Magical worlds-- different styles of rules.

[Zappo]

Generally, I don't have any rule about whether lightbulbs work or not, because there are no lightbulbs in the world and practically everyone who is smart enough to make any real scientific progress is studying magic instead. Gunpowder often exists, but it isn't too widespread because magic is better and more reliable.

If it somehow became a problem, I would feel no shame at all in stating that "it just doesn't work". I don't have to justify it in any way, at least not until the PCs try in game to figure out how the world works. Maybe they'll eventually find out that electricity is based on uncontrollable elemental forces instead of subatomic particles, and that people's nerves work thanks to the soul. The world has magic that violates every bloody physical law known to man, so if the lack of gunpowder hurts a player's suspension of disbelief, I place the blame on him entirely.

 

[Afrodyte]

I usually just tell my players (assuming they get snarky enough to start trying to call 'science' in a fantasy game) that there are unpredictable influences by mischeivous elementals, astronomical conjunctions, and so forth. These render the 'reproducibility' upon which the scientific method is based impossible, and so technology as we know it just isn't going to happen.

I really like this idea. I think that technology as we know it could still be theoretically possible, but the methodology changes drastically, which can lead to all sorts of interesting things. So, instead of having electricity run through circuits, the lightning elementals are fed and kept happy so that they can do their job. Hm. Intriguing.

 

[Charles Gray]

setting.

Thanks for your comments.

See one of the problems is that this setting is based on the "rapture" idea-- you get a bunch of people (mostly teens) from earth, and dump them in the new world. Mainly this is to have a magic setting-- but you also have people with a 21st century view.
Unfortunately, the minute I started thinking about this, I ran into troubles. Some players would want to start their characters off making guns, bombs, etc. Now granted, it's a lot harder than it looks-- but OTH, the entities responsible in the setting wanted a different society-- and given that we have magic, which as was pointed out, doesn't just break the laws of physics, it makes them run home sobbing to mommy, I thought it might be a better idea to just short the entire process.
As it is, I'm working on a three product set-- five years "after arrival" (because some playtesters convinced me that OGL log cabin doesn't work, and 5 years is long enough to have some settlements, and short enough that people are still arriving), 50 years, and then 150 years.

Generally, the as the books increase, you get higher population densities in some areas (although given the region is the size of North and Latin Ameirca put together, and the initial drop off is somewhere around 100,000 people, you can see how even 150 years later, there will be a lot of empty space). Most importantly, magic changes-- in the first product, magery is very much sorcery style, although using the Grim Tales mechanic (modified)-- most people learn by doing. 50 and 150 years later, magery has become much more understood and codified, to the poitn where you have "mages" who rather than cast spells against monsters, spend time doing stuff like making fields fertile, etc.

 

[s/LaSH]

I've never actually ruled out modern tech in my games. I'd just demand skill checks from people to capitalise on them - skill checks with DCs around the 70s, most likely. In the case of modern people who already know this sort of thing, I'd drop the DCs to 20s or 30s to figure out the process in an environment without specialised chemical suppliers and well-documented refining processes, and then require quests to find materials.

Of course, the materials will be the fun part. Sulphur, you say? Yep, there's plenty of sulphur over thar. Yep, where that funny hissing noise is comin' from. The place the sheep don't go. The place with the big footprints out front.

I suspect that you'll have a set of people (especially if you're using 100,000 modern teens) who'll want to make guns, and will spend an awful lot of time working on making them. They'll need metallurgy to make proper guns, of course, and that's going to take most of their time; within a few years, they'll have the powder, but its use will be limited to big bombs, and why do you need big bombs in a pristine new land? Guns need advanced metallurgy. By the time they've built forges and smelters, other people will be making armour and swords with the same technology, and (if I'm reading your comments right) mastering primitive magical arts. They'll already have some pretty good bows, if the land allows it, and an enchanted bow is pretty good compared to a home-made flintlock - it's easier to make and about as effective, although training time is higher. And don't think anybody's going to be precision-milling an M16 for a few hundred years.

Electricity, of course, takes time to implement. First priority: Fire. Second priority: Hunt food. Third priority: Build houses. Somewhere way down the line is 'centralised power grid', so by the time anyone actually builds a single unreliable lightbulb, people have glass windows (with the exact same tech), magic bows, and probably long-range magic communication. I don't think electricity would have a titanic impact on the world, and that's if it's still in living memory by the time anyone can implement it. It probably will be, but most people will go 'eh, it's not as good as magelight' and leave it to a secretive cult who insist on using electric power, an Uncanny And Misunderstood Power. Which I think is all good.

