D&D General The Transition of a D&D World into the Industrial Era

[generic]

Well, since you're immediately diving headlong into unscientific postulation because of the inclusion of magic, monsters, and other utterly fantastical elements, how I would address them depends on the kind of campaign world I want to have. Then I can spout any kind of justification and declare any events needed and desired to explain how that world came to be. The world you're describing seems more like steampunk than heroic fantasy simply because the setting is shifted into an industrialized world. Frankly, I don't think that a "D&D setting" really can be stretched to that point without first giving up what it is that MADE it D&D. You can use d20-based game mechanics for it but that doesn't make it D&D. It's really not D&D anymore at that point IMO, because D&D is not steampunk. You can use D&D-mechanics-based rules to create that setting and depict that genre, but that doesn't make it D&D. IMO.

But, just some initial brainstorming if I WERE to go that route, I'd consider a setting with a lot of inherent conflict between industries, nations, factions, etc. based on the "engine" that is chosen by certain individuals and groups. I see three basic possibilities.

First is necromancy, where use of animated dead (or perhaps summoned and enslaved supernatural entities like demons or elementals - but mostly just animated dead horses and other animals) is used as a limitless, literally undying power source. [Animate a dead horse, hook it to a mill, and it will then walk in a circle forever creating free mechanical power for water pumps, but consider the idea of a factory of once-human/elf/orc/halfling skeletons operating textile machinery 24/7/365. Who needs child labor to exploit at that point?] Second is golems and other magically created entities which are far more complex, more complicated, more potentially free-willed, and VASTLY more expensive to produce - but are generally considered just as vastly more ethically and morally permissible (assuming they are then put to ethical and moral use). And third, of course, is the strictly physical mechanics of steam power - even though the means of creating the steam for the engine then has a possibly wide variety of natural and supernatural origins.

That seems like a set of possibilities to build a very interesting campaign world upon. But it wouldn't be much like D&D.

Hard and iron-willed disagree, and this world is not Steampunk. In any case, thank you for your opinion.

 

[Beleriphon]

Hard and iron-willed disagree, and this world is not Steampunk. In any case, thank you for your opinion.

Yeppers, Industrial Revolution and Steampuck have some intersection, but generally the steampunk aestetic is late Victorian, so 1870s into late 1890s. Well past the point of the Industrial Revolution being a revolution and more the Industrial Status Quo.

 

[generic]

Yeppers, Industrial Revolution and Steampuck have some intersection, but generally the steampunk aestetic is late Victoria, so post 1870s into late 1890s. Well past the point of the Industrial Revolution being a revolution and more the Industrial Status Quo/

Indeed. In addition, I've found that the Steampunk aesthetic also relies on well, steam, and the lack of development in other fields. One wonders, after a time, how much coal is consumed daily in Steampunk worlds. Steampunk relies less on realism in the context of a campaign world, and more on an aesthetic preference for brass, gears, and pistons, flywheels excerpted.

 

[Beleriphon]

Indeed. In addition, I've found that the Steampunk aesthetic also relies on well, steam, and the lack of development in other fields. One wonders, after a time, how much coal is consumed daily in Steampunk worlds. Steampunk relies less on realism in the context of a campaign world, and more on an aesthetic preference for brass, gears, and pistons, flywheels excerpted.

Steampunk is basically "what if Jules Verne was right?" To a degree it is taking modern technology that we're familiar with, or even sci-fi technology, and applying a veneer of late Victorian aesthetics to it. Its retrofuturism, like Fallout is a 1950s and 1960s inspired future.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Indeed. In addition, I've found that the Steampunk aesthetic also relies on well, steam, and the lack of development in other fields. One wonders, after a time, how much coal is consumed daily in Steampunk worlds. Steampunk relies less on realism in the context of a campaign world, and more on an aesthetic preference for brass, gears, and pistons, flywheels excerpted.

Also, Steampunk is subversive. It is an exploration of the strictest period of sexual, gender, and in many places class and racial, repression in semi-recent western history, and either reimagining it as egalitarian, or playing characters who buck those traditions and fight against the consequences.

Anyway, in my Steampunk fantasy game several years ago, I had magical fire and lightning effects replace the coal in steam engines, and mixed steam with diesel magicpunk by having alchemical admixtures that replace the water, reaching rapid expansion faster or slower, leading even to “steam” pistols and the like.

Because hey why not go nuts with it. Steampunk is meant for swashbuckling!

