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2021-01-23, 09:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
So I have recently been reading up on the Epic Level Handbook and I recently realized that, for a massive planar metropolis, Union seems surprisingly primitive and medieval. Wood, torches, stone and leather are still used instead of composite alloys, lightbulbs and nylon even though thousands of people come through the place and at least some must be technologically advanced enough for that.
Heck, practically every other person in Union is smart enough as to be capable of creating all the tech and advancements of Shadowrun or Starfinder singlehandedly. Or at least you could find someone like that there. For example, one of the guys working for the Order of the Book could have just figured out databases and computers to upload the spells onto, even if it took epic magic which is basically a nonissue anyways.
Yet, we don't see even a hint of this on Union. Even across the universe AND the multiverse it seems everyone has swords, leather, and crossbows as their most advanced weapon. What if the US army comes through a gate and tries to conquer Union? Will its denizens be completely unable to resist?
Any information you give is welcomed.Last edited by Destro2119; 2021-01-23 at 09:24 PM.
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2021-01-23, 10:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
Your observation goes beyond the specific example.
For some reason, everyone equayes fantasy with the medieval era: torches light the streets. Horses pull a rickety old wagon...
Toilets are unheard of.
And yet, you have people walking around with items- tech, if you will- that reflect a clear a superior knowledge regarding crafting and ingenuity. This said knowledge need not be the one belonging to the wearer- PCs tend to be, for the most part, feeble minded and remorseless killers with expensive tools.
The world you create need not be one resembling an ignorant time in history. You can still have swords being swung around...
and a perfectly working sewer system. And even cell phones.
Case in point: Final Fantasy VII
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2021-01-23, 11:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
A world with dnd style magic should not be medieval, quite true.
But asking why they don't have modern technology is a funny question.
They already have a resource superior to our modern technology, it's called magic.
With it they can create automatons that follow any order, heal any injury or disease including death itself, and unleash wrath that makes the 2d8 of an automatic rifle look like a love tap.
Not to mention change someone's species, create artificial intelligences, control the weather, or create things ex nihilo.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
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2021-01-24, 12:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
Union is really underwhelming, even leaving technology aside. This is an Epic-level place built by an organization with staggering levels of resources. It shouldn't just be mostly an ordinary town!
Like, a while ago a played a 20th level character (in Pathfinder, so no Epic levels and somewhat less craziness available than 3.5). Just as a 20th level character with normal resources, I was able to construct a city-size demiplane network with:
* Control of all environmental aspects, including gravity and positive/negative polarity and such.
* Telepathic communication and control comparable to a modern computer network.
* Guards that were little barely-visible dots but packed enough punch to easily handle a Balor, in basically unlimited quantities.
* Easy access from anywhere to anywhere, and to most spells and gear on demand.
* Windows showing events in other planes, memory bars, illusory landscapes, etc.
While probably more high-op than WotC would expect a single character to be, it's nothing that couldn't be achieved at a higher resource cost by very normal methods. A consortium of non-Epic magic items merchants with a tenth of the resources Union is said to involve should have something at least as good as the above, and probably better.
Now you could say that maybe it's just an aesthetic. Union looks like a normal prime-material town because it was intentionally designed to look like one. Well besides the fact that nothing about the Mercane indicates such a preference, looking normal doesn't really impede any of the above - Union still could (and should) be functionally advanced even if it resembled a simple pastoral village.Last edited by icefractal; 2021-01-24 at 12:26 AM.
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2021-01-24, 01:13 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
The ELH was written very early in 3e's publication cycle, to the point that it is so low-optimization as to be effectively anti-optimization both in expectations and in the simple fact that many of the more advanced optimization tricks literally did not exist yet because the spells/feats/special abilities/etc had not yet been written.
That being said, Union is underwhelming from the perspective of even what epic-level 2e characters (who are orders of magnitude less powerful than 3e characters in terms of what high-level casters can do) could reasonably be expected to accomplish and where in fact actually presented as having done in terms of books written about Netheril and certain other high-magic localities in D&D's publication record.
