D&D General The Transition of a D&D World into the Industrial Era

[doctorbadwolf]

Again, I don't think the 70% number is necessary. 70% of people in the early industrial era--or now--don't know how to program or build mechanical constructs. We all know how to use an iPhone, turn on a light, etc, but that's not the equivalent of spell-casting. I can imagine a "magical-industrial" era in which there are magic guilds which control the means of production, but create devices--from glowing orbs to trains to sending stones--that everyone is able to use. In major devices you might need a spell-caster to keep something running or in control, but in everyday objects you don't need them.

But it really depends upon what you want--the ubiquity of magic, what can be created, and how closely you feel you need to align with the RAW. I'm just saying that it is possible to build a plausible magical-industrial world in which only a small number of people are spell-casters.

Not really. Anyone can learn to fix simple stuff on their car. But even ignoring home repair, you gotta have mechanics. A lot of them. It has to be a normal working class job.
If teleportation replaces trains and cars...you need thousands upon thousands of mages casting the spell, or at least thousands of mages making teleportation circles that anyone can use. Are you gonna posit that 1 mage is making dozens of types of magitech conveniences? Even if so, mage ends up needing to be a regular middle class job for that to be common enough to be comparable to industrialization.

 

[Mercurius]

Not really. Anyone can learn to fix simple stuff on their car. But even ignoring home repair, you gotta have mechanics. A lot of them. It has to be a normal working class job.
If teleportation replaces trains and cars...you need thousands upon thousands of mages casting the spell, or at least thousands of mages making teleportation circles that anyone can use. Are you gonna posit that 1 mage is making dozens of types of magitech conveniences? Even if so, mage ends up needing to be a regular middle class job for that to be common enough to be comparable to industrialization.

I think our difference has a lot to do with what degree we are adhering to RAW. I'm mostly approaching this from a fantasy world-building perspective, and only secondarily imagining how the D&D rules could be used or adapted to accomodate it, while you seem to be coming from a stricter RAW perspective, and imagining what would be required in order for a magical-industrial society to exist given the constraints of the D&D rules.

In that sense, we're both right: in fantasy world-building, you can do whatever you want and are only guided by to what degree you want internal consistency. Taking the D&D RAW, and you'd probably need a high percentage of spell-casters to make it work (although 70% remains debatable).

Where we might meet in the middle is through adapting the rules to fit what we might want to accomplish. There's no reason that one couldn't adapt the rules to create early industrial infrastructure and such. A DM could easily build a late 19th century style fantasy city with magical electricity, factories, trains, etc, all overseen by a super powerful magical guild that carefully guards its secrets, while creating limited items for everyday usage for common folk - all without touching industrial technology (in fact, that sounds like a rather intriguing set-up). It might require the creation of some new magical items and constructs, and new spells, but wouldn't be too hard to design. Or to come closer to your idea, maybe a large percentage of people have the ability to cast cantrips, with more mundane cantrips created. And maybe this guild prohibits the development of magical ability beyond cantrip level, and the PCs are budding rogue wizards...

p.s. You'd be suprised at how few people are willing to open up the Youtube and learn how to do minor car repair work. I was hesitant until a few years ago when a mechanic told me it would cost $300 to change my serpentine belts. After looking it up on Youtube, I bought the two belts for $30 or so and spent 45 minutes changing them myself. Voila, done.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I think our difference has a lot to do with what degree we are adhering to RAW. I'm mostly approaching this from a fantasy world-building perspective, and only secondarily imagining how the D&D rules could be used or adapted to accomodate it, while you seem to be coming from a stricter RAW perspective, and imagining what would be required in order for a magical-industrial society to exist given the constraints of the D&D rules.

In that sense, we're both right: in fantasy world-building, you can do whatever you want and are only guided by to what degree you want internal consistency. Taking the D&D RAW, and you'd probably need a high percentage of spell-casters to make it work (although 70% remains debatable).

Where we might meet in the middle is through adapting the rules to fit what we might want to accomplish. There's no reason that one couldn't adapt the rules to create early industrial infrastructure and such. A DM could easily build a late 19th century style fantasy city with magical electricity, factories, trains, etc, all overseen by a super powerful magical guild that carefully guards its secrets, while creating limited items for everyday usage for common folk - all without touching industrial technology (in fact, that sounds like a rather intriguing set-up). It might require the creation of some new magical items and constructs, and new spells, but wouldn't be too hard to design. Or to come closer to your idea, maybe a large percentage of people have the ability to cast cantrips, with more mundane cantrips created. And maybe this guild prohibits the development of magical ability beyond cantrip level, and the PCs are budding rogue wizards...

p.s. You'd be suprised at how few people are willing to open up the Youtube and learn how to do minor car repair work. I was hesitant until a few years ago when a mechanic told me it would cost $300 to change my serpentine belts. After looking it up on Youtube, I bought the two belts for $30 or so and spent 45 minutes changing them myself. Voila, done.

I sell Autoparts for a living. You’d be amazed how many people are out there learning to do simple repairs.

But again, you either have mage-mechanics, or you have mages who make the car that mundane mechanics can fix, but either way it’s gonna be a huge number of magic users to get enough tech out there to be industrialized.

And if you don’t have that kind of magic availability, or broadly dispersed magic user potential, you will have people of political power who want mundane alternatives to the magitech Because their area of power has fewer than average magic users, and thus mundane tech will develop as well.

 

[Bohandas]

I don’t think magic advancement would replace tech advancement unless magic is vastly more widely available than it is even in Eberron.

Why would one replace the other when they can augment each other?

Think of what you could do with a decanter of endless water and a bunch of waterwheel-driven equipment all stacked on top of each other

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Why would one replace the other when they can augment each other?

Think of what you could do with a decanter of endless water and a bunch of waterwheel-driven equipment all stacked on top of each other

Well, that’s a good part of my point.

you wouldn’t not get engines, you just get engines where magic is what solves some of the development questions of the engine, while others are “mundane”.

 

[Bohandas]

I just realized you can make an arguably much better perpetual engine with a couple of bags of holding and some lead shot. Each bag is held open in a tall enclosed chamber attached to a waterwheel-like device. The empty part of the chamber is big enough to hold 250lb of lead shot and the bag is positioned so as to be upright and at the bottom of the chamber when ascending but upturned and at the top of the chamber when descending. When a bag reaches the top and begins descending the lead shot pours out, causing the weight of that chamber to increase by 235 pounds. When that same chamber reaches the bottom, the lead shot pours back into the bag of holding, decreasing that chamber's weight. Therefore the descending side is always heavier than the ascending side and the wheel turns forever.