A question about a world idea I have.

[Acid_crash]

I have this idea of a setting, and for roughly the last thousand years the races have gotten relatively along, without any major wars, for this time period. Up until 60 to 80 years ago, magic did not exist during this time, neither arcane nor devine. 60 to 80 years ago, a bright blue star suddenly appeared in the sky, and around this time the powers of magic are becoming more real.

Now, I have this long time period in which no magic existed, and for this setting, with probably standard races (although I might go away with a couple...errr...I don't like da gnomes)...what kind of technology would develop if, at the beginning of the thousand years was like our middle ages? I hope that made sense.

In a world like this, would steam technology be plausible and not effect the versimilitude of the setting?

And, after I figure this out, I will then need to come up with how magic has altered things.

 

[kamosa]

Use the Industrial revolution as a guide

Look to the themes of the industrial revolution as a guide for your world.

Increases in magic might effect a world the same way rapid increases in tech changed the world.

1) Increased communication brings civilzations that would normally not interact into contact and conflict. If railroads and steam ships could cause far flung wars in our world, what is teleport and flight, even on a limited scale, going to do your world.

2) Advanced civilzations will seek to control primitive civilizations. This is a two sided coin. First the advances in magic help established powers flex their muscle, then magic helps the primative fight back. Example, established cultures have Priests and Wizards while primitive cultures have sorcers and druids.

3) Mix in a race or two that is being left behind. Lizardmen and orcs are great PC's as primatives that have not kept up with the ways of magic as it accelerated.

4) Rapid changes also will happen to the social order of your world. Priests that were scoffed at by the citizens will suddenly find their temples filled every week as direct evidence of godly magic is seen by the public. Witches and other magical outcasts are now seen as holders of real power, someone to respect and try to control.

Have fun.

 

[AeroDm]

Steamtech seems to work, but when combined with magic (espec non low-powered magic) problems arise. Why wouldn't everyone trap a water and fire elemental together to create the ultimate steam everything? Create water and create flame are much more primitive versions of the same thing, but still need to be considered.

 

[Acid_crash]

I think the combining of the elementals won't work is because magic did not exist until less than a century ago, and even today magic is a new, powerful force...and steam tech (if I go that route) would have existed for at least a century or two before the coming of magic.

 

[Umbran]

...what kind of technology would develop if, at the beginning of the thousand years was like our middle ages?

Well, that'll dpend on a couple of things...

The "Middle Ages" spread from the 5th century to the 15th century, a span of 1000 years. So, where you end up depends upon where you start. You can end up with anything from 15th to 25th century technology.

Rather than ask "What kind of tech woudl I end up with?" perhaps you should ask yourself, "What kind of tech do I want?"

Otherwise, you ned to ask your self two basic questions - what energy sources are available, and what sciences develop. Without fossil fuels, you might find yourself limited to steam-tech, unless someone makes a leap and figures out how to make alcohol based internal combustion engines. Without basic thermodynamics, you don't even get steam-tech, etc.

 

[Nifft]

IMC, there is a faction called the Anamists. They beleive that all things we can see and name are the bodies of sleeping spirits -- or the dreams of the sleeping spirits.

Where there is no magic, there are either no spirits, or the spirits are sleeping so deeply that we cannot touch their dreams. Where magic is plentiful, the spirits have lush dreams. (Cause and effect aren't debated much in Anamist circles.)

Some Anamists say that we are nothing but dreams ourselves. Others say that this reality (including ourselves) is but a pale shadow of what the true reality would be if the spirits were to awaken. The first bunch replies that, should the dreamers awaken, we would all die. The second group retorts that we eat and breathe spirit-substance as it is, why should they be lessened by consciousness? (Around this time, someone tends to get hit with a Flame Strike.)

In this sort of a "reactive" setting, you could easily have the sleeping spirits unconsciously react to changes in the environment. E.g.: automation causes gremlins (fey), and pollution causes monsters (abberations, oozes, magical beasts). Such effects could easily slow technological progress to whatever level you desire.

-- N

 

[Zappo]

It took us 700 years to get nuclear power, space exploration, cloning and the Internet, and here a scientist typically spends one third of his life just studying so that he can actually become one (assuming that he doesn't die young, which throughout most of history isn't a good bet). If Newton was an elf, he would likely still be around and healthy. A single smart elf with the correct mindset and enough resources, starting from middle-age knowledge, could probably discover the entirety of modern physics just by himself. With a thousand years worth of time, starting from the middle ages, you are looking at a Star Trek game, at least.