Honestly, I think Union was thrown together very quickly as a potential new 'planar hub' location because the powers that be weren't sure whether they wanted to keep using Sigil or not at that point. As it happened the answer with regards to Sigil was 'yes' and Union was basically never mentioned again.
Originally Posted by AlanBruce
Beyond that, D&D, specifically was very grounded in the Medieval Period - or more accurately the medieval period as understood by a bunch of adult nerds in the 1970s, which resulted in a portrayal that hasn't held up especially well when seen from the vantage of 2021 - when it was designed. D&D was intended to facilitate gameplay in a world that hews to the conventions of either High Fantasy or Sword & Sorcery, both of which were if not precisely medieval (several of the inspirational sources, such as Conan, have much more of Bronze Age vibe), at least viable using the designer's understanding of medieval period technologies. It didn't exactly hold to that, weird elements drawn from other genres got included very early on, but that was the intention.
It's also important that, during the time D&D fluff got refined and codified and the D&D worlds took on their mostly coherent fluff structures in the 1980s and 1990s when TSR churned out box sets describing them, characters were a lot less powerful. The ability of a 30th level wizard in 2e AD&D to upgrade the global tech level was not even close to what a 3e or 3.5e character could do. I mean, in order to make Netheril work, Ed Greenwood had to distinctly bend the rules, notably to allow for the creation of magical items in an industrialized fashion, which otherwise simply wasn't possible in 2e.
The world you create need not be one resembling an ignorant time in history. You can still have swords being swung around...
and a perfectly working sewer system. And even cell phones.
Case in point: Final Fantasy VII
Unfortunately its hard to sustain such a cheat, because there's usually some work around - which hey, Dune also includes an example of, gotta love the classics - and in tabletop in particular magitech is extremely vulnerable to abuse by creatively minded people with knowledge of STEM principles, something that encompasses most gaming tables. This why the various publishers of D&D and D&D derived games like Pathfinder, have, over the years, tried to pretend it's impossible to turn a D&D world into a magitech utopia (or slowly cooling debris field), even though it absolutely is.
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2021-01-24, 01:20 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
I feel I should point out that everything we humans in the real world needed to create many modern inventions had been around for a bazillion years before we got around to actually inventing those things.
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2021-01-24, 08:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
Yeah, but the people in Union can easily access the same (Plane of Earth for mineral wealth, etc etc) and if not, they can just PAO or True Creation it from thin air. Also, they are not cavemen starting from scratch they are a city that has hundreds of genius level residents and people from different planets/planes of existences passing through.
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2021-01-24, 09:31 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
I suspect you misunderstand. Perhaps an example:
The Greeks had a working steam engine. But they didn't seem to use it for anything. No trains, no powered boats, no production plants, et cetera. Why? Well, why would they? They had slaves to do all the work, so there wasn't any real point in the thing for them.
Most the time when folks have something that works well enough, they don't go looking for better solutions (especially when the search is expensive and doesn't promise results). So a society that has slaves and most stuff covered by basic magic... isn't necessarily going to be looking to better everything for the have-nots. Especially when the folks that are evil are just as "up there" as the folks that are good.....Last edited by Jack_Simth; 2021-01-24 at 09:32 AM.
Of course, by the time I finish this post, it will already be obsolete. C'est la vie.
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2021-01-24, 09:34 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
Hm, I don't know. I find it more then a bit silly to complain that a fantasy settings actually resembles a fantasy aesthetic.
If you don't like that, use a different setting.
There is nothing more to it.
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2021-01-24, 11:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
Have you seen the movie Onward? It shows what might happen when magic gets overtaken by technology (in a simplified Disney way). It doesn't factor in the potential age defying methods, but if it is easier to use a lightbulb than learn the spell, people forget how to use magic because people are lazy.
If magic is easy enough to learn, they never figure out the tech (as several above have pointed out).
