Does high magic = high tech?

[Chrisling]

Sociology!

Celebrim said, very correctly, that progress is as much sociology as it is technology (or magic), too. Another good way (to get to the thread's intent, hehe) to view why magic doesn't lead to magi-tech is to say, "Oh, maybe someday it will, but the education system of this world is still very feudal."

Right now, it could be that magic isn't done with our view of learning. Maybe the game's magic isn't the result of magical theories and hypotheses as simply a collection of techniques that produce effects for reasons that are unknown to anyone. If that's the case, the "learning" of wizards is merely memorization skills and <i>nothing else</i>. Thus, the culture could be centuries away from having the cultural skills necessary to organize magic appropriately to advance their magic into anything like an advanced society.

Furthermore, if some other sentient beings with alien mindsets had greater organization . . . well, they could set up the paradigm for "civilization."

Let's say, for instance, that one of the influential groups in the game world were a bunch of extremely long-lived magical types. Y'know. Elves. And lets say these elves had a few epic level spellcasters that used their epic spells to invent life forms that were the servants of the elves. Lots of advantages in that. Such as life forms breed on their own! They scale better, etc. So, a world full of fey creatures that do things for their creators could become the paradigm of an advanced civilization. Instead of producing golem-power or whatever, the goal would be to create spellcasters capable of making servitor races for civilizations.

 

[Nifft]

Re: Golems

Most likely it's far cheaper to keep a stable of golems around than to try to keep a system of post relief stations and courier roads up and running for decades.

Of course, if you have Golems, you also have cars... just hook a pair of golem arms and/or legs to a series of gears, put some treads and/or wheels (depending on the quality of the roads), slap a frame around it and figure out how to steer.

More seriously, though, a human on a horse will go most TACTICAL distances within TACTICAL time-frames (where "TACTICAL" means "possible to affect the outcome of a battle").

Sure, if you want to get a message to a different continent, putting it in an airtight container and handing it to a golem might make sense -- they're probably more reliable than a trireme.

However, if you have enough magic to make golems, you might just be able to whip up some small, fast constructs that fly faster than a horse can run.

-- Nifft

 

[ajanders]

Things money can't buy

One minor problem with assuming magic items will become common is the xp drain.
That's not something that can be earned back doing mercantile transactions, it's giving up literal bits of your soul and of your arcane powers.
Could somebody pay you enough for you to lose a third level spell slot? I know my wizard character wouldn't have done it.
Even in Urbis, where you can shunt the xp drain off on to some worthless commoner proles, creating magical items inflicts a level drain on the society as a whole. When your commoners and experts lose levels, you lose human capital, retarding your economy.
If you drain them so completely they die of negative levels, your problems might just get worse. Twenty dead proles is an aesthetic problem. Twenty dead proles coming back as wights is a major emergency.
Even evil rulers would have to excercise some modest restraint, or they'd have to start bearing the xp costs themselves when all their subjects are dead. And fighting the undead armies.
Neat idea though...kind of like Bishop Hatto's rats.

 

[LostSoul]

And in fact, while it is true that for some tasks the golem wouldn't have quite the efficiency of 28 men, for other tasks it would have greater than the efficiency of 28 men.

This is diminishing returns, right?

Another thing to consider is that golems aren't consumers, and don't add to the economy (other than the work they do). This would have effects on life in general - maybe leading to laws against slavery, etc.

 

[Celebrim]

It has always been my assumption that there are mundane ways of gaining XP that do not involve slaying things. For one thing, if the only way to advance in levels was to slay things, then there is no way to explain the number of high level characters in the universe, because in the process of gaining levels they would have made each other go extinct. So time you campaign, keep a list of everything your party kills in a certain period of time. It will quickly become impressive. The problem isn't as bad in 3rd. ed. as it was in first because you get more XP, but it is still there.

Those other mundane ways I think are generally ignored because they are slower, and on the day to day level quite redundant. Some people may enjoy RPing a wizard gaining XP by reading exotic tomes, or a fighter gaining XP by sparring. But after a few hundred days of this (and only a few hundred XP gained), I think most people will be more than willing to move on. But, if a character can only gain a couple XP per day of labor (of whatever sort is appropriate to the class), they will still have some XP to burn. In order to support a high magic society, obviously more effective means of training need to be developed in the long run.

There are also alternative sources of XP like sacrifices, and conceivably rituals could be developed that would let the Wizard borrow part of the cost (in XP) from a willing subject (the fighter that wants the sword made), etc.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Progress and Order

Hmmm, there has been much talk of the limitations magic might or might not impose on a societies ability to progress.

Me, I'm not much for progression. I mean every society reacts to its internal and external circumstances and its history, so every society changes as these change, and that does seem to me progression. People in the early middle ages ate more meat, lived in less crowded conditions, managed to do away with massive levels of slavery, created the spiritual institutions I live with today, and used sustainable systems of agriculture that kept Europe well fed without drastically changing its eco-systems until the advent of modern capitalism destroyed all that. On the other hand we now refer to the early medieval period as the 'dark ages' because we prefer the idea of living in the classical period.

My overall feeling is that societies move acording to what they know and what they value. My thoughts entering this thread were to play with the idea of how the addition of magical knowledge would effect that progresion.