Unless the world is exceptionally poor in key natural resources such as fossil fuels and uranium, which would slow down development in ways that I can't predict. Or unless some physical laws are changed, so that maybe electricity just isn't controllable. Or unless a lot of those 1000 years were dominated by some kind of regime that heavily repressed some or all scientific research. Any of these conditions could allow you to define the world pretty much as you want. I reckon that in standard D&D, either physics just don't work, or it is assumed that all truly intelligent and research-minded people will just become wizards.

I had a somewhat similar concept for the old Wizards Setting Search. In my setting, the tech and social level used to be near-future when arcane magic appeared (divine magic arrived about a century later). Estabilished Internet on the whole planet, megacorporations, bioengineering, some manned space exploration, standard cyberpunk 2020 stuff. When magic arrives, the first reactions are astonishment, panic, and repression/exploitation. Sorcerers (only spellcasters in these early days) are viewed with the same outlook you would reserve for someone who walks down the street carrying grenades, a chaingun, a rocket launcher, and a half dozen types of drugs. In the very first months, the first spellcasters are simply captured and locked up for examination, on the basis that they were evidently dangerous, until their constitutional rights could be asserted. Monsters are shot on sight by special forces teams.

After that, our ideas diverge; in my setting, the sudden increase in magic is parallel with the emergence of unexplainable problems with technology (ala Arcanum), resulting in terrible wars, famines, plagues and death and, given a few centuries, a quirky but purely-fantasy setting where humans have largely forgotten tech, dwarves haven't but they have given up on it, and elves are still blaming each other and wondering what the hell happened.

 

[Umbran]

. A single smart elf with the correct mindset and enough resources, starting from middle-age knowledge, could probably discover the entirety of modern physics just by himself.

If time were the only factor, yes. But it isn't. Science requires "eureka moments" and an occasionally fresh viewpoint on a problem to find new solutions. Mental ruts are the bane of scientific advancement, and the longer you've been working, the more likely you are to have an ossified view. Older scientists are very good at teaching and refining. They are widely known for being less able at coming up with revolutionary work.

 

[Acid_crash]

thanks for the replies, they have helped quite a bit.

With that, maybe a thousand years is too long...I want this to be a fantasy world, and I am leaning towards a period where steam technology was discovered, developed, and has become the mainstream form of high technology in this world. I am also leaning towards, but this isn't set in stone yet, the fact that steam tech has been around for at least a century or two.

I also plan on having a few large cities, and a couple with over a million people in them.

A minor background note of it is that for the last three or so thousand years magic has not existed on this world. Previously, though, it did. Over three thousand years ago there was a disastrous war between the gods, elder dragons, demons, powerful fey and spirits that ended in sundering the world from its original place and this sundering caused magic to no longer exist on the world. Three thousand years later, which will become the current age of magic, magic has become real again.

74 years before today, a bright, blue star suddenly appeared in the sky. Almost as big as the moon, it's coming was seen as a portent of things to come. Of course no one on the planet knew what that would be. Magic became real. This is also the first time in just over three thousand years that monsters have walked the world. Up until 74 years ago, monsters did not exist, just the people from the various races.

The other idea I am trying to work in is the end results of the ancient rulers of the world. When the gods, dragons, demons, fey, and spirits caused the end of their existence on the planet, part of their essences remained. After the blue star appeared, some of these essences awakened within the souls of individual people. These people, I don't know if I should call them Touched or Awakened, gain supernatural powers based on the kind of essence that dwells within them.

 

[humble minion]

Well, to minimise the weird effects that you can get when combining magic and tech, how about the following?

You say that magic did exist in the world thousands of years ago. So presumably the peoples of that time had at least some idea of how to use it. Then, however, magic goes away and stops working. The cultures that were the quickest to give up on it and concentrate on rationalism and technology are the ones that became the most scientifically advanced, and therefore now are the most powerful ones in the world. The cultures that stuck to magic withered, dwindled, and became backwards barbarians and peasants.

When magic comes back, these 'primitive' cultures who kept their magical traditions alive through oral history etc, have a big head start on the rest of the world. Add in the fact that magic is the domain of spirits that don't react well to experimentation under a scientific worldview. The most powerful spellcasters will be primitives, with a few eccentric types in urban societies. The rest of the mainstream technological world is still slowly and painfully discovering what magic can do...