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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dreaddisease" data-source="post: 932869" data-attributes="member: 3548">Thank you so much for your lively discussion.  I barely got time to read this and had some comments or maybe a summary to this whole thing. I agreed much with Dr. Strangemonkey but I felt that you tended to go towards the 'technology is inevitable' feeling.  I was forced to agree on some points but not all conclusions came towards technology.  I will return to this later.Interesting that no-one brought up the royalty in all this and the striving for power.  Elite vs dolts was a good point, as well as the selfishness of individuals and the progression of society through those means (Ayn Rand is ever so clever) but selfishness tends towards a relying on the abilities of yourself more on the loyalty of subjects.  Thus a elitist would rather they or their small group control the outcome of conflicts rather then depend on the peasants and dolts of their society who change loyalties to suit their survival.  This idea to me tends towards the retardation of technological advances and the enhancement of magical means.  We must not forget that money in many cases was not a concern for most royal families (considering they raped the population of every last cent) So the comment of ROI (Return on Investent) had no bearing.  As an example of royal wealth, the King of a small Arab country had (before westernizing his culture) over 100 Billion american dollars worth of liquid assets.  Often the advance of technology was related to the advancement of weapons (D&D being a battle oriented game) and I must agree that Thousands of rifles/muskets and intermixed cannons is much more powerful than a couple magic items, but that is also thousands of rifles in the hands of peasants, which can bring upon uprisings much quicker and more deadly than before.  Tech was not really handed to the masses unless it was deemed harmless to the 'regime' in power.  Thus most battle participants up until the 14th and 15th centuries were still considered the elite.  Also magic can lead a elite part of society to depend less and less upon the peasants/farmers and merchants (Create Food and Water, Ring of Sustenance, etc...) thus alienating the two societies.  One last point, Man tends towards stability and are frustrated easily.  Thus a Utopian society with no reason to become frustrated with their situation will always stay that way.  You introduce disease, hard work, famine, unexplained phenomenon, weather and any hardship the society must change because of the frustation of the masses.  IMHO magic sounds like an opiate that encourages stability in its use.  It destroys trials, hardships and pain and promotes deception, comfort and peace.  There is much I do not understand about history plus I doubt that you can use mankinds history as a good template for a fantasy setting as variances from the beginning of time would change things drastically.  Plus I would have a hard time believing that a society made up of christians, buddhists and muslims would exist where the dieties had more involvement or their powers were more present in their followers (i.e. Clerics).   I apologize for the long post, plus I must apologize for the vague question that started this post.  After I posted I knew I should have explained myself a little more.  I was in a very in depth discussion about Rowling's world she created with Harry Potter and some of the innate problems with the idea and how she solved them (with fairly little problem of creating the disbelief by separating the two worlds).  But the question I kept on rolling over in my mind was why they were so midevil in their practices when they had all the technology of modern day (Of course the flying car thing was an exception).  Anyways, thanks for the insights.</blockquote>

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