Starting the Industrial Revolution?

[Destro2119]

So I have recently been very interested in the logical developments of fantasy/DnD societies into an Industrial Age all the way up to Starfinder/Stellaris levels of development.

How would you pull a Connecticut Yankee and begin the Industrial Revolution in such a world? How could magic be incorporated into it? What specific processes/methods/exploits would you employ?

If there are any other good articles/threads on this forum that address this, please direct me to them as well.

[Martin Greywolf]

We had a lengthy discussion about bronze age gunpowder weapons in Real armor and Weapons thread a while back.

Bottom line to this is that you, personally, can't do it. Neither can anyone without an access to a Wikipedia's worth of knowledge. No matter what advanced tech you want to implement, you will quickly find that that advanced tech needs a less advanced tech and that needs less advanced tech still and so on, and there's no way you can remember them all. Unless you have a very specific hobby.

To be able to kickstart an idustrial revolution, you need three general areas of tech:


metallurgy good enough to produce dependable crucible steel - crucible steel by itself is not enough, you need processes that let you control how much extra stuff is in there (like eliminating phosphorus), which is a 1700s tech
agriculture that allows you to produce enough of a surplus to have people left over to move into industry
chemistry that enables you to both achieve the first point and to allow you to do solid experimentation


If you know enough about all of these to do them with tools you have available - and agriculture bit is dependent on climate and available porduce and soil - you can start to build up to get an industrial revolution eventually. It will still take you a minimum of about 20 years to be able to start it, and that assumes you have enough popular and official support to completely dictate an education system in a large state. Actually, scratch that, you will need about 5 more years to set up schools to teach people what they need to know and give them books and literacy they need. Good thing printing press is a relatively simple invention. You do know how to set up a printing press, right?

There's a reason why Technological enlightment takes up about 10 years at base rate, and that's with an interstellar empire pouring resources into it. That -10 energy is the equivalent of 2.5 base generator districts.

If you don't have a wikipedia at hand, it depends on what you know. Things like printing press and plow are doable, but how much demand will there be for a printing press without a strong burgher class that is literate? Also remember that you will not have the cooperation of, well, anyone who resents to be told what to do by you.

As for how quickly a civilization advances, it depends on a couple of factors, but primary ones are information exchange speed and science investment. Roman empire had excellent former, but lackluster latter, so they ended up being on par with early renaissance era Europe, which had both at middling levels. If Roman empire survived a bit longer and stopped being "military above all", or at least got into alchemy the way Europe did, we may have seen industrial revolution sometime between 1000-1500. Assuming unrealistic reorganization of Roman empire to a point where it was sustainable without constant conquest.

[Ajustusdaniel]

Hmm. Martin Greywolf is probably correct about the Connecticut Yankee scenario in RL history, but my suspicion is that all of the necessary technology already exists, or is work-aroundable given magical alternatives, in the default Pathfinder setting.

I don't need a large agricultural surplus to free up labor if I can use necromancy as a force multiplier. Death's Head Talismans allow me to transfer the control of up to ten skeleton or zombies to a moderately skilled overseer (a necromanager, if you will) for a one time cost of a thousand gold (less once I've got an in-house necromancer on salary, ideally, which I'll want to do anyways, for patchwork on the workers, and also to sit in his office and stroke his signet ring with the skull on it, and to get it in the neck when the adventurers kick down my factory door).

So the first problem is largely organizational- breaking down the manufacture of whatever it is I'm building into small simple steps that can be carried out by mindless undead, possibly operating simple controls of some sort gnomish or dwarven clockwork mechanism.

Long term I'd probably want to transition to Animated Object machines, capable of operating independently, overseen by a small group of spellcasters capable of casting Mending and a couple of specialists capable of resolving more complex breakdowns, which I think would save on front doors and necromancer recruitment costs.

[Bugbear]

It would be near impossible hard. For a 21st century person to look back and do it would be easy....but it's near impossible for a person in say 1500 to see any of it.


