What would it look like?

[Geoff Watson]

"What would happen if magic were to be used in a commercial manner" is the question I am hearing this thread asking. I would think that magic would then permiate society because there are so many mundane things that magic can be applied to in order to make life easier.

Every household would own wands of Prestidigitation. Clothes are cleaned instantaneously. Food tastes better. House is clean. Baby stays amused. Use it to play games with guests. This item is easy to create, people can learn how to use it, and it frees up so much time for the washer/cook/cleaner/babysitter/host that it becomes absurd to think someone wouldn't buy one. There is so much money to be made by the wizards and so much value to be reaped by the buyer that if wizards ever become as clever as they are intelligent, you will start to see Elminster-brand Presto-sticks in everyone's home.

That is just one spell. Levitation or something similar to Tenser's Floating Disk would be applied to shipping things short distances. Teleportation Circle would link major cities. Yes, it might take a while for these circles to become widely available, but how long did it take for airplane travel to become affordable for the average person after the first powered aircraft flew? 100 years? Mage companies, in the quest for greater power, will look to become wealthy from their creations. They will create so that their product becomes affordable for more and more customers, increasing their revenues. The commoners will buy because it "improves their life" somehow (never have to eat wife's bad cooking again!). The companies will compete with each other for revenues so they can become more powerful.

These things are far too expensive for the masses.
A wand of prestidigitation is still very expensive; 7.5 gp per charge. Would you spend a weeks income (10 weeks income for an unskilled labourer) to do minor tricks for an hour?

Teleportation Circles: How many spellcasters are high enough level for that?
What if they have something else to do (eg make magic items, deal with uber-level bad guys, etc)? The merchants will be waiting around for the mage to get back from whatever he's doing.

Geoff.

 

[doghead]

I do understand that there are a number of perfectly valid ways of explaining a world in which magic is not applied beyond adventuring and warfare, and has had little impact on the lives of most people. Whether or not it would be applied is a perfectly valid question.

However, the question in this thread is based on the hypothisis that magic has been and continues to be applied in all areas of endevour.

There is also no assumption that it would be any more a utopian society than or current one, or any other.

Perhaps restating the question could help. Suppose the above city was fairly autonomous (as opposed to being part of larger state), and your character its ruler. What would you do to take advantage of those resourses.

Some thoughts from this end.

Agriculture - feeding yourself is one of the most basic needs of a society. The more efficient a society is in generating what it needs, the more people the society can devote to other activities. The Plant domain offers Plant Growth (3rd/150gp); the Earth domain offers Soften Earth and Stone (2nd/30gp) and Stone Shape (3rd/150gp) and Wall of Stone (5th/450gp); and the Air Domain offers Control Weather (7th/910gp). The prices are market ones based on the minimum caster level required. Druids have access to most of these spells and more. Negotiating the establishment a church or Circle in return for its support and protection of the city's argricultural section would one consideration. The spells are quite pricy as such, but that assumes a fairly mercenary approach to the use of them on the part of the organisation. Security, status, political power, land could all be offered in some combination to get a more favourable price structure. Assuming it made sence economically. Of course, having a church offers other benefits, such as Heal and Cure spells.

 

[Krieg]

Look around you. While there are tons of fantastic inventions and powers in our world, we as the peasants of our time are largely unaffected by them. Some things filter down to us, but the truely powerful affects and powers of this world are denied to us.

Compare your daily life with that of the average villager in a poor (financially & technologically) third world nation. Then rethink the above statement.

 

[doghead]

Teleportation Circles (9th level) require a 18th level caster and cost 1620gp. Permenency (5th level) would cost an additional 900gp, assuming the same caster. The cost seems fairly negligable. Getting a 18th level wizard is more of an problem. Time to select a few promising candidates and support their development.

At this end of the scale, assuming that you can find a 18th level wizard, you could make some big money. A circle between two large cities, 1gp per person, 10 people a day, spell cost covered in 252 days.

 

[s/LaSH]

It's always seemed illogical to me that you have a society which has had 9th level spells since forever. (And, presumably, steel weapons, plate armour, and large swords.) You can compare fireball to MAD if you want, but we've only had MAD for 50 years, and fireball's been around for how long?

There are two solutions to this. The one I'm using with Dungeon Damage is to assume that magic advances just like technology, so steel is new and fireball is unknown in Europe (and 4th level spells are unimaginable). PCs are in no way restricted by this.

The other solution is the postapocalyptic one, which DD has seeds of in that it's set well after the Fall of Rome, where there were awesome things in the past, but they blew each other up or fell to ruin in some fashion and today we're just crawling around the ruins trying to put the pieces back together. Sure, I've got fireball, it's like the guy who has an AK after the bomb drops - he's not going to reverse engineer it and build a combustion engine because he doesn't understand it. This solution presents the fact that there are teleportation circles linking major cities, but the major cities are ruined and likely overrun with mutants - um, monsters - so you don't get to use them. If you treat the Forgotten Realms like Fallout, you might end up with a far more interesting paradigm...

