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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Empirate" data-source="post: 6020694" data-attributes="member: 78958">I'm surprised one analogy hasn't popped up in this thread yet:"Magic, if sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from technology"(or was it the other way round? Does it matter?)Anyway, think about your campaign's magic level the same as you would think about the campaign's tech level. Does long-range communication exist? Do really fast travel options exist? Is there combat tech that does more damage (or has other effects) than can be achieved by muscle power alone? What about the campaign's medical technology (read: magical healing available)? Etc. Just decide what you want available, and be sure that your choices will have a huge impact on the way the game plays out. For example, when I play Shadowrun, what makes a difference from standard D&D is less the automatic weapons and more the instant communication that's possible between everybody in the game world.The next set of questions regards the 'who has access to what' side of the matter. For example, the European Middle Ages saw highly restricted access to some of the era's 'high tech': only the rich could afford doctors, soothsayers, alchemists; only nobles could ride into battle and wear good armor. Some other 'high tech' options were available to large numbers of people: the best missile weapons were considered peasant's weapons, so armies were (potentially) chock full of them. The church's 'miracles' had mass appeal, and restricting them to nobles, for instance, was basically impossible (although usually, only nobles and rich institutions owned saint's relics...).Today, almost every kind of high tech that's useful on a personal basis is available to more or less everybody: fast transportation, communication, medicine, in some countries even weapons of rather great destructive power.So where do you want your campaign to fall in the tech curve, and in the 'availability of tech' curve? That will determine your stance on magic, as well.</blockquote>

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