Step one would need to be food. To have any industry you need to feed the working people. So, big farms.

Step two is you need the transportation. Step three storage and preservation of food.

And industry needs mechanical power.....steam and electricity. And "inventing" both of them takes years.

But then too....you don't need industry with magic. Industry makes lots of common items like clothing, but magic can make that out of thin air. One clothing creation box per town, so why have a clothing industry?

Same way some clerics can make food and water magic items....and you would not need a food industry.

But it will depend on how much magic your world has: magic fills some holes, but does make other ones.

[Destro2119]

We had a lengthy discussion about bronze age gunpowder weapons in Real armor and Weapons thread a while back.

Bottom line to this is that you, personally, can't do it. Neither can anyone without an access to a Wikipedia's worth of knowledge. No matter what advanced tech you want to implement, you will quickly find that that advanced tech needs a less advanced tech and that needs less advanced tech still and so on, and there's no way you can remember them all. Unless you have a very specific hobby.

To be able to kickstart an idustrial revolution, you need three general areas of tech:


metallurgy good enough to produce dependable crucible steel - crucible steel by itself is not enough, you need processes that let you control how much extra stuff is in there (like eliminating phosphorus), which is a 1700s tech
agriculture that allows you to produce enough of a surplus to have people left over to move into industry
chemistry that enables you to both achieve the first point and to allow you to do solid experimentation


If you know enough about all of these to do them with tools you have available - and agriculture bit is dependent on climate and available porduce and soil - you can start to build up to get an industrial revolution eventually. It will still take you a minimum of about 20 years to be able to start it, and that assumes you have enough popular and official support to completely dictate an education system in a large state. Actually, scratch that, you will need about 5 more years to set up schools to teach people what they need to know and give them books and literacy they need. Good thing printing press is a relatively simple invention. You do know how to set up a printing press, right?

There's a reason why Technological enlightment takes up about 10 years at base rate, and that's with an interstellar empire pouring resources into it. That -10 energy is the equivalent of 2.5 base generator districts.

If you don't have a wikipedia at hand, it depends on what you know. Things like printing press and plow are doable, but how much demand will there be for a printing press without a strong burgher class that is literate? Also remember that you will not have the cooperation of, well, anyone who resents to be told what to do by you.

As for how quickly a civilization advances, it depends on a couple of factors, but primary ones are information exchange speed and science investment. Roman empire had excellent former, but lackluster latter, so they ended up being on par with early renaissance era Europe, which had both at middling levels. If Roman empire survived a bit longer and stopped being "military above all", or at least got into alchemy the way Europe did, we may have seen industrial revolution sometime between 1000-1500. Assuming unrealistic reorganization of Roman empire to a point where it was sustainable without constant conquest.

TBH, I meant less one semi-deific figure giving everybody ALL THE TECHS and more how the world might naturally develop such things (unless in certain outrageous examples: In the SFverse, the god of technology literally gave everybody FTL, not to mention what other deific interventions might have happened during the Gap.) Like that Greyhawk 2000 article or Dragonstar.

In essence, I am theorycrafting how such things would look ie what would the "average" factory look like? In addition, another major point of the Industrial Revolution was agricultural developments, replicable to a point with Plant Growth, but how would one raise the efficiency even higher?

EDIT: to clarify, PathfinderVerse and Greyhawk has everything you say is needed to start the IR (FR is behind but it's a special case).

[Ajustusdaniel]

TBH, I meant less one semi-deific figure giving everybody ALL THE TECHS and more how the world might naturally develop such things. For example, in the SFverse, the god of technology literally gave everybody FTL, not to mention what other deific interventions might have happened durng the Gap.

In essence, I am theorycrafting how such things would look ie what would the "average" factory look like? In addition, another major point of the Industrial Revolution was agricultural developments, replicable to a point with Plant Growth, but how would one raise the efficiency even higher?

