. The cost to make the magic item might be fixed, but the TIME to make a magic item can be reduced with the use of valet familiars and wizard discoveries, for example. This means that the market can and will eventually drive the price of magic items in the DnD universe to the cost of materials plus the cost of labor, which, if my calculations are correct, should come out to about 5/8 the listed market price in the books. Now, that's the wholesale price for buying it directly from the wizard. Shipping and retail may drive that price back up depending on your location, but in large cities with wizard's guilds and the like, competition ought to drive that price down to the bare minimum. Combine this with the increased economic productivity that the introduction of any magic item will create, and you have ideal conditions for magic items to be a lot like electronics - expensive when first developed, then rapidly becoming affordable for all but the most impoverished.

There still needs to be a basic need for the items in the short-term, though, and remember that Joe Dirtfarmer has trouble living on what he already earns. A magic pantry might keep food fresh, but it might be cheaper to just build a cellar.

Also, contrary to what D&D might imply, gold doesn't have any inherent value. Ergo, producing more gold will just drive up inflation. I think the only reason gold was ever used was because it's hard to counterfeit.

Perhaps we ought to figure out what economic paradigm we're going by...Your logic would work out in D&D economics, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense either...

Eldan

2015-01-19, 09:50 AM

It could be, however, that a certain spell always needs not, say, the monetary equivalent of 500 gold pieces, but exactly 500 small discs of exactly 2.2 grams of pure gold each, with a sun stamped on one side.

So that spell would become cheaper was more gold was available.

Admiral Squish

2015-01-19, 10:41 AM

I like to think of magic-v-tech as bows-v-crossbows.
They're both frightfully effective, but learning the former options requires years of practice and devotion and physical/mental training and a bit of an inherent skill. With the latter options, anyone can pick it up and be relatively competent in weeks, or even days if they've got a talent.
Ultimately, I think magic would likely continue to exist, but it would probably be less of an industry and more of a trade. Tech is going to come out on top in everyday life, but a mage is always handy to have around, and a little bit of magic if well-applied can be a great help. Not to mention the potential for integrating magic into technological items can allow for some really, really awesome stuff.

But then, I suppose there's a flaw with the logic of thinking of the two as being separate. Science and technology are adaptive by nature. If magic existed in the world, and science developed to a reasonable extent, I think magic would just fold into science at some point. Once the rules are understood, and the energy harnessed properly then it's not 'magic' as a separate entity, it's just 'arcanology', or something similar.

Andrian

2015-01-19, 11:15 AM

There still needs to be a basic need for the items in the short-term, though, and remember that Joe Dirtfarmer has trouble living on what he already earns. A magic pantry might keep food fresh, but it might be cheaper to just build a cellar.

Also, contrary to what D&D might imply, gold doesn't have any inherent value. Ergo, producing more gold will just drive up inflation. I think the only reason gold was ever used was because it's hard to counterfeit.

Perhaps we ought to figure out what economic paradigm we're going by...Your logic would work out in D&D economics, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense either...

Well, actually, gold does have inherent value (well, actually, to be more correct, it has instrumental value, but that's too philosophical for this thread), which is why it was used as currency. Gold's material properties make it very useful for various things. It's excellent for jewelry and decoration, because it's durable, malleable, and can be beaten into a very thin sheet. It's also an excellent conductor of heat and electricity, and is easy to work because of its low melting point. Mining gold does in fact produce wealth, though you are correct in that gold's value is also based on its scarcity, and so the less scarce it is, the less valuable each unit of gold becomes.

Now, I'll admit I'm not an economist, so I can only speak to the broad strokes of how magic should affect an economy, but the fact that it can produce valuable goods and services at fractions of the cost and effort that it would take to produce those same goods and services using mundane methods means that magic is a source of wealth.

For example, the Fabricate spell would make any sorcerer instantly wealthy and empower him or her to put almost any industry out of business. In fact, a devious business strategy would be to control the market by threatening to put people out of business, rather than actually doing it. With only a few castings of the spell, the raw materials, and one workman to assemble the various parts, a sorcerer could produce at least one suit of full plate armor in a few hours at most. Having to pay only one employee for a few hours of work means that he or she can undersell any armorer in the kingdom, and the output will be enormous. For a skilled craftsman in Pathfinder RAW, it takes over a year to produce a single suit of full plate, even with an army of assistants and the best tools possible. For an arcane caster, it takes less than a day and only one employee. Sorcerers are going to be best at this, since they have the most spells per day. A single sorcerer can outfit a small army with full plate (and Masterwork, at that, with Masterwork Transformation) in a matter of months, easily outstripping the production of every forge in the dwarven capital, and doing it for less money, since each suit requires only the labor of two people for a few hours.

Most people think this would wreck the economy, and it would, if magic suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The thing is, this is a world where magic is a part of the economy, and anyone interested in making armor studies to be a wizard, just like today anyone who wants to make body armor becomes a materials engineer. With a single spell, anything which is expensive because of the labor required to produce it suddenly becomes dirt cheap. Heavy plows, wagons, cotton gins, cars, tanks, anything you can imagine is now barely more expensive than the raw materials. Manufacturing is a mage's game.

Now that I think about it, there's no way most medieval fantasy worlds would stay that way for long. With magic as advanced as it is in DnD, things would probably advance according to Moore's Law, with complexity doubling at a fixed rate.

One of these days, I'll find a game with a magic system that doesn't break the world... Some day.

Grinner

2015-01-19, 11:59 AM

Well, actually, gold does have inherent value (well, actually, to be more correct, it has instrumental value, but that's too philosophical for this thread), which is why it was used as currency. Gold's material properties make it very useful for various things. It's excellent for jewelry and decoration, because it's durable, malleable, and can be beaten into a very thin sheet. It's also an excellent conductor of heat and electricity, and is easy to work because of its low melting point. Mining gold does in fact produce wealth, though you are correct in that gold's value is also based on its scarcity, and so the less scarce it is, the less valuable each unit of gold becomes.

I was thinking more of gold in the context of a medieval society, where its physical properties in concern to technology are of minimal importance. In this society, you have basically two uses for gold: ornamentation (very niche) and minting currency.

