D&D General Eberron: With magic standing in for tech, why would the world still look so much like our own? Ruminations through the lens of Ursula K. Le Guin

[earthsea_wizard]

A few times a year I ruminate about Eberron, which I have still only run once since it was released, a handful of short adventures about 10 years ago. I should be running it again soon.

Right now I am thinking about the main conceit of "if the/a world evolved technologically via magic rather than, well, technology...". Ok, cool idea. I am into fantasy and sci-fi as speculative fiction and often look at it through the lens of a favorite author of mine, Ursula K. Le Guin.

But it falls short. Le Guin, just as an example, uses the what ifs in her fantasy/sci-fi to imagine new possibilities, new ways of living, new ways of organizing ourselves and so forth. Something like magic being as wide spread as it is in Eberron and being the driving force behind "progress" (a loaded term, one that Le Guin also takes major issue with in ways that I agree with), would likely result in a world, societies, cultures, modes of travel, concepts of progress, architecture, familial and governance structures and so forth that are totall alien to our own. But much of what we see in Eberron in this regard looks a lot like what we've got on good old planet earth for the last few hundred years.

One reason I enjoy reading about and asking about Eberron is because the wonerful fans of the setting always surprise me with really interesting and nuanced answers that typically leave me nodding and saying "Ok, nice, did not expect there to be a way to make this fit."

So, what do we think about the above? The answer I expect, really the only one I can come up with myself, is that it would otherwise not fit into the expectations of D&D (or just about any other fantasy role playing game).

 

[Sepulchrave II]

I agree - relatability.

I love Le Guin; she was genuinely unfettered by convention. But thought experiments developed carefully in a novel or short story aren't always a natural fit for a game. Tweaking one or two dimensions of the expected human experience might fly, but the further you diverge the more ungrounded it will feel. We need familiar anchors.

Also, I once sat next to her on a bus in Portland. I was paralyzed and couldn't say anything. She just smiled at me.

 

[dave2008]

I have been wanted to read Le Guin for some time, but have never picked it up. I know a little about Earthsea from reading a wiki years ago. I have also seen the animated movie, but I hear that is not a good representation of her work. However, what I remember didn't seem so different from typical fantasy. Perhaps more aligned with east-Asian fantast more, but not otherworldly.

So, please educate me. What makes Le Guin's work stand out IYO? How could that be used in D&D or even more specifically Eberron?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Eberron is styled after real world societies for the same reason most D&D settings are styled after real world societies - it's easier to imagine. It's always possible for societies to be completely different to anything seen in the real world if the creator wants to put the effort into imagining it and describing it to others, but that's hard*. It really makes no difference if it's high magic, low magic, or no magic. It might look like something in the real world, or it might not.


*A focus of elaborate world building is also a diversion from what D&D is about - the heroic(?) adventures of the PCs. If the DM is describing how society works in minute detail, then that is taking time away from poking dragons with pointy sticks. It's really better to put that stuff in a novel, where it doesn't matter that the world builder is doing all the talking.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I have been wanted to read Le Guin for some time, but have never picked it up. I know a little about Earthsea from reading a wiki years ago. I have also seen the animated movie, but I hear that is not a good representation of her work. However, what I remember didn't seem so different from typical fantasy. Perhaps more aligned with east-Asian fantast more, but not otherworldly.

So, please educate me. What makes Le Guin's work stand out IYO? How could that be used in D&D or even more specifically Eberron?

Earthsea, especially the original novel, is more significant for what isn't in it - any hint of pseudo-Medievil Europe. It does have a hint of 20th century American High School though!

But LeGuin's science fiction novels go in for serious not-at-all-like-us worldbuiding.

 

[Tonguez]

Ebberon isnt asking what would a civilization built around magic actually look like, instead it is asking "what if post-industrial society built technology that was magical". Those result in very different societies not least because Eberrons basic assumptions are that urbanization and industrialisation has already occurred and that magic can be standardized, reproduced and commodified.

Urusla Le Guin would take the first question and posit that if every village has several people capable of creating food and purifying water, repairing tools, fabricating goods, communicating across distances, healing injuries, and producing light and heat that why would they industrialize when dwarfs, elfs and alchemist are already crafting magi-tech? Why is there a need to gather large populations in Walled Cities? - would society be more small scale and post scarcity? How would people live in such a society?

Its possible to do such speculation and even to introduce gameable issues, but they would be very different to DnD

 

[dave2008]

Earthsea, especially the original novel, is more significant for what isn't in it - any hint of pseudo-Medievil Europe. It does have a hint of 20th century American High School though!

But LeGuin's science fiction novels go in for serious not-at-all-like-us worldbuiding.

I knew that part, generally, but that didn't seem to be what the OP was talking about so I thought there as more to it

 

[earthsea_wizard]

I have been wanted to read Le Guin for some time, but have never picked it up. I know a little about Earthsea from reading a wiki years ago. I have also seen the animated movie, but I hear that is not a good representation of her work. However, what I remember didn't seem so different from typical fantasy. Perhaps more aligned with east-Asian fantast more, but not otherworldly.

So, please educate me. What makes Le Guin's work stand out IYO? How could that be used in D&D or even more specifically Eberron?

She was a part of the short lived, late 60s-early 70s literary movement known as experiemental science fiction, which Michael Moorcock and Roger Zelazny were also a part of.

Earthsea, which is one of her three most famous works, was actually her attempt at writing a "typical" fantasy novel, so isn't the best representation of what I am talking about. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, the special thing about Earthsea (for its time) is it was not at all based on medieval european tropes and the characters were all dark skinned (although some of the early covers betrayed this, much to Le Guins dismay. That was eventually remedied).

As another poster stated:

LeGuin's science fiction novels go in for serious not-at-all-like-us worldbuiding.

