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

[Jfdlsjfd]

Is magic still quite rare in your world because it requires a "special power" or is it just a job anyone can learn? Most D&D settings replicates the Dark Ages, with collapsed trade network and wizard in their towers... As soon as universities appears in a world where anyone can learn to cast a spell provided he get enough training, you will see kings pouring money into unis. It's too valuable, before the industrial revolution, to have a cadre of wizard at your service. Add the infrastructure that allowed the IR to take place and you'll have mandatory education instated before it happened in the real-life timeperiod of the IR. And if you have mass-wizard, the setting justs gets very weird.

Even if the prevalence of wizard is low, you'll have infinite energy. Necromancy is baaaad, OK, but nobody would frown at an undead mule powering your wheel. You'll just have more difficulty creating armies of undead beast of burden. Free Energy, no coal needed. Spells that moderately change temperature are especially cheap in 5e (i know the system wasn't mentioned, just using it as a example) because they rarely have a gameplay impact, but the ability to create free energy would change the world.

 

[Legatus Legionis]

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[TheCosmicKid]

Even if the prevalence of wizard is low, you'll have infinite energy. Necromancy is baaaad, OK, but nobody would frown at an undead mule powering your wheel. You'll just have more difficulty creating armies of undead beast of burden. Free Energy, no coal needed. Spells that moderately change temperature are especially cheap in 5e (i know the system wasn't mentioned, just using it as a example) because they rarely have a gameplay impact, but the ability to create free energy would change the world.

I suspect you'll want to posit some conservation laws which the D&D rules just abstract away (the same way they make peasant railguns possible), unless you want to change the setting from Industrial Revolution straight to Star Trek.

For instance: undead donkeys. What if necromantic constructs work by gradually drawing power from the life-force of everything around them, something like desecration in Dark Sun? So any area frequented by undead will eventually be a bleak and barren wasteland? What if this is why necromancy is frowned upon in the first place? What if some nations failed to fully appreciate the scope of the danger, did institute a massive undead-donkey-based industrial economy, and are now starting to struggle with the environmental consequences?

Or is that too on the nose?

 

[Celebrim]

One could say that the definition of industrial revolution is the discovery of ways to mass produced that which had previously required intensive individual labor.

Yes, but the distinguishing feature of magic as opposed to technology is that magic just doesn't work for everyone. If magic isn't idiosyncratic, then it is just technology. You neglect the possibility that if the language isn't idiosyncratic, then it won't work.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Yes, but the distinguishing feature of magic as opposed to technology is that magic just doesn't work for everyone. If magic isn't idiosyncratic, then it is just technology. You neglect the possibility that if the language isn't idiosyncratic, then it won't work.

You certainly can characterize magic this way in a setting, but I wouldn't describe it as "the distinguishing feature". There are plenty of conceptions of magic where, yes, it is basically technology of another kind. You don't need to be a special person to nail a horseshoe over your door and have it repel evil spirits. That's supposed to just work.

But, again, yes, you can have idiosyncratic magic if you want to. The real question is: what are you trying to achieve with it in the story? In my eyes, if you're building a world themed around industry and revolution, then writing the rules of magic in a way which insulates it from that theme seems like a missed narrative opportunity.

 

[generic]

For the record: ECT as practiced today does have some well tested clinical uses and is not quackery. But obviously there are a lot of bad things you can do by running an electrical current through the human body if you do it haphazardly. That's what you meant, right?

Yes, I should have been more specific. I mean 19th-20th-century-style 'cure mental illness with electricity' therapies.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Usually you are imagining PCs with "toys" fighting against monsters without firearms and other gadgets, but you haven't thought about when PCs are tribemen who face an invasion by a higher-level tech. If WotC wants to create a videogame with different playable factions, who will want to play tribemen without spellcarters nor firearms?

Usually magic is too expensive to can be used by the masses. Why not noble houses would replace standar armours with powered exosuits, or "cheap" mini-construct carring (anti-ballistic) tower-shields?

In my worlds firearms in the towns aren't easy to be used, because temples create cursed zones against firearms in the zones. And they are too noisy to be used by criminals, o worse, there are supernatural curses against guns. Killed by firearms can come back as spirits to avenge. Or only an adivination spell allows to know where and when a firearm was shooted in that zone. With a simple spell and the body of the victim a spellcaster can know where is the weapon of the murder. And firearms wouldn't be the end of the magic because most of citizens (and even criminals themself) would rather to buy magic bullets for no-lethal damage (sleeping, hold-person, web).

And fighters would rather old firearms because they have got a special aura or resonance. They are more expensive or rare, but at least theses allow to be attuned to magic item. And most of firearms are one-shot, because weapons with automatic fire are possible, but too easy to be blocked by magic, psionic or other powers.

Vehicles with motor are possible, but the technophobia is too strong when you know in the past some vehicles were cursed and possesed by evil spirits or infernal outsiders. (Do you remember Stephen King's "Carrie" or "Maximum Overdrive"?)

Cybertronians (transformers) would nice as D&D PC race being published in April's Food (half seriously half joking).

* If magitek or magic technology could creatte a flywheel energy storage to be added to a war wagon, it would be the end of the chavalry. Or a little motor to a crossbow for automatic reload

* The next step will be talking about magic creating biopunk or organic technology, machines by living tissues.

 

[Coroc]

By finance I mean something like a national Bank and proto stock market.
...

Yes, any banking system was a big progress for trade and therefore also for industrialization.
If you mine / produce at one place you still need to bring raw materials or finished goods to another and for that you need banking.
A band of robbers on the trade routes will not assault the transport of tons of raw materials, but they surely will take on the trader carrying the bag of gold to pay for it.
The first progress on this problem was made by the Fugger by creating a bill of exchange system, you could transport your riches without carrying them as valuables.

 

[Coroc]

I appreciate the suggestion. But, the problem is that the setting that I've created is not exactly Eberron-esque in that magic is actually fairly rare in terms of spellcasting and items.

I'm looking for suggestions on how to deal with things such as monsters, the uncommon spellcasters which do exist, and the growth of technology in a world with things like Demons, Giants, and the like.

Yes, but I have to say that Eberrons Steampunk side is done perfectly in coexisting with magic without any logical fallacies by using its elemental powered stuff.

On magic e.g. in a real renaissance battlefield with primitive firearms:
Imagine a bunch of powder kegs and one level five mage with access to fireball....
Or even better, a level 1 mage with a wand or scroll of fireball.

So maybe you could resolve this by either replacing magic with psionics, or by careful trimming of evocation spells and in general spells which can do the same things like a canon or a musket, so there is basically an "incentive" to haveboth, magic and firearms.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I'm looking for suggestions on how to deal with things such as monsters, the uncommon spellcasters which do exist, and the growth of technology in a world with things like Demons, Giants, and the like.

The IR allowed for mass production of goods. You don't have any benefit to mass production in a single place if you can't carry these goods to the final consumer. So, the IR is heavily dependant on fairly secure trade network, the exact thing that can be compromised by wandering monsters. So, you would have specialized army units tasked with Monster Removal. It would certainly be a primary objective of any ruling body.

IR also happened within rather centralized states at first, and those were the ones able to transition from a feudal army to a conscription army, with much larger number of soldiers than in the Middle Ages or Renaissance Era. I'd have the Monster Removal units a conscript army, sent (with mass-produced +1 musketoons) to deal with these monsters. Cheap people and weapons. If spellcasters are few, they would be employed to create things for more expandable soldiers to use (if possible in the rule system) because risking them on the battlefield could be costly.