And isn't that what many worlds are like? Crawling through the ruins of great empires that performed great miracles in the past? Finding ancient artifacts in forgotten tombs? Even the word 'artifact' is defined by the rules as an item that can no longer be made.

Go postapocalyptic. Your spells are your guns, your petrol, your tooled-up humvee. I would think that makes everything much clearer.

 

[kamosa]

Compare your daily life with that of the average villager in a poor (financially & technologically) third world nation. Then rethink the above statement.

I certainly wouldn't say that we in the first world live in the worst conditions in the world, I don't think it changes the overall point. None of the institutions or powers I mentioned are available to the average citizen of the third world either.

 

[Wombat]

I think the one and only truly safe statement to make, eventually, about how the rules of D&D would translate into a society is to say the society would look very, very different from the picture usually presented.

The implications of many spells, the costs, the number and types of races, the number and type of gods, etc., are simply staggering. In the end, developing a world based on the rules would be vastly different from the worlds presented to use the rules in conjuction with. After that, the floodgates open for many types of arguments as to what truly would exist.

Obviously, many of us have different views as to how much magic would be used, by whom, and to what ends. Equally the place of religion, the manner of economics, and the like are so far-reaching as to be nearly unmappable.

OTOH, I would be interested in a truly serious endeavour in this direction.

 

[Nightfall]

Don't say that from the movie that revealed Denise Richards and revealed even MORE of Dina Meyer...

As if I didn't get enough revealing of her in Wild Things. In any case if I wanted skin I'd rent soft porn. But in the case of ST it's pretty much the same thing. It's the SF version of Showgirls.

Wombat,

Yeah but you don't like planar stuff!

 

[Wombat]

Wombat,

Yeah but you don't like planar stuff!

A fair cop, but I would still be amused to see a world created around the implications of the rules.

I didn't say I would want to play in such a world -- actually, it sounds like quite the nightmare to me, but I would be interested to see what it would look like

 

[Ace]

Here is a descriptive passage from my game world Midrea (to hit the net real soon now tm) concerning a city called "Polis"

From Tanzar's Journal


Polis--

Ahh Polis -- this unimaginatively named city was built long enough gao that acess to the river Nar and the mountain crossroads was still a consideration

The city sprawls out over an 20 square mile area. The old city is delinated by its walls -- shining Elemental Iron and Stone topped with great gates each guarded by an Iron Golem

These walls were originally built to control entry into the city and too an extent still serve that purpose

Although Caravans still pass through the great gates trade is no longer the lifeblood of the city

Instead the Church of the Way, The Worshipers of the Shan Gods and the Followers of Midrea coexist in an easy truce. The cities population of 10 million is supplied by hundreds of Crucibles (improved create food 4ht level as the spell casting time 6 seconds) -- and Decanters of Endless Water. Unseen Servants sweep human waste into great vats -- gleneras using Mage Hand Talismans and an occasional Ring of Telekenesis lift salvageables out of the mire. The waste is then purified and shipped out to the countryside for use as fertizlizer

The Wizards Guild handles the non food portion of the cities needs Mills casting major creation supply raw material for clothing and the like. New construction is handled by Construction Matrix (Wall of Stone and Shape Stone at Will) crews

Watching a Block House being raised is amazing -- An architect lays out the plans and within minutes ston is conjured and shaped to order

Still with all of this abudance there comes a heavy price-- a pall of boredom seems to hang over the city. While everyones needs are met this lack of anything like a market place has created a strange poverty

Persons unlucky enough to be born in the bario may have a life with nothing to look forward too but the anual yule package of treats and sunday chirch dinner. The is no forward and no back just an icy oppressive nothing. There isn't even enough surplus wealth to create a criminal class.

Unless you are among the lucky to be born with the gift (as they call Sorcery and Bard Talent) the only hope out of the lower city is the Army (if they will take you) The Rangers or for the fool hardy the annual Open Tunnels night into the sewers

Is it little wonder that so many youngters turn to the everpresent gangs for recreation?

A stranger in the wrong block can be in major trouble. Armed gangs of youth stake out block to extort money from strangers and fight one another in the ubiquous meeles


Trying to keep order in this are the 3 branches -- Rangers (who prevent the troubles from the old sewer network under the city from bubbling up) Police -- Who are sometimes seen high above the city on flying carpets and Paladins who handle the spirits of the living and the dead

Sometimes sniffer teams of Rangers Paladins and Wizards can be seen hunting for serious Evil --

Sometimes they find it