Everton integrated the two pretty well, resulting in generally less high level magic but a lot of magic/ elemental powered tech.
Also people in power prefer to stay in power- not many are selfless. Epic wizards don't encourage everyone else to reach their level of power.
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2021-01-24, 11:15 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
Well, the Real World answer is that the makers of D&D want to keep it a vague Medieval Renaissance setting. The idea is simple enough: the appeal of D&D is the roughly right before 1400 or so setting. Roughly right before gunpowder. Once you even add gunpowder, it's not really "D&D" to most people.
The second problem is space. Union, for example, does not get lots of pages in the book. And it would take lots of pages to describe 'advanced' place, and even more pages to describe the 'advanced' rules.
And that leads right into the third big problem: most writers could not do it if they tried. They might be able to say "Union is just like New York City in 2021", but would be hard pressed to give many details. You might get things like "the city has a magic train that goes Weeeee', but not too much else. Magical world building is hard, and it's about ten times harder using an D&D rules set. Most writers are not up to the challenge. They simply don't have the rule mastery, rule knowledge, game knowledge and imagination to do it.
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In game universe....well there is no reason Union or any other place would be a "modern wonderland".
The big problem here is the looking back one. As someone in the 21st century looking back into a 13th century world it is beyond easy to say "well why don't they just use magic to create computers". But that 21st century person has the advantage of knowing what a computer is and what it can do. But for someone IN the 13th century it is near impossible for them to think of that.
For example, have you ever tried to explain computers, the internet or any technology to a typically older person who grew up in a world without it? Are you old enough to remember the world without modern tech? If your in the 21st century, can you think up of the next new tech?
To go from the 13th century tech to 21st century tech took hundreds of years. To say it was slow is an understatement. Slowly improvements were made, but new ideas only come along once in a while. And new ideas are SLOW to come out. And most ideas need the support of the rest of the world too as few people create things in a vacuum. Most, if not all, advancement uses and builds on other advancements. And education, reading and communication are right at the top of such spreads.
Remember back in the day when you wanted to learn something, you had two options: 1.Find a book that told you about the topic...good luck. Or 2. Find someone to teach and tell you about it. But now look at 2021. With just You Tube alone you can find a ton of ton of information on nearly everything, in a couple minutes, with just the push of a button.
The second big problem is the magic is a huge crutch. Magic stifles invention. The basic reason anything is created and invented is need. The light bulb was invented so humans can see in the dark....but with magic is very easy to make glowing light, an everburing touch, or just see in the dark. And not only is there very little need, but there is very little advancement to build off of in the first place. Unlike Earth, you don't have countless people before you creating things and inventing things....because they have no need to do so.
The third problem is the alien problem. A true 21st century D&D city would be alien to us. To an extreme. It would be confusing and make no sense and maybe most of all not be fun and cool. It's more then enough to look at a lot of cultures that are not your own and be amazed at how different they are then what you think is normal. And it's about a hundred more times strange to think of the way anything was in the past. If fact, you might note just about all modern media looks back at the past with rose colored glasses. Any fiction set in history 'looks cool' to the modern audience. And that is on top of adding over the top drama and making it safe for a modern view point.
And this is a huge problem for fantasy and sci fi. Lots of classic such fiction was very alien, describing a world nothing like our own. It's popular enough, but does not have the broad appeal of the "just like Earth, but a little different". Both Star Wars and Star Trek have spaceships and zap guns....and then everything else is exactly like it is on modern Earth.
To illustrate this, picture a typical farmer from 1750. They have nothing we consider basic today: no running clean water, no sewer, no electricity, no phone, and no internet. They have to do everything by hand....and by hand that does basically mean THEY have to do it by hand. A typical day is endless work from sunrise to sunset. So then have our farmer get a peak into the future of 2021. And they see someone simply sitting at home in front of a TV/computer screen from sunup to sunset. Water just "comes out of the wall", and so does heat. Lights and nearly all electrical machines are beyond is understanding. One 'box' keeps food cool or frozen and another box 'cooks' food with no fire. And radio, TV, computers and internet are all things way, way, way beyond the farmers understanding. And things like social media...not a chance.
