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

[Dausuul]

Oof. You propose to fuel the heavy industries with plant-based fuels? Maybe with a lot of druids that go around casting Plant Growth it might be possible to at least grow enough plants. In our real world, we don't even have nearly enough surface to grow all the plants on. We'd need another earth just to grow all the fuels we use. But Plant Growth doesn't solve the other challenges of biobased fuels, such as the huge need for fertilizers, and all the effort needed for harvesting and converting.

On top of that, if a medieval society did develop such mass agriculture capabilities, they would almost certainly be used to feed people before making fuel. If those advances happened very quickly, as in the real world over the last 200 years, there might be enough excess to use it as an energy source... but if they happened gradually, population growth would literally eat up all the benefits.

Malthus gets a bad rap nowadays, but his fundamental reasoning held true for almost all of recorded history. What he didn't foresee was the explosive growth of technology in the last two centuries which let our capacity to feed people outstrip people's capacity to have babies. If the same technologies had been developed over 1000 years instead of 200, we'd still be in the Malthusian trap today.

(And as a side note, that real-world agriculture technology is overwhelmingly dependent on fossil fuels, too--not just as an energy source for the machines, but as fertilizer. Modern farming is in large part a system for converting petroleum into people.)

 

[UngainlyTitan]

True. But that depends a lot on the DM. In any setting that I played, magic is rare because high-level spellcasters are rare. Therefore magic is not able to produce the equivalent of molten metals/concrete that you'd need to make our modern society.

As you say it is totally DM dependant. If I was a sifi setting with magic I could posit that most magical process are done as rituals and involve loads of casters. The PC type spell slinger are those rare individuals that can store a suspended ritual in their personal aura for later release. So spell preparation is really casting the ritual to embed fireball or whatever in one's aura.

That's roughly 500,000 tons per day.

That's roughly 1,150,000 tons per day.

And that's just two examples of important materials. There's also plastics, paints, fabrics, etc.

You're gonna need a LOT of wizards to produce that. So, if your DM makes magic sufficiently common that this is possible, then sure.

Not really one wizard invents a bind lump of metal to the plane of fire at set temperature and the Stirling engine and electricity and off you go.
So you have a bunch of ritual casters working for Westinghouse making the hot and cold ends of Stirling engines and the rest is as in the real world.

 

[Dausuul]

Not really one wizard invents a bind lump of metal to the plane of fire at set temperature and the Stirling engine and electricity and off you go.

You are inventing capabilities for wizards that are neither stated nor implied in the D&D rules. Nothing says wizards can't do this... but nothing says they can, either.

 

[Jer]

I think a looking at 4e's Points of Light Nentir Vale setting illuminates a lot of the issues.

In Nentir Vale, there are tons of spellcasters. Humans have them.Elves have them. Gnomes have them. Dragonborn have them. Orcs have them. Hobgoblins have them. But why does magic progress so slowly.

Also the civilization that the Nentir Vale was a part of - the Nerathi Empire - was fairly recently destroyed in an apocalyptic demon summoning event. And the area was already fairly sparsely populated because, like many fantasy worlds, everything is a frontier and humans haven't settled everywhere yet. (A trope for which I blame Tolkien because so much of Middle Earth is unpopulated - not just unpopulated by humans but literally just open wilderness where nobody lives).

The real world never had to deal with powerful mages deciding that they wanted to destroy civilization every few hundred years and setting back progress. At best you have socio-economic collapses every once in a while that slow things down, but not to the level of your average fantasy world.

 

[Umbran]

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.

Mod Note:
What you say here (and double-down on later) reads to have racist implications. That you keep referring to a "small subset" without being specific does not save it from that.

EN World does not welcome racism or bigotry. Please take it to some other site. We don't want it and will not tolerate it.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The real world never had to deal with powerful mages deciding that they wanted to destroy civilization every few hundred years and setting back progress. At best you have socio-economic collapses every once in a while that slow things down, but not to the level of your average fantasy world.

We just had disease, war and the inherent incompetence of empires doing that.

Remember: we don't have the tens of thousands of years of what we'd call 'civilization' fantasy worlds have due to spec-fic writers having no sense of scale. When 50,000 years you become, look as good you will not.

 

[éxypnos]

Mod Note:
What you say here (and double-down on later) reads to have racist implications. That you keep referring to a "small subset" without being specific does not save it from that.

EN World does not welcome racism or bigotry. Please take it to some other site. We don't want it and will not tolerate it.

I'm referencing history and fact. If you find any facts wrong let me know. I believe the Chinese DID have the longest continuous high tech civilization on record. They simply stopped progressing near what we now refer to as late Middle Age or Renascence tech level. Since I'm part African American, Native American, Irish and Mexican, you can can the racist/ bigot false accussation NOW!

 

[Jer]

We just had disease, war and the inherent incompetence of empires doing that.

Remember: we don't have the tens of thousands of years of what we'd call 'civilization' fantasy worlds have due to spec-fic writers having no sense of scale. When 50,000 years you become, look as good you will not.

I mean, fantasy worlds have all that too. Plus the occasional civilization destroying apocalypse that does even more than those things to boot.

 

[Umbran]

I'm referencing history and fact. If you find any facts wrong let me know. I believe the Chinese DID have the longest continuous high tech civilization on record. They simply stopped progressing near what we now refer to as late Middle Age or Renascence tech level. Since I'm part African American, Native American, Irish and Mexican, you can can the racist/ bigot false accussation NOW!

Mod Note:
The idea that they would have not progressed themselves is racist.

And you are challenging moderation in-thread, which I believe you've been informed is not acceptable before.

So, you're done in this discussion.

 

[Vaalingrade]

- Removed. Didn't see mod post. -