Keeping Technology Stagnant

[EggKookoo]

Most fantasy worlds are ancient things but the general technology level never seems to change. We seem to take a period of a couple of centuries of real history and stretch them out to encompass an entire fantasy history. Or we create a mishmash of a thousand years of real history and jam them all together.

Either way, it never seems like the world will progress to a technologically advanced state. And by way of extension, it doesn't seem realistic to think of the tech level being more "stone age" in the distant past. I get the sense that a thousand years before the current timeframe in D&D, people still had steel swords and armor.

This isn't a criticism. It's part of the fun of a fantasy world. But what could account for it, aside from a supernatural intelligence working to keep it that way? Could it be something as simple as a significant deficit of raw metals to work with, preventing any kind of industrial critical mass from building up?

[Xuc Xac]

Maybe the technology isn't stagnant but everyone just assumes it is. If the technology developed slowly, people wouldn't notice the little incremental improvements. If no one is keeping track of the historical details, they might assume the past looked like the present (like Renaissance painters who portrayed warriors of the Trojan War in contemporary plate armor because that's what they think warriors look like).

[VoxRationis]

Repeated societal collapses, particularly those associated with people fleeing urban centers owing to famine and drought (like with the Maya Collapse), would probably hinder technological advancement. Your setting could be full of fields and valleys which are fertile for brief periods of time, either because farming techniques deplete the soil rapidly or because of some natural process which prevents stability.

[EggKookoo]

Repeated societal collapses, particularly those associated with people fleeing urban centers owing to famine and drought (like with the Maya Collapse), would probably hinder technological advancement. Your setting could be full of fields and valleys which are fertile for brief periods of time, either because farming techniques deplete the soil rapidly or because of some natural process which prevents stability.

Which seems like it would also cause a pendulum cycle of population. Just an observation...

[Everyl]

I'm no expert on industrial history, but perhaps a world lacking in fossil fuels might stagnate at a pre-industrial tech level for a long time? No coal, crude oil, or natural gas would make many of the technological innovations of the last 200 or so years either not happen or happen in different, less-efficient ways at best. A lot of the cheap energy that made mass production practical wouldn't be available, keeping artisans more relevant, and making many crafted goods stay more expensive.

And as for keeping pre-industrial tech levels constant over the centuries, that could just result from the regular turnover of empires and cultures. IRL, many technologies were discovered, lost, and re-discovered numerous times as empires rose and fell.

A variant on the question for fantasy worlds: what about development of magic? Is magical knowledge constant over the centuries, as well? Or are newer, better spells or magical methodologies being researched and developed all the time? Or (and I think this is common in published D&D settings) was some ancient fallen empire far more advanced magically than current society, with modern mages picking over the scraps and remains of ancient grandeur to piece together their meager bags of tricks?

[Xuc Xac]

IRL, many technologies were discovered, lost, and re-discovered numerous times as empires rose and fell.

Although, surprisingly, not as many as you might think. The formula for "Greek Fire" was lost but it was never that widespread in the first place. And the specific formula for Roman concrete was lost, even though other formulations weren't lost and mortar remained in general use. There really aren't that many technologies that can be lost to societal collapse before the modern era.

In the Middle Ages and earlier, the producers of finished products weren't that far removed from the suppliers of raw materials. When the Roman Empire collapsed and the so-called "Dark Ages" began, a blacksmith who formerly relied on deliveries of iron ingots from merchants who carried them from other parts of the empire could still easily get a few friends together and go dig up some iron nearby and get back to business fairly quickly.

In the Modern (Renaissance and later) era, this becomes less and less possible. As more and more middlemen are added to the supply chain, knowledge becomes more specialized and everything falls apart when too many links are removed. After the Industrial Revolution, it becomes even more difficult because we can't even start over with the medieval techniques: all the easily accessible raw materials have already been extracted. After the fall of Rome, a blacksmith could still dig up some local iron and get back to work. Today, a post-apocalyptic blacksmith would have to harvest iron from a rapidly dwindling pile of scrap metal. After a few generations, the usable metals will be rusted into a reddish soil layer across the old industrial centers. Extracting it would require a massive and extremely energy-intensive chemical processing infrastructure to get it back. If our modern society collapsed and there wasn't a large population of recyclers keeping the iron intact, then after a century, extracting iron from the ground would be more difficult than getting titanium.


A variant on the question for fantasy worlds: what about development of magic? Is magical knowledge constant over the centuries, as well? Or are newer, better spells or magical methodologies being researched and developed all the time? Or (and I think this is common in published D&D settings) was some ancient fallen empire far more advanced magically than current society, with modern mages picking over the scraps and remains of ancient grandeur to piece together their meager bags of tricks?

It would be an interesting subversion of the standard "Glory of the Ancients"/"Past Golden Age" tropes if adventurers armed with Greatswords+4 and full plate armor uncovered and explored a 2000 year old tomb of a legendary hero and discovered that "the sword that clove mountains in twain" was just a shortsword+1 with a big reputation because it was one of the first magic weapons.


I'm no expert on industrial history

That's ok. We know you have in-depth knowledge of other subjects, like the yodeling of lobsters and the schlatting of bills. You're quite a keen Lobster Yodeler and you'd be hard-pressed to find a better Bill Schlatter anywhere.

[Mechalich]

I've always felt that the role of magic, particularly in relatively high-magic D&D style fantasy settings, has a lot to do with the nature of technological stagnation. Generally the capabilities of magic are so far above that of the medieval style technology we see in fantasy settings that anyone focused on the overall development of a society - or their own person gain - is likely to focus on magic rather than invention or civil engineering. Therefore almost all of any society's resources are being thrust that direction.

However, magic is not like science or industry. It is a deeply personal process, essentially an art. Each sorcerer or wizard has to go through the same process their mentor did, and teaching is of limited capability to unlocking the secrets of the universe. While a wizard might be able to utilize the spells of predecessors, that cannot bypass the slow nature of level gain needed to attain power. Therefore magical advancement fails to build on itself generation by generation the way engineering and science do. Essentially wizards are constantly re-discovering the abilities of the past (in the form of gaining levels).

So while magical knowledge, and even magical items, might accumulate over time, it does nothing to raise the tech level of society as a whole.

[Mith]

Building off the idea of there being no coal or oil in a fantasy setting, maybe most D&D realms are not all that old geologically speaking, so fossil fuels do not have a chance to form. As such, the only limit of the tech base for the setting would be the lit of how much we can fuel steam engines with wood.

As for the limits of magic learning, perhaps to add to the limitations magic brings to a setting, not only is the study of magic an Art, but the power and sacrifice a mage puts into gaining their power means that they are also generally against the idea of creating items that apply magic is such ways to get around the energy limit of production to kick start any technological revolution.

[Tzi]

Most fantasy worlds are ancient things but the general technology level never seems to change. We seem to take a period of a couple of centuries of real history and stretch them out to encompass an entire fantasy history. Or we create a mishmash of a thousand years of real history and jam them all together.

Either way, it never seems like the world will progress to a technologically advanced state. And by way of extension, it doesn't seem realistic to think of the tech level being more "stone age" in the distant past. I get the sense that a thousand years before the current timeframe in D&D, people still had steel swords and armor.

This isn't a criticism. It's part of the fun of a fantasy world. But what could account for it, aside from a supernatural intelligence working to keep it that way? Could it be something as simple as a significant deficit of raw metals to work with, preventing any kind of industrial critical mass from building up?

Well, in most D&D settings there is this thing called magic, a real force, power or what have you that lets you literally break the laws of the universe. To use a game of Civilization as an example, imagine a tech tree, or web, were you had the option of pursuing research that lets you break the laws of physics with your mind, a wave of your hand and some random crap you carry in a little satchel on your belt? Thus technology exists as a response to, an accommodation for, application of, defense against, or enhancement to magic. Who cares to invent a firearm when some guy can just make a ball of fire in his hand and throw it?

To some degree its a miracle D&D settings would even develop basic metallurgy and farming.

[EggKookoo]

The magic explanation would only really work in a world where magic was cheap and commonplace. In most settings, magic is difficult to use and takes years of devotion by an individual practitioner. If, say, D&D-style magic existed in the real world, we'd probably still have an incentive to develop industry. It'd be the cheapest way to achieve a lot of things. We might not be so advanced, but we'd probably have investigated mechanical automation and fossil fuels, and once the computer was out of the bag, we'd probably have run with it as well. The advanced tech would probably be used to boost magic.

[Mechalich]

Acquiring the necessary knowledge of science and engineering sufficient to advance the state of the art also takes years of devotion by the individual practitioner. Even in the modern age it takes over a decade to go from high school to a PhD. In a culture without modern resources like widespread printing and calculators it takes longer and is a pathway available only to members of the elite (which is why do many foundational scientists were upper class, Chinese, Greeks, and Romans).

The thing is, scientific knowledge builds upon itself. If you develop say, a new chemical reaction, you can describe that reaction, publish it, and another chemist with the proper training can understand that reaction after a brief bit of study and start developing a new reaction directly from there.

Magic, at lest D&D style, doesn't work that way. If another wizard develops the knowledge of say, level 3 conjuration spells, he can't write it up and publish it and have every other wizard start working on level 4 conjuration spells. Instead, each wizard has to go and discover level 3 all over again. It's like learning a fine art, you cannot advance the form simply by copying someone else.

To expand on the Civilization example, in D&D and many fantasy settings, almost all of the 'research points' generated are going into the 'Magic' technology. Except, roughly once a generation, all those points are wiped out and you have to start over. Is this inefficient, absolutely, but since is you put enough points into magic you can unlock the equivalent of the Atom Bomb into ancient Rome, the incentive is immense. Especially since if you don't do it, some other society that did so wipes you out.

That last point is particularly important. In some sense every society in D&D is locked into a magical arms race (as an aside, this is why civilizations that reject magic as somehow taboo are kind of dumb in high fantasy, they just get crushed) due to their neighbors. In order for resources to be diverted to non-magical technologies you probably need to neutralize all nearby threats first (FR tacitly acknowledges this by putting the high-tech sub-society on an isolated island chain).

[Tzi]

The magic explanation would only really work in a world where magic was cheap and commonplace. In most settings, magic is difficult to use and takes years of devotion by an individual practitioner. If, say, D&D-style magic existed in the real world, we'd probably still have an incentive to develop industry. It'd be the cheapest way to achieve a lot of things. We might not be so advanced, but we'd probably have investigated mechanical automation and fossil fuels, and once the computer was out of the bag, we'd probably have run with it as well. The advanced tech would probably be used to boost magic.

Even if it wasn't, knowing you can break physics would be a huge reason to invest heavily in it. Years of devotion..... to literally tell the universe and its laws to piss off? Seems worth it to me.

Consider that monks and priests swore off sex, possessions and in general fun just to spend their whole lives praying. People have thrown away years, decades, their whole lives for less certain rewards. If I knew that with 10-20 years of study I could basically break the laws of reality with my mind.... Sign me up. Heck there would be a labor shortage from all the people seeking to become basically Gods.

[EggKookoo]

The thing with magic isn't so much about the power but about the payoff for the effort involved. If magic can build on itself and magical processes can be automated, it would supplant "normal" technology pretty well. But in most milieus, magic needs the be learned from the ground up for each practitioner and the process is often unique to each individual. It's hard for a society to leverage something so unpredictable, even if it ultimately has the power to alter reality.

[GolemsVoice]

This isn't that applicable to RPG settings, but I've read once that medieval history, being mainly concerned with the lives and deeds of the nobility, paid little attention to everyday matters. An extreme example: a historian would care little if lowly peasants plow their fields with wooden plows and oxens or with antigrav-hyperplows made of onedimensional matter. The historian cares about how many ultracool things their lord did while fighting somebody else.

Fantasy stories as well often have little concern for the everyday life of the general populace, so they tend to de-emphasize technological and scientific growth. Especially in quasi-mythic stories like Lord of the Rings.

[Xuc Xac]

If I knew that with 10-20 years of study I could basically break the laws of reality with my mind.... Sign me up. Heck there would be a labor shortage from all the people seeking to become basically Gods.

You're forgetting that 10-20 years of hard work pays off in 10-20 years, but laziness pays off now. That's why there are so many people playing X-Box in their underwear instead of going through medical school.

[Mith]

Another way to do it is to say that there is some innate talent required to become a wizard. Not to the same level as a sorcerer, as their use of magic is entirely innate, but someone with the potential for wizardry has a calling for it. As such, it explains why wizards are not as common in most places as say Fighters. So not just anyone can actually just study for 20 years and then go cast spells.

[GungHo]

Tech would still be developed for things that people needed. Necessity doesn't necessarily breed invention, but it sure as heck helps adoption. So, what things would magic not solve for you? Or not solve reliably? Tech probably advances for those. What things does magic easily take care of? Tech probably lags for those.

[xBlackWolfx]

In one fantasy world I designed, there was a clear and obvious advance in magical knowledge as time went on. They did go through a collapse at some point, but it only happened once. Essentially, one civilization tried to cast a spell that would eradicate all their enemies across the globe, but one guy that was helping to cast the spell (it required ritual participants scattered all across the planet) screwed up and instead their spell pretty much eradicated all civilization that existed at the time, and would've exterminated all life on the planet if a god hadn't intervened (he didn't intervene to save the civilizations, because he saw this as them committing suicide, they knew the risks and did it anyway). The time period which I focused mostly on was long after this, and the world still had yet to fully recover. Ruins still cover the landscape, filled with ancient enchanted artifacts, and the landscape itself still shows evidence of this catastrophe.

And the level of magic they had attained did start to resemble science fiction. They had flying ships, teleportation, and even flying cities with built-in astral travel. The people of the modern age however still haven't advanced to their level, partially because not enough time has passed yet for them to make it as far as their ancestors did (they accumulated their knowledge over thousands of years, the modern era took place at best 1,000 years later), but also because the few who do know about this historical event obviously don't feel inclined to do anything that could result in this bit of history repeating itself.

In that world, magic was primarily used as an analog for science, their fields of magic were even inspired by actual scientific fields (their school of restoration magic, or biomancy as I called it, was essentially medical science). I saw no need for them to be technologically advanced like we are, because magic fulfilled the same role that it does in ours.

[BootStrapTommy]

It's worth noting that the homo sapien is believed have been around as the race we are today for about 200,000 years. That's a lot of time. And it took us about 99.999% of that time to simply achieve the Industrial Revolution.

Not really sure why fantasy worlds would be much different. It took us nearly 194,000 of those years to even figure out the whole "civilization" thing.

While some might argue that magic would have sped things up (magictech), it could easily slow technological progress. Why build an automobile when you can teleport?

Not to mention these fantasy worlds are, well, fantasy worlds. The magical beasts of a fantasy world present a bigger threat to civilization than anything we ever faced, as does magic itself (think "atom bomb").

It's not actually unreasonable for fantasy worlds to be both old and medieval.

[EggKookoo]

It's worth noting that the homo sapien is believed have been around as the race we are today for about 200,000 years. That's a lot of time. And it took us about 99.999% of that time to simply achieve the Industrial Revolution.

