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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ruleslawyer" data-source="post: 1683033" data-attributes="member: 1757">A favor, guys. Given the size of these posts, can you try to format quotes accordingly? It'd be a big help.Yup. IMHO, however, the only way to do it is to keep magic mysterious and rare. Thus Mac's points about accumulation and proliferation. Stuff just isn't mysterious and frightening to people if it's part of their everyday lives, systemic, and classifiable, which, given the demographics in the core books and the D&D magic system, is the case in a standard D&D world. Equating "fearfulness" with "superstition" is a problem here. When I watched those planes hurtle into the Towers two miles away from me, I was plenty fearful and horrified, for myself, loved ones, and strangers I'd never see. That doesn't mean that I'm superstitious about terrorists, or that I don't see them as an endemic and understandable part of our world. Likewise, airplanes, cars, and KitchenAids may impress me as human inventions, but I've some understanding of how they work. That explicitly doesn't square up with mystery or superstition.I think Mac has it on the money; it's really, really hard to imagine the full extent of how D&D's demographics and magic would impact on the world. For one, I think teleportation circle is a serious game-breaker. A sufficiently far-sighted ruler with access to the right wizard, or a smart and money-inclined wizard (and who doesn't want money if making magic items and scribing spells costs so much?) will make a permanent one of these at some point spanning two major city markets and post guards at both ends; from that point onward, it's effortless, free transport of goods and services. True, the wizard or his descendants are going to charge what the market will bear, but that does mean perfect and efficient small package trade, message systems superior to FedEx, and stress-free diplomatic travel. Resurrection and healing are the big ones, IMHO. In our world, biotechnology is the second largest recipient of venture investment, behind information technology. Reliable healthcare (including public health and hygiene) have a tremendous impact on the human experience, facilitating population expansion, wealth, and family structure. The fact that these services would be provided most competently by people of Good (with a capital G) nature with a strong incentive to give them out for free is pretty tremendous. The greedy nature of most religions in D&D games has never made sense to me; Catholic missionaries have braved the front lines of guerilla conflict to preach peace for decades, churches hold wide-open soup kitchens, and even the mullahs of Hamas feed, clothe, and educate thousands of people for free. If I were to embrace the "D&D-isms" of alignment and divine magic fully, I'd have a world (or some regions of the world) where potable, disease-free water was available for the asking, sickness and wounds were cured almost instantly, and even death was a mere ailment to be cured, albeit at a cost for even the most charitable churches (if only to limit demand pressures).Yeah, this sorta dovetails with what I was thinking almost exactly. The funny thing about Midnight is that I just don't understand why the designers bothered to write new rules for it (especially such buggy ones). It's actually one of the few campaign settings in which I can see the D&D-isms working just fine. In essence, the PCs have to use all the cool powers at their disposal, or they'll die. They HAVE to spend a good amount of wealth and spell energy just to walk around constantly protected from scrying, because if they don't, the Legates will hunt them down and slay them. Public health and abundant resurrections? Well, sure... if you're powerful and evil enough to be valuable to the Shadow. Teleportation for fun and profit? Hardly. If I were to run an out-of-the-box D&D setting, I'd do it Midnight-style. The alternative would be to play it like a superhero game, in which the PCs can completely transform the world, but they're among the few who can do it and they've constantly got their hands full dealing with new and ever-more-threatening foes on their own power level. But it'd be too high-powered and too fast-paced to be a classic heroic fantasy setting. There you go for my general take.</blockquote>

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