Even the poor guy from say 1980 might be able to understand in a vague way radio, TV, computers and internet of 2021....but it's still light years beyond anything he can really imagine. And he'd be at a huge loss to understand social media.
This brings us back to the 21st century Union city: it would make no sense to a typical 21st century Earth person. Just take the 700 years of magic development: So it's a 25th dimensional outside of time dimensional transcendental relativity differentiated paradox machine settlement. Or simply put....not the sort of place a 'hardy adventuring group' could just walk into to go shopping or have a drink at the tavern.
The fourth and final one is that most people like the "real thing" better then super advanced magic/tech. Many people would rather eat real grown food, not 'food' made by magic or science. Many people like the light and warmth of a real fire. Many people like to cook, not get a meal with the punch of a button or wave of a hand. Many people would much rather read a book, then watch the movie....or have it downloaded into their brain.
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2021-01-24, 01:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
Impressive! Are there any more articles on this subject?
PS: The last line is exactly why I don't like Golarion or Greyhawk etc. To hear the devs say it, you would think that everyone there suffers from mental blocks large enough that you wonder how steel was discovered in the world.Last edited by Destro2119; 2021-01-24 at 01:50 PM.
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2021-01-24, 01:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
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2021-01-24, 01:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
Then why doesn't Union look even a little like Eberron?
Also, the people going to Union are people who have been all over the planes and the universe as well. Are you telling me that not even a single one had advanced tech? Also, these people are not 17th century farmers, they are incredibly intelligent individuals with tons of resources who might develop things for fun if not for sheer mundane utility of improving the area.All Classes Matter
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2021-01-24, 01:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
Well, if they actively did so, I suspect there would be like only 1-3 epic wizards, not like hundreds of them (tens of hundreds or thousands if you count the almost epic ones).
But this is off-point-- the real point is why don't they mass make technomagical items like in Eberron to overall improve life? Hell, at this point they can rule star systems and dimensions, and Union, one of the premier hang-out spots, is still so medieval? It's not like there are laws in Union to stop tech, the mercanes would love it because it is a trading city!Last edited by Destro2119; 2021-09-13 at 12:31 PM.
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2021-01-24, 01:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
It is simply a decoy.
It is meant to look like a capital but it is not and is here only so that murderhobos go and be generally dangerous in a place where few valuables are.
If you are not a murderhobo or one form of adventurer or mercenary or "hero"(you know the ones that are heroes because they defeated and stole a lot of stuff) they show you the real capital with tons of magical cool stuff.
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2021-01-24, 01:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
So what would a TRULY epic city look like?
PS: To the "magic stifles tech" people-- only if EVERYONE has it. If this is not true, you will eventually have Eberron when everyone realizes that magic is so good they just learn it (through feats that give you spells like a version of 5e's Magic initiate or just the magewright class), and then they make massive improvements for those who can't.
To the "high-powered wizards stop things" people, then there should be FAR less epics in the multiverse than as many Union or Sigil has (not enough for organizations). And if they ever got in a fight, I am pretty sure we wouldn't have a universe to put Union in.Last edited by Destro2119; 2022-07-13 at 06:59 PM.
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2021-01-24, 02:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
Note: Dragon #277 (November 2000) has three articles:
Steampunk:
Post-industrial:
Spoiler: Greyhawk 2000
Greyhawk 2000 for November 2000
and variable:
Spoiler: Fantasy Futures
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2021-01-24, 03:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
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2021-01-24, 04:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
Yes! One of the best issues in Dragon history!
