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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 393080" data-attributes="member: 6533">Concession Taken and ExploitedAll right!!! Paladin lords for everybody!!!Actually, the question of what sort of society develops magic is an interesting idea.  Seems like most fantasy settings get around the consequences of high magic in prior cultures by making the current culture the result of a collapse.   Ala, Rome to the Middle Ages.  Though I think that is a little bit unfair since Medieval Europe had better tech generally just worse engineering and social organization.I mean Forgotten Realms has, what?, like six 'fallen' high magic empires.  Maybe that's the real effect of these hordes of orcs and other things that would probably kick our collective demi-human heinees in pure Darwinian biology terms.On a tangent there's an idea that modern society is just an attempt to recapture Roman Society without the reliance on slave labor.A lawful good society that lived in the shadow of a powerful and sophisticated but essentially evil non-magical society could very well turn to magic for similar reasons.That would create some profoundly interesting consequences.Also, in an earlier post I discussed the potential power of magic-users, but I almost wonder if their extreme value might compromise that.Bronze age cultures would often cripple their smiths and keep them in terrible ritual bondage so that the society couldn't lose their knowledge to other groups or the smiths own morals.In an evil nation they could be a state owned resource, and even a good nation might be reluctant to let a potential arch-mage go rooting around in some dungeon when he could be making low level items or studying for the potion exams.They could turn into something like Chinese Mandarins, heavily isolated from the people, awash with power, absolutely at the mercy of their nations generals and nobles, and beholden to ritual behaviour that would be certain to keep them in their station.You mentioned earlier that you were doing a city based campaign.This will sound... ...odd... ...but I actually thought the city state in that Darned DnD movie had an interesting model for a state in which magical might rather than political discourse alone was used to balance the traditional conflict between the prince and the nobility.That was the Italian Renaissance with magic and bad acting.Machiavelli would so have played a sorceror.</blockquote>

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