Most people think this would wreck the economy, and it would, if magic suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The thing is, this is a world where magic is a part of the economy, and anyone interested in making armor studies to be a wizard, just like today anyone who wants to make body armor becomes a materials engineer. With a single spell, anything which is expensive because of the labor required to produce it suddenly becomes dirt cheap. Heavy plows, wagons, cotton gins, cars, tanks, anything you can imagine is now barely more expensive than the raw materials. Manufacturing is a mage's game.

Now that I think about it, there's no way most medieval fantasy worlds would stay that way for long. With magic as advanced as it is in DnD, things would probably advance according to Moore's Law, with complexity doubling at a fixed rate.

Perhaps not. This all assumes that spellcasters are in plentiful supply, and that these highly-educated folk are more than willing to do society's grunt work.

Unfortunately, per the 3.5 books, most people are barely intelligent enough to cast even the simplest spells (assuming an even distribution of stats for members of all classes, which is admittedly unlikely*), and of those people having the prerequisite intelligence to cast a fifth-level spell, only a few will have enough experience to do so.

This is all going on the strained logic of D&D 3.5, but it's the best I can offer in regard to the availability of spellcasters.

Now, that's fine and dandy, and the few spellcasters capable of the needed spells could very well outperform any mundane craftsman. However, there's the issue of why they would waste their rare talents on such work. Why ought they do what could be left to almost anyone else? Theirs is a much higher destiny.

On that note, even if they did take up mundane crafts and could collectively outperform the rest of the population, what would everyone else do? They'd be left out of work and starve (setting aside the notion of self-resetting Create Food & Water traps), unless the spellcasters are working for free.

*Most people are going to gravitate to A) professions available to them, which B) require skillsets they have an aptitude for.

jqavins

2015-01-19, 12:45 PM

It's an interesting topic, what hapens as technology advances in a world with magic? But it's veered away from the OP topic, which is how come one doesn't see more of it, in literature and RPGs?

One reason, I think, is simply the inertia of tradition. High fantasy in a quasi-medieval setting works well, and audiences (i.e. customers) are used to it, so writers (i.e. vendors) produce it. Why it works well could be analyzed and then analyzed to death, but the relevant fact is that it does, and therefore there is little demand for placing high fantasy at other tech levels.

Second is the rather common idea that magic and tech are incompatible. They don't have to be incompatible (and lot of this thread discusses bringing them together) but it is widely (though not universally) accepted dogma that they are. Why? See above, I guess. The notion may have begun as a rationalization for not having them mixed, and has taken on a life of its own.

And finally, there are examples, some of which have been mentioned. What are the requirements for something to be "high fantasy?" Gutza1, you stated that you want elves and they have to have come from the same planet as the humans. Why? Is "elves and magic" the actual definition of high fantasy? If that's not a case of treading faithfully in Tolkein's footsteps I don't know what is. Why not different wounderous species of people? Why can't they come from a different planet rather than a differnt part of the same planet?

Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Twilight have been mentioned. Add to those Harry Dresden, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Supernatural, Diana Tregarde, and John the Balladeer to name a few.

Andrian

2015-01-19, 12:50 PM

What would people do if spellcasters took over mundane crafting? Exactly what they did when machines took over mundane crafting - find new jobs. Arts and entertainment tend to grow as countries become more prosperous and less labor is required for sustenance. People would also no longer have to work nearly as hard to feed themselves. Under these conditions, more people will gravitate toward educating themselves which means... more casters! Still, that doesn't just mean casters. It means engineers and inventors. It means more skilled warriors to fill the ranks of armies. People find things to do with their time - things that other people will pay them for. Money is as much a guiding influence in people's actions as their interests, probably more of an influence, actually.

As to why a wizard would turn to mundane crafting, that's quite simple - it's lucrative. While DnD tries to create a world where adventuring is a viable profession, that just doesn't work in the long term. Monsters will go extinct. Bandits will all be thrown in jail, or be too poor to be worth chasing down. Ancient caches of treasure will all be exploited. Wars might still be common enough, but what would you rather do - fight on the front lines, exposing yourself to danger and making yourself a high-profile target to enemy forces, or sitting at home swimming in platinum coins from being the king's primary armor or artillery producer? You can still undersell everyone and make massive profits. Incidentally, the latter is probably also going to probably win the war faster than standing out on some battlefield throwing around flashy spells. Some might want the glory that comes with fighting, but I imagine more of them would prefer to stay at home in comfort and luxury while profiting from the meatheaded fools who insist on stabbing each other with pointy objects.

Also, the DnD universe doesn't have a lot of the things that puts the breaks on progress. People can't be superstitious. They live in a world where a significant portion of their population uses magic and dragons really do carry off children. So far as I know, there are no major religions that oppose progress or change. The world is gender egalitarian and generally pro-education (at least for those who can afford it). Vagrants regularly become heroes, and the class system (which separates the commoners from the nobility, not the fighters from the rangers) appears to be fairly weak, with a strong middle class. Literacy seems to be a common skill. These are ideal conditions for scientific progress.

Now, unless magic is really something totally static, it will progress like any other technology, and it's already extremely advanced. Within a matter of decades, I would expect wizardry to become more common, and it would have a feedback loop sort of effect, starting with the nobles. Nobles would begin to buy magic items and magically-produced mundane items, because they have the capital for it. This would fund the expansion of the magical industry - wizards could take more apprentices, and with wizardry being a good profession, there would be many eager candidates. This produces more wizard-made goods on the market, at increasingly lower prices as techniques are perfected, new advances are made, and competition between wizards rises. This broadens the market and increases the average wealth level of the lower classes, since a proportion of them are becoming wizards. The cycle repeats and accelerates until magic is everywhere.

It's exactly what happened with computers - they started out being outrageously expensive and only a privileged few had access to them, but they did things so much better than people that now they're everywhere, and almost anyone can use them. It's a standard model for the progress of technology that has been repeated with pretty much every major advance, from shipbuilding to agriculture to firearms.

Now, there may be design constraints on magic (though no indication of this is given so far as I'm aware in most DnD worlds), such that using magic actually expends a finite or quasi-finite resource. If magic is like oil and starts to run out, then you can have a magic crisis, where the economy based on the arcane collapses under its own weight.

Qwertystop

2015-01-19, 01:18 PM

One thing to keep in mind - all magic items, which tend to be required for major societal change due to the comparative rarity of people with high enough mental stats to cast big spells, cost XP. What, exactly, this represents is uncertain, but it's definitely a significant cost to the caster making the item, much more so than money is.

