D&D General Is there a D&D setting that actually works how it would with access to D&D magic?

[UngainlyTitan]

I would say spellcasters in D&D are more common than say Electrical Engineers in modern society and look at everything Electrical Engineers have brought us.

The analogy may or may not hold. If I may grossly oversimplify, our technology benefits from standardisation. A plug will operate in an appropriate socket, and so forth. This means the Electrical Engineers can design common components and combine these components in to complex devices. These components and so forth can be assembled by people less skilled than the engineers. Some of these components are made by other specialists that also manufacture other standardised components. Screws, bolts, wires and so forth.

There was a lot of invention before you get to the kind of part interchangeable mass manufacturing that makes Electrical Engineers so productive at this point in time.

Magic for instance may not be standardisable, in which case, all workers of magic are craft specialists. There is some evidence in the rules that magic is not or cannot be standardised. That is the need to copy spells from another wizards spell book before a spell can be prepared.

For instance, I do not allow players to know in advance what spell they are countering when casting counterspell. the non standard nature of magic is the reason why.
That and I think it is more fun that way.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

So, no easy fuel to power your industrial revolution.

Lamp oil was made from olives for rather a long time before petroleum was refined in an industrial process. No reason to think plant-based fuels like lamp oil, fruit-based sugar alcohol, etc, wouldn’t be developed at an accelerated rate in a world with no mineral fuel sources.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

No. A VERY small subset of humans did that. The VAST majority did not. (even the Japanese would still be a fuedal, middle age tech society) Take away that small subset and you have a planet in the Middle ages at the highest. And HUGE areas of stone age society.

This is false. The distribution of industrious people inventing new ways to do things in the last 2000 years is global. The highest levels of achievement move around quite a bit from region to region depending on the century, but very few cultures stayed technologically the same throughout that 2000 year period.

 

[éxypnos]

This is false. The distribution of industrious people inventing new ways to do things in the last 2000 years is global. The highest levels of achievement move around quite a bit from region to region depending on the century, but very few cultures stayed technologically the same throughout that 2000 year period

This is false. The distribution of industrious people inventing new ways to do things in the last 2000 years is global. The highest levels of achievement move around quite a bit from region to region depending on the century, but very few cultures stayed technologically the same throughout that 2000 year period.

wrong. globally people didn't invent what I was referring to.

 

[Mallus]

This is a good time to mention one of the most famous science fiction series posited a future where a civilization capable of interstellar space flight remained more-or-less technologically static for about 15,000 years.

(and both movies made from the first book are good!)

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Magic for instance may not be standardisable, in which case, all workers of magic are craft specialists. There is some evidence in the rules that magic is not or cannot be standardised. That is the need to copy spells from another wizards spell book before a spell can be prepared.

I think that evidence is pretty tenuous, though. Alchemists had to translate each other’s work for centuries before communication advanced sufficiently to facilitate standardization of scientific language in Europe and her neighbors.

But it really boils down to how common magic is, especially magic items, and how evenly dispersed it is.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

So, if we assume that magic is available to some, but not all, and that real big magic is a thing you see from a few people a generation, at most, you’ll see a much more recognizable world than if anyone can learn to do magic, and the basics don’t require any special x-factor or any more study than blacksmithing or cobbling.

But PHB D&D land seems to assume a world where most people can’t do any magic at all, and a few people a generation (people with PC class levels and thier enemies in a given campaign) can do real big magic, and where dragons aren’t really that rare, nor any number of other dangers.

In that world, technology should be advancing faster than most pre-modern periods IRL.

 

[MichaelSomething]

What percentage of your population are capable of casting spells?

 

[squibbles]

I guess I should have specified at least a rule set for my thinking. My original thought for this question was for the Pathfinder rules, since that's what I mostly play with, but it would apply to any 3.5 or higher ruleset.

According to those rules, here are the main points that lead to my thoughts that an actual D&D world would be different than most published settings.

• Anyone with a casting stat of 11 or higher can cast spells, the only impediment is learning them.
• Anyone can switch classes when they level up. So switching to a spellcasting class isn't an issue by the rules. So NPCs can switch from whatever to Adept.
• The general population rules show that most villages will have some kind of spellcasters, so magic is available and accessible to most people- assuming those spellcasters are cooperative.
• Any caster that makes it to 4th level can choose an item creation feat and craft wonderous only requires 3rd level

Those four factors point to a world that would have a lot more permanent magic than is currently in most setting- especially low-level utility magic. This is barring of course any setting-specific reasons why this HAS NOT happened. I'm only talking about what is possible by the rules as presented. Most settings probably have some reason why the world isn't like this, and that's fine. I'm interested if there is a world, or at least a resource, that explores what's possible.

Good on ya for stating your assumptions and trying to get the thread back to the intended focus. I'm afraid the board is liable to continue refusing the premise of your question, but that's how it goes.

If Pathfinder is where you get your starting assumptions, then I would again recommend you read the Tippyverse post. It's not perfect, but it does at least do what you are asking. Also, as @Rune mentions, the Order of the Stick webcomic uses a setting that takes literally a bunch of the rules quirks of 3e D&D (often as parody).

