Worlds of Design: Magic vs. Technology

In connection with my discussion about differentiating science fiction and fantasy, here’s a related question: How do we tell what’s magic, and what’s technology, especially in light of A. C. Clarke’s famous maxim?

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke

Having a strong grasp of differences between magic and technology is useful to both role-playing game designers and to game masters. Sometimes it's hard to say what the difference may be.

A Matter of Knowledge​

My take is that the familiar or knowable tends to be technology, and the unfamiliar or unknowable tends to be magic. Technology and science aren't quite the same thing: technology is applied science. But here we'll speak of them together.

Keep in mind, with our current technology we could reproduce many of the miracles that any particular set of religionists are said to have witnessed. Those are magic to the religion, yet we could use technology.

Magic has an air of mystery that technology does not (or shouldn’t, anyway). Someone can explain how tech works. That's rare in magic, magic just IS.

Does technology require machinery? To create it, perhaps; to use it, I don't think so.

Novelist Brandon Sanderson's magic systems have rules and bases, but then get to the "black box" stage: "this works because it does, we don't know why or how." Science attempts to understand the black box, tries to keep working deeper and deeper into "why". Magic systems rarely bother. Perhaps that is the fundamental difference between magic and technology: we understand why technology works, but no one really understands why magic works, it just does.

In a game, magic inevitably becomes "hard" to the extent that the rules of the game must explain exactly how things work. Yet heavy reliance on the "black box" is still there.

If you’ve ever read a tome purporting to be about real-world alchemy (yes, they do exist), you've seen the author trying to turn alchemy into a kind of technology with rational explanation, but entirely BSing it—a bogus "explanation" amounting to "it just is" if not "it's magic."

Isaac Newton famously said, "if I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" (previous scientists). Technology tends to derive from previous technology. Magic frequently just happens through "mystic discoveries."

Mass Production​

Are everyday items, items that are technology in our contemporary world, producing many of the same effects through magic? So which is it?

Mass production implies technology. Individual production implies pre-technology (which can include magic). Obviously, we had individual production before the Industrial Revolution, but I nevertheless regard mass production as a sign of technology, not magic. (Of course, we can conceive of a magical world where mass production exists: but is that natural, or forced by the creator of that world?

The Frequency of Magic​

How often do you encounter someone who can cast magic spells/make magic (as opposed to use a magic item)? How often do you encounter someone who can create magic items? For that matter, how hard is it to make magic items? (I'm reminded of the vast number of potions cheaply produced in the original version of Pathfinder. This "smells of" technology even though it is magic.)

If magic includes an air of mystery, then is anything that is commonplace not magic, even if it is mass production of potions?

Star Wars: Magic or Technology?​

Many call Star Wars science fantasy. The Force, and light sabers, are mysterious, unknown, and to an extent unknowable (despite the "midichlorians"). Some of the technology is "indistinguishable from magic," such as the instantaneous communication throughout the galaxy (that is nevertheless easy to jam). I'd call Star Wars magic, tacked onto a more or less science fiction setting.

Knowledge vs. Familiarity​

In the end, familiarity is less important than whether something is knowable. Knowable as in, understanding what happens to make the black box work. If it's mysterious, something we don't think can be figured out, we tend to think of it as magic. If we think it can be figured out (even if it has not been, yet), it is more likely technology.

Your Turn: Where do you draw the line between magic and technology in your campaigns?

 

[PsyzhranV2]

If you’ve ever read a tome purporting to be about real-world alchemy (yes, they do exist), you've seen the author trying to turn alchemy into a kind of technology with rational explanation, but entirely BSing it—a bogus "explanation" amounting to "it just is" if not "it's magic."

I'd argue that this line is perhaps somewhat reductive of real-world attempts at alchemy. Certainly, if we look at its (lack of) results through our modern lens of our increased understanding of chemistry and physics, it's easy to dismiss the historical alchemists as doing things willy-nilly. But I think it's important to remember that they were not just doing stuff at random, but were doing things that they thought make sense by their own understandings of the world. They were grounding their methods in the natural philosophy and proto-science of their time, faulty as it may have been. What they were doing might fit the label of what we might call "religion" today, but it did have some degree of internal consistency and coherence.

Keeping the above in mind, I think it's perfectly possible to use a system of magic for your setting that is based on (what is in your world) empirical knowledge and testing, and that successively builds on previous discoveries, rather than being at the whims of fortune and random inspiration -- and still have it fit the label of "fantasy". Mass production might be another question, but I'd still argue that you could step into those waters and still have your magic be "fantastical".

