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Aliquid
2016-02-09, 12:03 AM
I've often thought that living in a magical fantasy world would have all sorts of social, cultural and psychological impacts that we don't see in the real world.

A small example - lie detection:

Imagine a kid growing up with a high level Cleric as a parent, and that parent is a strict disciplinarian who regularly uses spells such as "zone of truth" or "discern lies" on the child as they grow up. Imagine the psychological impact on that kid.

Or imagine Clerics working with the justice system using this spell regularly when suspected criminals are put to trial? Sure the high level skilled ones could make a save, or have some magical protection... but only a small percentage of the population have good saving throws or magical protection.

Jay R
2016-02-09, 12:21 AM
The social and psychological impact of discern lies is trivial compared to the social and psychological impact of Evil and Good being objective, clearly defined, detectable, and often determined by birth (race).

Mechalich
2016-02-09, 12:38 AM
I've often thought that living in a magical fantasy world would have all sorts of social, cultural and psychological impacts that we don't see in the real world.


If powerful D&D-style magic is abundant (as in, as abundant as proposed by the RAW formulas in the 3.5 DMG or anything similar) then the world doesn't resemble a medieval fantasy world at all if allowed to evolve naturally, it either explodes (leaving some sort of Dark Sun-esque remnant behind) or develops into some form of magic-mediated dystopia/utopia scenario that is positively bizarre along the lines of the weirder stuff in Planescape and Spelljammer.

In order to even consider the sociological and psychological implications of magic working we have to power it down from the D&D core assumptions by a lot, which of course many fantasy worlds do. In this scenario there are still implications, but as magic is likely to be rare and the bulk of people aren't going to understand how it works, the implications are going to be much more nebulous. Additionally, throughout most of human history the overwhelming majority of the human population believed in supernatural powers of a magical nature, of individuals with magical abilities, and so forth a huge portion of the world's population still sincerely believes in supernatural events of all kinds.

I suspect the bigger change has to do with the confirmed evidence of divine powers (assuming such powers exist). While some fantasy worlds go for some sort of 'all myths are true' construction, others allow for the specific deployment of powers derived from divine (or at least phenomenally powerful, fantasy gods often behave as merely overpowered humans and lack any sort of differentiation besides their raw oomph), others put forward a specific god or gods who are real and the others are explicitly lies. Depending on how your design a fantasy world, the implications of that are immense.

Lorsa
2016-02-09, 01:38 AM
Even if very expensive, the ability to raise dead has very non-trivial impact on society and people's psychology.

Aliquid
2016-02-09, 12:20 PM
The social and psychological impact of discern lies is trivial compared to the social and psychological impact of Evil and Good being objective, clearly defined, detectable, and often determined by birth (race).
Considering the number of ongoing debates on the definition of "good" and "evil" in D&D... I'm not so sure about the "clearly defined" part.

Racial wouldn't be that big of a deal... certain races wouldn't be part of society in the first place due to their inherent evilness.

Detectable would have an interesting impact. Imagine a group of clerics/paladins scanning a community on a regular basis with "detect evil", and hauling away any citizens that come up on the scan.
"But little Johnny hasn't done anything wrong!".
"Too bad, he is evil, and there is no place for his kind in our society".... could get messy with the ethics.


If powerful D&D-style magic is abundant (as in, as abundant as proposed by the RAW formulas in the 3.5 DMG or anything similar) then the world doesn't resemble a medieval fantasy world at all if allowed to evolve naturally, it either explodes (leaving some sort of Dark Sun-esque remnant behind) or develops into some form of magic-mediated dystopia/utopia scenario that is positively bizarre along the lines of the weirder stuff in Planescape and Spelljammer.Yeah, that's what I was thinking. The typical medieval fantasy world just wouldn't exist in that format. I'm not overly familiar with Spelljammer, but Planescape is a great example of something more... "realistic"
Realistic fantasy? Hmm not sure if that's the right word to use, but you get the idea.


I suspect the bigger change has to do with the confirmed evidence of divine powers (assuming such powers exist). While some fantasy worlds go for some sort of 'all myths are true' construction, others allow for the specific deployment of powers derived from divine (or at least phenomenally powerful, fantasy gods often behave as merely overpowered humans and lack any sort of differentiation besides their raw oomph), others put forward a specific god or gods who are real and the others are explicitly lies. Depending on how your design a fantasy world, the implications of that are immense.Religions would still be fighting against each other, but not because one is saying "mine is real and yours isn't", but because "my god hates your god" :)
But yes, the cultural impact of religion without any need to question faith would be big.