We also spent about 190,000 of those years with nothing more advanced than stone tools. Yet fantasy kingdoms sit on pre-industrial technology for millennia.


While some might argue that magic would have sped things up (magictech), it could easily slow technological progress. Why build an automobile when you can teleport?

Because 99% of the population can't teleport. Magic is difficult, rare, and often dangerous to the user, at least in most settings. I agree that if you created a world where powerful magic was casual and commonplace, you could keep things stagnant pretty easily.


Not to mention these fantasy worlds are, well, fantasy worlds. The magical beasts of a fantasy world present a bigger threat to civilization than anything we ever faced, as does magic itself (think "atom bomb").

It's not actually unreasonable for fantasy worlds to be both old and medieval.

It reminds me of the gryphons you fly on from town to town in World of Warcraft. Why do they have wings? Those wings are too small to lift them off the ground, so clearly they fly using magic. But if they fly using magic, what are the wings for?

It's the same idea with ancient stagnant medieval worlds. Why develop swords and plate armor if you have the power to alter reality? Why get to that level of tech and stop there? Why not make guns? Are we to believe that in a world where people can use magic to pretty much literally do anything they want, they wouldn't advance basic technology levels further than 1500s Europe? Or if there's no need to do that because magic is so capable, then why even get that far? Why aren't we seeing a bunch of wizards living comfortably and everyone else is in tiger skins wielding stone knives?

[BootStrapTommy]

It reminds me of the gryphons you fly on from town to town in World of Warcraft. Why do they have wings? Those wings are too small to lift them off the ground, so clearly they fly using magic. But if they fly using magic, what are the wings for?

It's the same idea with ancient stagnant medieval worlds. Why develop swords and plate armor if you have the power to alter reality? Why get to that level of tech and stop there? Why not make guns? Are we to believe that in a world where people can use magic to pretty much literally do anything they want, they wouldn't advance basic technology levels further than 1500s Europe? Or if there's no need to do that because magic is so capable, then why even get that far? Why aren't we seeing a bunch of wizards living comfortably and everyone else is in tiger skins wielding stone knives? Like you said, it would have a lot to do with how many mages there were. If everyone's a mage, than yeah. But if mages are a fraction of the population, you think the plebs are just gunna wallow or are they gunna use their brains to make their lives better?

Theoretically there is a sweet spot, where there are enough mages to stifle the need for technology, but not enough that the plebs won't still resort to semi-creative ways of bashing each other's brains in.

[Yanagi]

Most fantasy worlds are ancient things but the general technology level never seems to change. We seem to take a period of a couple of centuries of real history and stretch them out to encompass an entire fantasy history. Or we create a mishmash of a thousand years of real history and jam them all together.

Either way, it never seems like the world will progress to a technologically advanced state. And by way of extension, it doesn't seem realistic to think of the tech level being more "stone age" in the distant past. I get the sense that a thousand years before the current timeframe in D&D, people still had steel swords and armor.

This isn't a criticism. It's part of the fun of a fantasy world. But what could account for it, aside from a supernatural intelligence working to keep it that way? Could it be something as simple as a significant deficit of raw metals to work with, preventing any kind of industrial critical mass from building up?


1. The hazards to infrastructure and the kind of large-scale products that produce raw materials for public works are more numerous in fantasy settings. At the top tier, there's gods capable of smacking you down for hubris, but there's also dragons and various giant critters that wreck stuff up. Like mining isn't already perilous enough, there's a myriad of underground critters that will eat your face.

2. The weird corollary of (1) is that the resources that would be claimed and controlled via property ownership...are already owned. Fantasy settings, with their 31 flavors of elf-dwarf-whatever, are actually really densely populated. Any wild place can have spirits, faeries, or territorial beasties, if not a kingdom of cave/forest/desert-customized sapient beings. There's not a lot of terra nulla to claim, and the fantasy being allsorts that *do* control land and non-renewable resources have enough numbers and force (magic, gods, critters) to push back against a claim. There's not a lot of "machine guns versus assegai" conflicts for valuable land.

3. Dovetailed with all the crazy megalofauna and magic beings is...Black Swan events. Let's face it: in fantasy, there are more whirling, inexplicable forces at work. Destiny, curses, demon armies coming through a portal, dragons, the occasional Titanomachy. People die and stuff gets wrecked in ways that guarantee that the concept of "insurance" will never enter the culture.

4. This is a bit more philosophical, but: the basis of technological progress is science, and science stems from natural philosophy...that is, observing nature and figuring out things about the world. In a fantasy world, where would natural philosophy take you? Every "natural law" has an asterisk after it. Gods are imminent beings you who respond directly to entreatment. If magic is art, then reality in an artistic medium.

Basically, most people--even smart people--wouldn't think in terms of slow gains by honing ideas and testing them. Magical thinking works; skepticism isn't rewarded; how would you sort the natural from the supernatural?

5. Technological revolutions come about because of money. Someone has to spend to make it happen, and generally their motivation is long-term profit...usually in the form of greater systemic efficiency. Irrigation means more land to grow on, which means more surplus calories to consume or trade. Sewers means a few less gong-collecting jobs, but generally larger and less death-prone labor pool in your urban area.

Magic and the supernatural--plus all the above stuff above that amount to "bad insurance risks"--would skew the costs and benefits. On a ledger, fantasy shenanigans are just extra startup costs, extra maintenance, and "act(s) of gods/dragons/evil trees/swamp wizards." Whether an entrepreneur or a lord, the cost bump might make you look at other form of investment like, say, giving tons of money to churches so that the totally-real gods and their various minions don't get smash-y. Or subsidizing one court wizard with all the gems and rare critter bits they need to make you a goblet of endless Malmsley.

ETA: None of these, or even all of them together, makes the tech stagnation is fantasy settings totally understandable. This is just a quick list of stuff off the top of my head.

[EggKookoo]

1. The hazards to infrastructure and the kind of large-scale products that produce raw materials for public works are more numerous in fantasy settings. At the top tier, there's gods capable of smacking you down for hubris, but there's also dragons and various giant critters that wreck stuff up. Like mining isn't already perilous enough, there's a myriad of underground critters that will eat your face.

2. The weird corollary of (1) is that the resources that would be claimed and controlled via property ownership...are already owned. Fantasy settings, with their 31 flavors of elf-dwarf-whatever, are actually really densely populated. Any wild place can have spirits, faeries, or territorial beasties, if not a kingdom of cave/forest/desert-customized sapient beings. There's not a lot of terra nulla to claim, and the fantasy being allsorts that *do* control land and non-renewable resources have enough numbers and force (magic, gods, critters) to push back against a claim. There's not a lot of "machine guns versus assegai" conflicts for valuable land.

3. Dovetailed with all the crazy megalofauna and magic beings is...Black Swan events. Let's face it: in fantasy, there are more whirling, inexplicable forces at work. Destiny, curses, demon armies coming through a portal, dragons, the occasional Titanomachy. People die and stuff gets wrecked in ways that guarantee that the concept of "insurance" will never enter the culture.

4. This is a bit more philosophical, but: the basis of technological progress is science, and science stems from natural philosophy...that is, observing nature and figuring out things about the world. In a fantasy world, where would natural philosophy take you? Every "natural law" has an asterisk after it. Gods are imminent beings you who respond directly to entreatment. If magic is art, then reality in an artistic medium.

Basically, most people--even smart people--wouldn't think in terms of slow gains by honing ideas and testing them. Magical thinking works; skepticism isn't rewarded; how would you sort the natural from the supernatural?

5. Technological revolutions come about because of money. Someone has to spend to make it happen, and generally their motivation is long-term profit...usually in the form of greater systemic efficiency. Irrigation means more land to grow on, which means more surplus calories to consume or trade. Sewers means a few less gong-collecting jobs, but generally larger and less death-prone labor pool in your urban area.

Magic and the supernatural--plus all the above stuff above that amount to "bad insurance risks"--would skew the costs and benefits. On a ledger, fantasy shenanigans are just extra startup costs, extra maintenance, and "act(s) of gods/dragons/evil trees/swamp wizards." Whether an entrepreneur or a lord, the cost bump might make you look at other form of investment like, say, giving tons of money to churches so that the totally-real gods and their various minions don't get smash-y. Or subsidizing one court wizard with all the gems and rare critter bits they need to make you a goblet of endless Malmsley.

ETA: None of these, or even all of them together, makes the tech stagnation is fantasy settings totally understandable. This is just a quick list of stuff off the top of my head.

I can't "like" a post, but I just wanted to say this analysis is awesome.

[LudicSavant]

I tend to think that stagnant tech is simply the result of poor writing and worldbuilding more often than not. Thankfully, my experience doesn't seem to be the same as the OP's, since most of the fantasy novels I've read do not have stagnant cultures (Such as The Way of Kings, The Name of the Wind, A Game of Thrones, Perdido Street Station, Ship of Magic, etc).

Eberron, in addition to actually having some visible technological progress over the ages (though its ages are conspicuously long), has an interesting tidbit detailing the way magic has changed over time. For instance, Keith Baker mentions how long ago, all spells had to be stilled and silenced (and thus were much more difficult to cast, requiring a higher caster level and feats and such), and that somatic and verbal components were invented later to simplify magic and make it more accessible.



4. This is a bit more philosophical, but: the basis of technological progress is science, and science stems from natural philosophy...that is, observing nature and figuring out things about the world. In a fantasy world, where would natural philosophy take you? Every "natural law" has an asterisk after it. Gods are imminent beings you who respond directly to entreatment. If magic is art, then reality in an artistic medium.

Basically, most people--even smart people--wouldn't think in terms of slow gains by honing ideas and testing them. Magical thinking works; skepticism isn't rewarded; how would you sort the natural from the supernatural?

This bit represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how science works. None of the things that give any of those analytical processes their utility have been eliminated from any D&D world I've ever encountered. If a god is an imminent being that responds directly to entreatment, that is part of natural law in that world. No asterisk, nothing.

Talking about "breaking the laws of physics" is merely a fanciful piece of nonsensical rhetoric, for the laws of physics are nothing more than a description of events that happen in the world. If a thing happens, its behavior defines the laws of physics. If you can wave your hands and speak an intonation and cause something to fly around, the very fact that you can do that makes it part of the physical rules by which the world operates, by definition. Saying that a flight spell is breaking the fantasy world's laws of physics is equally silly to claiming that an airplane is breaking the laws of gravity.

The function of science isn't to "sort the natural from the supernatural." It's to gather increasingly accurate information about the world.

Skepticism, too, functions exactly as it always does, because lies and misunderstandings still exist in D&D worlds. Being skeptical of them will thus have its usual rewards. Likewise, magical thinking (the attribution of causal relationships between actions and events which cannot be justified by reason and observation) still doesn't work. The acts of magical beings or deities are justifiable by reason and observation in D&D settings, whether it's Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms or whatever. You can actually go and see the god. You can see the Flame Strike. None of this is unobservable. None of this is "rewarding magical thinking." If you can justify the causal relationship with reason or observation, it's not magical thinking.



5. Technological revolutions come about because of money. Someone has to spend to make it happen, and generally their motivation is long-term profit...usually in the form of greater systemic efficiency. Irrigation means more land to grow on, which means more surplus calories to consume or trade. Sewers means a few less gong-collecting jobs, but generally larger and less death-prone labor pool in your urban area.


For one thing, technological progress predates the use of money. For another, there are still cultures around that don't have such a system.

[BootStrapTommy]

For one thing, technological progress predates the use of money. For another, there are still cultures around that don't have such a system. Humanity's propensity for technological advance predates currency. There is little evidence for the origin and timeframe of money, however. And those are actually two very nuanced things.

[VoxRationis]

Thankfully, my experience doesn't seem to be the same as the OP's, since most of the fantasy novels I've read do not have stagnant cultures (Such as The Way of Kings, The Name of the Wind, A Game of Thrones, Perdido Street Station, Ship of Magic, etc).

Actually, A Game of Thrones is one of the worst offenders for stasis. The cultures of Westeros have been in a medieval society for a couple of thousand years, and each of the great houses has been around for longer than any ruling dynasty exists, save, perhaps, that of the Emperors of Japan. The cultures of Slaver's Bay (in Essos), on the other hand, still act like it's the Hellenistic period, with phalanx fighting considered the epitome of combat to which all other forms are measured.



This bit represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how science works. None of the things that give any of those analytical processes their utility have been eliminated from any D&D world I've ever encountered. If a god is an imminent being that responds directly to entreatment, that is part of natural law in that world. No asterisk, nothing.

Talking about "breaking the laws of physics" is merely a fanciful piece of nonsensical rhetoric, for the laws of physics are nothing more than a description of events that happen in the world. If a thing happens, its behavior defines the laws of physics. If you can wave your hands and speak an intonation and cause something to fly around, the very fact that you can do that makes it part of the physical rules by which the world operates, by definition. Saying that a flight spell is breaking the fantasy world's laws of physics is equally silly to claiming that an airplane is breaking the laws of gravity.

The function of science isn't to "sort the natural from the supernatural." It's to gather increasingly accurate information about the world.

Skepticism, too, functions exactly as it always does, because lies and misunderstandings still exist in D&D worlds. Being skeptical of them will thus have its usual rewards. Likewise, magical thinking (the attribution of causal relationships between actions and events which cannot be justified by reason and observation) still doesn't work. The acts of magical beings or deities are justifiable by reason and observation in D&D settings, whether it's Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms or whatever. You can actually go and see the god. You can see the Flame Strike. None of this is unobservable. None of this is "rewarding magical thinking." If you can justify the causal relationship with reason or observation, it's not magical thinking.

Thank you. Magic in D&D is repeatable and predictable, and therefore the scientific method can apply to it.

[LudicSavant]

Actually, A Game of Thrones is one of the worst offenders for stasis. The cultures of Westeros have been in a medieval society for a couple of thousand years, and each of the great houses has been around for longer than any ruling dynasty exists, save, perhaps, that of the Emperors of Japan. The cultures of Slaver's Bay (in Essos), on the other hand, still act like it's the Hellenistic period, with phalanx fighting considered the epitome of combat to which all other forms are measured.

Ah, I wasn't aware of the sheer span of time between the different cultural periods in GoT. When they talk about things like the children of the forest carving faces into trees that are still around I didn't think they meant 15,000 years ago. Yeesh. O_o

That does indeed seem rather... conspicuous. Consider it stricken from the list :-p

[EggKookoo]

It's not so much about technology moving slowly, but about it being stuck at a phase that, on Earth, really only lasted about a century or so. In many ways, Renaissance Europe was a transitional phase.

If we had a fantasy world where technology didn't budge for 10,000 years and everyone's running around like with stone tools and bearskins, it'd be easy to understand why things haven't changed in a long time. But in order to get to the "1500s Europe" point, a kind of development ball needed to get rolling, and once it begins, it's hard to understand (for me, anyway) what would stop it before we got to transistors and automobiles. I keep coming back to a dearth of natural resources, so people just begin to wrap their brains around the beginnings of industry only to grind to a halt when they learn they've used up all the cheaply-available iron (therefore no steel, etc.).