What you want to read are her other two big works- The Disposessed and Left Hand of Darkness. The first features two societies living on two different moons, one organized as an anarchist society and the other organized as a capatlist society which are both compared, contrasted and critiqued by the author (although, Le Guin was an anarchist, and that stance shows. She is still able to critique utopian anarchist ideals in the novel though).

Left Hand of Darkness features an envoy from a federation of planets who travels to an icy planet who hasn't joined the confederation to try and convince them to join. The people here are ambisexual and gender-fluid (they literally change gender in phases like seasons, if I recall correctly). Remember, this was written in the 1960s, a big deal at the time. The people of this planet also have two distinct and alien religions that are difficult for the envoy to comprehend.

The aesthetics, clothing, arhictecture and many day to day things that make up how socieities interact, eat, produce, organize and so forth are quite different than real world earth. As another posted stated:

"Urusla Le Guin would...posit that if every village has several people capable of creating food and purifying water, repairing tools, fabricating goods, communicating across distances, healing injuries, and producing light and heat that why would they industrialize when dwarfs, elfs and alchemist are already crafting magi-tech? Why is there a need to gather large populations in Walled Cities? - would society be more small scale and post scarcity? How would people live in such a society?"

It's always possible for societies to be completely different to anything seen in the real world if the creator wants to put the effort into imagining it and describing it to others, but that's hard*.

True, hard and time consuming and I agree that it may not look so much like D&D. But my thought is that almost everything in Eberron just looks like what we have, just "with magic". Trains, a New York City, capitalism and so forth. All things that were not even inevitable in our on world, let alone one propelled by magic. But the poster in the follow post makes a relevant point about this:

Ebberon isnt asking what would a civilization built around magic actually look like, instead it is asking "what if post-industrial society built technology that was magical". Those result in very different societies not least because Eberrons basic assumptions are that urbanization and industrialisation has already occurred and that magic can be standardized, reproduced and commodified.

Urusla Le Guin would take the first question and posit that if every village has several people capable of creating food and purifying water, repairing tools, fabricating goods, communicating across distances, healing injuries, and producing light and heat that why would they industrialize when dwarfs, elfs and alchemist are already crafting magi-tech? Why is there a need to gather large populations in Walled Cities? - would society be more small scale and post scarcity? How would people live in such a society?

Its possible to do such speculation and even to introduce gameable issues, but they would be very different to DnD.

This is a very important distinction, thanks for bringning it up. Even then, I do wonder, would even a post-industrial society built with tech that was magic having trains that looks like our trains, versions of London and New York City, washing machines, capitalism, democracy and so forth? Everything in Eberron is close to identical to the real world, if you squint past the magic. They didn't even really bother to do a big "what if" about anything at all in the world.

 

[earthsea_wizard]

Keith Baker responded to this inquiry on Reddit, where I also posed the question. Here is his response:

There’s a number of reasons for this.

First of all, keep in mind that Eberron wasn’t generically created as “A world where magic replaces technology.” It was specifically created as a world in which ARCANE MAGIC AS IT EXISTS IN THIRD EDITION D&D REPLACES TECHNOLOGY. This was inspired by the fact that arcane magic is very concrete in 3E. It’s not whimsical or mysterious. A wizard can teach a spell to another wizard — it’s not mysterious like Gandalf in Middle Earth, it’s a teachable skill that would end up as a job. Now add to that what others have said: the next step is that only first through third level spells are part of everyday life. So it’s not an abstract “What’s a world look like when it’s built on Magic” — it’s “What’s a world look like when drawing on the specific list of spells.” Hence the fact that the streets are lit with Continual Flame street lamps, and that Whispering Wind forms the basis of what is functionally a telegraph system (note that in 3E, Sending was a 5th level spell). We did create new rules: Magewrights to represent the common professional spellcaster, Artificers as the inventors and engineers.

That then gets to the second point, which others have already called out. Eberron isn’t a novel. It’s not a thought exercise. It’s a setting for Dungeons & Dragons, and one created with the specific goal that “Anything that exists in D&D has a place in Eberron.” In the first version of Eberron magic WAS more advanced and among other things, no one used bows or crossbows, because everyone used wands and rods. But D&D is built on a foundation of people using swords, armor, bows, horses — WotC didn’t WANT to move away from that foundation. So we scaled things back. With that specific example, of course, I’ve written about how crossbows in Eberron are nothing like the crossbows that we know — that the things that appear to be medieval may not be. Further, now that cantrips exist I’ve been pushing wandslingers. But the point is still there: Eberron is a setting for Dungeons and Dragons. It was always going to be a world with wizards and clerics casting Vancian magic. It wasn’t just MAGIC, it was magic as defined in 3E D&D, and a world designed to support the general experience of D&D… to be familiar and easily accessible to every D&D player, while still having interesting twists. “If it exists in D&D there’s a place for it in Eberron” is a crucial tenet: it meant that this was always going to be a world with elves, dwarves, gnomes, gnolls, orcs, dragons, lycanthropes, and so on. Again, not a novel starting from a blank slate; a sandbox already filled with a particular set of toys, wanting to present a different way to play with them.

 

[Davy Greenwind]

What makes Le Guin's work stand out IYO?

I'm a huge fan of hers. First, her works have serious literary quality, the only fantasy novels I have read on par with Lord of the Rings in terms of style, themes, and prosody. Second, so much of modern fantasy is lifted from her works, people don't even realize it. Things like "good" dragons, true name magic, magic schools (by this I mean bot magical academies and categories of magic), and other fantasy staples first appeared in fantasy fiction form in her works. Third, her world-building is masterful, the best I have ever read. The Left Hand of Darkness really made me feel as if I had taken a trip to another planet.