The classic, if somewhat cheesy, way to do it is to abuse traps by pointing out that there's no rules reason you can't build a self-resetting trap of Create Food and Water.

More generally, since you have A) Magic Spells that can create healthful food and drink, and B) Magic items that can duplicate the functions of spells without needing further investment from the caster, that's probably your best long-term solution, although you'll run into start up costs.

[Gavinfoxx]

You don't really start the industrial revolution as much as you start the magitech revolution. See my handbook:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aG4P3dU6WP3pq8mW9l1qztFeNfqQHyI22oJe09i8KWw/edit

I think there's a few more Pathfinder-specific tricks that I don't mention since the last time I updated it, though!

[Morty_Jhones]

the thing is you have to ask your self

How much can magic Do?

yes you might be able to make cloathes or food,
but
Is the food tasty and filling?
when you read the discription appart for hero's feast the ansser is NO, thin grull or proage with water! BLAG!!!!!
OY farmer get your ass back in that field, I want spudds and i want them NOW!

It the same for maufacturing magic, unless the Mage is realy skilled at cloth making then any magic formed cloathing would be a simple overall.

So don't piss of your talor he may be a level 3 commoner or exspert, but he could be a level 20 Mage in disgize.

[Ajustusdaniel]

the thing is you have to ask your self

How much can magic Do?

yes you might be able to make cloathes or food,
but
Is the food tasty and filling?
when you read the discription appart for hero's feast the ansser is NO, thin grull or proage with water! BLAG!!!!!
OY farmer get your ass back in that field, I want spudds and i want them NOW!

It the same for maufacturing magic, unless the Mage is realy skilled at cloth making then any magic formed cloathing would be a simple overall.

So don't piss of your talor he may be a level 3 commoner or exspert, but he could be a level 20 Mage in disgize.

"Highly nourishing, if rather bland," in the case of Create Food and Water. Of course, if you wanted, you could run it through a magic item of Prestidigitation set to flavor it however you liked. You could even separate the water out and run it through a magic item of Enhance Water (with mud mixed in first if you prefer a dark beer).

[Destro2119]

The classic, if somewhat cheesy, way to do it is to abuse traps by pointing out that there's no rules reason you can't build a self-resetting trap of Create Food and Water.

More generally, since you have A) Magic Spells that can create healthful food and drink, and B) Magic items that can duplicate the functions of spells without needing further investment from the caster, that's probably your best long-term solution, although you'll run into start up costs.

I remember something about using Servant Horde with magecraft to mass produce items. That or make intelligent magic items with wizard levels and crafting wrights to mass produce magic.

Or use the downtime rules and a horn of plentiful magic to mass produce Goods and turn Goods into Magic.

[freduncio]

http://www.paultwister.com/
The Tales Of Paul Twister: A geek from modern-
day Earth gets dropped into a Standard Fantasy Setting. He'd really prefer to live in the modern world, but he can't get home, so he starts trying to introduce the principles of modern technology into the world in which he finds himself. Except he can't really do that because, being a child of the modern world, he has only the barest understanding of how technology actually works, so he gets actual scholars and craftsmen to work with him on developing the necessary principles. (Plus a bunch of epic fantasy stuff also going on which he gets dragged into the middle of.)

[Destro2119]

http://www.paultwister.com/
The Tales Of Paul Twister: A geek from modern-
day Earth gets dropped into a Standard Fantasy Setting. He'd really prefer to live in the modern world, but he can't get home, so he starts trying to introduce the principles of modern technology into the world in which he finds himself. Except he can't really do that because, being a child of the modern world, he has only the barest understanding of how technology actually works, so he gets actual scholars and craftsmen to work with him on developing the necessary principles. (Plus a bunch of epic fantasy stuff also going on which he gets dragged into the middle of.)

The only problem is, that universe is kept stagnant for plot reasons much like FR because of Deific (or at least something similar) intervention. Golarion and Greyhawk have no such limitations, and already have methods to increase industry.