This is common in other media/genres as well. Star Trek assumes we'll still basically be living like 20th/21st century people just with better toys and starships, when it's extremely unlikely anyone alive today has the faintest concept of what people in the 2300s will be like (will they even be organic creatures?).

The other issue is that even if technology reaches the beginnings of the ideas of industry only to find they've run out of easily-obtainable resources, they wouldn't stay there for millennia or even centuries. They'd probably backslide to some kind of low-energy state -- probably more akin to Classic Greece or Ancient Egypt -- and stay there for a good long time.

[BladeofObliviom]

Talking about "breaking the laws of physics" is merely a fanciful piece of nonsensical rhetoric, for the laws of physics are nothing more than a description of events that happen in the world.

If a thing happens, its behavior defines the laws of physics. If you can wave your hands and speak an intonation and cause something to fly around, the very fact that you can do that makes it part of the physical rules by which the world operates, by definition. Saying that a flight spell is breaking the fantasy world's laws of physics is equally silly to claiming that an airplane is breaking the laws of gravity.

Indeed. One can't break the laws of physics by any means, by definition. Perhaps it might be possible to break "the laws of physics as we know them", which would of course be grounds for altering our model to fit the new phenomena as well as previous data.

(When people talk about physics or science in Fantasy settings, I mentally append "when not acted upon by magic" to the statement for exactly this reason. This tends to work much better in low-magic settings though.)



For one thing, technological progress predates the use of money. For another, there are still cultures around that don't have such a system.


Humanity's propensity for technological advance predates currency. There is little evidence for the origin and timeframe of money, however. And those are actually two very nuanced things.

Indeed. While Tommy here is correct, there's still a point in the above statement: Innovation, and particularly industrial or post-industrial innovation, does often require a fair propensity of resources to get rolling. Whether those resources are currency, labor, influence, materials, or some other form of capital isn't particularly relevant. Random peasants might regularly have great ideas, but if they can't convince some wealthy merchant or noble that their idea would be more cost-effective, efficient, or at least more convenient than asking the local wizard to do it, it probably won't get financed.


Now, applying this logic uniformly might result in an odd-looking setting though. After all, if one casting of Fabricate can turn a block of iron into a bunch of swords, who needs a mundane blacksmith? They'll never be able to compete with the wizard, even remotely. At some point it becomes cheaper to pay the wizard to snap his fingers and outfit your whole army than it does to hire a team of blacksmiths to make them over the course of several weeks.

[BootStrapTommy]

Technological advances are informed by economic factors. Therefore the question here is how economic factors are effected by the ability to manipulate reality by tapping into the unknown cosmic forces which fuel magic. How does magic effect the fantasy economy and how does that effect physical technology?

It's worth noting we as humans often believe technological progress to be indefinite, when it is naturally limited by the resources at our disposal. If we Earthlings colonize the solar system only to find no feasible means of interstellar travel, will our current or future use of resources be sustainable? And what effect would that unsubstainability have on our technology? I'm reminded of City of Amber, were barely anyone understands the machines that light the city and few resources exist to repair them or build more.

It's been touched on here a lot, but the natural scarcity of resources might be a huge factor. But how would the existence of magic effect scarcity?

Oh, and what about cultures which have actually stagnated in our history? Australian Aboriginals? Sub-Saharran Africans? The Native Americans? The rest of the world had advanced shipbuilding and gunpowder while they remained barely out of the Stone Age.

[BladeofObliviom]

Oh, and what about cultures which have actually stagnated in our history? Australian Aboriginals? Sub-Saharran Africans? The Native Americans? The rest of the world had advanced shipbuilding and gunpowder while they remained barely out of the Stone Age.

I actually read a fascinating book by Fareed Zakaria called The Post-American World, and he made an interesting argument as to why, despite the obvious technological lead possessed by Kingdoms like Ancient China, the various Mongol Khanates, and the Caliphates of the Middle East, it was ultimately Europe that first developed industrial powers and (in effect) took over the rest of the world.

In essence, all of those cultures were built on flat land, ideal to move soldiers across. It would have been relatively easy to conquer the surrounding lands in these areas with raw military force. Europe, on the other hand, is for the most part very mountainous and covered in crisscrossing rivers. While the ability to quickly gather a large amount of land and consolidate it is useful in some ways for developing a stable technological base, it can backfire in other ways.

This was expressed via the story of Zheng He (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He), a Chinese Admiral who developed one of the most impressive fleets in history. He practiced some impressive Gunboat Diplomacy, and destroyed many of the pirates that had plagued China for years. At some point, the Hongxi Emperor decided that China would not be doing operations at sea anymore because they were too expensive, and ordered the fleet (and the place it was docked at) burned when people tried to operate on the seas anyway. (His son allowed one more expedition, then decided to continue the policy.)

Basically, a shortsighted Emperor with a lot of authority undid Zheng He's great advances because he didn't want to pay for them, and used his power and reach to destructively enforce it.

In Europe, no such thing would have been possible; Europe was not dominated by a single Empire (with the blip of Ancient Rome's higher points as a major exception). If the King of France had tried to resist some particular technological development, the people trying to sell their idea could have fled to the HRE, or to England, or Spain, and whoever did accept the idea would have it, and France would not. In essence, the lack of a single dominant power in Europe helped it resist stagnation, because people afraid of (or skeptical of) progress had much less power to stifle it.

I thought it was an interesting point, at least. Politics can be just as important as Economics, in some ways. Basically, a relatively unified, top-down power with few competitors is more likely to be technologically stagnant than one with many competitors, because they can afford to be.

[VoxRationis]

I actually read a fascinating book by Fareed Zakaria called The Post-American World, and he made an interesting argument as to why, despite the obvious technological lead possessed by Kingdoms like Ancient China, the various Mongol Khanates, and the Caliphates of the Middle East, it was ultimately Europe that first developed industrial powers and (in effect) took over the rest of the world.

In essence, all of those cultures were built on flat land, ideal to move soldiers across. It would have been relatively easy to conquer the surrounding lands in these areas with raw military force. Europe, on the other hand, is for the most part very mountainous and covered in crisscrossing rivers. While the ability to quickly gather a large amount of land and consolidate it is useful in some ways for developing a stable technological base, it can backfire in other ways.

This was expressed via the story of Zheng He (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He), a Chinese Admiral who developed one of the most impressive fleets in history. He practiced some impressive Gunboat Diplomacy, and destroyed many of the pirates that had plagued China for years. At some point, the Hongxi Emperor decided that China would not be doing operations at sea anymore because they were too expensive, and ordered the fleet (and the place it was docked at) burned when people tried to operate on the seas anyway. (His son allowed one more expedition, then decided to continue the policy.)

Basically, a shortsighted Emperor with a lot of authority undid Zheng He's great advances because he didn't want to pay for them, and used his power and reach to destructively enforce it.

In Europe, no such thing would have been possible; Europe was not dominated by a single Empire (with the blip of Ancient Rome's higher points as a major exception). If the King of France had tried to resist some particular technological development, the people trying to sell their idea could have fled to the HRE, or to England, or Spain, and whoever did accept the idea would have it, and France would not. In essence, the lack of a single dominant power in Europe helped it resist stagnation, because people afraid of (or skeptical of) progress had much less power to stifle it.

I thought it was an interesting point, at least. Politics can be just as important as Economics, in some ways. Basically, a relatively unified, top-down power with few competitors is more likely to be technologically stagnant than one with many competitors, because they can afford to be.

That explains why China didn't industrialize, but it doesn't really answer the questions associated with the foragers or horticulturalists of the Americas, Africa, and Oceania, who often lived in highly fragmented areas where there was plenty of competition between tribes and ethnic groups which would encourage technological progression under that paradigm. I've heard it argued that it can be traced back to a more difficult process of domestication in certain areas, owing to a lack of fundamentally domesticatable wildlife, but that argument seems a bit weak to me—one would think that kind of hardship would spur technological development, not discourage it. At best, if there weren't enough proto-staple crops, it would be difficult to build an urban base, but that argument doesn't apply to the Americas, where they've had corn for a while, in spite of how tough it was to make viable, or to sub-Saharan Africa.

[BootStrapTommy]

Horses are a very important tool in the development of the Old World. Their absence could say a lot...

Worth noting that in the Americas urban centers did emerge, the Mesoamerican cultures as well as the Mississippi mound builders and the Anasazi.

But outside Mesoamerica, metal working is nonexistent (there even just goldsmithing), and a lack of easily accessible metal might explain a lot about development in New World.

Scarce resources, again.

[BladeofObliviom]

That explains why China didn't industrialize, but it doesn't really answer the questions associated with the foragers or horticulturalists of the Americas, Africa, and Oceania, who often lived in highly fragmented areas where there was plenty of competition between tribes and ethnic groups which would encourage technological progression under that paradigm.

You're right, I wasn't actually answering the question as asked, rather answering a similar but different question. I realized that but thought was interesting nevertheless, at least enough to share.


I don't have a complete answer to the question as asked, nor do I have enough knowledge of the history of Native American Technological development to come up with a coherent argument without further research.

[VoxRationis]

Horses are a very important tool in the development of the Old World. Their absence could say a lot...

The Egyptians went through two Kingdoms before using the horse, and the Greeks, though their gods rode in chariots, relied more on ships. I think that those two areas, at the very least, could have developed just fine sans horses.



Worth noting that in the Americas urban centers did emerge, the Mesoamerican cultures as well as the Mississippi mound builders and the Anasazi.

That's what I'm saying. Sorry if my phrasing was ambiguous.


But outside Mesoamerica, metal working is nonexistent (there even just goldsmithing), and a lack of easily accessible metal might explain a lot about development in New World.

Scarce resources, again.
Is metal truly scarce in the Americas? There's a fair amount of it in the US, as far as I know, or at least there was before industrialization.

[BootStrapTommy]

s metal truly scarce in the Americas? There's a fair amount of it in the US, as far as I know, or at least there was before industrialization. A lot of the Americas' metal is locked up in types of ore which require pre-existing knowledge of chemistry or metallurgy to extract. So without the access to easy ore, they failed to develop the complex techniques required to get at the hard ore.

Honestly, I've always been a bit surprised that metal working never emerged from the Great Lakes region, where there is easy copper and iron.

[LudicSavant]

The Native Americans? The rest of the world had advanced shipbuilding and gunpowder while they remained barely out of the Stone Age.

Native American cultures weren't stagnant. Nor were they barely out of the stone age.

[BladeofObliviom]

Do you keep deleting your post and bringing it back or something? I've gotten three different notifications for the same post and it's starting to make me wonder.

[RazDelacroix]

In North America we had whole CITIES long before the Europeans came along. And said colonials even made note of the massive amounts of smoke that came from them. So what happened to such a civilization that had intricate trade, politics, even without the unified massive mining and metallurgy operations?

Ladies and gentleman, though I may not be linking the appropriate source material for it is late and I am about to crash, we are currently living in a technical post-apocalypse. Specifically one generated via a plague that hit about 90% of the native population within the span of a decade or so if I can recall my history lessons correctly. And if someone tries to lay the blame fully on the European settlers reign thyselves in. I am reasonably certain that the illness in question was one not originally carried over.

Ugh, I want to refind links now... Meh, you folks can do more practical research.

Still, if a good chunk of your top-end spellslingers AND mundane engineers suddenly kicked the bucket without the time to spend training up a new generation... Yeah, that could make for some stagnation.




Now I blame Aboleths for all D&D style world stagnation of tech & magic.

[LudicSavant]

I'd recommend things like Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" or James Loewen's "Lies My Teacher Told Me" or any of a hundred other books about history, but for the sake of brevity and accessibility I'll just give you an article from Cracked that I googled up just now while trying to find internet resources to get the point across quickly.

6 Ridiculous Lies You Believe About the Founding of America (http://www.cracked.com/article_19864_6-ridiculous-lies-you-believe-about-founding-america.html)

[BootStrapTommy]

The fact that the Native Americans had a thriving civilization complete with urban centers was touched on, Ludic.

But you are ignoring the fact that there is little archeological evidence that those civilizations, no matter how societitally complex, possessed forged metal tools, which is why they, for all intents and purposes, barely out of the Stone Age.

The only places in the Americas which developed complex metalworking were in South America and Mesoamerica, where rudimentary copper and gold smithing emerged. Both, however, are almost exclusively for ornamentation.

In North America rudimentary copper working emerges from the afore mentioned Great Lakes region. But it is not smithing, in the strict sense, as these copper tools are cold hammered, not forged. Nor was it widespread enough to leave a considerable archeological footprint or survive the plagues which devistate the Natives.

Functionally, when the pinnacle of your metal technology is cold hammered native copper, you are barely out of the Stone Age, regardless of the complexity of your society.

May I remind you that in the Old World, Neolithic man built massive monolithic structures and trade centers like Göbekli Tepe with just stone tools. Doesn't change the fact that they were Stone Age cultures.

[EggKookoo]

And Stone Age cultures can go on for quite a long time without significant change.

[redwizard007]

And Stone Age cultures can go on for quite a long time without significant change.

Completely correct, and by no means is metallurgy the only factor in determining a civilization's level of advancement, it is however, a necessary part of advancement in the real world.

A fantastic society with classic d&d magic might take even longer to make it out of the stone age. Druids and clerics replace medical and agricultural advances while wizards and sorcerers replace other advances. This assumption rests on the fact that enough of the population develops casting abilities to make innovation unnecessary (as previously mentioned.)

Regions or peoples with less access to magic will still drive innovation and that will eventually percolate throughout neighboring groups until it is the new norm. Rinse, lather, repeat until society has advanced to the point where resource scarcity limits it. This would probably result in patchwork technology levels worldwide (like many published settings) and periods of relative stagnation which could last far longer than we would expect, but eventually it could result in some pretty fantastic scenarios.

[EggKookoo]

Regions or peoples with less access to magic will still drive innovation and that will eventually percolate throughout neighboring groups until it is the new norm. Rinse, lather, repeat until society has advanced to the point where resource scarcity limits it. This would probably result in patchwork technology levels worldwide (like many published settings) and periods of relative stagnation which could last far longer than we would expect, but eventually it could result in some pretty fantastic scenarios.

The problem I see here is that once your general tech reaches a certain level, you must (I think?) continually consume resources to maintain it. The reason you can stay at Stone Age for forever is because stone is pretty much the opposite of scarce. But if you get to a relatively advanced metallurgy level where you're producing nice steel items, you need a stream of material to keep it up.

If you run out of iron, you're not just going to stop at "we have steel swords." You're going to stop making new swords, and the existing ones will wear out or rust or otherwise decay, and you'll backslide to bronze, then (if copper is no longer available) eventually to stone again.

I think, anyway? Maybe I'm betraying some ignorance here but this seems sensible to me.

[VoxRationis]

Completely correct, and by no means is metallurgy the only factor in determining a civilization's level of advancement, it is however, a necessary part of advancement in the real world.