On the other hand... could the problem of the lack of people with the required stats be solved by major production of Headbands of Intellect and similar? You still have the XP cost to make those, but once you have a lot of them you can give them to people to let them cast better spells - the average person can only manage a cantrip or first-level, but a +4 item elevates 50% of average people (the ones with 11s) to 5th-level spells like Fabricate. Once you've got more casters (even if some of them do need magic items to do much), you don't need to make as many magic items to stand in for them, and the XP cost of the magic items you do need to make can be spread out over more people.

Grinner

2015-01-19, 01:21 PM

As to why a wizard would turn to mundane crafting, that's quite simple - it's lucrative. While DnD tries to create a world where adventuring is a viable profession, that just doesn't work in the long term. Monsters will go extinct. Bandits will all be thrown in jail, or be too poor to be worth chasing down. Ancient caches of treasure will all be exploited. Wars might still be common enough, but what would you rather do - fight on the front lines, exposing yourself to danger and making yourself a high-profile target to enemy forces, or sitting at home swimming in platinum coins from being the king's primary armor or artillery producer? You can still undersell everyone and make massive profits. Incidentally, the latter is probably also going to probably win the war faster than standing out on some battlefield throwing around flashy spells. Some might want the glory that comes with fighting, but I imagine more of them would prefer to stay at home in comfort and luxury while profiting from the meatheaded fools who insist on stabbing each other with pointy objects.

I still don't accept that these privileged few would turn their considerable skills to such base purposes, but let's say such a small number of people can produce the great majority of a nation's needs. Either that's going to tank the value of the items they're producing, making it much less lucrative and thus negating any incentive, or a great deal of wealth is going to flow into their pockets, leading to a disproportionate distribution of wealth. Acquiring money faster than they can spend it and entire nations being dependent upon them and their apprentices, a dystopia will result.

Time to break out the cyberarms. :smallamused:

On the other hand... could the problem of the lack of people with the required stats be solved by major production of Headbands of Intellect and similar? You still have the XP cost to make those, but once you have a lot of them you can give them to people to let them cast better spells - the average person can only manage a cantrip or first-level, but a +4 item elevates 50% of average people (the ones with 11s) to 5th-level spells like Fabricate. Once you've got more casters (even if some of them do need magic items to do much), you don't need to make as many magic items to stand in for them, and the XP cost of the magic items you do need to make can be spread out over more people.

It's possible, but there's still the issue of logistics. Getting people to cooperate is not an easy task, especially when the work involved, like making magic items, is demanding. One thing that these sort of threads tend to assume is that people are under the influence of some sort of hivemind, but it's more reasonable to expect that everyone's looking out for number one.

You know that sociology game, the Prisoner's Dilemma, where everyone inevitably ends up selling out one another? That's what this is like.

ComatosePhoenix

2015-01-19, 01:30 PM

As some people have already said, wizards aren't supposed to be common in most magical settings. And magic itself is supposed to be fairly difficult. In these settings wizards are gradually replaced by the cheaper and more easily produced siege engines, legendary monsters that exist only to prey on humans are hunted to extinction, and interesting humanoid races either seclude themselves from the world or crossbreed themselves out of existence.

There are still wizards and magic in the world, only the most powerful remain, and they choose to hide.

If you allow magic to be profoundly common you usually get crazy stuff like magitek. the only thing I can think of to stop that is to use a less exotic magic system. The only way to stop magitek is to either to handwave it by saying magic and technology don't mix (bad Idea because the PC will try to find ways to mix them) or by engineering a magic system that doesn't add much to progression of society.

Actually now that I think of it, most of the Elder Scrolls magic is fairly minor in terms of technological integration. yeah people can throw fire balls around and cure wounds, but only characters that approach godlike powers could build the "Tippyverse" that everyone here dreads. Personal experience dictates that a crossbow bolt is just as deadly as a magic one.

yeah actually that sounds like a pretty safe level of magic, everyone seems to know a minor healing spell or can start a quick campfire, but proper mages that can use their powers for evil are no more common then a man with a shotgun.

Just cut summoning magic from existance, make sure necromancy is either equally non-existant or strictly evil.

Eldan

2015-01-19, 01:38 PM

Except for the Dwemer, of course, who built a mechanical god and an army of steam-powered robots and then left the planet.

Andrian

2015-01-19, 04:41 PM

In short, I expect the reason we don't see Tolkien-clone worlds taken to the modern day very often is because it's complicated and because Tolkien-clone worlds probably wouldn't progress along the same technological path as our own, making their "present day" unrecognizable as such to us.

Sorry for derailing the thread.

JaminDM

2015-01-19, 06:19 PM

Simply, because it works so well. Most other time periods don't work as well.

Andrian

2015-01-19, 08:52 PM

You know, one idea I've had for a world setting/story is that at first everything looks like medieval fantasy, but as time goes on, the protagonists discover that it's actually earth in a post-apocalyptic future. The different races are humanity beginning to evolve and diversify, magic is actually people interfacing with lost, hidden supertech, stuff like that. All those ancient ruins of a once great civilization would be places like New York and Tokyo, and magic artifacts would be things like smart guns and mobile computers.

Yora

2015-01-20, 05:33 AM

Personally, I really dislike those. It always makes me feel cheated. It's not quite as bad, but feels like the same thing as "It was all a dream" to me.
Seems strangely popular in certain genres, though.

Eldan

2015-01-20, 05:37 AM

People just like the idea of apocalpyses, I guess. Where all society falls away and they can finally show everyone how great they are, now that they are unconstrained by civilization.

I had fantasies like that. Until I remember that I can't hunt, farm or fight and would probably die of hunger or dysentery in a few months, once the easily-looted food is gone.

gutza1

2015-01-20, 02:07 PM

Well, in my campaign setting, magic and technology are utterly incompatible. One half of the world uses near-future technology, the other half uses what Eberron would be if it had a modern instead of steampunk feel. However, Pereptual Motion Machine Magic is not allowed, meaning that most magic items have to be either plugged in to a magic energy grid or use magic batteries (power crystals) to work.

Grinner

2015-01-21, 12:00 AM

However, Pereptual Motion Machine Magic is not allowed, meaning that most magic items have to be either plugged in to a magic energy grid or use magic batteries (power crystals) to work.