Above all, I don't think the changes these little technologies introduce are insurmountable to creating a different culture. Introduce magic early and give it some oomph, and many people will follow it rather than technology. What tech remains will be lesser, but give the world character and history. Taking all the tech away greatly diminishes the history of the culture.

For my part, one world has nobody who knows about powder and electricity yet, and one world has cyborgs and wizards rubbing elbows. They're both cool.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Some players would want to start their characters off making guns, bombs, etc.

...are your players chemists? Because I don't know anyone who could actually whip up a batch of gunpowder...

 

[Izer]

Outlawing gunpowder and modern chemistry is not very sensible because, well, human beings *are* chemistry. Bio-chem, but chemistry is chemistry and if the rules of your world doesn't allow gunpowder, they probably do not allow people either. And "You arrive, your ATP-cycle stops working, you die." isn't a very interesting campaign.
Notes that are useful for a campaign with modern people in a fantasy setting. Making gun-powder is dangerous, but not all that hard, if you can find the ingredients. That step can be fairly tricky, but assuming that the local alchemists are up to the task, and a "tounges" spell or the like can clarify exactly what it is you want, then okay. So what? Gunpowder is in fact not a game-breaker in a magic rich world. The main revolutionary impact of gunpowder in our world was the effect it had on fortifications. IE: "blowing up castles and walls real good!" Which D&D magic is frankly better at. Guns?
What off them? Even if they manage to build breechloading black-powder fire-arms, Which would be quite a feat, the main advantage those would have over a longbow would be ease of training and the ability to fire while prone. (I know the rules give guns higher damage dice. The rules are on crack. Being shot with a cloth-yard arrow is at least as painful as being shot with a bullet.)

The world breaking innovations are not in the fields of gunpowder manufacture, and warfare. They are economic and philosopical. If the players start to intoduce stuff like "mass production" "freedom of speech" "Equality, liberty & brotherhood" "Democracy" "Class struggle (ouch!)" "free trade" And so forth, then you world is really going to have some upheaval.

 

[Gez]

Well...

What was that smell? Not the stink of the hides, but another, a faint skiff as of rainstorms, under this clear dawn sky... Ozone? Yes. But how come?

“God!” Holger exclaimed. He sprang up, snatched Alianora in his arms and bounded back toward camp. “Hugi! Get away from there! Get away from this whole place! Don’t touch a thing if you want to live!”

They were mounted and plunging down the western slope in minutes. Not till they had come miles did Holger feel safe enough to stop. And then he must fob off his companions’ demands for an explanation with some weak excuse about the saints vouchsafing him a vision of dire peril. Fortunately his stock stood too high with them for anyone to argue.

But how could he have gotten the truth across? He himself had no real grasp of atomic theory. He’d only learned in college about experiments in transmutation by such men as Rutherford and Lawrence, and about radium burns.

Those tales of a curse on the plunderer of a sun-stricken giant were absolutely correct. When carbon was changed to silicon, you were bound to get a radioactive isotope; and tons of material were involved.

Usually, I merely assume that the laws of physics work the way they do, on the prime material plane, except when magic is involved... So, no radioactivity when a flesh to stone spell petrifies someone, and you can't defeat a dragon by splashing water on it. Contrarily to what happens in this fine book.

 

[Charles Gray]

Outlawing gunpowder and modern chemistry is not very sensible because, well, human beings *are* chemistry. Bio-chem, but chemistry is chemistry and if the rules of your world doesn't allow gunpowder, they probably do not allow people either. And "You arrive, your ATP-cycle stops working, you die." isn't a very interesting campaign.

Um, no-- and this is one thing I hate about some fantasy settings that try to be "realistic".
Modern Chemistry is already outlawed, along with teh laws of thermodynamics, relativity, etc. You have magic-- people being turned into stone-- or heavy iron, where you somehow came up with several hundred pounds of matter from no where, or where you cast a disintigrate-- and you and everything for several thousand miles around don't get the first hand look of E=MC2.
And of course, people don't use ATP cycles, as their lower soul maintains their body, until they die and it sinks into the stone to become a tree. Questions of real physical laws belong in science fiction--but not in fantasy, not at all.

 

[Li Shenron]

Why do players want to play a medieval fantasy game and pretend their characters know what gunpowder is or electricity works? It's like reading the Odyssey and think it's a stupid idea that Ulysses sails around for years to get home instead of catching a plane... :\

 

[Li Shenron]

Also, if your players pretend to use suplhur+charcoal+saltpeter=gunpowder, next time I'll play a sci-fi campaign settled in the future, and I'll pretend that to use the technology of the setting the players have to explain how it works, no matter if it hasn't been invented yet.