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waxing philosophical on "low magic" versus "high fantasy"
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<blockquote data-quote="Brother MacLaren" data-source="post: 1923008" data-attributes="member: 15999"><p>My reasoning for restricting magic to those with The Gift is this:</p><p>If you don't do it, magic becomes technology. Given human nature, one or more kings will set up a school, train wizards, and conquer neighboring lands. Even at the expense of a few palaces. Now, if you have a very young or poor land, you can say nobody has yet acquired the resources and knowledge to try this. And if you have a very small land, you can say nobody has yet succeeded at it (there are only three baronies, and one was destroyed by civil war when the wizard brigade revolted; or, the number of wizards is small enough that a single guild controls them all as in Dragonlance). </p><p></p><p>But, given a large and/or ancient world, you will have Glantri and Alphatia if you say that wizard schools are workable. Magic absolutely everywhere, as a logical consequence of how humanity and societies would use this tool. The only way around this is to say that the gods of magic intervene in some way, which brings you back to The Gift (or other non-egalitarian devices).</p><p></p><p>People are very very good at killing each other. An invention that allows people to kill each other more effectively WILL be adopted in nearly every case, and cultural taboos will be discarded. The real reason medieval Japan held off from firearms for 300 years is that they were at peace for 300 years; if they had to fight European powers in the Napoleonic Era, they'd have picked up firearms right away, samurai code be damned. If you want to say you have a large, ancient, and occasionally warring world where nobody has yet "commercialized" the most efficient means of slaughter, you are considerably changing human nature. (and, once it is perfected on the battlefield, it spills over into other aspects of life)</p><p></p><p>Want magic != technology? Make it erratic, unpredictable, inherently dangerous, or not necessarily learnable. Most of these penalize the PCs and so are not very popular with players; I was just tossing out the one idea that hurts PCs the least.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Brother MacLaren, post: 1923008, member: 15999"] My reasoning for restricting magic to those with The Gift is this: If you don't do it, magic becomes technology. Given human nature, one or more kings will set up a school, train wizards, and conquer neighboring lands. Even at the expense of a few palaces. Now, if you have a very young or poor land, you can say nobody has yet acquired the resources and knowledge to try this. And if you have a very small land, you can say nobody has yet succeeded at it (there are only three baronies, and one was destroyed by civil war when the wizard brigade revolted; or, the number of wizards is small enough that a single guild controls them all as in Dragonlance). But, given a large and/or ancient world, you will have Glantri and Alphatia if you say that wizard schools are workable. Magic absolutely everywhere, as a logical consequence of how humanity and societies would use this tool. The only way around this is to say that the gods of magic intervene in some way, which brings you back to The Gift (or other non-egalitarian devices). People are very very good at killing each other. An invention that allows people to kill each other more effectively WILL be adopted in nearly every case, and cultural taboos will be discarded. The real reason medieval Japan held off from firearms for 300 years is that they were at peace for 300 years; if they had to fight European powers in the Napoleonic Era, they'd have picked up firearms right away, samurai code be damned. If you want to say you have a large, ancient, and occasionally warring world where nobody has yet "commercialized" the most efficient means of slaughter, you are considerably changing human nature. (and, once it is perfected on the battlefield, it spills over into other aspects of life) Want magic != technology? Make it erratic, unpredictable, inherently dangerous, or not necessarily learnable. Most of these penalize the PCs and so are not very popular with players; I was just tossing out the one idea that hurts PCs the least. [/QUOTE]
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