I have in mind the Xianxia genre, which takes inspiration from Daoist cosmology and traditional Chinese medicine:


Also,

The Force, and light sabers, are mysterious, unknown, and to an extent unknowable (despite the "midichlorians").

The Force, yes, but lightsabers are a known: they're essentially extended plasma torches contained by magnetic fields. Yes, the Kyber crystals make it more complicated than that, as they require Force attunement and all, but the fundamental design principles are "scientific" ones.

 

[Laurefindel]

Third Clarke's law:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

---

Science is the opposite of the ocultism. The ocultism tells about special secrets only a special group can know. Science is about knownledge what can be shared by everybody.

Mage: the sorcerer's crusade, by White Wolf, was a fabulous game about science vs magic.

My own challenge as worldbuilder is how to allow firearms and magic-tek but keeping the balance power. If magic allows a disk to spin then we can create an automobile, and this means a war charriot with motor causing the end of the chilvary.

Other matter is not only the magic vs the gunpowder, but knights vs gunslingers. Spellcaster can create new low-level magic tricks against the firearms, for example a piece of ectoplasm to block canons, or illusory magic as smoke grenades, or magic to summon swarns or mind-control to use warbeasts against the musketeers. But if magic becomes powerful against firearms then the classes about hand-to-hand combat would be forgotten too soon. Who would play the barbarian, the paladin or the monk? It would be as the heroes from Diablo or Warcraft against the shooters of Overwatch or Fortnite.

But fantasy goes full circle in a "any sufficiently applied magic is indistinguishable from science" kind of way with settings like Eberron or science-fantasy settings like in Girl Genius.

Regardless of the source, the outcome has the same result once you apply industrialization.

 

[Tonguez]

I'm reminded of the Fire of Orthanc from The Two Towers, referred to as "Blasting Fire" (in the film adaptation, Wormtongue asks what kind of sorcery can induce fire from stone).

Obviously, we, the readers/viewers know that it is gunpowder. Perhaps we even know that it is saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur.

Medievalesque RPGs, being what they are, have (or can have) a large combat component and there is a large pool of technology to pull from from those eras. What's saltpeter? Where would people in such a campaign even get it? The answer is simple. It can be mined or harvested from bat guano. It's squarely within the realm of a traditional campaign.

Those older folk here don't even have to comb through WIkipedia. We can just think back 20 years. Add fuel to fertilizer and you can blow up a building. A very good resource for what is possible is a book called "Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World" by Adrienne Mayor. It's a fast, fun, and informative read on just what was possible back then.

Naptha was used as a weapon in antiquity. Apropos of the last day of Hanukkah, it's described in the book of II Maccabees, which tells how a "thick water" was put on a sacrifice at the time of Nehemiah and when the sun shone it caught fire. It adds that "those around Nehemiah termed this 'Nephthar', which means Purification, but it is called Nephthaei by the many."

Arguably, you could have nukes in a medieval setting. Uranium is mined. I'm not saying that there would be MOABs falling from the sky but there certainly could be a dirty bomb being wielded by some BBEG.

Of course, all of this falls under the middle ground rubric of "alchemy."

Alchemy is a great way to stealthily put modern "technology" into an older setting. Want to clone someone? Alchemy! Want Frankenstein but without magic? Alchemy!

Even the most stripped down settings can have "technology." The Wheel of Pain could be a mill. Or it could be a dynamo.

I would possibly draw the line at laser pistols. But even then, does that mean you can't can laser pistols? I don't think so. Expedition To The Barrier Peaks proves that. One of D&D's most iconic villain races are space-faring aliens from the future.

There is no line between magic and technology and I don't believe that there should be Sithian prohibitions against traditionally "sci-fi" tropes. Be creative. Odds are pretty good that the shiny thing you think is modern technology was certainly possible in even the oldest of settings.

Yep, what a lot of people tend to ignore/gloss over is that Isaac Newton was an Alchemist studying the Mathematical Principals of Natural Philosophy rather than a ‘Scientist’ and that shoulders of giants that the OP mentions arent the shoulders of scientist (who didnt exist before Newtown) but rather of other philosophers many of whom held very mystical beliefs.

Indeed it was from the study of Hermetic Magics’ principle of Antipathies that Newton determined that there was a “secret principle by which substances are “sociable” or “unsociable” with others”. To this Newton applied the Pythagoran tradition that reality could be described through mathematical formula to create our understanding of ‘Force’ acting across a distance.

