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

[generic]

By finance I mean something like a national Bank and proto stock market. Early factories were often located very close to coal.

It's a key reason it started in the UK. Instead if say France. Tax also had something to do with it. Napoleonic wars UK outspent France something like 2-1with 1/5th the population.

So firearms and cannon exist, the DMG has cartridge based guns. They're more common late 19th century.

IR started late in places like Italy and Eastern Europe.

Geography plays a part as well Spain has often come up as another place it could have started.

So you could have a place where it started. Dwarves could be there as well espicially if they're plugged into trade routes.

Note bows outperformed guns well into the 19th century. Make guns simple weapons. UK had to import wood to make bows and they're to hard to train people on.

Being compact with ports helps as well. Doesn't have to be an island.

So if you're being realistic land owners with coal or iron bought their way into the nobility, your 4 nation's could be not UK, not France, not Germany, Dwarves may have iron in not Sweden.

Any country that can export coal is also rich assuming trade links are developed enough.

All excellent suggestions, they confirm what research I have done, and help with the development of the setting.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Does this world have antibiotics and medical science of the late Industrial Revolution and beyond? Presumably healing magic removes infections and fragments from wounds such as the ones left by bullets. But could the technology of the world with some effort do such things?

 

[Aldarc]

IMHO, you should not assume a linear progression of history, technology, economics, etc.

When you throw magic into the mix as well, then things will naturally become more complicated.

This is one thing that Eberron does well. In some respects, the world looks positively medieval. In other respects, the world looks positively modern and industrial. This is largely because of how magic unevenly impacts various developments in the world of Eberron in ways that will naturally differ from our mundane world and its history.

So my own advice would be to at least consider how people would use magic to live, to make money, and to better their lives.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The challenge is the balance of power between gunfighter, spellcasters, and warriors without gunpowder, for example savage tribes. Solomon Kane kills Conan the barbarian.

In my stories some heroes are as ewoks or na'vi, living with low-tech and low-magic and being invaded by goblins with steampunk mechas. Or warmages investigating new tricks in the battlefield against firearms, for example summoning swarms, remote-control warbeasts, illusory magic as smoke grenades, "cheap" constructs carring bulletproof shields, piece of ectoplasm to block cannons, watering gunpowder. Other matter is gunfighters are worse attuned to magic, and this may be fatal when healing potions isn't so effective on you.

Any war gods don't like firearms at all, and sometimes as punishment they send petitioners from Valhalla with bulletproof traits to fight against musketeers.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Any war gods don't like firearms at all, and sometimes as punishment they send petitioners from Valhalla with bulletproof traits to fight against musketeers.

No they don't, many depictions of Ares has him fine with firearms.

Vulcan (Roman name for Hapaestus) in the TV adaption of American Gods basically became a God of Firearms, some depictions of the Yoruban God/Orisha Shango/Chango have him becoming a God of Firearms.

 

[Fenris-77]

I would suggest that there's no correct 'start here' answer. These conversations often whirl about in a madcap fashion as one person after another argues about how magic 'would' effect X, Y, and Z. The fact is we have excellent historical records for the actual IR, and no one has any clue about adding magic to that, not really. The cultural forces that shaped the IR are enormously complex and personally I think it's silly to try and get too granular about porting that history over to a fantasy setting. The thing that drives narrative is conflict and that would be my suggestion about where to start. Decide what kind of conflict you want, the who vs who about the the what, and then line everything else up behind that. That doesn't mean there aren't places to start though...

1. Is the conflict class based? Changes in the labor market was a big part of the IR. Are people getting put out of work and are thus disaffected?

2. Is there a racial component? Is this powerful new technology equally in the hands of all nations, or is concentrated somewhere? (Humans or Dwarves being the usual culprit there)

3. How does this new technology change the power base of the existing rulers and nobles? Do current nobles command this new tech or is there a rising new class of technology users? People fight wars to maintain their grip on power.

4. When it comes specifically to war, which is super important, does this new technology trump magic, or are they used together in some kind of synergistic way? (if the answer is the latter then steampunk is a good index).

Those are the kinds of questions I'd want to answer were I in your shoes.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Fairly realistic, and, to address your questions:
1. Coal and steel are not a problem. There are mining networks, steel mills, and a good system of trading caravans that carry coal from mountainous regions down to metropolitan cities.

Steel mills also came a little later. Historians place the industrial revolution from the mid 18th to mid 19th centuries, the Bessemer process was introduced in 1857, right at the end of the period. Cast iron (and a specific meaning of wrought iron that was more of an alloy) was emblematic of the industrial revolution.

You have weapon &c technology around the Renaissance level, so good century or so behind the leading edge of the industrial revolution. Mass steel production would seriously impact that.

Of course, a wizard who wanted a fairly large amount of steel could get it, if not by conjuring it, by making a 'steel mill' of sorts work without all the attendant technology. Magically making up for deficiencies in the available processes. For instance, the 'puddling' process of iron could be done with stunning ease and efficiency by a 'magma elemental' or some such strong fire-immune creature.

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.

Big monsters that are dangerous because they're big I'd expect to be kinda doomed. The kind of firepower that could be brought to bear in the period became substantial. At the end of the period you even had repeating firearms and even Gatling guns. A wizard able to magic his way past problems with earlier designs could bring similar things out even sooner.

Also, and I suppose this really matters to 5e, armies kept getting larger and larger as populations rapidly grew and urbanized. In theory, in 5e a hundred archers or so can kill a dragon - 100 men with muskets is lot easier to field.

OTOH, by the same token, stealthy or shape changing or otherwise hard to track down monsters that used to be given away by their need or compulsion to kill people frequently could thrive in the largest cities, packed with nobody'll-miss-'em victims.
Monsters that reproduce that way could rise to the level of plagues before coming to light.

 

[generic]

Does this world have antibiotics and medical science of the late Industrial Revolution and beyond? Presumably healing magic removes infections and fragments from wounds such as the ones left by bullets. But could the technology of the world with some effort do such things?

I had considered that. Medical technology was slowed, but not halted, because magical healing is expensive and rare in my setting, by curative spells and dweomers. The rich and the exceptionally pious have the greatest access to healing magic.

In my setting, due to the early discovery of how a simple battery works, some electricity-based quackery has gained prominence as medicine.

 

[generic]

Steel mills also came a little later. Historians place the industrial revolution from the mid 18th to mid 19th centuries, the Bessemer process was introduced in 1857, right at the end of the period. Cast iron (and a specific meaning of wrought iron that was more of an alloy) was emblematic of the industrial revolution.

You have weapon &c technology around the Renaissance level, so good century or so behind the leading edge of the industrial revolution. Mass steel production would seriously impact that.

Of course, a wizard who wanted a fairly large amount of steel could get it, if not by conjuring it, by making a 'steel mill' of sorts work without all the attendant technology. Magically making up for deficiencies in the available processes. For instance, the 'puddling' process of iron could be done with stunning ease and efficiency by a 'magma elemental' or some such strong fire-immune creature.

Yeah, the introduction of better weapons technology, and the beginning of true mass production of weapons sounds realistic to me.

 

[Fenris-77]

The great thing about magical settings is that you can muck about with the order of operations for things like the IR without a lot of logical consequence. Pretty much any version of events is logical and narrative-ly neat with the right veneer of 'because magic...' (meant without condescension or irony).