Energy grid? Batteries? That sounds an awful lot like technology... :smallamused:

Yora

2015-01-21, 06:09 AM

Use magic to generate heat, make steam, get electrical power. Making magic and technology incompatible seems rather unlikely.

gutza1

2015-01-21, 01:56 PM

Energy grid? Batteries? That sounds an awful lot like technology... :smallamused:

Well, in my world, magic replicates technology a lot. However, it is not technology, and is incompatible with technology because magic bends physics, which advanced (steam power and beyond) technology depends upon. Also, I have power as a requirement because most D&D magic items are Perpetual Motion Machines; they do awesome stuff but don't consume anything except for regenerating charges, which makes them really OP in an Eberron-like society.

sktarq

2015-01-21, 02:45 PM

Marvel's X-men, Agents of SHIELD, Hulu?/Netflix? Misfits, Supernatural, Trueblood would all be pretty fantastical-other races, magic powers, effectively magic items...

Tarzan, The land the time forgot, The John Carter of Mars seires, actually almost anything by Edgar Rice Burrows. 20,000 leagues under the sea. . . Guliver's Travels. . .

Warhammer 40K

I'm not seeing what high fantasy concepts you are wanting that you can't find with say post-industrial tech.

Yora

2015-01-21, 03:09 PM

I don't think any of these are High Fantasy. Aren't they all set in a fictional version of the real world?

Tzi

2015-01-21, 03:53 PM

The Medieval period has good PR?!

Actually it's plausible to have a simpler answer. Time for a history lesson though, and some listed factors.

1) Antiquity has its own drama and incredibly myth and lore but to an extent these settings are rarely touched on. Partially because the further back you go the less textual examples you have. While Age of Conan touched it and the Conan world is right there in terms of themeing the fact is the difference between Antiquity and the Middle Ages is actually somewhat sketchy to define in historical terms.

2) The "Medieval," Period is simply a common social phenomena in which a previously organized social order has collapsed. Most people use social collapse in their settings to provide drama, conflict and struggle for players. Any given setting will appear Medieval because most settings use the social underpinnings that made the Medieval period what it was. Even placed in differing contexts such as Antiquity, there is still Kings, Queens, Princesses, Dragons ect. In fact most of the monsters and lore are distinctly ancient.

3) Textual sources. The War of the Roses, Charlemagne, ect are all extremely well documented. As are the vikings, Gaelic myth, the histories of France, Spain, Romania ect. Sources abound. However for my Ancient Near-East inspired setting my MAIN mythological source was the Bible and the Talmud. Granted obscure for my players so it all felt new to them, but annoying because the players were not comfortable with it. Also, even if you remove the Culturally European tropes and switch the scenery to say an Egypt, or a Japan, or even an India, my point established in point 2 still holds. Most world builders and DM's go for that transitional period of time when one older empire has fallen and now many petty squabbling warlords dominate politically. Even my bronze age Mesopotamia setting looked rather Medieval. I mean you had city-state warlords all vying to conquer one another, lording over patches of farmland. You had their vassal lords, chieftains and small empires but for the most part it was rather Medieval. The previous Empire that held the land together was gone and now it was a free for all for power. "Who would rule the grain lands?"

Yora

2015-01-21, 04:07 PM

The true reason, like pretty much everything in High Fantasy: Tolkien did it. :smallamused:

Tzi

2015-01-21, 04:09 PM

The true reason, like pretty much everything in High Fantasy: Tolkien did it. :smallamused:

The other reason, precedent.

Tolkien, George R. R. Martin, ect.

Also popularity. Let's face it, players want what they want.

Lord Raziere

2015-01-22, 03:14 AM

hamishspence

2015-01-22, 03:18 AM

Isn't Spelljammer "sci-fi and fantasy combined" in a lot of respects?

Tzi

2015-01-22, 03:26 AM

which makes me sad. we should have more ages than medieval.

I will find a way to make more high-tech magic fantasy. speak not to me of only science fiction or only fantasy, they are too constraining, I will make something beyond both, yet also combined. something greater. something fantastic. these current fantasy worlds are too boring, too down to earth, too person solving everything with a sword-ish. if no one else is willing to break the mold, I will do so myself.

and no I will not "just make sci-fi" that is not enough. I need to show the world, a GREATER fantasy! *cackles madly*

Well, putting it another way,

Fantasy doesn't equal medieval, But the medieval period in terms of social order, and nature is just really common to do.

Essentially its an era with...

1) Decreased trade
2) Warring small states
3) Collapsed former glorious empires
4) Decline in education, wealth and connectivity of the world.

Usually eras with one or more of these make for great adventure / drama. Like say the Warring state period in Japan or China. These era's are simply dramatic and interesting. For example the anime Inuyasha mostly is ALLEGED to take place during the Sengoku jidai or warring states era. Likewise Princess Mononoke happens very early when black powder is adopted. These settings are decidedly Feudal like the Medieval times of Europe. In general the culture and setting may be different but EFFECTIVELY its the same Medieval setting. Social order has disintegrated, states are small and in intermittent periods of warfare. Japan's lacked the collapse in trade, however not every feature need be there.

Yora

2015-01-22, 05:45 AM

Isn't Spelljammer "sci-fi and fantasy combined" in a lot of respects?

Spelljammer, and I would also say Eberron. And of course most of the later Final Fantasy games and the Legacy of Kain series. Then there's also the Avatar shows and Star Wars, though the later one doesn't use magic for technology.

jqavins

2015-01-22, 09:21 AM

I will find a way to make more high-tech magic fantasy. speak not to me of only science fiction or only fantasy, they are too constraining, I will make something beyond both, yet also combined.

Then there's also the Avatar shows and Star Wars, though the later one doesn't use magic for technology.
Ah, but that's why it's perfect. Lord Raziere isn't looking for magic as technology, but coexistant magic and technology*. And that's exactly what Star Wars has. Still, if Lord R. wants to do another such world, different in whatever ways he wishes, that's so much to the good.