A fantastic society with classic d&d magic might take even longer to make it out of the stone age. Druids and clerics replace medical and agricultural advances while wizards and sorcerers replace other advances. This assumption rests on the fact that enough of the population develops casting abilities to make innovation unnecessary (as previously mentioned.)

Regions or peoples with less access to magic will still drive innovation and that will eventually percolate throughout neighboring groups until it is the new norm. Rinse, lather, repeat until society has advanced to the point where resource scarcity limits it. This would probably result in patchwork technology levels worldwide (like many published settings) and periods of relative stagnation which could last far longer than we would expect, but eventually it could result in some pretty fantastic scenarios.

But development of spellcasting traditions is a form of technological advancement in itself. In D&D, the rules as written don't provide for it (because spells already take up half the book and coming up with multiple different "tech levels" for magic would be a pain), but I think it reasonable to assume that there are different levels of magical sophistication, particularly where wizards are involved.

[redwizard007]

The problem I see here is that once your general tech reaches a certain level, you must (I think?) continually consume resources to maintain it. The reason you can stay at Stone Age for forever is because stone is pretty much the opposite of scarce. But if you get to a relatively advanced metallurgy level where you're producing nice steel items, you need a stream of material to keep it up.

If you run out of iron, you're not just going to stop at "we have steel swords." You're going to stop making new swords, and the existing ones will wear out or rust or otherwise decay, and you'll backslide to bronze, then (if copper is no longer available) eventually to stone again.

I think, anyway? Maybe I'm betraying some ignorance here but this seems sensible to me.

I've been operating on the assumption that there are sufficient resources for the foreseeable future. Planar gates aside, I guess that may have been a mistake. If the world is at, or nearing a shortage of certain resources than it changes things significantly. Among other things, I would be inclined to classify that as an apocalyptic setting and flavor stories or campaigns as such.

[BootStrapTommy]

But development of spellcasting traditions is a form of technological advancement in itself. In D&D, the rules as written don't provide for it (because spells already take up half the book and coming up with multiple different "tech levels" for magic would be a pain), but I think it reasonable to assume that there are different levels of magical sophistication, particularly where wizards are involved. Theoretically they possibly are written that way. Think about it. As society advances, theoretically so does the lifespan and the collective magic knowledge of spellcasters. Consequently, as time goes by, higher and higher level casters become more common, advancing magic simply by giving the existing casters access to more powerful spellcasting by virtue of being more powerful spellcasters.

Just a thought.

[Spojaz]

One way to keep technology stagnant would be if mind erasing magic were easy and commonplace. Armies following troupes of casters, conquering cities by giving everyone a theatrical kind of amnesia, leaving behind chaos and destruction in their wake. It is really easy to conquer a city when the defenders no longer remember who is in charge, or how to correctly use their weapons. This could be a very dominant strategy in a medieval war, as it is much faster and causes less collateral damage than a starvation siege or knocking down walls with siege weapons. Maybe in the aftermath you pillage your enemy's library to steal all their secrets, but their retaliatory strike leaves no one capable of reading them.

Suddenly, spending months or years figuring out how to make and use a new tool, weapon, or kind of magic would be a sucker's game.

[BladeofObliviom]

One way to keep technology stagnant would be if mind erasing magic were easy and commonplace. Armies following troupes of casters, conquering cities by giving everyone a theatrical kind of amnesia, leaving behind chaos and destruction in their wake. It is really easy to conquer a city when the defenders no longer remember who is in charge, or how to correctly use their weapons. This could be a very dominant strategy in a medieval war, as it is much faster and causes less collateral damage than a starvation siege or knocking down walls with siege weapons. Maybe in the aftermath you pillage your enemy's library to steal all their secrets, but their retaliatory strike leaves no one capable of reading them.

Suddenly, spending months or years figuring out how to make and use a new tool, weapon, or kind of magic would be a sucker's game.

I dunno if that'd really be a good universal explanation, but it's an interesting thought that could have some impact on a setting; It'd almost certainly be seen as a very dirty tactic though, and in fact probably would count as a hideous act of evil in most settings. Messing with the mind tends to skeeve people out.

[hiryuu]

The fact that the Native Americans had a thriving civilization complete with urban centers was touched on, Ludic.

But you are ignoring the fact that there is little archeological evidence that those civilizations, no matter how societitally complex, possessed forged metal tools, which is why they, for all intents and purposes, barely out of the Stone Age.

The only places in the Americas which developed complex metalworking were in South America and Mesoamerica, where rudimentary copper and gold smithing emerged. Both, however, are almost exclusively for ornamentation.

In North America rudimentary copper working emerges from the afore mentioned Great Lakes region. But it is not smithing, in the strict sense, as these copper tools are cold hammered, not forged. Nor was it widespread enough to leave a considerable archeological footprint or survive the plagues which devistate the Natives.

Functionally, when the pinnacle of your metal technology is cold hammered native copper, you are barely out of the Stone Age, regardless of the complexity of your society.

May I remind you that in the Old World, Neolithic man built massive monolithic structures and trade centers like Göbekli Tepe with just stone tools. Doesn't change the fact that they were Stone Age cultures.

We don't call it "stone age" or "neolithic" in the Americas (in fact, we don't tend to use the neo/chalco/iron movements outside of Europe - calling a non-European "stone age" is at best a misnomer and at worst a mark of European exceptionalism), considering most of the Americas (before it got smeared across the map by plagues brought by European fishermen in the 1500s) had quite reasonable, continent-spanning empires with social advances well ahead of their time - there's a different set of criteria in place because the same criteria do not describe the other characteristics present in the cultures in the ancient Americas. They are, in order from oldest to most recent: Paleo, Archaic, Formative, Classic, and Post-Classic.

It is important to not that if you do want to keep going on the stone-copper-iron age kick, during the Archaic period, there was widespread use of copper tools around 3000 BC-1000 BCE. Then they threw them out because they weren't efficient enough to keep up with the efficiency systems put in place aling the southeastern regions of North America. They stopped using copper because it was too inefficient for their infrastructure. If that doesn't qualify for "out of the stone age," even in a European meaning of the term, then I bet I can start making a case for the 1700s being the damn stone age.
---------------------------

Now, in response to the main questions, I don't. Sometimes I blow things up and let civilizations rebuild here and there, but for the most part if I run a campaign about a hundred years apart I make sure that the decisions the PCs made have led to some kind of cultural change. Change is inevitable, cultural or technological, and any magic system which allows for the creation of spells is a technology by the scientific definition of the term.

[EggKookoo]

Let's not get into a real-world cultural debate, please.

[Jendekit]

In one campaign I planned out but never ran, the reason why tech never grew past your typical fantasy setting tech base is because the gods didn't let it. Every time mortals developed tech that was on par with what they could grant their lowest servants (level 1-5 clerics) they cleaned the slate. This had happened dozens of times prior, each time anything approaching IR capabilities became widespread they struck down the mortal civilizations with declarations of hubris.

I forget the reason why they did this, but it served as a reason for the technological stasis and the driving force of the campaign.

[BootStrapTommy]

If that doesn't qualify for "out of the stone age," even in a European meaning of the term, then I bet I can start making a case for the 1700s being the damn stone age.
For the record, human beings use language. Language has words. And specific words have very specific meanings. For example, the phrase "barely out of" means "out of but just barely". "Barely out of the Stone Age", as a result, means "out of the Stone Age, but just barely". Very similar to a society which had and abandoned copper tools...

[hiryuu]

For the record, human beings use language. Language has words. And specific words have very specific meanings. For example, the phrase "barely out of" means "out of but just barely". "Barely out of the Stone Age", as a result, means "out of the Stone Age, but just barely". Very similar to a society which had and abandoned copper tools...

"Stone age" only qualifies when we're talking about European and Mediterranean cultures. It is not (and should not) be used to talk about cultures outside of qualifying European and Mediterranean cultural groups.

[BootStrapTommy]

"Stone age" only qualifies when we're talking about European and Mediterranean cultures. It is not (and should not) be used to talk about cultures outside of qualifying European and Mediterranean cultural groups. Worth noting that the Three-age system of Christian Jürgensen Thomsen applies to not only Europe and the Mediterranean, but also to the Near-East and Asia.

[LudicSavant]

Worth noting that the Three-age system of Christian Jürgensen Thomsen applies to not only Europe and the Mediterranean, but also to the Near-East and Asia.

Last I checked, his Three Age System is a 2-centuries-old stopgap even for the cultures for which it was meant to apply, oft revised, and is often rejected outright for any other settings besides Europe and West Asia. Here are the first three things Google hands me for "Three Age System." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-age_system#Criticism. http://archaeology.about.com/od/tterms/g/threeage.htm. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Three+Age+system

The most optimistic comment I see in there is "Not bad for 150 years ago."

Why are you even bringing this up to describe cultures such as Australians, Africans, and Native Americans that most certainly aren't from Europe or West Asia?

[VoxRationis]

The three-age paradigm is irrelevant to this discussion, but in an informal sense, using the term "stone age" to describe the technological development of a culture that uses only stone or organic materials for tool-building is reasonable. And all the vaunted achievements of the indigenous American cultures, save perhaps aspects of Incan architecture—all the temple pyramids and priest-kings ruling over urban centers, the trade networks, the writing, everything—is just doing what Sumer was doing ages upon ages beforehand. Getting all huffy about people pointing out that the cultures of the Americas were technologically behind those of Eurasia is uncalled for.

[hiryuu]

The three-age paradigm is irrelevant to this discussion, but in an informal sense, using the term "stone age" to describe the technological development of a culture that uses only stone or organic materials for tool-building is reasonable. And all the vaunted achievements of the indigenous American cultures, save perhaps aspects of Incan architecture—all the temple pyramids and priest-kings ruling over urban centers, the trade networks, the writing, everything—is just doing what Sumer was doing ages upon ages beforehand. Getting all huffy about people pointing out that the cultures of the Americas were technologically behind those of Eurasia is uncalled for.

Sure, what with the Mayan sewer systems that rival modern New York. Or the Mississippian package mailing system. Or the Iroquois government system, which the United States cribbed the hell out of when writing the Constitution and Declaration.

Saying that it's reasonable to call the Americas "stone age" is like saying it's reasonable to apply the term "Tang Dynasty" to the Moorish empires. And calling them "technologically behind" is just as good as saying it's reasonable to call the Roman empire a backwards, socially inept, puny tribe-state run by deviant, ignorant culture thieves that ruled over less than 5% of the "known world" at the time when China was well into the Han-freaking-dynasty - it doesn't meaningfully contribute anything and it seems like it's being bandied about just to punch a culture down. "None of your advancements matter because you never stopped using rocks." It's disingenuous. Again: No one is getting huffy that it's being pointed out they were "technologically behind," because the phrase "technologically behind" has no actual definition that can contribute to the discussion at all and the only possible connotation it has had in this discussion so far is "these people were less everything than the Eurasians."

So, please stop.

[EggKookoo]

Can we please stay on topic?

[BootStrapTommy]

Saying that it's reasonable to call the Americas "stone age" is like saying it's reasonable to apply the term "Tang Dynasty" to the Moorish empires. And calling them "technologically behind" is just as good as saying it's reasonable to call the Roman empire a backwards, socially inept, puny tribe-state run by deviant, ignorant culture thieves that ruled over less than 5% of the "known world" at the time when China was well into the Han-freaking-dynasty - it doesn't meaningfully contribute anything and it seems like it's being bandied about just to punch a culture down. "None of your advancements matter because you never stopped using rocks." It's disingenuous. Again: No one is getting huffy that it's being pointed out they were "technologically behind," because the phrase "technologically behind" has no actual definition that can contribute to the discussion at all and the only possible connotation it has had in this discussion so far is "these people were less everything than the Eurasians."

So, please stop. Actually the use of the phrase "Stone Age" does none of those things. In the thread's context of use, it denotes that the primary tool making technologies of the culture, regardless of what cultural and engineering achievements they may have accomplished, was stone and organic materials.

Everything else is something which you chose to read into the statement because you chose to connote the "Stone Age" with backwards peoples, something highly disingenuous itself. You're the one who chose to diminish the accomplishments of our Paleolithic and Neolithic ancestors by choosing to associate their technology with a primitive cultural state. Yet they possess no less sophisticated cultures than many Indigenous Americans.

Neolithic man built Göbekli Tepe. They were hardly cultural unsophisticated. An you are no more in the right for dismissing their achievements.


Can we please stay on topic? This is the internet, what do you expect?

[Mechalich]

I've been operating on the assumption that there are sufficient resources for the foreseeable future. Planar gates aside, I guess that may have been a mistake. If the world is at, or nearing a shortage of certain resources than it changes things significantly. Among other things, I would be inclined to classify that as an apocalyptic setting and flavor stories or campaigns as such.

Actually, I think the majority of D&D settings actually qualify as post-apocalyptic in construct.

Forgotten Realms is post-apocalyptic: there were several apocalypses but the most important is the fall of Netheril - a society that was absolutely more advanced (in terms of pure magical technology) than anything currently present.

Dark Sun: obvious

Dragonlance: the Cataclysm certainly qualifies as an apocalypse

Planescape and Spelljammer: the entire meta-narrative of D&D history posits a vast period of ancient history when the Illithids (TM) ruled over essentially the entire known universe. Their destruction due to the rebellion of Gith, was a reality shattering apocaplypse that shook planes. I ran the calculations (based on the number of Githyanki monarchs) once and estimated that occurred about 32,000 years before the accepted present.

So maybe stagnation is something that's less common in D&D style settings than we think and the whole advance-collapse-advance cyclical model is more common.

[EggKookoo]

This is the internet, what do you expect?

I expect exactly what's happening. I'm just making the request.

[bulbaquil]

Exploiting the laws of physics (where "laws of physics" here basically means the operating principles of the world/campaign setting/universe/whatever, whether they are simple mathematical formulae applicable everywhere or convoluted reams of legalese rife with exceptions, special cases, and the like) to develop lasting technology is much like exploiting vulnerabilities in a computer program - essentially, technological development is "physics hacking."

Given sufficient time and resources, just about any computer program or operating system, no matter how secure, can be hacked. The primary exception is a computer program designed to self-destruct if someone attempts to breach its security. (The legality of the hacks is immaterial here - the authorities arresting the hacker before the hacker can infiltrate the system is a case of "insufficient time".)

Now, how do those who don't want the system to be hacked deal with vulnerabilities they don't want exploited? They code, install, and disseminate security patches, or upgrade to a new OS, or something of that type. In other words, they change the rules of the system.

So what does this have to do with maintaining technological stasis (or near-stasis)? Simply put, in order for a set (or subset) of laws of physics to be able to be exploited as the type of technology that "builds upon itself", the following postulates must be true:

1. The laws of physics must be constant in time; or at least, the timing and nature of any changes must be able to be anticipated in advance. (They do not need to be constant in space, and they can have time-dependent variables [some of OUR laws of physics do!], so long as the laws themselves do not change.)

2. The laws of physics must be deterministic; or at least, they need to be close enough to deterministic at relevant scale that the relevant-scale results are statistically reliable.