Even if very expensive, the ability to raise dead has very non-trivial impact on society and people's psychology.Even more power for the 1%

PersonMan
2016-02-09, 12:59 PM
Detectable would have an interesting impact. Imagine a group of clerics/paladins scanning a community on a regular basis with "detect evil", and hauling away any citizens that come up on the scan.
"But little Johnny hasn't done anything wrong!".
"Too bad, he is evil, and there is no place for his kind in our society".... could get messy with the ethics.

They actually couldn't - in 3.5, being Evil isn't a crime a Paladin or similar champion of Lawful Goodness would convict someone for.

awa
2016-02-09, 01:07 PM
good and evil maybe but I could see a totalitarian lawful evil society using detect chaos to root out rebels and malcontents.

Also agree that the logical consequence of d&d style magic is an apocalypse (although I see it as more self replicating undead specters and wraith rather then sand)

Segev
2016-02-09, 02:28 PM
In most cases, any society organized enough to do regular Alignment Scans would probably prefer to use them to target people for re-education rather than exile. Exile those chaotic rebels and they'll form a pesky resistance (or obnoxious bandit gang). Punish people just for having evil tendencies, and they'll get bitter.

Warn them, on the other hand, that you're aware of the dark things they're thinking, and offering to help them resolve them, and your LG paladin could find that seed of evil is legitimately a moral problem...in which case teaching them better before they do anything that needs punishment is a win all around...or is being set there by troubles that the paladin can help them out with (abusive parents, for example).

Even if they're grown ups, if you detect a start of darkness before it results in action, your good-aligned sort is probably going to want to try to talk them out of it and help them repent of any evil desires, not punish them pre-emptively. Punishment isn't something Good people LIKE inflicting; it's a sad necessity to quell worse behavior.

awa
2016-02-09, 02:45 PM
never said anything about exile I was picturing more 1984. Although depending on how evil the lawful evil society is you might find yourself being converted into material resources for the community vie devil sacrifice, or "volunteering" for the zombie work crew.

Aliquid
2016-02-09, 03:23 PM
They actually couldn't - in 3.5, being Evil isn't a crime a Paladin or similar champion of Lawful Goodness would convict someone for.Well I didn't say "convicted". I was thinking more along the lines of removal from society... but Segev seems to have gone into that in more detail.


In most cases, any society organized enough to do regular Alignment Scans would probably prefer to use them to target people for re-education rather than exile. Exile those chaotic rebels and they'll form a pesky resistance (or obnoxious bandit gang). Punish people just for having evil tendencies, and they'll get bitter.good point


Warn them, on the other hand, that you're aware of the dark things they're thinking, and offering to help them resolve them, and your LG paladin could find that seed of evil is legitimately a moral problem...in which case teaching them better before they do anything that needs punishment is a win all around...or is being set there by troubles that the paladin can help them out with (abusive parents, for example). This brings up the question of why people are evil. Is it learned or is it innate? If learned then yes the Paladin could do a very good service by teaching the individual to be better.

If the individual is simply evil in nature... and isn't really going to change then it depends on the type of "Evil". For a LE or maybe a NE, the Paladin/Cleric could make it very clear what is and isn't appropriate, and make it clear that they will be "watching" this individual. If they are CE, and it is innately within their personality... then the Cleric/Paladin has quite the dilemma on their hands.



good and evil maybe but I could see a totalitarian lawful evil society using detect chaos to root out rebels and malcontents.Think of all of the typical movies/books where your typical rebellious group undermines a LE dictatorship. Imagine how much harder it would have been for the characters if the establishment could use "detect chaos".... or "detect good"


Also agree that the logical consequence of d&d style magic is an apocalypse (although I see it as more self replicating undead specters and wraith rather then sand)Who knows. In the 1950s many people were quite sure we would have hit apocalypse by now with the growth of technology and the advent of the Nuke etc.

LibraryOgre
2016-02-09, 03:30 PM
Even if very expensive, the ability to raise dead has very non-trivial impact on society and people's psychology.

So, the Vlad Taltos series by Steven Brust has pretty easy raise dead. And Vlad is an assassin.

How does this impact life? Well, there are three kinds of assassinations. One is "kill the guy." It costs him some money to come back to life, and he gets a very definite message. The second is "make him unrevivifiable"... damage his brain enough that he can't be brought back. He doesn't learn much (unless you believe that all Dragaerans can reincarnate by traversing the Paths of the Dead), but you remove him from play. That's more expensive, and makes you a few more enemies. Then there's "Morganti", which means "Use this semi-alive weapon that, when it drinks his blood, will also eat his soul, leaving him unrevivifiable and with no possibility of traversing the Paths of the Dead."

The world also has easy teleportation (though it makes humans puke), lots of psychic messengers (and artists), and all sorts of similar things.