 

[Celebrim]

Well folks, it's been done very well already: Magical Industrial Revolution

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

You should post a review then, seeing as the product currently has none.

 

[77IM]

For a low/rare magic setting, the question I ask myself is: how did the belief in magic an magical creatures affect the actual Industrial Revolution? The answer is, probably not very much.

In the low/rare magic genre, magic is very much NOT commoditized or commercialized, and magical creatures are definitely not farmed or domesticated. If you want magic, you have to go to the crazy old man in the tower or the cranky old lady out in the woods, and if you were to suggest using it to light your factory or spin your flywheel they'd turn you into a toad. There are no wizard colleges because the price of magic is too high, and anyone who spontaneously develops powers (like a sorcerer or warlock) gets run out of town on pitchforks. Clerics and druids are guided by higher powers that won't allow their miracles to be squandered on mass production, which is an ugly, dehumanizing thing.

Now... if a robber-baron wants to make a deal with a devil, that's entirely in-genre both for low/rare magic fiction and for Industrial Revolution fiction. Ditto for ghouls living in the sewers, sneaky goblins causing horrific factory accidents, and gargoyles snatching away children. During the real Industrial Revolution, there was also fascination with mediums, hypnosis, and "miracle cures" that blurred the line between superstition and science. This era also gave rise to many of the classic tropes of Gothic horror: creaky old haunted houses, sexually-liberated vampires, and rural country weirdos.

Basically, as science begins shining its light on everything and humans begin clumping together in technology-driven cities, magic retreats into subtle, hidden places. The kind of places where only adventurers can deal with it. Like urban fantasy, this doesn't mean the magic has to be weak; it just needs to be out-of-sight of the mainstream.

So that's the main change I'd make for a low magic/rare magic Industrial Revolution setting: the powers-that-be, the media establishment, and other mainstream influencers (local church leaders, popular celebrities, and community business people) all treat magic as a backwards, inconsequential, has-been power. Who needs potions when you have modern medical science? Who bothers trying to domesticate a hippogriff when you can just ride a hot air balloon? Why learn the dangerous magic of fire bolt when you can just pick up a pistol? In a setting where magic has never been a solution to ordinary people's problems, technology and industry and progress will be.

Unless, of course, you're a PC on an adventure...

 

[Tony Vargas]

Diplomats might want to craft a Helm of Comprehending Languages. Perhaps diplomatic branches ... granting them to diplomats as gifts.

...ooh, such a helm could be subtly cursed to put an unpleasant edge on anything it translates....

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Usually magic in the RPGs is too expensive for mass production. In a fantasy world the industrial revolution would need lot of coal, or wood from forests, and this would mean war for the (mineral) recourses. Gods could forbidden, even with supernatural curses, polluting industry. Maybe alchemy and magictek could allow the creation of "clean energy" as electromagnetic motors, but these motors need special mineral materials... and we could find magic would a cheaper way to get this technology.

Firearms are possible, but machines guns couldn't be used because this technology would be too vulnerable to sabotages by paranormal tricks, for example creating a little piece of ectoplasm to block clockwork mechanisms, or watering gunpowder to avoid this to inflame. A simple level 0 catrip could be enough to cause a gun to pigeonhole.

Other possibility could fallen soldiers could come back as undead, or living constructs, or like a mutant sentient plant (like the wildens, races from PH3 4th Ed), some creature with bulletproof resistance. These poor souls should be fighting, or working, for years, to can pay a reincarnation spell, or a special divine gift to breed "normal" children.

 

[jgsugden]

My primary campaign world has involved science, industry and technology since the 1980s. In my experience, it works best when you don't worry about making it mimic the real world. Instead, try letting the science mimic the other magics in the game.

In my setting there ar 5 types of magic: Arcane (based upon the magic weave - stolen from the FR), Divine (granted by deities), Nature (drawn from positive and negative energy directly), Psionic (generated by the individual) and Elemental. Elemental magic covers anything that doesn't fit the first four types. Elementals are elemental magic, but so is supernatural phenomena (like ghosts), and technology / science based tricks, such as gunpowder, steam engines, etc... Elemental magic draws from the elements that make up the universe.

For example, an engineer that creates a steam boat would say that the ship is powered by the magic drawn from water and fire when they combine in a controlled environment. A gun is described as a wand powered by earth and fire. The players think it through in technology terms, but the NPCs describe it by the 'Elemental Magic' descriptions... and I find it is more immersive.