To explain postulate 2 - quantum phenomena like radioactive decay are (at least believed by many to be) stochastic and random in nature. Suppose you have a clump of 100 trillion atoms of a radioactive isotope for which each atom has a 2% chance per second of decaying into its stable form - every second, if you will, you roll a d100 for each individual atom and if it comes up a 1 or 2, that atom decays, 3 through 100 it does not. After about 34.3 seconds, about half, 50 trillion, will still be radioactive - that's what a half-life is. It may not be exactly 50 trillion, but it will be as near to it as to make little difference.

But now we change the laws of physics so that, instead of rolling the d100 for each individual atom, we roll it for the clump of radioactive matter as a whole. If it comes up a 1 or 2, the entire clump, all 100 trillion atoms of it, decays into stable isotopes; if it comes up 3-100, the entire clump stays radioactive. I went ahead and rolled d100s on Random.org, and I came up with a 2, finally, on the 91st roll. Up until the 91st second, then, the entire clump is still radioactive; from the 91st second onward, the entire clump is inert. I rolled it again for a different clump of 100 trillion atoms, and this one went fully inert on second number 19. Under the old laws of physics, that would be for 2 individual atoms; under the new regime, it's for 200 trillion.

Now, 100 trillion atoms is still pretty small - it's about the amount in a human blood cell - but given that the entirety of the D&D system (and all other non-diceless systems) is predicated on unpredictable stochastic processes occurring on macroscopic scales, adjudged by a GM typically empowered to ignore or enforce the rules when convenient or otherwise necessary... the entire concept of reliable laws of physics that is necessary to create technology that "builds upon itself" breaks down.

As for why it tends to be at a medieval/Renaissance level - it's entirely possible that the laws of physics themselves are "in on it". We have in the real world laws of physics that essentially boil down to "you can't go faster than light". They're hidden in mathematical formulas, but they essentially boil down to "you can't go faster than light, and if you try, weird stuff starts to happen... well, it's technically happening at normal speeds, but it's so small there that for most purposes it isn't happening." There's no reason why a different set of laws of physics might not have this sort of asymptotic relationship with technology - "you can't start the industrial revolution, and if you try, weird stuff starts to happen... which technically is already happening with medieval tech, but the effects are so minor that for most purposes it isn't happening."

[Khaelo]

Actually, I think the majority of D&D settings actually qualify as post-apocalyptic in construct.

<snip>

So maybe stagnation is something that's less common in D&D style settings than we think and the whole advance-collapse-advance cyclical model is more common.
There's an essay in Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding about this exact phenomenon. This model is common because you need someone to a) build dungeons for players to delve and b) leave desirable items in said dungeons. A "first generation" monument-building society wouldn't have as many dungeon crawl opportunities. You could alleviate the issue with a strong tradition of grave goods (a la ancient Egypt), but that doesn't make for heroic PCs.* The cyclical model not only makes more sense than a stagnant model, it also supports better gaming. The PCs just always happen to be born in a time that resembles the European medieval period.

The Game of Thrones timeline is a pet peeve of mine. It breaks my suspension of disbelief.

ETA: * i.e. If the PCs do it in 2000 BC, it's "tomb robbing." If they do it in AD 2000, it's "archeology." :smalltongue:

[Quarian Rex]

5. Technological revolutions come about because of money. Someone has to spend to make it happen, and generally their motivation is long-term profit...usually in the form of greater systemic efficiency. Irrigation means more land to grow on, which means more surplus calories to consume or trade. Sewers means a few less gong-collecting jobs, but generally larger and less death-prone labor pool in your urban area.


See, this is the interesting part. It reminds me of something I read that said that we owe most of our modern technological advancement (since the Enlightenment, Renaissance. etc.) to the Black Plague. Prior to that all problems (military, engineering, etc.) were resolved by throwing more serfs at it. They were cheap, plentiful, and couldn't say no.

Then comes the Black Plague, killing most of them off. Now there aren't enough serfs to do all of the things. Now the nobility needs to actually pay (gasp!) people for the work thay do lest they go to someone who will. With money in the hands of the people actually doing the work, expending resources on finding ways for the work to suck less now becomes a thing. Laziness being the mother of all invention and all that.

Looking at this from a fantasy perspective, Clerics and healing magic means that even the worst of outbreaks never really spread farther than a villiage or two before it gets quashed. No shortage of serfs/slaves means no motivation to find easier/more efficient ways to do the work things. After all, the Kings, Priests, and Mages, who control the wealth and power don't care how hard/tiring a job is. That is a worry for peasants. And if there were a resource scarcity/sudden defeat/immediate need that would normally drive a search for new solutions? Magic. Disruption is now over. Let the plebs grind on.


Now these things...


Talking about "breaking the laws of physics" is merely a fanciful piece of nonsensical rhetoric, for the laws of physics are nothing more than a description of events that happen in the world. If a thing happens, its behavior defines the laws of physics. If you can wave your hands and speak an intonation and cause something to fly around, the very fact that you can do that makes it part of the physical rules by which the world operates, by definition. Saying that a flight spell is breaking the fantasy world's laws of physics is equally silly to claiming that an airplane is breaking the laws of gravity.




Magic in D&D is repeatable and predictable, and therefore the scientific method can apply to it.

... go hand in hand and show exactly why science could not progress.

Magic in D&D type settings is not repeatable and predictable. It is repeatable by that guy. The one with the pointy hat and a beard. I doesn't matter how many ranks of Linguistics and Perform (Mime) an Expert (of any level) has to perfectly, "wave (his) hands and speak an intonation", he will not cause something to fly around. Even the guy with the pointy hat, when saying the same words and making the same gestures, can only make the object fly around so many times and then it just stops working. Same words, same gestures, same guy, nothing happens. This is not a scientifically repeatable nor reliable phenomena. It is most definitely something that happens (everyone saw the guy fly into the air and Fireball the orcs last week after all), and might even happen a lot, but not something that can be independantly recreated in the lab.

Can you imagine being a natural philosopher in such a place? Where would you even start? Every question or curiosity you had would ultimately be answered with 'because the gods'. If that didn't fit then 'because magic'. And that would be the most truthful and accurate answer possible. That is no form of intellectual laziness. That is the final conclusion of any intellighent individual.

What if there was some brain damaged individual with genius intellect who decided keep going? How can you develop the theory of gravity when you have to account for levitation/magical flight? How can you develop explosives by inspecting Fireballs? How can conservation of matter even be contemplated when Creation spells are a thing. Either every inquiry leads back to magic being the answer, or magic skews the observations so much that no useful observations can be made, and so no useful theories can be crafted.

All in all, I think that the idea of technological stagnation in fantasy worlds would be a pretty valid one.

[LooseCannoneer]

Here's the way I see it: people who would normally develop new technology are instead seen as smart, then taken to be educated as a wizard, preventing them from researching technology. They developed plows and the like because there wasn't enough food to support enough spellcasters, but when they started to produce enough food to provide more people to research technological advances, the mages started recruiting, limiting the research along non-magic lines.

[Xuc Xac]

Here's the way I see it: people who would normally develop new technology are instead seen as smart, then taken to be educated as a wizard, preventing them from researching technology. They developed plows and the like because there wasn't enough food to support enough spellcasters, but when they started to produce enough food to provide more people to research technological advances, the mages started recruiting, limiting the research along non-magic lines.

That's like saying nobody studies medicine in the real world because all the people smart enough to be doctors just learn engineering instead. In a world where magic can be studied academically and scientifically (as in D&D where it's reliable and repeatable), then it wouldn't be any different than any other subject. The distinction between "Magic" and "Technology" only makes sense to people, like us, who don't have magic. In a fantasy world, it's all just stuff you can learn to do, but which most people never bother to learn because it's hard.

[Xuc Xac]

Magic in D&D type settings is not repeatable and predictable. It is repeatable by that guy. The one with the pointy hat and a beard. I doesn't matter how many ranks of Linguistics and Perform (Mime) an Expert (of any level) has to perfectly, "wave (his) hands and speak an intonation", he will not cause something to fly around. Even the guy with the pointy hat, when saying the same words and making the same gestures, can only make the object fly around so many times and then it just stops working. Same words, same gestures, same guy, nothing happens. This is not a scientifically repeatable nor reliable phenomena. It is most definitely something that happens (everyone saw the guy fly into the air and Fireball the orcs last week after all), and might even happen a lot, but not something that can be independantly recreated in the lab.

This is like saying "Squeezing the trigger of a revolver doesn't always make it shoot. It works half a dozen times, then you can repeat the trigger pull in exactly the same way a 7th, 8th, or 9th time and nothing happens. Revolvers are mysterious and their functioning can't be quantified." There's a lot more to casting a spell than just the verbal, somatic, and material components, just like firing a revolver involves a lot more than the basic point-and-click interface.

[BladeofObliviom]

This is like saying "Squeezing the trigger of a revolver doesn't always make it shoot. It works half a dozen times, then you can repeat the trigger pull in exactly the same way a 7th, 8th, or 9th time and nothing happens. Revolvers are mysterious and their functioning can't be quantified." There's a lot more to casting a spell than just the verbal, somatic, and material components, just like firing a revolver involves a lot more than the basic point-and-click interface.

Indeed. Even the act of preparing spells requires a lot of knowledge to weave the spells together, leaving only the last bit (the components) for a wizard to finish up and call it in. If you're willing to go through the academic training and knowledge to be able to figure all this out...

...Well, you've taken a level of Wizard. (Or equivalent Arcane Spellcasting class)

[LudicSavant]

The distinction between "Magic" and "Technology" only makes sense to people, like us, who don't have magic.

Hiryuu puts it well when he says "Scary magical hoodoo and technology are the same thing; their difference is merely one of cultural context."




Magic in D&D type settings is not repeatable and predictable. You contradict this in your very next sentence.


It is repeatable by that guy. The one with the pointy hat and a beard. First off, science doesn't actually require a phenomenon to be repeatable to study it. We can't repeat the Big Bang (or indeed much of the things we deal with in astrophysics), but we study it just fine.

Second off, if it's repeatable by anyone or indeed anything, it's a repeatable phenomenon.


I doesn't matter how many ranks of Linguistics and Perform (Mime) an Expert (of any level) has to perfectly, "wave (his) hands and speak an intonation", he will not cause something to fly around. Even the guy with the pointy hat, when saying the same words and making the same gestures, can only make the object fly around so many times and then it just stops working. Same words, same gestures, same guy, nothing happens. This is not a scientifically repeatable nor reliable phenomena.
Everything you said about fly spells goes for countless things that work in the real world. The example of a revolver given by Xuc Xac is an apt one.

The fact that you are using the same gestures, same words, and same guy but getting a different result can simply mean that some condition besides the gestures, words, and guy has changed. And it has: Spell slots ran out. This isn't even mysterious to people in the game world. Spell slots, what they are and how they work, are described in detail in the lore of D&D, and pretty much all of the main bullet points of that lore can easily be gathered by observation of your average wizard.


It is most definitely something that happens (everyone saw the guy fly into the air and Fireball the orcs last week after all), and might even happen a lot, Then it's observable, and so science can apply.

You seem to think all of these other factors are required, but they aren't. You just have to be able to observe something and, through observation, learn something about that thing. That's it. And I can learn an awful lot about Fireballs just by watching a Wizard do it. I can learn even more by watching him do it 10 times. I might not learn how to do it, but again, that's not the goalpost. I don't need to be able to make cavitation bubbles like a pistol shrimp in order for marine biology to be a valid scientific pursuit.


but not something that can be independantly recreated in the lab. This contradicts your earlier statement saying that a wizard can repeat his spells. However, even if it was the case that it couldn't be independently created in the lab, that would be irrelevant. Being able to independently recreate a phenomenon in a laboratory environment is not necessary for science to happen, whether we're talking about anything from astrophysics to sociology (it certainly helps, though :smallsmile:).


Can you imagine being a natural philosopher in such a place? Where would you even start? You would do it the same way that you do it in real life. Kinda like this: http://hpmor.com/

You start by going out and exploring the world and seeing what it has to offer.


Every question or curiosity you had would ultimately be answered with 'because the gods'. If that didn't fit then 'because magic'. And that would be the most truthful and accurate answer possible. That is no form of intellectual laziness. That is the final conclusion of any intellighent individual. This is equivalently bad to saying "how does gravity work?" "Because physics. Okay, that's our final conclusion, science work done, moving on to next question?" Not only is it intellectual laziness, it's one of the worst kinds of intellectual laziness, where explanations are reduced to nothing more than labels and guessing the teacher's password (http://lesswrong.com/lw/iq/guessing_the_teachers_password/).


How can you develop the theory of gravity when you have to account for levitation/magical flight? Using the same principles and methods you would to develop such a theory in the real world.


How can you develop explosives by inspecting Fireballs? Well, for starters, Fireball spells ARE developed explosives, as are things like Fireball scrolls or Fireball wands and so forth. And second off, they're... well, explosions for anyone who wants to learn about combustion and explosions and the like to observe.


How can conservation of matter even be contemplated when Creation spells are a thing. Science is not just something with a bunch of preformed rules that you contemplate. Scientific knowledge is achieved by going out into the world and observing how it works. If, in your universe, matter is not conserved, "Conservation of Matter" would be an unscientific idea, not the other way around.

Science is, at its core, a set of methods by which you can gather information about the world, not some dogma that sprung up out of nowhere comprised of decrees like "Conservation of Matter."


Either every inquiry leads back to magic being the answer Just because you conclude that a Fireball is magic doesn't mean that you can't learn things about it. I can learn how hot a Fireball is. I can learn its effects on things that are hit by it (they burn!). I can learn how big an area it covers. I can learn that its area and range appear to be consistent from one casting to the next unless an additional method (like metamagic) is applied. And so on and so forth. Science accomplished.

[VoxRationis]

Indeed. Even the act of preparing spells requires a lot of knowledge to weave the spells together, leaving only the last bit (the components) for a wizard to finish up and call it in. If you're willing to go through the academic training and knowledge to be able to figure all this out...

...Well, you've taken a level of Wizard. (Or equivalent Arcane Spellcasting class)

And if a character with a bunch of ranks in Linguistics and Mime or something to that effect perfectly mimics the entire casting process, including the boring stuff the wizard does at the start of the day, then what you have is a ritual or incantation.

[Gnoman]

One important distinction that has to be made between the real world and a magic-rich fantasy world is that, in the real world, books are nothing more than information-storage devices that don't hurt much in the short term if you lose them. Meanwhile, spellbooks in a high-magic setting are weapons of war in their own right, and taking out the libraries becomes a strategic goal - which also has a massively destructive effect on non-magical knowledge. Imagine that the sum total of human knowledge was engraved on the wall of missile silos.


Second, it is far from rare in fantasy settings for people to learn how to do things by having a god point to them and say "Do this!". If you didn't invent metalworking or chemistry yourself and were just given the secret of steel, you don't have a foundation for improving the art - it's the difference between using RPG maker and knowing how to program in assembly.

