Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="s/LaSH" data-source="post: 1792383" data-attributes="member: 6929">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.</blockquote>

Verification