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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 5691571" data-attributes="member: 8835">I don't think i use magic as a plot device as in, this here dungeon is magic, or you have to get the magic sword to advance the plot.It's more of a tool the PCs have, like skills and weapons to use towards solving problems.  Many of the problems in my games are non-magical.  the villain is the problem because he and his henchment are trying to destroy the village, not because they happen to be undead.Like you said, I think the problem is that settings designers forget that all this magic-technology would change the world if a some wizards put their mind to it, and that these world changing ideas could have happened a long time ago before the PCs show up.So instead, it's like you've got a medieval world, that only in the last 50 years or so, has magic appeared.I think if you want to play in GreyHawk/Forgotten Realms/medieval fantasy, you've got to swallow the pill.  Otherwise, what you're lobbying for is that every fantasy game has to be Magipunk 2020.  That's where the idea goes.I can think of a few other constraints to why this won't happen:wizards, by 1e math, account for a very small percentage of the population.  Is that enough for them to go industrial revolution on the world?  Would that increase or diminish their own power (if they could wire up a control switch to their products...)Wizards are stuck with whatever spells they learned.  While the PH has a butt load of spells, that doesn't mean they all literally exist in the game world and can be learned by heading for the library.  There's nothing saying these spells have existed since the first mage (who couldn't know all of them).  Some of them were first announced at the Wizards of the Coast convention last year.  The first time a PC proclaims he's learning Fireball, might represent him inventing that spell (probably not, but you get the point).Since wizards can't KNOW all spells in the PH, it is probably that not all spells in the PH are actively available as castable spells at any point in game time.Humans are sort of resistant to change, and to magic (remember the Salem Land Grabs, er Witch Trials).  Our technological growth has been accerating, but that also implies that we freaking crawled up until the 1800s when things really started to pick up steam.Couple that with fear of powers a minority has that are unnatural, compared to what the rest of the world can do.  Folks don't that unholy stuff anywhere near them.  There's a reason for the D&D stereotype that magic is feared, which screws the wizard PC in the party during social encounters.I don't see any single reason, but there are a pile of little reasons why the guy with phenomenal cosmic power doesn't submit to being a factory worker cranking out magic light bulbs for the masses.</blockquote>

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