[Khaelo]

Second, it is far from rare in fantasy settings for people to learn how to do things by having a god point to them and say "Do this!". If you didn't invent metalworking or chemistry yourself and were just given the secret of steel, you don't have a foundation for improving the art - it's the difference between using RPG maker and knowing how to program in assembly.
I don't think this explanation works. Humans tinker with things. "Sure, the god said to do it this way, but..."
a) "...it takes forever; let's try this shortcut."
b) "...we're out of this material; let's try this substitution."
c) "...we've done that a thousand times before. What happens if we tweak this?"
d) "...oops!"

Stagnation works if the god is handing out steel swords without explaining how to create them. A fantasy god can do things like that. But once humans have the process, somebody is going to mess with it, whether or not they have any clue what they're doing. In our world, all sorts of technology were attributed to divine origin (agriculture, writing, metalwork). People didn't have sophisticated theories of chemistry to explain how smithing worked. They managed to improve on it anyway.

[BootStrapTommy]

First off, science doesn't actually require a phenomenon to be repeatable to study it. We can't repeat the Big Bang (or indeed much of the things we deal with in astrophysics), but we study it just fine. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/The_Scientific_Method_as_an_Ongoing_Process.svg/450px-The_Scientific_Method_as_an_Ongoing_Process.svg.pn g

Note that data replication is included under Gather Data to Test Predictions
There's a difference between scientifically knowable data and scientific theory (extrapolations and predictions based on empirically induced causal relationships between variables).

To scientifically study magic, it would have to be repeatable. You can't accurately induce things from a single point of data.

That being said, repeatable magic is setting (or even GM) dependent.

[Mechalich]

There are very, very few settings where magic can be said to function in a scientific way. D&D is absolutely not one of them. D&D magic functions as an art. FR outright refers to magic as The Art.

In science, you can take an extremely complicated experiment, say, taking a particle accelerator and synthesizing a few atoms of element 112, and, if you've done your work properly and described all the steps, the next guy can come along and without any training whatsoever follow the steps exactly and throw the switch and produce the same result.

In art, you can't watch Van Gogh paint for a few days and then produce a Van Gogh through sincere imitation. It does not work that way.

Even with incantations in D&D, you have to have sufficient training to make a spellcraft check in order to make the incantation work. Not only does that require skill and training, but it is subject to the RNG. That's not a scientific process.

[BladeofObliviom]

Even with incantations in D&D, you have to have sufficient training to make a spellcraft check in order to make the incantation work. Not only does that require skill and training, but it is subject to the RNG. That's not a scientific process.

How so? Everyone makes mistakes. Even perfectly competent scientists and technicians pay too little attention to one thing, or too much to another, or get a little distracted, or simply screw up. The RNG in DnD doesn't represent literal random chance most of the time, it's simply a way to simulate that the same person with the same skills can both succeed and fail at the same task at different times.

I've never heard someone claim chemistry isn't a scientific process because sometimes a chemist accidentally mixes in the wrong chemical, or forgets a step in the process, or otherwise accidentally violates experimental parameters. Someone might drop a test tube once due to carelessness or distraction, and it doesn't mean they don't have the skill or training to operate grasping fingers.

[AtlasSniperman]

How so? Everyone makes mistakes. Even perfectly competent scientists and technicians pay too little attention to one thing, or too much to another, or get a little distracted, or simply screw up. The RNG in DnD doesn't represent literal random chance most of the time, it's simply a way to simulate that the same person with the same skills can both succeed and fail at the same task at different times.

I've never heard someone claim chemistry isn't a scientific process because sometimes a chemist accidentally mixes in the wrong chemical, or forgets a step in the process, or otherwise accidentally violates experimental parameters. Someone might drop a test tube once due to carelessness or distraction, and it doesn't mean they don't have the skill or training to operate grasping fingers.

Agreed, and that's what taking 10 and taking 20 are for, If you're following a step-by-step manual you're probably taking 10. If it's super detailed and covers ever nuance, it's probably taking 20.

[Mechalich]

RNG applies to saves - the efficacy of a spell's effect. While reflex saves arguably account for differences in conditions, a fortitude or will save is largely random.

Finger of Death is a spell that kills people some percentage of the time, and that percentage differs for every spellcaster/spell target combination in the whole universe.

While characters in universe may have some vague understanding of how to make people 'more vulnerable' to certain spells (often by casting other spells) there is absolutely no way, in universe, to elucidate the mechanism that governs how saving throws work.

[AtlasSniperman]

RNG applies to saves - the efficacy of a spell's effect. While reflex saves arguably account for differences in conditions, a fortitude or will save is largely random.

Finger of Death is a spell that kills people some percentage of the time, and that percentage differs for every spellcaster/spell target combination in the whole universe.

While characters in universe may have some vague understanding of how to make people 'more vulnerable' to certain spells (often by casting other spells) there is absolutely no way, in universe, to elucidate the mechanism that governs how saving throws work.

Sure there is, the capacity of the target to resist the energy(focusing on Will or Fort for this) and the amount of energy a particular caster can put INTO an effect. The caster is a variable in any experiments utilising magic, but as long as the caster continues to apply the same amount of energy(caster level), the spell itself is consistent.
Finger of Death for example is an amount of raw energy that some people can resist and others can't, likely due to training or natural immunities, just like poisons and diseases.

[LudicSavant]

Note that data replication is included under Gather Data to Test Predictions

It is possible to have reproducible and/or repeatable data that helps us understand non-reproudicible events, because those things leave footprints for us to examine.

It's also very important to note that science has more tools in its toolbox than the controlled lab experiment, such as correlational research and "natural experiments." The fact of the matter is that much of the scientific knowhow we have today would not be possible without such methods. I highly recommend that you, MechaLich, and Quarian Rex read the following article: http://arstechnica.com/science/2006/10/5744/

Not that that's even particularly relevant, since magic in D&D fits all of the criteria for reproducibility and repeatability that you could ever want (none of the published settings appear to be an exception to this. Magic appears to follow consistent and discoverable rules in all of them).

In fact, if you got together a group of clever people to play a game system like D&D, had them play premade spellcaster characters and never told them the rules (only the results of their actions determined by the DM, who is rolling everything behind a screen), they could accurately reverse-engineer the mechanics for their magic with enough playtime and effort, simply via in-character investigation. That's science, right there.

[VoxRationis]

There are very, very few settings where magic can be said to function in a scientific way. D&D is absolutely not one of them. D&D magic functions as an art. FR outright refers to magic as The Art.

In science, you can take an extremely complicated experiment, say, taking a particle accelerator and synthesizing a few atoms of element 112, and, if you've done your work properly and described all the steps, the next guy can come along and without any training whatsoever follow the steps exactly and throw the switch and produce the same result.

In art, you can't watch Van Gogh paint for a few days and then produce a Van Gogh through sincere imitation. It does not work that way.
Improper comparison. The creation of the particle accelerator requires technical expertise which is similarly difficult to replicate for the layman. But a sufficiently trained engineer, well-versed in knowledge of what he's doing, can build another such device, and a sufficiently trained forger can replicate a Van Gogh just fine. In both cases, however, it's actually less replicable than D&D magic, which follows mathematical progressions according to caster level and whatnot which are quite simple, compared with most scientific laws and formulae.


Even with incantations in D&D, you have to have sufficient training to make a spellcraft check in order to make the incantation work. Not only does that require skill and training, but it is subject to the RNG. That's not a scientific process.
As others have pointed out, that's the same amount of random chance that applies to literally every other endeavor in D&D—it represents a number of things, including small and fluctuating but significant environmental factors, and usually the fact that people are trying to do things in a stressful, uncontrolled scenario, such as combat.

[BootStrapTommy]

In fact, if you got together a group of clever people to play a game system like D&D, had them play premade spellcaster characters and never told them the rules (only the results of their actions determined by the DM, who is rolling everything behind a screen), they could accurately reverse-engineer the mechanics for their magic with enough playtime and effort, simply via in-character investigation. That's science, right there. That is a consequence of the fact that D&D is a game and games are based on knowable rules. If it wasn't, it would be a garbage game.

So what you are talking about is completely incidental to the nature of a roleplaying system, and does not necessarily reflect the reality of the magic in the world it is suppose to represent. It has to follow those rules, because it would be nonsensical to the players if it didn't.

I have often jokingly propose in other threads the idea of a 5e Hermit whose Discovery was that the world was run by a DM on the rules of 5e D&D, as a kind of farcical comic end to that line of reasoning.


II highly recommend that you, MechaLich, and Quarian Rex read the following article: http://arstechnica.com/science/2006/10/5744/ You ignore (as does the article) the fact that scientific theories are not themselves observations or experiments, but the inductive reasoning of causal relationships based on testable and observable data, judged by their correspondence to the data and the reliability of their predictions. They are not data, nor can they be held to the same empirical standards, as they are logical inductions not physical observations. No one saw the Big Bang. But the Big Bang explains the data and has been used to make accurate predictions.

I find it strange that that was overlooked by the article, as it is honestly a simpler response to the creationist critique then what they choose. No one has to see the Big Bang. We induced the existence of the Big Bang.

Inductive reasoning is the oft forgotten hero of science.

[Gnoman]

I don't think this explanation works. Humans tinker with things. "Sure, the god said to do it this way, but..."
a) "...it takes forever; let's try this shortcut."
b) "...we're out of this material; let's try this substitution."
c) "...we've done that a thousand times before. What happens if we tweak this?"
d) "...oops!"

Stagnation works if the god is handing out steel swords without explaining how to create them. A fantasy god can do things like that. But once humans have the process, somebody is going to mess with it, whether or not they have any clue what they're doing. In our world, all sorts of technology were attributed to divine origin (agriculture, writing, metalwork). People didn't have sophisticated theories of chemistry to explain how smithing worked. They managed to improve on it anyway.

It's not that I'm claiming that no advancement is possible, just that the precursor knowledge needed to make directed advancement does not exist, and the technology exists in a vacuum - in our world, it took hundreds of years to go from copper to steel, and by then so many alloys were created that a genuine understanding of how properties of various metals interact in the process and how much of metal A needs to be mixed with metal B to get that result. If all that was known was "mix one part tin to four parts copper to make bronze" and "use bones while shaping iron to get steel", all those centuries of work would not exist, and it would take decades at least to acquire it once somebody decided to start looking.

[Mechalich]

Improper comparison. The creation of the particle accelerator requires technical expertise which is similarly difficult to replicate for the layman. But a sufficiently trained engineer, well-versed in knowledge of what he's doing, can build another such device, and a sufficiently trained forger can replicate a Van Gogh just fine. In both cases, however, it's actually less replicable than D&D magic, which follows mathematical progressions according to caster level and whatnot which are quite simple, compared with most scientific laws and formulae.

The comparison is abjectly not to what a person with sufficient training can do, but do what a person with no training at all can do.

There is nothing in scientific practice that inherently requires pre-established expertise. It is absolutely possible for a high-school student to follow the steps in a manual and conduct a ridiculously complex process and successfully produce the expected result. In fact, students do this all the time in labs - conducting highly complex procedures like PCR with no real understanding of the principles behind how they work.

D&D magic does not work this way. Even if you follow the steps exactly, you cannot cast a 5th level spell without sufficient training. You also simply cannot cast that spell unless you have a 15 intelligence. The principles of magic in D&D do not have universal applicability, they work only under certain conditions, conditions that other magic (like Fox's Cunning) can actively change.

They are also not additive - in science it is perfectly possible to do an experiment that relies on procedures and reactions that other people have developed that you, the experimenter do not yourself actually understand. I have, personally, done this, using both molecular biology tools whose chemistry I am at best very fuzzy on, and cladistics analysis packages whose statistical principles make my brain hurt to conduct other research. You cannot do this with D&D magic - while some breakthroughs can be shared, you cannot combine a 3rd level spell and a 4th level spell can get a 7th level spell out of it.

[AtlasSniperman]

The comparison is abjectly not to what a person with sufficient training can do, but do what a person with no training at all can do.

There is nothing in scientific practice that inherently requires pre-established expertise. It is absolutely possible for a high-school student to follow the steps in a manual and conduct a ridiculously complex process and successfully produce the expected result. In fact, students do this all the time in labs - conducting highly complex procedures like PCR with no real understanding of the principles behind how they work.

D&D magic does not work this way. Even if you follow the steps exactly, you cannot cast a 5th level spell without sufficient training. You also simply cannot cast that spell unless you have a 15 intelligence. The principles of magic in D&D do not have universal applicability, they work only under certain conditions, conditions that other magic (like Fox's Cunning) can actively change.

They are also not additive - in science it is perfectly possible to do an experiment that relies on procedures and reactions that other people have developed that you, the experimenter do not yourself actually understand. I have, personally, done this, using both molecular biology tools whose chemistry I am at best very fuzzy on, and cladistics analysis packages whose statistical principles make my brain hurt to conduct other research. You cannot do this with D&D magic - while some breakthroughs can be shared, you cannot combine a 3rd level spell and a 4th level spell can get a 7th level spell out of it.

But the whole process of reverse engineering developed spells to create new effects is simulated in rules by the "Spell research" rules in the DMG. You are developing a new spell and require a library, fair enough to assume that means you are building on existing knowledge.
As for performing a spell without proper training, that's what rituals and incantations are! A wizard prepares spells in the morning(see, begins ritual) and completes them throughout the day. You can document every action someone takes in the preparation of a spell and then reproduce that as a ritual. Just because you can't prepare spells and cast like a wizard, doesn't mean you can't repeat all the steps and replicate the effect anyway.
Also by RAW with spell research; you don't have to actually CAST spells to create them. a first level commoner with enough ranks in spellcraft and enough time can make a living off creating 9th level spells. It's possible, just not often utilized.

[LudicSavant]

No one has to see the Big Bang. We induced the existence of the Big Bang.

Funny, that's the very point that you were disputing in post #74.

[Quarian Rex]

This is like saying "Squeezing the trigger of a revolver doesn't always make it shoot... Revolvers are mysterious and their functioning can't be quantified." There's a lot more to casting a spell than just the verbal, somatic, and material components, just like firing a revolver involves a lot more than the basic point-and-click interface.

Except that the revolver can be quantified, by anyone, given the opportunity to inspect it. The trigger releases the hammer, which strikes the cartrige, which ignites the powder, which fires the bullet, which puts a hole in a nearby object. The number of times that it goes boom seems to coincide with the number of cartriges in the weapon, etc. There are plenty of things to give clues as to what is happening and plenty of opportunity to reverse-engineer. Not so with magic.


{Scrubbed}
Look at the thread you are posting in and look at my response. We're looking at why technology doesn't seem to develop in a D&D type setting. Specifically a similar technological progression to what we have seen in the real world. You seem to be stuck on the idea that all study of a thing is science, and that all science will lead to technology. While I completely understand this sentiment, since it is mostly correct in our world, you must realize that this would not be the case in D&D-land.