One thing though: it seems that a lot of the high magic things would almost make anything being "Steampunk" per se obsolete. I could see Eberron being a stepping stone to replace it and build onto what would ultimately become the post-industrial /future settings (which might result in said settings becoming more magical).All Classes Matter
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2021-01-24, 04:50 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
Remember, Medieval times (where D&D is mostly based) were actually a step back in many aspects. The Romans had in-house plumbing already. The Greek were a step away from a steam engine. Superstition ruled the day, and science/"magic" was suppressed if not outlawed completely.
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2021-01-24, 05:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
It depends on the place, the amount of misconceptions your reader got about the past(it is a prime factor when wanting to do a story that is real looking instead of a story that is based on real things) and a bunch of other factors.
Technology kept progressing during the medieval times such as the compass continuing to spread and improve during that time.
There was in fact lots of technological progress(I will not do a list because it would take months to do a correct one).
The problem is that if you just say "medieval" it is spread over a 10 centuries time period so what you heard about it might be about a shorter time period but then you just said "medieval" instead of saying "in that specific continent right when famine, plague and some wars did hit it".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages
And superstition probably ruled the days before the middle ages it is just that there is a lot less records of that due to those time periods being further away.
In fact superstition rules right now: it is a constant thing rather than a punctual thing.Last edited by noob; 2021-01-24 at 05:49 PM.
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2021-01-24, 05:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-01-24, 05:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
Well, the Tippyverse is one concept for a highly advanced D&D setting. It's not a perfect or complete concept and is mainly built around the impact of a single magical effect - Teleportation Circles - but it gets you at least oriented conceptually.
One of the difficulties with regard to projecting the actual impact of 3.X level D&D magic is that the magic system is comprised of thousands of individual components - individual spells, magical items, and monster abilities - that were rarely if ever designed to directly interact with each other. Many of these effects, like teleportation circles, are individually powerful enough to drastically deform the world from medieval stasis entirely on their own. Considering them all together rapidly becomes nearly impossible.
Most fantasy concepts of advanced magitech societies mimic what we know actual technology can provide because that's the only model we have.
On a broader level, speculative fiction struggles with the presentation of worlds in which life for the average individual has drastically changed from the human norm. A setting like Eclipse Phase (it's free to get the pdfs so it's very much worth looking at) throws so much advanced technology into the mix that the setting becomes immensely alien to the known human experience in a hurry. And as a scenario grows more and more distant from the typical known human condition it grows more and more distant from typical human stories as well, making it extremely difficult to actually use such a setting. Conversely, one of the appeals of the typical medieval fantasy is that it simplifies.
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2021-01-24, 06:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-01-24, 06:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-01-24, 06:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-01-24, 06:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-01-24, 06:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
2e had a very elegant answer to this: because, while there may be no *rules*, there are *laws* preventing it. As in laws of physics.
Worlds have a technology rating, and technology beyond that *simply doesn't work*.
Now, that doesn't stop a purely magical utopia from forming, but… I've yet to see the PCs even attempt to create one.
Well, their weapons might well simply stop working, and Google wouldn't be available to tell them what to do. So I expect that they'd just sit there patiently waiting for the Illithid vendors to decide whether or not their brains had spoiled.
Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, is one of several of my characters familiar with multiple technology levels.
Honestly, Quertus has never been terribly impressed with technology. It's biggest selling point is, "anyone can use it", which, Quertus reasons, means that you're putting more power into less competent hands, and breeding your population for incompetence. He really can't fathom why you'd want to do either.
From his perspective, he really hasn't found technological worlds to have any real advantages, either. They still have problems - disease, death, war, hunger, pollution, nuclear winter, extinction (species or complete) - and seemingly much less ability (or, at times, wherewithal) to solve them.
Technological armies have a much harder time adapting to "suddenly, Dragons" than magical armies do to "suddenly, orbital bombardment" (as Endgame demonstrates ).
I've never seen technology catch on in a world with (good, reliable, powerful, commonly-known) magic - and, really, never seen a reason for it to do so, either.
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2021-01-24, 06:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Is the Multiverse Medieval?/Why is the city of Union so primitive?
Last edited by Destro2119; 2022-04-09 at 06:12 PM.
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