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MonkeySage
2018-03-08, 11:51 PM
My newest project involves a setting in which there's no magic. At most, this setting, which is set in a distant future, is a bronze age society. Technology from the past seems like magic.

But how can I get that to work in a practical sense?

Mordaedil
2018-03-09, 02:58 AM
So your game has no magic, that's fairly easy, just don't have any magic. I do have some questions about the other features of your setting however. You say it's in the distant future, where civilization has collapsed and started over, and only recently gotten to the bronze age.

What else has changed? Have demi-humans emerged in this future time-line, or was the past ruled by elves, not humans? What separates the two societies and time-periods and what connects them? Have all science of making concrete, producing steel been lost due to some serious set-back in evolution or are the new people just not curious or learned enough to quickly advance their civilization? When discovering artifacts from the past, how do they still work and what hinders the society from developing from simply observing the craftsmanship of the weapons and such?

Why are they using a metal that is so soft when stronger metalurgy would be simple to figure out if knowledge exists?

Knaight
2018-03-09, 03:02 AM
Just don't have a magic system. They're not a required part of all RPGs, and there's no shortage of fantasy settings set after the fall of a technological power, with a system made to fit.

Cespenar
2018-03-09, 03:57 AM
Just don't have a magic system. They're not a required part of all RPGs, and there's no shortage of fantasy settings set after the fall of a technological power, with a system made to fit.

This basically.

If you want to underline the effects of that Clarke quote, try to sprinkle high tech equipment across the setting but treat them as weird magical items: keep your descriptions mysterious and limited. A recent example to draw from might be Torment: Tides of Numenera, if you haven't checked it already.

Lvl 2 Expert
2018-03-09, 04:43 AM
Maybe have rituals for using the technology, riddled with unnecessary steps and counterproductive parts. That's how they learned to operate it, so that's how they'll operate it. It would be rather stupid for people to actually keep doing things like that for any long period of time, but it's fun.

Never refer to anything by their real name. Mix technology the players would know like a blender, a Geiger teller or a steam pump with future technologies, like a scanner that shows a green light if the tire you aim it at is at optimal temperature based on its rubber composition, a kit that can build rats for laboratory use based on genetic codes and parameters or a wrist mounted antimatter storage container, but don't point out the difference. Only describe what it looks like to the people in the setting and what the NPCs do with it.

Logosloki
2018-03-09, 04:55 AM
My newest project involves a setting in which there's no magic. At most, this setting, which is set in a distant future, is a bronze age society. Technology from the past seems like magic.

But how can I get that to work in a practical sense?

mnemonic prayers that contain instructions on how to use long abandoned machines. Think of it like how latin became a liturgical language for western europe, a group of people know how to speak say, english, and everyone else speaks their common tongues.Probably add in some ritualistic elements from bronze age societies like choruses, elemental invocation, sacrifices, some boffo to hide what is mundane. Your 'magic users' might not even be aware of what is necessary to make something work and what is purely for tradition.

BWR
2018-03-09, 05:45 AM
It depends on what you mean by 'magic system. If you mean you want mechanics for how to use magic in your game that doesn't contain magic, I'm gonna have to throw in with the "Do you really need a magic system if there is no magic?" crowd.
Now, if you want to, as the last couple of posters suggested, just have the remnants of technology, either just memory of or some actual relics, be the source of ritual and magical belief, then look at some common scientific knowledge and common technological items are perceived of by people and just greatly twist details and reasons. Plenty of media has similar things. The Doctor Who episode "The Face of Evil", for instance, has some good stuff you can steal.

Kaptin Keen
2018-03-09, 09:21 AM
There was a game - Hired Guns - in which alien artifacts called psi foci allowed players magic powers.

I adapted that for a game of Shadowrun, in which everyone played characters without any magic. There were different foci - more slots but lower power, or higher power but fewer slots. And you could only carry one.

This worked a charm.

MonkeySage
2018-03-09, 10:33 AM
So your game has no magic, that's fairly easy, just don't have any magic. I do have some questions about the other features of your setting however. You say it's in the distant future, where civilization has collapsed and started over, and only recently gotten to the bronze age.