With the addendum of society valuing magic as well as knowing it.

Now I could see the argument that the essential change that lead to the early modern period was a new found valuation of knowledge, and that a society that values magic still values knowledge and would make similar choices. Thus the interesting aspects of this 'mind game.'

The above is simply my way of getting around the progress issue.

Also: The golems in the book were useful because they were strategic couriers. Similar wisdom to cowboys using mules to go long distances quickly. They're just tougher than thoroughbreds.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Note that in terms of s.p., my analysis is even more conservative than yours, ei 2010 g.p. per year. Even at that rate, I think it is something of a bargin, however, I can defend my claim that the DMG is wrong (and always has been since 1st edition). Given the prices for goods and services and the abundance of wealth in an average setting, it is impossible that the common laborer can only demand for his wages 1 s.p. per day, or that common laborer could live on 1 s.p. per day. The economics of that claim don't make any sense.

Even the "poor meals" listed in the PHB are relatively posh. I mean, they include actual bread! And vegetables! Plus, the 1 sp is probably what they charge in an inn...

For example, the average high level character could leverage all the labor of very large areas (given the unhistorical low populations of D&D worlds) for very long periods of time.

How many people do that, though? How much work is there for so many people?

And from the description of the Profession skill, we know that anyone with even the slightest training in a Profession (including profession (farmer)!!!) can make roughly 1 g.p. per day in income. (Of course, the profession skill is broken in its own ways as well.)

In Urbis, many, many people don't have any profession skill - including "farmer"! Most agriculture is done on large plantations that are owned by wealthy city-dwellers, after all...

Anyhow, that is the basics. The details are lying around somewhere, and I can keep this up if you aren't somewhat convinced.

I'm somewhat convinced for "normal" D&D world. However, in Urbis I am trying to justify the "D&D economics", so by all means bring it on!

No. It may be that the food you give them is part of thier pay, but the total cost of thier labor won't go under 1 s.p.

Whatever the wage standard of a substitance economy is, be it 1 s.p. or 1 g.p. or 1 shilling or 1 denira or whatever, it is impossible to pay your worker much less than that. If you do, they die. Before they die, they generally go into revolt and try to kill you.

If they get uppity, you fire them. Of course, they might try to get communist on you...

(Hmmm... I think I'll have to put some sort of pseudo-communist organisation into Urbis without making the real-world links too blatant. )

The whole purpose of slavery, sweat shops, share cropping, company stores, serfdom and so forth is to try to insure that locally or with some percentage of the population, you continue to pay workers substitance wages when they might otherwise be able to demand slightly more than that. Even that doesn't work to well in the long run or for large percentages of the population, because it is very difficult to keep wages below the market demand.

Like I said, I'm assuming that in Urbis, the population is far higher than the number of available jobs. See here for some basic discussion of my social model...

And if you can't get enough food, there are always some charity soup kitchens. Not enough to live on, but enough for not dying. Keeps you docile (in addition to the Nexus Tower-induced lethargy)...

And in any event, D&D has never dwelt upon such highly oppressive societies, nor does history leave much in the way of evidence that any attempt to do so resulted in significant increase in the wealth of anyone. I see it as alot like an owner embezelling his own company. Sure, he can line his pockets in the short term, but in the long term the money he steals isn't invested in the company, doesn't return a profit for him, and eventually the company goes broke.

I think the Industrial Age, at least in Western Europe, might make a good model. Of course, the question is how long this status could be maintained...

Perhaps I should write that the current social model in Urbis is transistory, and might transform itself soon...

I've always said that the hard part about progress isn't the science, its the sociology. The whole of the Middle Ages was about evolving the right culture to take advantage of the science that antiquity had achieved but couldn't really put to use.

And it's an interesting intellectual excercise to put all this into a D&D context...

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Re: Golems

Golems are comporatively slow on a round to round comparison with humans, but they don't sleep, eat, or get tired so they eat up the ground, won't take bribes, and are really difficult for a patrol or long range reconaissance unit to take out.

Just make sure that you put your messages into really solid containers, or else enemies will take out the message while leaving the golem standing...

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Re: Sociology!

Let's say, for instance, that one of the influential groups in the game world were a bunch of extremely long-lived magical types. Y'know. Elves. And lets say these elves had a few epic level spellcasters that used their epic spells to invent life forms that were the servants of the elves. Lots of advantages in that. Such as life forms breed on their own! They scale better, etc. So, a world full of fey creatures that do things for their creators could become the paradigm of an advanced civilization. Instead of producing golem-power or whatever, the goal would be to create spellcasters capable of making servitor races for civilizations.

The elves have done that already. I mean, take dryads. They apparently are very lusty, but don't form any strong emotional attachments to their lovers to become jealous. Can you say "sex slaves"?

And are the elves themselves really a "natural" race? Aren't they a bit to close to how humans would like to be - long-lived, attractive, and so on?

I could go on, but I'll leave it to my Pyramid article, if it gets accepted...

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Re: Things money can't buy

Even in Urbis, where you can shunt the xp drain off on to some worthless commoner proles, creating magical items inflicts a level drain on the society as a whole. When your commoners and experts lose levels, you lose human capital, retarding your economy.

Unless, of course, this life energy you are gathering is your "human capital"...