ExLibrisMortis
2016-02-09, 03:32 PM
Many big problems in science would be non-issues. For example, zone of truth solves non-trivial semantic problems when it decides what is or is not a lie in a given context. Tongues alone nearly invalidates the entire field of linguistics.


Edit: in the broader sense, D&D-style magic almost completely trivializes Earth-style physics. Magic becomes the new science and technology, because it's generally far more efficient than mundane tech.

awa
2016-02-09, 04:08 PM
Who knows. In the 1950s many people were quite sure we would have hit apocalypse by now with the growth of technology and the advent of the Nuke etc.

yet but nukes require a lot of people and resources to make and some one needs to decide to use one and even then it takes a lot of them being used with a conscious choice to end the world.

many undead can spontaneously occur and reproduce exponentially one Spector or wraith appearing in a city could transform the entire city over night and be so numerous that almost nothing could stop them.

Aliquid
2016-02-09, 05:40 PM
yet but nukes require a lot of people and resources to make and some one needs to decide to use one and even then it takes a lot of them being used with a conscious choice to end the world.

many undead can spontaneously occur and reproduce exponentially one Spector or wraith appearing in a city could transform the entire city over night and be so numerous that almost nothing could stop them.Well in the D&D world specifically yeah... I suppose so. There is a non-stop list of evil and extremely dangerous creatures, but only a handful of extremely powerful 'good' creatures to balance things out... but that's the whole purpose of Player Characters' existence.

Arbane
2016-02-09, 05:40 PM
many undead can spontaneously occur and reproduce exponentially one Spector or wraith appearing in a city could transform the entire city over night and be so numerous that almost nothing could stop them.

That's more of a D&D (and Zombopocalypse)-specific problem than a more general magic problem, though.

Religion and politics. Do monarchs genuinely have a Divine Mandate to rule? Will the priests cut out the middlemen and rule themselves? Will the gods do the same? What kind of religious disputes can you have when asking a god directly for a ruling is an option?

Magic vs. Conservation of energy: Can magic create perpetual-motion machines? If so, where's the energy coming from? Can magic create unlimited resources? If so, is that why the ocean is salty (http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0565.html)?

awa
2016-02-09, 09:16 PM
true it does depend on the magic system and d&d is not a friendly one for the sustained existence of civilization.

On a more general note when thinking about how a society would function i think how safe magical study is would be a big factor.

A lot of d&d though experiments assume that wizards know what it says in the phb that they have the exact effects and interactions described and no others, a setting that worked like that would look very different from one where bad luck when designing a new spell or combination of spells might melt your face or worse let some elder thing hollow you out and walk into town wearing you like a mask.

Sam113097
2016-02-10, 11:12 AM
Magic would probably replace science as a subject of study. Researchers would try to invent new spells instead of new technology. Instead of Thomas Edison gaining fame for inventing the lightbulb, it would be a wizard becoming famous for inventing a better Light spell. This can be seen in setting like Eberron, where magitek is ubiquitous. Because things like the laws of physics don't really matter if you can ignore them with magic, actual science would probably be ignored.

LibraryOgre
2016-02-10, 02:25 PM
Interestingly, Hackmaster just released their fifth part of the Zealot's Guide to World Conversion, including the Tellenic God of Magic, known as the Riftmaster. His dogma is that there is a finite amount of magic in the world, and that abuse of magic will destroy practical skills, eventually descending into a chaotic hell-hole where we're all replaced by golems. Every day, his followers are told the current state of magic, and are told to cast some spells, no spells, or every possible spell in order to keep it balanced.

Segev
2016-02-10, 02:39 PM
the Tellenic God of Magic, known as the Riftmaster. His dogma is ... that abuse of magic will destroy practical skills, eventually descending into a chaotic hell-hole.

I see what they did there.

LibraryOgre
2016-02-10, 07:31 PM
I see what they did there.

Actually been that way in the setting since the early 90s!

Milo v3
2016-02-10, 08:05 PM
They actually couldn't - in 3.5, being Evil isn't a crime a Paladin or similar champion of Lawful Goodness would convict someone for.
Well, laws are dependant on society and in 3.5e you get evil alignment for having done evil actions, so I could see societies that end up developing such laws and detaining people until they discover what evil actions they have committed.

Âmesang
2016-02-10, 08:21 PM
This thread has me thinking that I should probably have my longest running and wholly evil character learn misdirection. :smalltongue:


Even if very expensive, the ability to raise dead has very non-trivial impact on society and people's psychology.
Yamcha: "You make it sound like death has no consequence."
Tenshinhan: "It really doesn't. We're literally waiting to go back. Hell, this is Chiaotzu's second time."
Chiaotzu: "Next time I get a free sundae!"