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Message: <blockquote data-quote="M_Natas" data-source="post: 9218093" data-attributes="member: 7025918">Yeah, having hundreds of thousands if slaves takes away all incentives to create technology that makes work easier.Big bounds in technological progress usually happen when their is lack/need of some kind.When there is a war, there is a need for better weapons.When there was pestilence and half of Europe was killed, there was a need for improved productivity per person.Also you have different interest groups in societies. Like a common misconception about medieval guilds was, that they hindered technological progress.But that is only a half truth. Medieval Guilds job was it to keep their members an their families in business.So they discouraged any development of technology that could replace their labor. Because that would destabilise the workforce and having a stable society were everything has its place was ab imperativ for medieval societies. But technological progress like for the quality of product was fine and encouraged.Producing better armor was fine. Producing more armor so that other smithes went out of business was not (until a war came and the demand for armor increased so much  ...).So one has to look at what is in places and what are needs that are not fulfilled.Like a society in which Druids bless the crops maybe doesn't need to develop better agricultural techniques. But now there is a war an the Druids are drafted into it and can't bless the crops anymore and suddenly you need to figure out how to feed a whole population without magical enhanced growing of corn and boom progress or death.Maybe you don't need Gunpowder and muskets if everybody can learn firebolts. But what if Magic is rare, magical knowledge highly controlled and used to suppress the masses, then Gunpowder weapons could be great equalisers.You also have to take into account the mantra of a society. Medieval societies were pretty much all about stability. So technological disruptions were.not encouraged. Modern western society is all about maximising profit. So technological progress that benefits that is encouraged while technological progress that disrupts profits (like clean cheap energy, cheap medication) is discouraged.Socialist society was about equality and betterment of all, so medical research and access to medicine was developed (like broke ass Cuba has a better medical system than the US, because that is whats important for cuban society).German society is all about risk management, that's why it has like probably the biggest insurance Industry in the world and everybody has like 10 insurances ...So if you create your own world, think about what society wants.Like, in my first ever big campaign I DMed, there was a dwarfen society build on the principles of socialism. Everything was owned by the workers who worked there, which shaped that society more into uniformity and deviation was rare.The "evil empire" had the goal to monopolise all magic (including the enslavement of all magical creatures, including elves) and when you bought magic items from them, they didn't recharge automatically- you had to pay a licensed trader to recharge that magic item while another country opposed to the evil empire was more of a benevolent theocracy, that was a safe haven for all the magical creatures fleeing the grasps of the evil empire.So the evil empire had some highly advanced magic tech, but it was not widespread.The theocracy had widespread magic use everywhere.The dwarfen community had low magic (because of a conspiracy to kill all children with magical abilities) which lead to technological development - more advanced mining techniques, advanced weaponry including gun powder weapons and so on.</blockquote>

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