D&D General Radio Broadcasts in a D&D Setting?

[Undrave]

Forgot which one but I read a webcomic where people could produce what was essentially podcasts they could transmit on magical jewelry. People would sell the jewelry to allow people to listen to their group talking about random things. There was a whole thing where the big expense was producing affordable jewels and trying to hitch onto someone's jewelry 'network' might not be a good idea because people pay for the 'star' and you'd be overshadowed and so forth...

Thought it was interesting.

 

[Nefermandias]

I am curious to hear people's imaginative ideas on how to introduce radios into a D&D setting.

I don't want it to use radio waves. It should involve magic. If it can be seen as a natural expansion on some existing magic, like spells, all the better.

What kinds of radio programs would air? How else might they be used in a setting?

How could it be made to be affordable-enough in a larger city like Waterdeep that a decent number of people would have one and listen to shows?

I don't think we can really separate science and arcane magic in a D&D setting anyway.

 

[NotAYakk]

Because I like technological development being gonzo, what if it starts with the ability to send words on enchanted paper.

So the fist step was you have a way to enchant two pieces of paper, so anything written on one appears on the other through the law of similarity.

Post offices are created. In the post office, echo-papers from the posts up and down the line are checked, and scribes transcribe it to papers for the next step on the line. Couriers carry the echo-papers of adjacent stops to each other, refreshing the ability to communicate.

Long distance expensive echo-papers are also distributed, and those are checked more often for messages, providing expensive express service.

This is also used in war. Attacking the scribes of communication becomes key to disrupting the enemy's ability to coordinate. Even better is suborning them, or getting ahold of an echo paper and being able to intercept messages.

Spies work out how to duplicate one of these echo-papers and intercept the enemy communications. After this causes a tactical upset, it also opens up the world for the newspaper. One primary paper and a bunch of echo-papers.

So one piece of paper, when written on, makes things appear on many other pieces of paper.

Thus the echopaper news is born.

The ratio -- between primary and secondary -- is bounded. And the number of times the master can be erased is as well. So you have to buy new newspapers every week or so.

---

Technological advancement automates this, with enchanted quills copying from one piece of paper to another to allow for larger networks and causing an employment crisis among scribes. You still need scribes to start the communication, and deliver it, because who knows how to read and write? But the large number of scribes that run the echo-channels are rendered unemployed as the magic quills take over.

---

To get radio, take a strip of paper, a continual light spell, and a magic mouth, and put it in a box. The mouth is told to read the paper and say what is sees. The broadcasters scribes write on their piece of paper, and the mouth-boxes repeat what they hear.

The voice of the broadcaster is thus always that of the magic mouth enchantment, which lets the DM use a funny voice.

The paper inside the mouth-box is a long strip on a spool. The mouth-box has a crank on the side that advances the strip. As the broadcasting paper runs out of ability to be reused, listeners have to turn the crank to the next setting to get signals.

Advanced mouthboxes even have the ability to change which spool they are using, after which you need to tune in to the current broadcast mark.

Humidity can stretch the paper, causing letters to be garbled or dropped, as can damage to the strip or misturning the crank.

The mouth sometimes also misreads words. New alphabets are developed to clean this up.

Over time, the language used to instruct the magic mouths on what to say drifts away from being readable/written by humans to ones more suitable for the mouth and make more efficient use of paper. Mouths that know musical notation are even developed.

---

The automated quill technology is also warped beyond recognition. Careful use of symbols and connecting the "quill" up to devices allows echo-paper to be used to get large numbers of quills to be controlled by one set of instructions.

Using this technique, one master scribe-weaver can run 100s of looms at once. Mechanics run between the looms, repairing things that go wrong, and replacing spools of echo-paper as they run out.

---

The first quillion "warrior" was a toy. The next dozen where playing pieces that the sun king used to play a board game.

But over time they became cheaper and more dexterious. An army of quillions marched on the kingdom, followed by warrior-scribes whose ink-stained hands dripped with the blood of their foes.

As the kingdom fell, the knights turned to each other in despair. Finally, it had happened. The pen had proved mightier than the sword.

 

[Oofta]

I've had story arcs where golem type creatures took place of some modern day appliances.

So I would simply have something that looks like this:

When there's a broadcast, it opens it's mouth and sounds come out. Probably add some sort of "tuning", perhaps a set of gems you need to buy or configure. How does it work? Magic!

In other words, if I want to add something like this to the story, I just do so. The PHB does not contain all magic, rituals or options. I only go into as much detail as I need for it to make sense for the story (and my brain).

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

I could see someone tinkering with the magic of existing sending stone and making a series of breakthroughs to improve them. First improve the rate of communication by removing the limits on the number of words spent and eventually the number of times messages can be sent over them. Then experiments are conducted where more than two such stones are linked together so that when one sends a message all other stones in the network receive it.

As increasingly large networks of stones are created with their limits removed it will naturally come up that some will want to limit the messages they receive. By now there are multiple groups of magic users experimenting with the stones so one group decides to limit noise by designating only a few stones in the network as broadcasters while other stones can only listen. Another group adds functionality for a stone to set its channel so that only stones set to the same channel receive each others messages. After much debate about which method works better eventually some enterprising individual just combines them and creates a network of stones so large that just about every family in their home town has a receiving stone. Broadcast stones are given to important citizens of the town. The town crier no longer has to yell in the square and now reports news through the stones. The tavern keeper likes to broadcast live music whenever a musician rolls through town.

 

[Dausuul]

If you want to model it on radio broadcasting specifically, one of the key features is "easier to receive than to send." So you would create a powerful magic item that can transmit your voice through talismans. The talismans require only an hour or two of work by a low-level spellcaster; but the "transmitter" is a much more powerful item that requires a highly skilled caster to create, and perhaps also to operate.

It's worth keeping in mind that a medium like this is an extremely powerful propaganda tool, and that goes double if the rest of the setting is limited to medieval technology (i.e., no telephones, maybe not even the printing press), so the broadcast is the only way for most people to quickly get information over long distances. Think about the '30s and '40s, and the way charismatic leaders from Hitler to FDR wielded radio to influence their nations. Most states would exercise tight control over the transmitter items. Creating or obtaining a pirate transmitter, to disrupt the propaganda operations of a malevolent state, could be a vital plot point in an adventure.

 

[Lanefan]

There was a spell from 1e (or was it 2e?) called "Whispering Wind" which could be a jumping-off point for something like this.

Maybe a mass version of it except instead of targeting people it instead targets specific items (conch shells, maybe?) that have been primed to receive the signals.

At the receiving end, sound volume could be controlled by a cover over the shell's hole; this cover could be raised to allow louder sound, lowered to dampen the sound, or completely lowered to shut the thing off entirely.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I'd go with Kenkus that learn the speech, songs or radio-drama in advance, then reproduce all the voices and such for a group of houses or in a small town square. Neighborhoods could pitch in together to play for such services, say, 3 times a day for 1 hour, including the news, a few songs and the most recent episode of the drama.

 

[Eltab]

Want a very public message - like an advertisement? The magic mouth in the communication box reads a (verbal component only) Skywrite spell.

 

[Lanefan]

Want a very public message - like an advertisement? The magic mouth in the communication box reads a (verbal component only) Skywrite spell.

Magic Mouth can be used to cast another spell? That's new...at least to this old dog's ears...