In a world where magic is as everyday as electricity and TV is in the modern age, can there truly be such a thing as superstition?
In A World Where Magic Exists...
- Thread starter Diamond Cross
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Alan Shutko
Explorer
Superstition is founded in ignorance, of which there will never be a shortage. Even today, when electricity and TV are as everyday as they are, people believe strange things without foundation. Health effects of high-voltage lines or cell phones. Magnetic cures to arthritis. You name it. Most interestingly, some of the strange and unfounded things people believe might turn out to be true, there's just no support for them now!
This is because no matter how common technology or magic is, most people don't fully understand it. They can use it because it's been packaged up for them. When they try to make sense of their universe, they'll naturally make mistakes and believe things that are untrue... causing superstition.
This is because no matter how common technology or magic is, most people don't fully understand it. They can use it because it's been packaged up for them. When they try to make sense of their universe, they'll naturally make mistakes and believe things that are untrue... causing superstition.
wingsandsword
Legend
Pretty much this.
Think of how much superstition there is about technology, and realize it would apply to magic. Even with learned wizards knowing the whole truth, just knowing magic is real but not knowing the details or limits would fuel superstition, not silence it.
Imagine superstitions about who can magically heal who or bad things might happen ("can't let a man heal a woman, else if she ever marries the child will actually be that of the healer, not her husband!"), or that being exposed to too many detection spells subtly poisons you, or the superstition that magically created food or growth-augmented crops makes you unhealthy and fat (or doesn't really sustain you and instead slowly lets you starve). This goes triple when you realize that a lot of superstition is real in a D&D world: werewolves are hurt by silver, vampires can't see themselves in mirrors or stand garlic or sunlight, ect.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
In a world with science, there are plenty of people who think that douching with Coca-Cola can prevent pregnancy.
So, yes.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Incidentally, given the lack of a unified cosmological basis for magic in the D&D universe -- WHY exactly does silver hurt certain beings but not others? Why not gold? Or platinum? -- the residents would naturally be confused about what works and what doesn't, since there's no identifiable pattern of cause and effect.
Starman
Adventurer
This is one I hadn't heard, so I googled it out of curiosity. Wow.
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