* By the way, I hate the very usage I've just used, "technology" meaning the electricity/cheistry/biology/etc. based stuff we are familiar with. If magic follows rules in that doing a certain thing consistantly gives a certain result, then application of those rules to accomplish a desired goal is technology. Technology based on the natural laws of magic and developed through the study thereof, i.e. science. I should have stated that, in Star Wars, magic doesn't replace the more familiar laws of physics as the basis of technology, but rather that there are both traditional physics-based and magic-based technologies coexisting.

sktarq

2015-01-22, 11:52 AM

I don't think any of these are High Fantasy. Aren't they all set in a fictional version of the real world?

The first bunch I'll grant you are based on the real world in part but have magic superpowers, basically princesses, etc. I would call that highly fantastical. Where you draw the line on high fantasy vs fantasy would be thus part of the argument.

and as for -
"The land the time forgot, The John Carter of Mars seires, actually almost anything by Edgar Rice Burrows. 20,000 leagues under the sea. . . Guliver's Travels. . ." I would say the links to "real world" are in the framing devices only before they leave the "real world" to where-ever the story is taking place at best

and as for "Warhammer 40K" nope-not real world-unless you could the existence of earth being the home of humanity as "real"

also Anime. I don't know anime well but it has plenty. Some guy in a red jacket who freaks out about everything and travels with two insurance chicks on desert world....spirit/element wielding families having all sorts of battles in downtown cities. Hyper symmetrically focused nitwit who leads some people who deal with death and whose weapons become people. . .plenty to pick from in the non-midevil high fantasy basket there.

Tzi

2015-01-22, 12:37 PM

The first bunch I'll grant you are based on the real world in part but have magic superpowers, basically princesses, etc. I would call that highly fantastical. Where you draw the line on high fantasy vs fantasy would be thus part of the argument.

and as for -
"The land the time forgot, The John Carter of Mars seires, actually almost anything by Edgar Rice Burrows. 20,000 leagues under the sea. . . Guliver's Travels. . ." I would say the links to "real world" are in the framing devices only before they leave the "real world" to where-ever the story is taking place at best

and as for "Warhammer 40K" nope-not real world-unless you could the existence of earth being the home of humanity as "real"

also Anime. I don't know anime well but it has plenty. Some guy in a red jacket who freaks out about everything and travels with two insurance chicks on desert world....spirit/element wielding families having all sorts of battles in downtown cities. Hyper symmetrically focused nitwit who leads some people who deal with death and whose weapons become people. . .plenty to pick from in the non-midevil high fantasy basket there.

Actually Warhammer 40K is explicitly spelled out as a kind of future of our universe we just simply don't know it yet.

In the lore, Earth or Holy Terra is one and the same. So our little world, in that continuum becomes the barren hive world capital of a galactic Imperium built on insanity.

I'd argue you have an incredibly narrow understanding of what is or was the Medieval period or what is High Fantasy.

Tzi

2015-01-22, 12:40 PM

Ah, but that's why it's perfect. Lord Raziere isn't looking for magic as technology, but coexistant magic and technology*. And that's exactly what Star Wars has. Still, if Lord R. wants to do another such world, different in whatever ways he wishes, that's so much to the good.

* By the way, I hate the very usage I've just used, "technology" meaning the electricity/cheistry/biology/etc. based stuff we are familiar with. If magic follows rules in that doing a certain thing consistantly gives a certain result, then application of those rules to accomplish a desired goal is technology. Technology based on the natural laws of magic and developed through the study thereof, i.e. science. I should have stated that, in Star Wars, magic doesn't replace the more familiar laws of physics as the basis of technology, but rather that there are both traditional physics-based and magic-based technologies coexisting.

I think I bypass some of the problems of magic and technology co-existing.

In star wars there is a limiting factor, mainly that it requires a caster to do the spells. Going one step further I have that magic also exerts a sort of psychic impression on reality. And reality exerts a collective psychic presence on magic. Think of it like Warhammer 40K, excessive use of psionic sorcery brings the world to the attention of things people might not want to deal with. HOWEVER it also is a means of defending said world and they might notice the planet anyway.

Yora

2015-01-22, 04:37 PM

Takes place in our world or features characters from our world traveling to another world: Low.
Not our world and no characters from our world: High.

High, medium, or low amounts of magic is a completely different matter.

Rakaydos

2015-01-22, 04:56 PM

which makes me sad. we should have more ages than medieval.

How about low-magic Renasaunce, where priests of S'Allumer's Light can heal minor injuries and banish the undead, but cant bring back someone who's head was caved in, such as with a Bisclavere mercenary's wheellock musket?

cybishop

2015-01-22, 05:07 PM

I was wondering why so much high fantasy is medieval. It seems that every fantasy writer/creator has followed Tolkien in that regard, and very few settings (Shadowrun, Arcanum, Eberron, etc.) has decided to be different. I am wondering why this cliche is so powerful, and why shouldn't a true elf (not just space elf) be seen wearing sci-fi technological power armor as be seen wielding a bow.

The question is complicated and probably should have been phrased better.

Not all fantasy is medieval, as you go on to say. But, fine, it's probably true that most high fantasy is, and the best-known examples of the genre are. Why, then?

Partly because "medieval" is usually part of the definition. A story about a wizard in modern-day Chicago isn't high fantasy because it's marketed as urban fantasy instead, even if it fits all (or very nearly all) the other criteria. Also partly because medieval high fantasy is the popular, familiar kind of high fantasy. Tolkien basically created the genre, and lots of other high-profile works since then have been cast from the same die, or recast to fit into it after they were created. If the Oxford polyglot who wrote some really influential fiction set in an unprecedented created world between the Thirties and Fifties had been more of a fan of science fiction than of a romanticized idyll, maybe we'd now be asking why high fantasy is always set in outer space. (All that is mostly based on how TV Tropes defines things (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HighFantasy). I know they're not the be-all and end-all of analysis of fiction, but they seem like a good starting point at least.)

Beyond that, I'd say that a medieval setting is just useful for a certain type of story. A feudal system has the illusion of permanency, but in fact is very fragile. Everyone's aware that a ruler can last for decades and a dynasty for centuries, but in practice, most dynasties didn't remain in control of entire countries that long, and the chain of succession tends to be much messier than in a democracy. So it's plausible that the good guys killing one evil king (or vice versa) really would spell the end of the world as they know it, and it's plausible that they actually could do so. You have to add magic to make the literal end of the world plausible, but something like the Hundred Years War is bad enough. It takes a feudal system to make small numbers of people matter like that, for better and for worse. A medieval setting has other advantages: without cell phones, you can't call for help. Without a modern centralized state, a random warlord can live like a king. Without public schools, you have to go on a quest just to find someone who can translate a letter in a foreign language, or work the magic that we would call medicine.

