Magical Applications to the Campaign Milieu

[Mokona]

A lot of modern cultural, legal, and even financial aspects come from Judaism and Christianity. Since D&D has neither, the presence of magic would not lead to similarly advanced or structured systems as we have today.

The kind of religious structure posited by Dungeons & Dragons (Bahamut, Bane, primordials, etc) has never led to the kind of progress that got the world to where it is today.

 

[genshou]

An interesting read.

I think most of the effects you're referring to require a particularly "high-magic" milieu as opposed to what would be found in "default D&D". Even so, since I'm getting back into my study of what makes up the "default" setting of 3.x, I'll be looking at the numbers of spellcasters to see what kinds of changes they might be capable of!

 

[Baron Opal]

SHARK, I have made different assumptions as to the incidence of excellence in the general population of my gameworlds. Given that the world is usually crawling with nasty things that want to eat your face, fighters and thieves would have ample chances to train, regardless of where they happened to be. Clerics and magic-users, however, needed specialized training areas to even begin to learn their class. Given literature and the number of "failed wizard experiments" there are in the Monster Manual, I furthermore decided that magic-users were fairly unpopular. Those who had the talent to access magic would become clerics if they could.

Therefore, it would not seem to be out of line for a good-sized, prosperous villiage of 500+ to have a small temple that had a single level 1 cleric and a couple of acolytes that were devout, but unpowered. He might have some scrolls given to him by the Mother Church, or even some passed down from a particularlly capable abbott. Assuming that the cleric is benevolent, or at least wants to get in good with the populace, he would offer his services to the people.

I figured that the presence of magic balanced out the presence of monsters, survivability wise. It did skew the population, however. Having a cleric, presumably trained in the healing arts as well as doctine and magic, would make an exceptional midwife. Improving infant and maternal survivability would go a long way to increasing the stability of a village or town. Even using a rare cure disease scroll for childbirth fever would be appropriate. But, he's just one man (or woman). The presence of a plague or other serious situation he just gets overwhelmed. Either because he doesn't have the scrolls to cure the infected or he can't catch up if he can memorize the spell.

So, my upshot was that the 5 year mortality rate would be significantly, if not drastically, less. All-cause mortality for 16-30 year olds would be higher, than historical because of the ankhegs, manticores and carrion crawlers that jump out at you when you are in the fields. Those that made it to 50 and 70 years old would be about the same.

And since so few made it to a magical apprenticeship, there isn't the number of magicians to even conceive of a mercantile for magic. There certainly is a market for magic items, but I figured that it would be parallel to the current market for high end jewelry. Done by the rich, lucky or clever in comfortable hidden areas that the general population doesn't know about. You can find it if you look, but only those that can affort it do so.

 

[Clavis]

My campaigns tend to have a fairly cynical view of human nature, and so have easy explanations as to why every place isn't a magical utopia.

1) Mages are really arrogant in general. The ability to wield the powers of the universe tends to make wizards insensitive to the affairs of "petty mundanes". At best, they tend to be apathetic about most people's problems. At worst, they take the opportunity to indulge themselves in whatever way strikes their fancy. They certainly would not allow themselves to be thought of as mere craftsmen.

2) Being obsessed with power (otherwise they wouldn't care about magic!), the most powerful wizards force the others into hierarchical magical orders. The orders are riven with vicious in-fighting, and the orders also fight each other constantly. The mages tend not to care too much about who gets accidentally hurt by all of this.

3) As a result of the above, people fear wizards in general. Priests would set themselves up as the protectors of the people against the wizards. The wizards would be allied with the nobility, who seek a check against the power of the clergy.The wizards and the priests would exist in a kind of cold war, with frequent plots and secret assassinations.

4) In addition, the craft guilds would not appreciate any competition from the clergy or the wizards. Any idealistic young wizard who wants to be clever and give the city Continual Light streetlights might wake up to an assassin's blade, courtesy of the town's Lamplighters and Oil Mongers. The do-gooder Priest who creates too much food for the poor might find out that the food sellers can always pay local gangs to beat some respect for local business into him.

Of course, I do have some places where magic is commonly seen. Those magicarchies are pretty terrible places to live if you're not spell-caster, and are therefore a despised second class citizen.

 

[Ace]

Magic in my game world is rather common. To dealwith the social ramifications of it I just assumed it made society a lot more like "modern cold war with swords" -- happily there is birth control galore and extensive church support for it so city populations are kept in check

Now I did have a city where there was very high magic. It had no functioning economy and ended up a sort of commune. Everyone had what they needed but since there was no surplus thos made it nigh impossible for anyone to get anything they wanted.It was a drab place

My players foud the entire concept blah and so I lowered the magic level to "rare for non PC's with just enough for Ren-Fest middle ages" and everyone was happy

 

[Thanael]

Interesting read.

And the Gamist vs. Simulationist and PC/NPC Divide discussions rear their ugly heads. I for one don't like the "Heroes are so special that they have their own completely different set of rules" premise. It doesn't suspend my disbelief. I like that in 3E NPCs can have levels too and I like settings that try to explain how a world would look like where magic and levelling and xp function (roughly) as the rules describe it. It's interesting to explore the unique underlying implied flavour in the D&D rules, which IMHO is where the true quirky charm of D&D lies hidden. It is why i like Terry Pratchett and Eberron, the Barrister's Guild of the City of Greyhawk and Jack Vance.

 

[Ydars]

Let's take the assumption of spell-casters as a real power and force to its logical conclusion.

Lots of mages may indeed be powerful if prepared, but they are relatively soft targets if they are surprised. In addition, to defend themselves they would have to expend most of their magical power to keep up a constant defence; a high price for someone who is trying to pursue scholarly research. As a researcher myself, I can tell you that scholars tend to become very myopic and can often lose complete track of the "real world" that other people experience. We do not like interuptions at all.

If mages did become a force in wars, then don't you think that the your enemies first move would be to try and kill as many of your mages as possible, much like a first strike to destroy as many of the enemies missle silos as possible? Isn't it also true that magical wars would be terrible and frightening things that would probably make mages an object of hatred and fear?

If this is so, then most worlds would go through one or two terrible magical wars and then I predict that mages would refuse to have anything to do with temporal matters, either because of a restriction placed upon them by others or, more likely, as a result of the mages own refusal to become involved.

So mages could well be relatively common, magic powerful and pervasive and yet have almost NO effect on society at large in such a scenario, because, I would argue, mages would eventually realise that they would just become pawns in the hands of others and would have strict laws to prevent this happening.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Urbis goes into some detail with such ideas.

 

[SHARK]

Interesting read.

And the Gamist vs. Simulationist and PC/NPC Divide discussions rear their ugly heads. I for one don't like the "Heroes are so special that they have their own completely different set of rules" premise. It doesn't suspend my disbelief. I like that in 3E NPCs can have levels too and I like settings that try to explain how a world would look like where magic and levelling and xp function (roughly) as the rules describe it. It's interesting to explore the unique underlying implied flavour in the D&D rules, which IMHO is where the true quirky charm of D&D lies hidden. It is why i like Terry Pratchett and Eberron, the Barrister's Guild of the City of Greyhawk and Jack Vance.

Greetings!

Indeed, in many ways, I definitely lean the same way. I tend to apply the rules and assumptions to the enitre campaign. I typically think that there isn't anything especially unique about the player character's classes, stats, or abilities, per se. It is what they actually *DO* and how they choose to *act and behave* that sets them apart from the "norm".

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[Sir Brennen]

Another good literary example would be China Miéville's Bas-Lag novels.