overgeeked
B/X Known World
Because it’s a game and we want to play.
D&D General Technology in D&D, the IRL Timeline, and Pausing It.
Sure. I'm just wondering why you'd set it up to be crawling with 3rd-5th casters. I'd figure they'd be a pretty small percent next to all the peasant farmers and craftsmen and their kids and even bandits and low level soldiers, so that if a plague broke out the number of lesser restorations available would be hard pressed to tamp it down. And that there wouldn't be so many 5th level casters that a troop of archers and cavalry would all be useless.
Jackdaw McGraw
Explorer
A few suggestions:
Gunpowder and fossil fuels are notorious for attracting fire elementals, even when not in use. Additional safeguards must be put in place before any large-scale application, making the costs and risks much more than in the real world.
Moveable type and the printing press are of extreme interest to fiends and devils. No one knows exactly why, but theories abound. An alarming percentage of famous inventors and printers have been unmasked as infernalists. Most print-houses are operated by religious institutions for this reason, and on a much smaller scale.
The secrets of porcelain production are fiercely protected by an ancient dragon and her cult of dragon blooded descendants. Any attempt to steal this knowledge - or to independently replicate it - is an invitation to assassination.
Observing the microscopic world comes with the added rare risk of accidently peering into other planes or attracting the attention of magical microorganisms. Lenses can't just be ground and set, they must be warded, made with additional materials and training. They're phenomenally rare.
Compasses are largely useless unless you have the training to account for ley lines' affects on geomagnetic secular variation. It's a whole field of academia.
Hot air balloons attract the attention of air elementals. About 1 in 6 get escorted to the Elemental Plane of Air, never to be seen again.
The steam engine is considered an apocalyptic device among the denizens of the feywild, depicted in their most chilling art and stories long before it was invented. The Archfey have launched missions akin to crusades against previous inventors.
It turns out clothing buttons have some some low-key magical properties that a lot of folk don't want to get involved with. 1) They attract fairies, who consider them more valuable than gold. 2) A lost button from regularly worn garment can be used as a component the same way a lock of hair or dram of blood can in dark magic.
An undead army washed over and completely destroyed the empire that was this fantasy world's analogue to Islam's golden age, thus setting back mathematics, astronomy and chemistry a good 400+ years.
What I'm getting at here is that, in a magical world, there are lots of reasons technological development could be rife with pitfalls and set-backs, side by side with the mundane ones.
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The "Dark Age" was a lot less dark than how people think (how do you think people lived in roman villages? It wasn't aqueducts and masonry everywhere) and the regression was not global or even continent wide either while agriculture for example steadily advanced.
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Paul Farquhar
Legend
I think that is an oversimplification, and really only applies in the early stages. Britain was the first place to industrialise and there is no lack of water. Indeed water was the initial industrial power source before coal took over.
But I agree with your general point - it is society that drives technological change, not time.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
Historically, it would be more accurate to call the D&D longsword a bastard sword, rather than visa versa.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
This is not correct. coal and oil where formed under different conditions and there is no reason to suppose those conditions occur in the same place. Normally, when a tree dies it rots without forming coal. In order for coal to be formed the dead tree has to fall in a location where a lack of oxygen prevents decay - i.e. into water. Oil is formed on ancient sea beds.
However, in a fantasy world there is no reason to suppose fossil fuels got into the ground scientifically. They where used for hundreds of years before people had any idea how they came to be there - it was just assumed to be the same as minerals.
Also, you do not need fossil fuels to smelt metals. If you have trees you can make charcoal, and charcoal does just as well. It's only when it comes to mass industrialisation that you need fuel in much larger quantities than can be produced by charcoal burning.
Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
Well, you’re talking about industrialization, I was talking about institutionalization. Great Britain was already highly institutionalized by then.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
True, but the OP is talking about technology that includes industrialisation.
And Britain's institutionalism was, in effect, imported. You can argue that it starts in areas water deficient, but it is then spread by migration and conquest.
Tonguez
A suffusion of yellow
The aeolipile steam engine was described by Hero in 1AD but remained a curio for 1750 years - just because a technology is known doesnt mean there’s impetus to use it. Gunpowder and the Parthian battery are similar examples.
thats even more so in fantasy worlds where magic is immediately useful so things like dangerous gunpowder remain minor curiosities. Astronomy and biology dont work in fantasy either - the sun is a chariot of Helios and disease really is caused by undead curses, demons and tiny little oozes
thats even more so in fantasy worlds where magic is immediately useful so things like dangerous gunpowder remain minor curiosities. Astronomy and biology dont work in fantasy either - the sun is a chariot of Helios and disease really is caused by undead curses, demons and tiny little oozes
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