There's no reason you can't set a story in a world that has all those things, but if you do, its narrative won't look too much like a high fantasy.

sktarq

2015-01-22, 07:43 PM

Actually...

I'd argue you have an incredibly narrow understanding of what is or was the Medieval period or what is High Fantasy.

I'd argue the exact opposite. I think to take 40K and not call it high fantasy is extremely narrow. It is also not medieval in nature and thus serves, as does the ERB John Carter of Mars series Guliver's travels, or various Anime, as a counter argument to the idea that all High fantasy is medieval in Nature-if you understand High Fantasy to be as highly fantastic highly epic stories with magic, etc which I think is the way the OP meant the question in the title to be taken.
If you are simply using the idea that High Fantasy is the name for the medieval era settings of a broader selection of epic fantasy then I'd say the OP question is basically meaningless.

Tzi

2015-01-23, 03:37 AM

I'd argue the exact opposite. I think to take 40K and not call it high fantasy is extremely narrow. It is also not medieval in nature and thus serves, as does the ERB John Carter of Mars series Guliver's travels, or various Anime, as a counter argument to the idea that all High fantasy is medieval in Nature-if you understand High Fantasy to be as highly fantastic highly epic stories with magic, etc which I think is the way the OP meant the question in the title to be taken.
If you are simply using the idea that High Fantasy is the name for the medieval era settings of a broader selection of epic fantasy then I'd say the OP question is basically meaningless.

It's high fantasy, but with sciency voodoo twist. Often called Sci-Fantasy as there is magic but taking place within the less fantastical realm of cosmic nightmares and space travel.

I am not saying High Fantasy = Medieval, I'm saying Medieval at its core is a series of tropes. Even if you take away the castles and knights and princesses stuck in towers it changes little but the coat of paint.

Warhammer 40K for example has lords, aristocracy, a knightly class, inquisitors and is extremely INSPIRED BY medieval fantasy and even blatantly copies tropes from your standard Medieval world. Collapsed great Empire, social disintegration, vast hysteria about dark and unknown forces, general ignorance about the past and technology. Essentially its a standard medieval fantasy world but set in space. Heck they even use swords and medieval inspired weapons and full on body armor like *cough* plate mailed Knights.

sktarq

2015-01-23, 10:42 AM

I'm sorry but I don't think that every "worse than it was before" fallen empire story is medieval. The whole post-apocalyptic genre for example. The world seems far more based on pulp style reading of the hyper-militaristic propaganda of late 19th Century through the cold war. The space marines are as much Rambo, Six-million dollar man, and SS as they are Knightly orders. Vast hysteria of dark and outsiders seems as much Franco and the Red Scare as Catholic Church.

Plus the empire hasn't fallen but is reduced (would that make it the Byzantine Empire you think?)

I would certainly not say that medieval fantasy wasn't a part of their world building-lots came when they used the medieval Warhammer to create the 40K version but I would say enough other things were part of the mix to say it is not a medieval nature setting.

gutza1

2015-01-23, 02:20 PM

Guys, I think I need to clarify some points here:

1. You guys are fighting over what the definition of medieval and high fantasy is. Let me tell you what I'm referring to.
Medieval : Anything with a base tech-level lower than the Renaissance. Actually, many fantasy world have guns, so let's change medieval fantasy to Renaissance fantasy. Also, steampunk schizo-tech and a crashed spaceship here and there doesn't count. I might also include a medieval society, but since lots of "medieval" fantasy has Arabian, Chinese cultures that isn't a criteria.
High fantasy: Fantasy set in a fictional world that is not Earth. That discounts a majority of urban fantasy works, and WH40K. Notice that that definition has no requirement of tech-level. It could be stone age or space age. Actually, TBH, I think Shadowrun counts just cause.
2. When talking about races, aliens that are just said races IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAACE don't count. The universe of the work has to include a High-fantasy planet, but can have a more advanced than medieval tech level. Like Arcanum: Steamworks and Magic obscura, which is a perfect example of the non-medieval high fantasy I'm talking about. Sadly, I am not a fan of steampunk and race/class interlocking (why shouldn't an elf be interested in science?), but that is getting off topic.
3. I consider magic to be a science, but to be completely different from actual science (natural science). By a science, I mean that the scientific method is applicable to that. However, a scientist is one who studies natural sciences, while a wizard is one who studies magic. Ditto for magitek (magic as technology) and actual technology.
4. World where the post-medieval tech is exclusively magic masquerading as tech don't count. That would invalidate worlds like Spelljammer, Eberron, and Exalted. However, works like Dragonstar do fit the criteria for non-medieval high fantasy.

If the Oxford polyglot who wrote some really influential fiction set in an unprecedented created world between the Thirties and Fifties had been more of a fan of science fiction than of a romanticized idyll, maybe we'd now be asking why high fantasy is always set in outer space.

Well then I wouldn't be complaining about this. I am a massive technophile.

Man on Fire

2015-01-23, 05:35 PM

Actually, aren't some shonen mangas non-medieval high fantasy? Fullmetal Alchemist, Naruto, One Piece?

Aedilred

2015-01-24, 01:55 AM

1. You guys are fighting over what the definition of medieval and high fantasy is. Let me tell you what I'm referring to.
Medieval : Anything with a base tech-level lower than the Renaissance. Actually, many fantasy world have guns, so let's change medieval fantasy to Renaissance fantasy. Also, steampunk schizo-tech and a crashed spaceship here and there doesn't count. I might also include a medieval society, but since lots of "medieval" fantasy has Arabian, Chinese cultures that isn't a criteria.

In that case, a post-Renaissance setting covers only about 10% of even the narrowest definition of what can be called "human history" and a much lower percentage of anything wider than that, unless you start working in speculative futurist settings, which are usually considered part of another genre. So it's not surprising that the vast majority of fantasy takes place in such periods, just on the basis of statistics.

Roxxy

2015-01-24, 02:32 AM

Well, putting it another way,

Fantasy doesn't equal medieval, But the medieval period in terms of social order, and nature is just really common to do.

Essentially its an era with...