 

[Dire Bare]

The Force, yes, but lightsabers are a known: they're essentially extended plasma torches contained by magnetic fields. Yes, the Kyber crystals make it more complicated than that, as they require Force attunement and all, but the fundamental design principles are "scientific" ones.

I've always looked at lightsabers are "magitech", using magic (the Force) to enhance technology to achieve something not normally possible. Lightsabers without the force-attuned kyber crystals don't work, they can't.

 

[embee]

Yep, what a lot of people tend to ignore/gloss over is that Isaac Newton was an Alchemist studying the Mathematical Principals of Natural Philosopher rather than a ‘Scientist’ and that shoulders of giants that the OP mentions arent the shoulders of scientist (who didnt exist before Newtown) but rather of other philosophers many of whom held very mystical beliefs.

Indeed it was from the study of Hermetic Magics’ principle of Antipathies that Newton determined that there was a “secret principle by which substances are “sociable” or “unsociable” with others”. To this Newton applied the Pythagoran tradition that reality could be described through mathetical formula to create our understanding of ‘Force’ acting across a distance.

Consider Philosopher's Stone, capable of transmuting a base metal into gold. Sounds fantastical.

Now consider uranium, which we can turn into plutonium.

Pb (82) -> Au (79) is supposedly fantasy.
U (92) -> Pu (94) is science.

They're both, basically, alchemy.

 

[Jack Daniel]

When I was a kid, I fell in love with the Victorian and Wild West meet Tolkien and D&D aesthetic of the computer RPG Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura; but I never cared for that game's conceit that technology and magic are diametrically opposed forces that interfere with each other's workings and are eternally at war. I much prefer a setting where technologists can build inventions and gadgets that a mage can subsequently enchant. (I'm less enamored with magical artificers and the idea of magic itself and magical items being used as reliable technology, à la Eberron. When magic is too reliable, it's not as fun and mysterious.)

 

[embee]

When I was a kid, I fell in love with the Victorian and Wild West meet Tolkien and D&D aesthetic of the computer RPG Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura; but I never cared for that game's conceit that technology and magic are diametrically opposed forces that interfere with each other's workings and are eternally at war. I much prefer a setting where technologists can build inventions and gadgets that a mage can subsequently enchant. (I'm less enamored with magical artificers and the idea of magic itself and magical items being used as reliable technology, à la Eberron. When magic is too reliable, it's not as fun and mysterious.)

You have just written the entire script for "Onward."

 

[tomBitonti]

Eh, increasingly, the fruits of science are things that “just work”, with even learned folks struggling to explain. Leading the way are quantum effects and big data based AI. Increasingly, we use technology that might as well be magic.

Also worth pointing out is that certain physical processes, especially quantum mechanic, have reached a limit of understanding. Why things work the way they do is not understood. The explanations are empirical. Theories explain what will happen, to a high degree of precision, but not so much why.

Also, gamers expect a certain coherence to magic systems, such that they can reason (within narrative limitations) how magic will work within the system. To some, gaming systems are a theater of the mind, where a magical sygem is introduced, and a part of the thrill of playing within the system is learning how the magical elements which were introduced impact the world — working out those impacts in a logical and consistent manner.

Be safe and well,
Tom Bitonti

 

[Hussar]

I played in a game once where I wanted to buy a grappling hook and was told they hadn't been invented

Sure you could buy plate armor and crossbows, but a hook on a rope? Nah to advanced.

The guy just wanted to make us climb the wall with a skill roll versus using a tool. Needless to say I didn't play another game with this bozo

I once had a DM insist that while chain mail existed in the world, plate mail hadn't been invented yet. Obviously, since, well, plate mail is better than chain mail.

When I pointed out that they had plate mail in the bronze age, she still wouldn't back down.

The primary difference between magic and science when it comes to fiction is the role they play in the narrative. Magic is used as a plot device to overcome some challenge - That potion of really neat water is just perfect when you meet that giant spider - not before or after... Whereas science in the narrative, is used as the central point of the story. Spice allows you to see the future - what does it mean to be human if you can know the future?

 

[Professor Murder]

Science and Sci-Fi are not near as interchangeable as we fans want them to be. At some point, most Sci-Fi tropes dissolve down to the same handwaving that Magic in a fantasy setting does. What's important is serving the story you want to tell and the themes and mood you want the setting to operate under. For example, Doctor Who presents itself as Sci-Fi but it makes tenuous attempts at best to root anything in actual scientific explanations of effects. It's all ultimately just how you skin the same effects. The Doctor is a wizard. They even use a magic wand.