What else has changed? Have demi-humans emerged in this future time-line, or was the past ruled by elves, not humans? What separates the two societies and time-periods and what connects them? Have all science of making concrete, producing steel been lost due to some serious set-back in evolution or are the new people just not curious or learned enough to quickly advance their civilization? When discovering artifacts from the past, how do they still work and what hinders the society from developing from simply observing the craftsmanship of the weapons and such?

Why are they using a metal that is so soft when stronger metalurgy would be simple to figure out if knowledge exists?

Well, basically, this was Earth. Humans have been gone for a while, and this is all about their replacements. Cities have been nearly completely reclaimed by nature, roads have washed away, etc. Humanity has been replaced by anthros(I'll leave it up to imagination how earth has been taken over by anthros- nobody in setting knows. Just as nobody knows how long humans have been gone), and there's not a lot that still works. Finding something that does is a stroke of luck- and there were a few humans who saw the writing on the wall. They left a few instructions for whatever replaces them, to help them avoid the mistakes humans made, but not enough to rapidly advance them up the tech tree.

If I were to run a game with this, I'd have that be a major plot point- rumors of haunted ruins, something like that.

Pelle
2018-03-09, 10:45 AM
Use a Knowledge Arcana type skill to learn how to use the magic (old high tech) items?

Thrudd
2018-03-09, 12:08 PM
Look at "Mutant Crawl Classics", which is basically what you describe. It has basically D&D style magic but its source is ancient AI or left over technology. Also Gamma World and the free retro clone Mutant Future. These have tech found as loot which the characters need to make a roll to be able to use and/or repair.

Rhedyn
2018-03-09, 12:24 PM
My newest project involves a setting in which there's no magic. At most, this setting, which is set in a distant future, is a bronze age society. Technology from the past seems like magic.

But how can I get that to work in a practical sense?
Savage Worlds weird science arcane background, just give trappings of ancient technology to everything and "mages" are those that can intuit how it works better.

Cosi
2018-03-09, 01:10 PM
I agree that you don't necessarily need a magic system to have a RPG. Lots of RPGs don't (for example, non-Shadowrun Cyberpunk RPGs).

That said, I'm not sure what you mean by "Technology from the past seems like magic". That could easily be a setting where there's a bunch of nano-tech and quantum nonsense running around that is functionally indistinguishable from magic, or it could mean a setting where people are sufficiently low-tech that a functional lazer rifle is godlike power, or anything in between. In the first setting, you can just have a traditional magic system and maybe have a big reveal at some point where people discover that their healing magic is actually medical nanotech. That has the advantage of allowing you to give characters totally arbitrary power ups on the basis of however the old tech worked together. In the second setting, just write up whatever tech you want in whatever system you're using and drop it in where you feel appropriate.

One thing you could do to make old tech feel "weird" would be to sprinkle AI everywhere. Weapons are keyed to activation codes in dead languages, which sound like spells to people who have no idea what the "US Marines" or the "People's Liberation Army" are. Various AIs have gone off mission in various ways or degrees and now what things that are incomprehensible or bizarre (maybe whatever Google turned in to is still trying to index everything, so it tells you the secrets of the universe in exchange for telling it the street names in a town it's never heard of before). An AI-piloted drone, tank, or submarine is a lot like a dragon, tarrasque, or leviathan respectively.

I suggest reading Empire of the East and/or Prince of Thorns for settings in the style you seem interested in.

Khedrac
2018-03-09, 04:58 PM
I think Clarke's Law applies - technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced

It's over 20 years since I saw the rules, but iirc Gamma World had a table for random success/failure for characters attempting to activate technological items.
I would create a table for attempting to activate items something like: "catastrophic failure", "device destuction", "something breaks off", "no effect", "something happens with no practical effect", "useful result" and "device works".
I would look to sort the results so a modifer could be applied fo repeat attempts/extra time that could cause either success of failure (the longer you play with it the more likely something will happen - good or bad).
Also look at modifers for trying to replicate the previous result - just because they got a gun to fire once does not mean they can do so automatically a second time.

I would also avoid describing items too well - if the players realise what it is it will be very hard for them not to shape their instructions for their characters fiddling with a device according to their knowledge (e.g. I try moving the litte bit sticking out that is inside the look coming out from the main shaft of the pole = I pull the trigger). Leave each itme a mystery and let the table rule what the characters find out about it.