1) Decreased trade
2) Warring small states
3) Collapsed former glorious empires
4) Decline in education, wealth and connectivity of the world.Interestingly enough, my setting only has one of these elements. The world uses medieval weapons and early firearms, and the ruleset is Pathfinder, but one of the big themes is that the world is in a magical version of the Industrial Revolution brought on by the discovery of arcane magic, and has mass production, near instant communication, railroads and self propelled ships, advanced fertilizers and medical care, and urbanization. Rather than decreased trade, we are seeing a world where virtually everybody in the "core world" (as in, areas that you don't have to sail off the edge of the planet or through a supernatural wall of wind to reach) is connected to the rest of the world in some fashion. If something major happens in FauxJapan, important people in FauxBritain will likely know about it in a matter of hours, and the general population will read about it in the papers the next morning. Global trade structures are a thing. Wealth is steadily increasing. Educational standards aren't exactly the best, but we at least have some degree of public schooling in more economically developed areas, and education is on the upswing. FauxChina is fragmented into multiple states, however, and FauxBritain's former colonies rule themselves, even if they remain extremely closely tied. FauxOld-West is a former colony that rules over a huge area, but who's government can't actually exercise its authority. It can make laws and proclamations, but lacks the armed forces or perceived legitimacy necessary to compel people to actually obey. Warlordism, economic exploitation, an ungodly crime rate, and constant violent conflict (settler on settler, settler on native tribe, native tribe on native tribe) are all extremely big problems. FauxEuropean and FauxEuropean-American fashions have a distinct Victorian or Old West flavor. Outside of the FauxOld-West or exploring beyond the supernatural wall of wind or off the edge of the world, adventurers aren't that common. A player character is much more likely to be either an agent of a government (my preference) or a member of a legitimate mercenary organization or private law enforcement force (magic Pinkertons, anybody?).

I get what you're saying, but it's so fun to subvert these things :smallbiggrin:

Milo v3

2015-01-24, 09:49 PM

1. You guys are fighting over what the definition of medieval and high fantasy is. Let me tell you what I'm referring to.
Medieval : Anything with a base tech-level lower than the Renaissance.
I think this is abit of an unfair definition, since over 99% of human history then counts as "Medieval". Do stone age settings still count as Medieval?

Eldan

2015-01-25, 04:44 AM

Plus the first guns were around for most of the actual medieval.

Tzi

2015-01-25, 11:55 AM

Interestingly enough, my setting only has one of these elements. The world uses medieval weapons and early firearms, and the ruleset is Pathfinder, but one of the big themes is that the world is in a magical version of the Industrial Revolution brought on by the discovery of arcane magic, and has mass production, near instant communication, railroads and self propelled ships, advanced fertilizers and medical care, and urbanization. Rather than decreased trade, we are seeing a world where virtually everybody in the "core world" (as in, areas that you don't have to sail off the edge of the planet or through a supernatural wall of wind to reach) is connected to the rest of the world in some fashion. If something major happens in FauxJapan, important people in FauxBritain will likely know about it in a matter of hours, and the general population will read about it in the papers the next morning. Global trade structures are a thing. Wealth is steadily increasing. Educational standards aren't exactly the best, but we at least have some degree of public schooling in more economically developed areas, and education is on the upswing. FauxChina is fragmented into multiple states, however, and FauxBritain's former colonies rule themselves, even if they remain extremely closely tied. FauxOld-West is a former colony that rules over a huge area, but who's government can't actually exercise its authority. It can make laws and proclamations, but lacks the armed forces or perceived legitimacy necessary to compel people to actually obey. Warlordism, economic exploitation, an ungodly crime rate, and constant violent conflict (settler on settler, settler on native tribe, native tribe on native tribe) are all extremely big problems. FauxEuropean and FauxEuropean-American fashions have a distinct Victorian or Old West flavor. Outside of the FauxOld-West or exploring beyond the supernatural wall of wind or off the edge of the world, adventurers aren't that common. A player character is much more likely to be either an agent of a government (my preference) or a member of a legitimate mercenary organization or private law enforcement force (magic Pinkertons, anybody?).

I get what you're saying, but it's so fun to subvert these things :smallbiggrin:

I've somewhat given up on my attempts to subvert a lot of tropes.

Right now I've settled on a kind of Nausicca and the Valley of the Wind styled world. Not necessarily a world devastated by industrialization but by a quasi-magic / geologic event that has made life difficult.

Over all I have a lot of cultures inspired by Ancient cultures but gave them some hints of modernity. Minoans with Ironclad steam ships, Egyptians with Hydro-electric dams, Celts with rifles ect.

Lord Raziere

2015-01-25, 03:20 PM

Spelljammer, and I would also say Eberron. And of course most of the later Final Fantasy games and the Legacy of Kain series. Then there's also the Avatar shows and Star Wars, though the later one doesn't use magic for technology.

nah, Star Wars isn't good enough-its too pure normaltech, and Avatar has some tech that you need bending to use, but most of it is normaltech.

but Spelljammer, Eberron and Final Fantasy? thats more of what I'm aiming for.

problem is, Spelljammer hasn't been around for like years or something, and the book of it I've got is hard to read so I don't read it that much, Eberron doesn't include ENOUGH magitech for my tastes because while it does have it, its still medieval fantasy but with a magitech dressing. while Final Fantasy are all on the PS systems, and I'm an Xbox or Nintendo buyer.

so yeah. I'm kind of starved for magitech here.

Milo v3

2015-01-25, 06:46 PM

Eberron doesn't include ENOUGH magitech for my tastes because while it does have it, its still medieval fantasy but with a magitech dressing.

so yeah. I'm kind of starved for magitech here.