In D&D-land the 'laws' of physics, as we know them, are mostly identical to what we know in the real world. The rules themselves abstract things, because this is a pen and paper game, but it is meant to resolve things in a similar manner to reality. Fire consumes fuel, living things need food, water freezes, etc. All identical to what we know. Magic, however, allows all of this to be sidestepped/manipulated/negated/blurred/what-have-you. Magic is the exception. Magic is the hack. Magic is what lets that-which-should-not-exist to exist. Magic is a seperate force layered upon reality whose removal, accomplished through dispels, anti-magic fields, and dead magic zones, leaves the rest of the firmament fully intact (the same could not be said for electro-magnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, etc.).

Magic follows it's own rules, not those of the physical reality in which it is most often used. It manifests something regardless of cause and effect, and any requirements that something may need to otherwise exist. Studying a magical effect will not lead to any observations that could be used to develop technology. Such observations will even provide erroneous info. Case in point...



I can learn an awful lot about Fireballs just by watching a Wizard do it. I can learn even more by watching him do it 10 times. I might not learn how to do it, but again, that's not the goalpost.

Again, you miss the point, because that is the goalpost.


Fireball spells ARE developed explosives, as are things like Fireball scrolls or Fireball wands and so forth. And second off, they're... well, explosions for anyone who wants to learn about combustion and explosions and the like to observe.

Ahem...


The explosion creates almost no pressure.

What was that again? I assume that there would be many esteemed mundane scholars in this setting, who, much like yourself, would study Fireballs to learn all about combustion and explosions, and learn absolutely nothing about combustion and explosions.

You're kind of proving my point for me here. You are looking to study the most obvious example of an effect in a setting to develop a technology based on that effect. Observations of that effect, because it is a magical effect, are useless for developing technology. Welcome to a technologically stagnant setting.



Just because you conclude that a Fireball is magic doesn't mean that you can't learn things about it. I can learn how hot a Fireball is. I can learn its effects on things that are hit by it (they burn!). I can learn how big an area it covers. I can learn that its area and range appear to be consistent from one casting to the next unless an additional method (like metamagic) is applied. And so on and so forth. Science accomplished.

To what end good sir? You have just described putting points into Spellcraft. Studying magic leads to knowledge of magic. It does nothing to advance technology.

You also seem to be using science as a catch-all term for academics. Just because something can be studied does not mean that it is a science. Music can be studied. Paintings can be studied. Sculpture can be studied. Arts can be studied. In amazing depth. And, as has been mentioned many, many times before, magic seems to be an art.



However, magic is not like science or industry. It is a deeply personal process, essentially an art. Each sorcerer or wizard has to go through the same process their mentor did, and teaching is of limited capability to unlocking the secrets of the universe. While a wizard might be able to utilize the spells of predecessors, that cannot bypass the slow nature of level gain needed to attain power. Therefore magical advancement fails to build on itself generation by generation the way engineering and science do. Essentially wizards are constantly re-discovering the abilities of the past (in the form of gaining levels).

So while magical knowledge, and even magical items, might accumulate over time, it does nothing to raise the tech level of society as a whole.



There are very, very few settings where magic can be said to function in a scientific way. D&D is absolutely not one of them. D&D magic functions as an art.

Mechalich sums it quite well. Magic is an art. Art is not science. Art does not lead to technology. This is something that just seems to not be getting across.

[LudicSavant]

:smallsigh:

Magic in D&D literally is technology, by definition. And not just one definition, either...



Full Definition of TECHNOLOGY
1
a : the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area
b : a capability given by the practical application of knowledge

2
: a manner of accomplishing a task especially using technical processes, methods, or knowledge

3
: the specialized aspects of a particular field of endeavor <educational technology>


- Magic is the practical application of knowledge. The wizard knows how to cast the spell Fireball (it's knowledge), and applies it to blow things up (it's a practical application). That's definition 1.
- Magic is a manner of accomplishing a task (such as fireballing some goblins) using technical processes, methods, or knowledge (things like verbal and somatic components count as technical methods, again by definition). That's definition 2.
- Necromancy (and all other magic schools) embodies the specialized aspects of a particular field of endeavor (Magic). That's definition 3.


Technology (from Greek τέχνη, techne, "art, skill, cunning of hand"; and -λογία, -logia[3]) is the collection of techniques, methods or processes used in the production of goods or services or in the accomplishment of objectives, such as scientific investigation. Technology can be the knowledge of techniques, processes, etc. or it can be embedded in machines, computers, devices and factories, which can be operated by individuals without detailed knowledge of the workings of such things.

Magic is technology under every definition here as well. Magic is a technique, method or process used in the production of both goods (such as magic items, stuff made with creation magic, or just things made with the assistance of spells like Magecraft or Unseen Crafter) and services (such as healing wounds or divining the location of objects), and in the accomplishment of objectives (such as Fireballing anyone who looks at you funny). Magic includes knowledge of techniques and processes (such as spell preparation and casting components), and it can be embedded in machines and devices that can be operated by individuals without detailed knowledge of the things (you don't need to be a wizard to use a +1 Flaming Greatsword).


To what end good sir? You have just described putting points into Spellcraft. Studying magic leads to knowledge of magic. It does nothing to advance technology.

Okay, so, Spellcraft = knowledge in a particular area (magic). Using the Spellcraft skill = practical application of Spellcraft. Therefore using the Spellcraft skill is the practical application of knowledge. That should remind you of something.



Full Definition of TECHNOLOGY
1a : the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area

Taking ranks in Spellcraft not only does something to advance technology, it literally is advancing your personal technological means. Share the information that you used to gain ranks in Spellcraft with a society and that society's technological means advance as well. :smallsmile:

[AtlasSniperman]

I'm not sure if I'm seeing correctly, but it looks like a lot of people here are stating that the natural laws of the universe in a D&D setting are the same as ours but they also have magic which is outside of these rules.

Why do the rules have to be assumed to be the same yet conflict with magic? Why isn't magic part of the laws of nature that create the functionality of the universe? "Magic follows it's own rules, not those of the physical reality in which it is most often used." Why can't they be the same thing? Why can't magic possibly be part of the physical reality in which it occurs? Sure it doesn't match OUR universe, doesn't mean its not consistent in itself and can allow Scientific inquiry and the development of technology within it's own rules.

"Studying magic leads to knowledge of magic. It does nothing to advance technology.", I counter:
"Study of biology leads to knowledge of biology. It does nothing to advance medicine."
You seem to be defining magic as mutually exclusive from a naturally occurring phenomenon, but it's not. Magical effects occur in the nature of the D&D world, and magical effects are studied and built upon by specialists in the fields associated with it: Necromancy, Divination, Evocation, Illusion, Enchantment, Conjuration, Transmutation, Physics, Chemistry...

If you mentally separate and say "magic is mutually exclusive and fundementally different from- the forces of nature" then I agree, Magic makes scientific inquiry impossible and stagnates technology. But if Magic is a part of the forces of nature, it can be investigated and can be used to create technologies.

[Mechalich]

Why do the rules have to be assumed to be the same yet conflict with magic? Why isn't magic part of the laws of nature that create the functionality of the universe? "Magic follows it's own rules, not those of the physical reality in which it is most often used." Why can't they be the same thing? Why can't magic possibly be part of the physical reality in which it occurs? Sure it doesn't match OUR universe, doesn't mean its not consistent in itself and can allow Scientific inquiry and the development of technology within it's own rules.

Well, divine magic, for one, is explicitly a hack. It's drawing on the power of the gods to violate the rules that the gods would otherwise maintain for mortals. Casting Cure Light Wounds is not somehow utilizing internal formulae to alter the bodily balance of positive and negative energy - it is issuing a prayer to channel the power of a divine entity to do so.

Interestingly, arcane magic cannot mimic that effect. It actually operates on different principles entirely, manipulating underlying forces of the D&D world (which are explicitly not the same as the real one, the interaction of the primary elements and positive and negative energy may functionally duplicate quantum mechanics, but quantum mechanics they ain't) through the lens of complex symbology.

There is really no logical reason why a wizard can't cast cure light wounds or any other spell on the cleric spell list. That boundary is explicitly arbitrary, existing solely for the purpose of game balance. This is a very clear example of how the rules of D&D are not built to be internally consistent - they're built to model a game where the nature of reality is controlled by capricious gods.

All sorts of examples abound. Ethergaunts can just flat out ignore spells below a certain level because of their incredible brainpower - but a human who advances their Int score to the same level doesn't get to develop that skill.

Look, you absolutely can develop 'magical technology' in D&D as opposed to scientific technology. That's how you get things like the Tippyverse. And the principles of spellcasting, in D&D are fundamentally formulaic and logical in nature, so you can apply experimental principles to those properties. You can do the same thing in certain types of artistic analysis too, but that does not mean that you can look at the totality of 'magic' and say that it can be considered a variant of science.

In terms of the original topic though - the reason that I put forward the advancement of magic as a counterforce to technological advancement can actually be seen in something like the Tippyverse. D&D spellcasting is flexible and powerful enough that, applied with logical goals and taken to its natural conclusion you can achieve a post-scarcity society that has the power to fundamentally rewrite reality into a utopia a whole lot faster than you ever could using science.

[AtlasSniperman]

Well, divine magic, for one, is explicitly a hack. It's drawing on the power of the gods to violate the rules that the gods would otherwise maintain for mortals. Casting Cure Light Wounds is not somehow utilizing internal formulae to alter the bodily balance of positive and negative energy - it is issuing a prayer to channel the power of a divine entity to do so.

Interestingly, arcane magic cannot mimic that effect. It actually operates on different principles entirely, manipulating underlying forces of the D&D world (which are explicitly not the same as the real one, the interaction of the primary elements and positive and negative energy may functionally duplicate quantum mechanics, but quantum mechanics they ain't) through the lens of complex symbology.

[SNIP]



Emphasis mine; the only problem I have with your response is that Bards cast Arcane spells, but Bards cast Cure spells.
Deities are super powerful entities, it's possible to assume(though it cannot be proven from outside the system, and is DM and setting dependent) that Gods prepare their spells like Arcane casters do, and give their worshippers the triggers. This still aligns with the Arcane system and merges the two into the group of rules simply "Magic".
Psionics and Incarnum sitting seperate from that.

Otherwise I agree with your post. (though from my reading it seems like your saying that the only reason technology is stagnant is because if Magitech was allowed, the world would crumble from the speed of change)

[BootStrapTommy]

Funny, that's the very point that you were disputing in post #74.


There's a difference between scientifically knowable data and scientific theory (extrapolations and predictions based on empirically induced causal relationships between variables). Reading comprehension, my friend. It's the exact same point I was making in post #74.

[LudicSavant]

Funny, that's the very point that you were disputing in post #74.
There's a difference between scientifically knowable data and scientific theory (extrapolations and predictions based on empirically induced causal relationships between variables).Reading comprehension, my friend. It's the exact same point I was making in post #74.

Odd, the bolded text (emphasis mine) doesn't resemble the text I responded to when I said "Funny, that's the very point that you were disputing in post #74", now does it? :smallannoyed:



No one has to see the Big Bang. We induced the existence of the Big Bang.Funny, that's the very point that you were disputing in post #74.

You know what does resemble the text that I responded to, though? The text you quoted and disputed in post #74. The bit where I said that we don't need to be able to recreate the Big Bang in a controlled lab setting in order to learn about it with science. A sentiment reinforced by the statement "No one has to see the Big Bang. We induced the existence of the Big Bang." Indeed, your statement cannot true without mine also being true.

If you want to contest the idea that you don't need to be able to repeat the Big Bang in order to learn about it with science, you're wrong for reasons contained within your own statements ("No one has to see the Big Bang. We induced the Big Bang"). If you think that my point was something other than that, well, your jab about reading comprehension is rather ironic.

[redwizard007]

How many pages of you guys arguing do we need to deal with? Go apply all this energy to curing cancer.

[LudicSavant]

Back to the OP's original question:


Most fantasy worlds are ancient things but the general technology level never seems to change. We seem to take a period of a couple of centuries of real history and stretch them out to encompass an entire fantasy history. Or we create a mishmash of a thousand years of real history and jam them all together.

Either way, it never seems like the world will progress to a technologically advanced state. And by way of extension, it doesn't seem realistic to think of the tech level being more "stone age" in the distant past. I get the sense that a thousand years before the current timeframe in D&D, people still had steel swords and armor.

This isn't a criticism. It's part of the fun of a fantasy world. But what could account for it, aside from a supernatural intelligence working to keep it that way? Could it be something as simple as a significant deficit of raw metals to work with, preventing any kind of industrial critical mass from building up?

I recall the classic JRPG Breath of Fire 3 having an actual reason for its lack of technological progress that played a central role in its plot, despite there clearly being people around who were investigating advanced technology.

Breath of Fire 3 had a setting where the world was forcefully kept from advancing by a powerful protective mother "goddess," who said that humanity was doomed to once again* destroy its environment and turn the world into a vast desert if they were allowed to advance. She thus was working to forcefully suppress human knowledge at every turn, resorting to atrocities if necessary to prevent humans from becoming the masters of their own destinies, all in the name of "their own good." By the end of the game you had to decide whether to kill the overprotective mother God or let things remain in forced stagnation. Breath of Fire 4 takes place on a desert world :)

I know the OP said "besides a supernatural intelligence keeping it that way" but I felt it was a case that might be worth mentioning nonetheless, since it was a central driving point of the setting rather than a more dismissive "god did it" sort of thing.

*Apparently human society had already advanced to having a modern-like situation in the past, and the goddess intervened to stop/reverse the growth of the desert.

Another reason would be societal collapses, social change, or cultural practices which impede the spread or retention of knowledge. Many people seem to assume that technology just sort of generally progresses in a line over time, with things gradually getting better as time marches on. Real history isn't quite so simple. In real life, knowledge and technology are frequently lost due to a variety of reasons. Some examples:


Knowledge is easily lost if strictly compartmentalized. When I read "The Discoverers (http://www.amazon.com/The-Discoverers-Daniel-J-Boorstin/dp/0394726251)" they had an interesting section about how Chinese rulers monopolized astronomy and the calendar, since it represented the connection of the emperor to the heavens, and an understanding of the seasons represented his celestial role and lent authority over farmers. New regimes would often reinvent the calendar to undermine the old regime. They has some interesting examples of why some impressive clockwork machines simply couldn't be reconstructed by later generations: Such works languished in the emperor's collection, and the knowledge of how to build it simply wasn't shared.

Another example, covered in the 5th episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson's iteration of "Cosmos" (though in this case the knowledge wasn't actually lost) talks about how advanced knowledge of optics gave Bavaria a tactical advantage... and thus was kept highly classified. Joseph Frauenhoefer ended up having to expound all of his scientific secrets to a scribe on his deathbed. What if guys like that didn't get the chance?


Losing repositories of information can really hurt. Apparently we lost a lot in the destruction of libraries such as the Library of Alexandria.

Moreover, there are a lot of examples throughout history of rulers going about expunging information that doesn't suit them, including technological information. You don't need an actual god to suppress technology, plain old human rulers (who may or may not be pretending to be gods :smallwink:) can do it by persecuting intellectuals and burning books.

