D&D General Technology in D&D, the IRL Timeline, and Pausing It.

[Faolyn]

Without coal, though, metallurgy at scale stalls out, unless you burn huge amounts of wood, or another energy source is available.

Like the Eberron route, and go with captive elementals. Or the Discworld way, with pet tiny dragons. Or the Dwarf Fortress route and magma forges.

Actually, the latter could make for an interesting world where only dwarfs (or their equivalent) are capable of really good metallurgy.

 

[Umbran]

Like the Eberron route, and go with captive elementals. Or the Discworld way, with pet tiny dragons. Or the Dwarf Fortress route and magma forges.

In the recently released Coyote & Crow, the authors stipulate a world in which large scale fossil fuel use... just didn't happen. The coal and oil is there, it simply hasn't been exploited. I have not seen in the setting material a statement of how they got to high technology without, they just say it happened.

I wound up turning that one over in my head so much I lost much of a night's sleep chewing over the possibilities - I wound up with head-canon that an organic room-tempterature superconducting material was discovered, enabling a jump to early use of wind and solar electricity far beyond what we've see in our world.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I find the most attempts to overtly justify technological stunting without very high magic without direct, overt and ongoing divine interference raises the question of how people didn't suck and die long before discovering magic.

Sometimes it's okay to not explain things.

And sometimes it's also okay to let tech and magic interact or coexist without trying to push one over the other.

 

[Faolyn]

In the recently released Coyote & Crow, the authors stipulate a world in which large scale fossil fuel use... just didn't happen. The coal and oil is there, it simply hasn't been exploited. I have not seen in the setting material a statement of how they got to high technology without, they just say it happened.

I wound up turning that one over in my head so much I lost much of a night's sleep chewing over the possibilities - I wound up with head-canon that an organic room-tempterature superconducting material was discovered, enabling a jump to early use of wind and solar electricity far beyond what we've see in our world.

Coyote & Crow is out? It's one I was definitely interested in.

 

[Umbran]

Coyote & Crow is out? It's one I was definitely interested in.

I backed the Kickstarter, so I already have my book. Street date for the book is April 20th.

Welcome To Coyote & Crow Games - Coyote & Crow

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coyoteandcrow.net

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Man, I'm sad I missed this thread the first time around, this is some good stuff. Makes me want to do a deep dive on a related but distinct topic: the prevalence, benefits, and flaws of (and fixes for) the "built on the ruins of old" trope, aka "Europe pining for the days of Rome." Because that, as @Charlaquin noted earlier, plus some of the other components of fantasy settings (magic, the difficulty of preserving knowledge and the incentives against doing so in a world where magic exists, often being located on a floodplain or having a major river network) could simultaneously explain the so-called "medieval stasis"* situation and point to ways we can make richer settings without abandoning the fun/positive sides of tropes we're accustomed to.

*Not my phrase, that's just what the trope is called.

 

[Beleriphon]

I'm not sure if I fully buy the explanation. Seems like a bit of a cop out. My understanding of a bastard sword is that it larger than a longsword, cannot be used one-handed. I was curious if "bastard" was a word they just didn't want to use in modern dnd books. And "hand-and-a-half" was just too much of a tongue twister.

Its because bastard sword is an Elizabethan term that is unique to the late 16th and early 17th Century English, and was mostly about blade length. And it doesn't hurt that Victorian antiquarians were mostly dolts that made up terms based on the fact that people from the past had to be morons; otherwise they'd be modern like the Victorians.

The bastard sword is the current D&D longsword, which is any sword that can be used in a one or two handed grip. It is intentionally generic and can cover the Elizabethan bastard sword, or a Sengoku Era katana (oddly enough both in use around the same).

The "Dark Age" was a lot less dark than how people think (how do you think people lived in roman villages? It wasn't aqueducts and masonry everywhere) and the regression was not global or even continent wide either while agriculture for example steadily advanced.

Right. So many people forget that Charlemenge was crowned in 747 (200 years after the sacking of Rome and the final blow to the Western Roman Empire), and the Eastern Roman Empire continued as Byzantium until 1453 when the Ottomans finally conquered Constantinople. Hell, even Notra Dame's construction started in 1160, the thing is nearly 900 years old, and Hagia Sofia was built in 537.

 

[Thunderfoot]

Umbran made some very salient points about coal. But take it another step, without coal... no diamonds. Unless you somehow develop nuclear fission in a desert before developing the burning of fossil fuels, diamonds won't exist. Closest you might get it FIREBALL glass. But it would still be glass.

 

[tetrasodium]

Umbran made some very salient points about coal. But take it another step, without coal... no diamonds. Unless you somehow develop nuclear fission in a desert before developing the burning of fossil fuels, diamonds won't exist. Closest you might get it FIREBALL glass. But it would still be glass.

Why would diamonds not exist just because of a readily available superconductor?

A readily avail organic room temperature super conductor being discovered is such a huge thing that it would impact us today in almost unimaginable ways. Something like that being discovered early enough would have drastically changed how we developed technologically.

Put in another perspective is the US rural electrification project long ago. At the time it meant installing poles all over with huge economic results both in paying people to do it and them having things like electric lighting. Also however is the fact that it was pretty difficult to transmit power more than about 2 miles.

We have since learned a lot of things to improve the range of how far we can pipe electricity from a power plant, but it comes at the cost of things like high voltage wire runs and electrical switching stations all over. That 2ish mile range rdsulylted in lots of tiny power plants in little towns all over. With that superconductor it could be a bunch of windmills spread over tens of miles or more without the 2ish mile problem.

 

[LordEntrails]

Extremely rare, perhaps unique, nuclear fission has been known to occur naturally. Natural nuclear fission reactor - Wikipedia

Nature's Nuclear Reactors: The 2-Billion-Year-Old Natural Fission Reactors in Gabon, Western Africa

blogs.scientificamerican.com