I was similarly disappointed with eberron, it's sounded cool when people described it to me, but when I actually looked into it there were so many missed opportunities, they just added generic steampunk tech and gave it magic paint rather than using magic as an actual technology. :smallfrown:

Lord Raziere

2015-01-26, 06:58 AM

I was similarly disappointed with eberron, it's sounded cool when people described it to me, but when I actually looked into it there were so many missed opportunities, they just added generic steampunk tech and gave it magic paint rather than using magic as an actual technology. :smallfrown:

yeah, like say bows and arrows being outdated not because guns were invented, but because people figured out how to make sword wands so that you could draw a sword and use it like a wand to fire things at range and as a sword up close. Or making plate armor obsolete by enchanting normal cloth uniforms to be just as protective but far more flexible.

magic as technology would probably result in everything getting really fancy in my estimation, because who needs actual utilitarian protection when you can enchant anything you want to have little force fields around them as well as special strength-enhancing enchantments to make certain architecture possible. combine this with transmutation and your enchanted stuff can look like whatever you want without sacrificing protection- or at least for those who can afford it. the transmutation process would be a job for high-paying wizards and such, but the rest of it, the forging, the hammering into shape, the crafting would all need laborers and what not from the raw materials that the wizard transmutes.

such a world would be like a bunch of flying palaces or something that look more like architectural pieces of art than fortresses capable of battle flying over the various dirty factories that were built to make it, but with various little enchanted amongst the grime, all of which look like strange art pieces enchanted to be powerful functional things that never get unclean or dull despite the surrounding gritty city. with magic, form doesn't need to follow function. you can wear boots that give you better punching power, gloves that allow you to fly and a shirt that projects a forcefield around your nether regions while wearing pants that protect your head, and no one would be able to say you can't.

Amblehook

2015-01-26, 04:37 PM

magic as technology would probably result in everything getting really fancy in my estimation, because who needs actual utilitarian protection when you can enchant anything you want to have little force fields around them as well as special strength-enhancing enchantments to make certain architecture possible. combine this with transmutation and your enchanted stuff can look like whatever you want without sacrificing protection

I like this and I want to use this in places in my setting, but what happens to this world when the bbeg comes through a major city with magical support structures or attacks the army decked out in magical tunics and sword wands and casts an antimagic field? It seems like a well-timed dispel magic or antimagic field could wreak havoc on even the most powerful kingdoms.

(I would really like others opinions on this as I plan to incorporate a few of those magical features into certain kingdoms without fear of the PCs destroying everything!)

Qwertystop

2015-01-26, 05:18 PM

I like this and I want to use this in places in my setting, but what happens to this world when the bbeg comes through a major city with magical support structures or attacks the army decked out in magical tunics and sword wands and casts an antimagic field? It seems like a well-timed dispel magic or antimagic field could wreak havoc on even the most powerful kingdoms.

(I would really like others opinions on this as I plan to incorporate a few of those magical features into certain kingdoms without fear of the PCs destroying everything!)

What happens is any nation with enough intelligent people to organize and maintain that much magic would come up with precautions. Either someone designs a spell or item with the specific effect of preventing castings of Antimagic Field (plausible, though I don't know if it exists yet) or the troops enchant actual armor rather than cloth.

Milo v3

2015-01-26, 05:21 PM

yeah, like say bows and arrows being outdated not because guns were invented, but because people figured out how to make sword wands so that you could draw a sword and use it like a wand to fire things at range and as a sword up close. Or making plate armor obsolete by enchanting normal cloth uniforms to be just as protective but far more flexible.
Especially since sword wands would actually be more balanced than swords with wand-chambers, since you wouldn't be able to swap the wand type every ten minutes.

magic as technology would probably result in everything getting really fancy in my estimation, because who needs actual utilitarian protection when you can enchant anything you want to have little force fields around them as well as special strength-enhancing enchantments to make certain architecture possible. combine this with transmutation and your enchanted stuff can look like whatever you want without sacrificing protection- or at least for those who can afford it. the transmutation process would be a job for high-paying wizards and such, but the rest of it, the forging, the hammering into shape, the crafting would all need laborers and what not from the raw materials that the wizard transmutes.

such a world would be like a bunch of flying palaces or something that look more like architectural pieces of art than fortresses capable of battle flying over the various dirty factories that were built to make it, but with various little enchanted amongst the grime, all of which look like strange art pieces enchanted to be powerful functional things that never get unclean or dull despite the surrounding gritty city. with magic, form doesn't need to follow function. you can wear boots that give you better punching power, gloves that allow you to fly and a shirt that projects a forcefield around your nether regions while wearing pants that protect your head, and no one would be able to say you can't.
Just wondering, have you seen Gramarie?

Lord Raziere

2015-01-28, 10:17 AM

Especially since sword wands would actually be more balanced than swords with wand-chambers, since you wouldn't be able to swap the wand type every ten minutes.

Just wondering, have you seen Gramarie?

the homebrew 3.5 thing? Yes actually. but all that was just what I came up with in the moment, if any of that was inspired by/similar to Gramarie, it was unconsciously. I actually once tried to get into a Gramarie game, and made a Changeling Gramarist for it, but it never took off and I prefer lighter systems like Fate myself.

Milo v3

2015-01-28, 05:57 PM

the homebrew 3.5 thing? Yes actually. but all that was just what I came up with in the moment, if any of that was inspired by/similar to Gramarie, it was unconsciously. I actually once tried to get into a Gramarie game, and made a Changeling Gramarist for it, but it never took off and I prefer lighter systems like Fate myself.

Just wondering because it sounded exactly like what Gramarie has been Trying to accomplish, admittedly it does use a hell of a lot of weird rules even in a game system that is rules heavy.... We've been trying to streamline it abit, but work has slowed because of RL stuff.

Tvtyrant

2015-03-04, 12:06 AM

Sounds like a campaign setting for Tales of the Nightside (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightside_%28book_series%29) would be the right approach. Basically a kitchen sink where cross-genre elements all popup but within a primarily modern setting.

Gritmonger

2015-03-04, 02:06 AM

Not to come in late, but for OP:

Because, age of legend. A lot of legendary stories were adapted and re-adapted in times when the tech was "modern" swords and tactics and so-on. You have older stories, but much like West Side Story, they are sometimes fitted with at the time "Modern" trappings to make them more relatable, or easy to write.

So Tolkien was aping the style of mythos that had been already re-written to have "modern" tech of the time.

Take the Arthurian tales. Depending on which account you read, everybody is in plate armor on horseback - and if the given supposed original era of Arthur is correct, none of those were present. Fifth century versus late Medieval. And I could be very wrong, it's been a long time in recalling some of this, and I'm tired and even though I'm on the internet right now, I don't have the energy to go tunneling after the original Arthurian mythos.

So, really - the reason for fantasy is because of the very complaint you have right now addressed in a previous era, only aped by a modern author to make his stories seem legendary, following in this re-adapted "modern" medieval style interpretation of ancient myth.