For instance, apparently the camera obscura and many other advances were lost for centuries due to the writings of Mo Tze, Confucius and others from that era being burned during the reign of Emperor Chin.


Religious or cultural institutions can make technological advancement far more difficult by deeming certain things heretical or taboo. There are altogether too many examples of scientists being suppressed for their work not conforming. One of the most famous examples is Galileo being forced to recant his "fraudulent" discovery of the heliocentric universe, but it is merely one of countless sad examples throughout history.

I'm not terribly familiar with Warhammer 40k's lore, but I seem to recall that they took advantage of this to justify the stagnation of the Empire of Man.


Rome had a lot of interesting technology which some people might even think was anachronistic if you told them about it. Vending machines (used for holy water!), concrete, animatronics and automata (often used for religious or theatrical practices), pneumatics, convection heating, running water, flush toilets, a steam engine (the aeolipile), water-powered factories, incredible architecture, sophisticated clockwork (such as the antikythera mechanism), devices for underwater exploration (such as the diving bell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_bell)), and more. Many of the advancements that came about in Rome never became widespread or were lost for much of the Middle Ages. It demonstrates just how much can be lost in a collapse.


Jared Diamond's "Collapse" (http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Succeed-Revised-Edition/dp/0143117009) has a ton of examples of societal collapses and detailed analysis of causes of societal collapses. It may have good inspiration for your own world-building if you want to come up with a bunch of societal collapses (always good for explaining why the world is full of ruins and dungeons, not just technological stagnation!).


A loss of immediate cultural relevance (such as via obsolescence) can cause some technologies to be lost.

Likewise, a number of technological paths that might have seemed to be worth pursuing for us might seem like dead ends not worth investigating in a world full of magic. "Guns? Please, I have a necklace of fireballs. You're wasting my time!" This wouldn't stop technology from advancing, of course, but it could well cause it to advance along different lines than earth's history.

Eberron takes advantage of this route (amongst others), pointing out the ways in which magic technology has developed over time, and mentioning how it has been focused on in preference to other possible fields of inquiry. For instance, Keith Baker (author of Eberron) mentions how long ago, all spells had to be stilled and silenced (and thus were much more difficult to cast, requiring a higher caster level and feats and such), and that somatic and verbal components were invented later to simplify magic and make it more accessible.


Mind, none of these examples would lead to truly unchanging or "stagnant" tech; different cultures and societies and regimes would have different technology from each other, and cultures would be changing their ways all the time. However, it could cause it to take quite a while before you get the industrial revolution (or whatever particular bit of progress you're concerned about delaying) going.

[BootStrapTommy]

First off, science doesn't actually require a phenomenon to be repeatable to study it.Post #74 is a refutation of this statement, which is untrue. Scientific data does require repeatability. Because inductive reasoning requires there be strong empirical support for a claim, which cannot be established with only a single or very few points of unverified data.


We can't repeat the Big Bang (or indeed much of the things we deal with in astrophysics), but we study it just fine. The part I reposted and you bolded addressed why this can be the case, despite the first part being untrue.

And happens to be in fewer words what I reiterated in the later post.

Like I said, reading comprehension.

And for the record, I'm not disagreeing with you, Ludic. Only magic of a wild and completely unpredictable kind would be scientifically unstudiable. If magic follows some sort of rules, it can be studied.

Which makes that a setting dependent thing.

[Mechalich]

It occurs to me that another contributing factor to technological stagnation in a fantasy setting could be the presence of monsters with superhuman capabilities.

A good example can be found in the LotR movies: Sauron's army utilizes several massive works of construction, but instead the relatively complex machines necessary to make the moveable by humans, they simply use trolls to run everything manually.

If the ceiling on the capabilities of one level of technology are significantly greater because they can be powered by superhuman strength of monitored by superhuman intelligences, then the comparative advantage of the next technological step is lower and might by, in a localized context, wasteful to develop.

That would also further support rulers limiting technological development if they already had exclusive possession of some monster-mediated capability - like the Targaryeans being the only people with dragons in ASOIAF.

In D&D this works especially well, since the usual answer to having a problem your extant tools and magic can't solve is to summon up an outsider who can handwave the problem away.

[LudicSavant]

Post #74 is a refutation of this statement, which is untrue. Scientific data does require repeatability.

Except that that's a straw man argument that does not refute what the post actually claims. The statement you quoted does not, in fact, say "no scientific data needs to be repeatable." In fact, the term "scientific data" is never used, nor is any equivalent term. It says that not all phenomena (e.g. individual events, such as the Big Bang) need to be repeatable (a sentiment echoed by your own statements like "Nobody needs to see the Big Bang. We induced the existence of the Big Bang") in order for us to learn about them via science (since we can examine the metaphorical footprints just fine). In fact, I clarified it even more explicitly in the next post, where I said "It is possible to have reproducible and/or repeatable data that helps us understand non-reprodudicible events, because those things leave footprints for us to examine." And we induce from the footprints.

At this point I suspect that you already agree, but are simply misreading what I am saying. Which is why I find your jabs about reading comprehension terribly ironic.

[hiryuu]

It occurs to me that another contributing factor to technological stagnation in a fantasy setting could be the presence of monsters with superhuman capabilities.

A good example can be found in the LotR movies: Sauron's army utilizes several massive works of construction, but instead the relatively complex machines necessary to make the moveable by humans, they simply use trolls to run everything manually.

If the ceiling on the capabilities of one level of technology are significantly greater because they can be powered by superhuman strength of monitored by superhuman intelligences, then the comparative advantage of the next technological step is lower and might by, in a localized context, wasteful to develop.

That would also further support rulers limiting technological development if they already had exclusive possession of some monster-mediated capability - like the Targaryeans being the only people with dragons in ASOIAF.

In D&D this works especially well, since the usual answer to having a problem your extant tools and magic can't solve is to summon up an outsider who can handwave the problem away.

A cool thing to note is that this is how it works in real life. You hear people say things about how our modern construction equipment can't reproduce the pyramids or puma punku or the Great Wall, right? It's because modern equipment has mechanical limits, but adding another rope and another human has no functional upper limit other than the amount of dudes you can round up. If fifty dudes haul a two ton block, each of them only has to haul eighty pounds. Even if you can round up only half that, it's still just 160 pounds per person. That is straight up how pre-industrial peoples did stuff like build one-piece ten-ton obelisks and pyramids and henges and massive complexes back in the day.

Also, libraries in a D&D sense are essentially weapons. Live weapons to be deployed - one of the reasons that Crusaders targeted Muslim libraries was that they were also public schools and repositories for works of art. You wanted the city's gold? Smash and burn the library. So much knowledge was lost that we have only translated about one-tenth of the Islamic Golden Age texts that we know of, and most of that's been mathematics and astronomy. You know when the Roman empire crumbled, it took all of Greek mythology and all of their technology with it? It was the Muslim world that preserved it, kept it in books, because they loved the stories. Greek myth was to the Islamic Golden Age like Superman comics are to us. Now, in a D&D sense, these would also be the places where you'd put spare spellbooks. It's like keeping your civilization's knowledge in just the arsenals. Any kind of war at all will annihilate centuries of knowledge.

Another option is don't: At the end of the day, keeping technology and culture stagnant is essentially telling the players that they or their characters can't meaningfully impact the world. Every time they go back in, it's the same; sure, there might be a good or evil country someplace there was another one before, but nothing progressed, nothing changed, it's like the bad end of Chrono Trigger except in this case it's forced just to retain the basic outlook of the setting. The Avatar series let us see the opposite of this, and it was probably the most amazing show Nickelodeon ever had. Just imagine a multiple generation campaign about going through the birthing pangs of technological and cultural progress. The players will really feel like they did something great, because their actions built it.

I've been running a setting I started in a pretendy-fun-time Mesoamerica/Mississippian/Iroquois Nation series and it's been running so long that thanks to PC actions (and suggestions), the next campaign I run in that setting will involve a post-war world where WMDs were deployed, and there are mecha suits and the like - I'd say there'd be TV and radio, but honestly those have been around in the setting for the last out-of-game decade, and the world's first space flight and the intrigue surrounding the space race was the theme of the last game. It's gotten to the point where players have made predictions involving magical theory and have asked for sessions/RP just so they can be scientists and make experiments to test them out (they have all decided to make oceanographers/sea floor scavengers this next time around - which means cool stuff like boats and big daddy suits and underwater cities and sea monsters and other awesome things).

[StandardDeviant]

Hmm...I sat down to write with the idea that it would be possible to explain away the lack of technological innovation in a fantasy world by jiggering with its underlying physics. We're generally talking about worlds actually comprised of the four classical elements, after all. So it would be easy to declare, for example, that steam engines don't work because the ideal gas law is all wonky there (S. M. Stirling gets some mileage out of this one). You could mess with Maxwell's equations, maybe rule that transistors can't be built with the world's chemistry, to foreclose electronics.
I was wrong. Those kinds of changes only really help to shut down particular applications of real-world technology--maybe in a worlds-collide situation, where characters from a technologically advanced reality pop into the fantasy world next door. Because there's not much you'd want to do with a steam engine that you couldn't do with, for example, a golem on a treadmill. Plus, the golem doesn't require fuel or water, and it's not likely to explode or parboil you with escaping steam. And there's hardly an electronic gadget out there that someone hasn't tried to replicate with a magic item. And even setting the direct application of magic aside, the world would (I suspect) have to be crazily weird to make it impossible to use whatever rules held there to build interesting mechanical devices.
So my next pass at the idea looked at the cultural requirements for technological innovation. To my non-scholarly, back-of-the-envelope way of thinking, the primary thing you need is someone a) clever b) observant, c) prone to tinkering with the world according to those observations, d) well-financed enough to carry on tinkering, and e) not under the sway of cultural bans on innovation. If you have collaboration or competition between several such people, you're really off to the races.
Ah, crud, I think I just described wizards.
I think it's possible to explain away magic-as-electronics as a cost issue; that stuff is just too darn expensive to be widespread. A magical/industrial revolution is harder to stop; it seems to require some sort of barrier to the combination of magic and mechanical advantage. Arcanum (if anyone remembers that game) dealt with the problem by positing a breakdown of Newtonian mechanics in the presence of strong magic, an effect that scaled with the strength of the magic and the complexity of the affected device. That might work. Alternately, there may be no physical reason why such a combination is impossible, but it could be legally prohibited or taboo, though you'd have to justify why the wizards would put up with the restriction.
In the end, I might be content to admit that an imaginary world operates according to narrative logic. Things that are thematically inappropriate simply do not exist there.

[Princess]

Technology doesn't always proceed in a linear manner. It goes forward, then backward, then sideways for any number of reasons.

Best real world example: China

The Ming Dynasty had guns, rockets, mines (land and sea), flamethrowers, et c. all before anyone else did. Ming dynasty repeating crossbows worked better than European guns in the 16th century, but a European army might have never even learned that had they faced the Chinese because they'd already have been blown up or on fire before the grunts started raining down bolts on them. And that's before even considering that the Chinese had cotton gins, earth-quake detection devices, huge mechanical clocks, and large machines for pounding and shaping metal full centuries before Europeans and Americans did.

The Qing Dynasty took over (Notably, a minority that had never been in charge before) and found all of those crazy weapons terrifying, so they banned most of them. By the time they were fighting Japan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the only Ming weapons they still had around were some schematics, some antiques beyond repair, and the repeating crossbows. And this was well after most major armies had bolt action rifles and early machine guns.

China, in several ways, actually started to industrialize before the rest of the world, but civil war and government policy set that back so far they had to try and catch up in the midst of one of the bloodiest wars ever. (And it's not a coincidence that most of the bloodiest human conflicts ever have been partially or entirely within Chinese borders.)



Another real world example: European guns. It took several centuries of fooling around with terrible gun powder weapons before a single European military had any that could be considered *maybe* better than the pre-gunpowder bows and siege weapons. And even then, the first effective guns for infantry wouldn't work properly if it was rainy that day, which led to very expensive and complicated solutions that barely anyone used, until eventually the flintlock musket revolutionized European armies... during the same era that the aforementioned Ming Dynasty would still have beaten the crap out of them with various exploding and burning contraptions.



A third real world example: South America before significant contact with Europe, Africa, or Asia. Their stone work was just as good as anywhere in the world, they could mine and refine precious metals, obsidian provided cutting edges easily as reliable as metal (sometimes more-so) for all the practical purposes that they cared about, but they didn't have wheeled carts or iron tools. Why? Well, the obvious explanation is that local terrain, when combined with a smaller population, made it less likely for anyone to think of the idea, make good use of the idea, and/or pass on the idea to someone else who would care enough about it to keep doing it.


Edit: It's also worth noting that China and what is now Somalia both had better ships and maritime technology than Columbus did when he "discovered" America. It's entirely possible that the real reason Asians didn't discover the Americas first boils down to 1 - not caring about an easier path to Europe and 2 - It's a harder trip to get from west to east on the Pacific than east to west on the Atlantic.

[halcyonforever]

So far this is my favorite thread on the internet in a long time. Including the semi-off topic debates.

I am leaning pretty far towards the cyclical nature of fantasy worlds. Technology/magical/societal progress is periodically wiped clean by any or all of the following:

Natural Disasters
Magical Disasters
Vengeful Dieties
Bored Deities
Magic Warfare
Internal Collapse
External Invasion
Hungry Dragons



I like the cyclical nature because it also explains the presence of ruins, treasure, powerful lost artifacts. It so far seems the best explanation. With so much power available through magic, it almost seems inevitable that near nuclear war with magic would break out. Heck you could even include magic "radiation" effects lingering as a result. Even just going for a non-war reset, "powerful wizard creates a uncontrollable disaster", "nihilist wizard creates dooms day spell"

So much story options through even deeper world history.

[Weltall_BR]

Great thread, mates.

I may be raising a dead corpse here, but I would like to draw your attention to an aspect of magic which seems to have been neglected in the discussions.

In the end, magic is based on willpower. The verbal, somatic and material components are merely means through which the magic-user focus her will into producing an effect. It's the will, not the components, that produces the results. This is why mimicking the words, gestures, etc of a spell produces no results, and also why magic is not easy nor available to anyone -- it requires an exceptional mind (represented in DnD 3.5 by the minimum attribute required to cast a spell).

This makes magic somewhat different from, say, physics or engineering. Both these and other natural sciences are universal -- their rules apply to any and all beings in the universe. Magic, on the other side is "identity-dependable" -- only those properly gifted for it may apply its methods to produce results. This does not mean that magic "breaks the rules of the universe" -- as someone pointed out, this is impossible, as by definition these rules reflect the ways of the world, and in one in which magic exists, they would have to take account of it. It doesn't mean either that magic cannot be developed as a science (by researching and teaching the methods for focusing one's mind, as in the Eberron example), though it would arguably advance slower than science as we know it does, because there would be fewer people capable of taking part in the collective endeavor of developing it.

EDIT: divine magic is not a matter of will, but of faith, but I don't believe this affects my argument.