Yes, item creation and even low-level permanent magic (like continual flame) are expensive, but it's easy to imagine scenarios where that wouldn't be a problem.

[...]

But even at a trickle of advancement, the cumulative affect would make a change in the world.

While reading your post, I had a curious recollection of season 3 of The Wire, where a neighborhood gets littered with partially used burner phones that people pick up, use, and then drop on the ground. An erstwhile D&D-land crime lord could, perhaps, do the same with wands. But, of course, lots of D&D magic items are permanent. Imagine picking up a 200 year old continual flame pebble from the street, which has basically no value, using it to find your way home from the bar, and then tossing it the gutter. Things that are durable pile up like that--even if an object was created to be grand and high status, it's liable to be sold as a cheap hand-me-down decades or centuries later.

There was a pattern like this in the price of swords in the middle ages. They start out expensive but gradually become cheap and common. Here's a link about that from scholagladiatoria (which is a spectacular resource if you want to know things about medieval kit--and not just the D&Disms about medieval kit)

A lot really depends on assumption. If magic is rare then magic items are rare and the PC's are rare and power beings.

Yes, absolutely! And, fortunately @FoxWander has helpfully provided some, so we can go from there.

I don't think that it is useful to try and extrapolate from a set of assumptions to a final world state. First off, that is pretty much beyond anybody. Which is why people are so crap at working out the full implications of innovate and society changing tech. I am pretty sure that the inventors of the TCP/IP protocol envisioned cat memes and Tiktok videos.

You are better off deciding where your end point is; and working backwards from there.

I disagree. To my thinking, both strategies are reasonable.

The fun of starting from assumptions and trying to play them out is that it often leads to unexpected places. Trying to be "realistic" can get you to a setting that is more creative and strange than what you would have invented yourself. Even if it isn't really possible to a fully worked out fantasy world, the constraints are good for creativity.

This is a good time to mention one of the most famous science fiction series posited a future where a civilization capable of interstellar space flight remained more-or-less technologically static for about 15,000 years.

(and both movies made from the first book are good!)

I'm glad someone brought this up. Dune is a very good example of technological stasis done right.

Herbert posits a technobabble law, the Holtzman Effect, and a religious taboo against AI, the Butlerian Jihad, that do a lot to explain the stasis of Dune tech and society. The tech creates a feudal social system and the feudal social system maintains the tech. You can listen to an actual historian nerd out about it at length in this podcast.

 

[RangerWickett]

What I mean is- humans, at the very least, are a very industrious and innovative people. Look how far we’ve developed in just the past 2000 years- or even the past 100! But most D&D settings seem to have multi-thousand-year histories where the world has existed at the “default” D&D setting; that is- a vaguely medieval, feudal peasant society that happens to have magic, dragons, etc. Now monsters aside, our world does not exist like that, and we don’t have fairly accessible magic.

I’m not saying I want a D&D game that recreates modern society- except with magic instead of electricity. But the D&D rules, as written; with item creation, permanent spells effects, and more; would NOT create Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, or Golarion.

Eberron comes close, but it also invents at least three other systems to “justify” it (dragonmarks, manifest zones, and rampant exploitation of elementals). You don’t need anything extra like that to envision that most D&D worlds should be vastly different than the medieval default that’s used for most of them.

Also, I should mention, I’m not looking for an argument or reasons about WHY most D&D worlds ARE stuck in their vaguely medieval setting. I know the history of D&D’s development and all the books that Gary and Dave got their inspiration from. They took a setting, slapped rules for dungeons, magic, and dragons on it and started to play. All those game worlds I mentioned are fine. I've gamed in them for years, just like all of you have. But what would a world that has always existed within those rules ACTUALLY look like? Is there a setting that takes the rules-as-written and runs with it- as humanity would do?

Adventures in ZEITGEIST posits a fantasy world that is undergoing an industrial revolution. Scholars are starting to understand the building blocks of magic the way we understand atoms in our world, so wondrous technology is possible, though the resources to build it to industrial scale are limited, so only some technologies are widely adopted enough to change the whole world.

So one justification for why schools don't teach everyone how to do magic is that the energy to perform magic is a finite resource, especially for more powerful stuff. Some cultures have found ways to produce more of those resources -- for instance, large organized religion harnesses the collective belief of worshipers so that the ordained can easily call upon it for divine spellcasting -- but mostly magical knacks are hard to hone into real power.

For things like teleportation, it's possible, but nations try to safeguard against the security risk it poses by building teleportation beacons to deflect planar travel to certain secure locations with a lot of military nearby. Resurrection magic is also possible, but the setting has a metaphysical limit that souls can't be restored if the body travels more than three miles. Plus the largest organized religion has a cartel that hunts down people who offer resurrections that they don't approve of.

The setting book just came out last week: Level Up: Adventures in ZEITGEIST (A5E) - EN Publishing | ZEITGEIST Adventure Path | D&D 5th Edition | Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition | DriveThruRPG.com