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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nevvur" data-source="post: 7291371" data-attributes="member: 6783882">In anticipation of launching a new campaign, I've been reviewing and updating setting documents for the homebrew world I started building a few years ago. An interesting trend emerged as I considered the role magic has played in forming the disparate societies of this world. Namely, that tribal and nomadic societies tend to prefer 'nature magic' (druids, shamans, etc.) while sedentary civilizations focus more on the arcane and divine traditions of magic. This appears to be the case not only in my homebrew world, but across most of the fantasy genre as well. The reason for it feels obvious, almost self-explanatory. The uncivilized folk are closer to nature, so clearly they prefer nature-based magic. Divine and arcane magic supposes the need for certain social structures to support their instruction. Magic as an inborn trait (Sorcerers, in 5e) is a bit of an outlier, but while it seems equally suited to nomadic and sedentary civilizations, most fictional characters who express magic in this way come from the latter.What I find of particular interest in all this is how it reinforces the idea that magic is a substitute for technology in the fantasy genre. More 'complex' magic requires a more advanced society. There are certainly exceptions to this on an individual level. It's perfectly reasonable to treat as a bard a magic user who uses primal chants and drums in his expression of magic, or for a wizard to be some wild outlander hermit with a 'spellbook' consisting of primitive glyphs etched into runestones. The reason I share these observations is to solicit examples from other DMs (or players given the latitude) who bucked tradition and developed entire societies with a relationship to magic contrary to the 'standard' described above. More broadly, I'm also interested to hear details about the origin and evolution of magic in your worlds where they deviate from stock cosmologies ("the Weave," etc).</blockquote>

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