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?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You hang this on "modern games", but the structure of magic for PCs in D&D has been pretty much the same from the start. There's nothing "modern" about the specified spells and slots that casters use.

In fact, the hobby has grown to encompass less codified magic over time, not the other way around. DnD has remained much the same, sadly, but plenty of other games give you a skill, or a feature that simply says you can do fire magic, or even that simply says you can do magic and this is very very broadly the expected power level of that, etc, and ask you to improvise and have fun with it from there.

But also, most real life systems of magic, from the religious to the hermetic/occult, have rules and structures and processes that you can teach another person and write down in a book and draw diagrams.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But also, most real life systems of magic, from the religious to the hermetic/occult, have rules and structures and processes that you can teach another person and write down in a book and draw diagrams.

Yep. The main problem with most of them is that they didn't work. In general, those that "did" work either were conflation (thinking they were actually forcing reality to behave a certain way, when it was doing so by happenstance or as an accidental consequence of the process) or simply the fact that human beings are garbage at statistics (and thus thinking there was a pattern where none existed).

And then science came along and did things like saying that as long as a system is closed and lacks geometric gobbledygook (like self-intersections or irresolvable singularities), a bunch of quantities are conserved (angular and linear momentum, mass-energy, probability), making true enforcement of one's will on existence problematic at best. An awful lot of (proposed) magic ends up being either a violation of one of those conservation laws, or a violation of the laws of thermodynamics. People still get away with peddling much of it because it's not always easy to see that something is ultimately claiming to break one of those laws. (The reader may notice that explicitly fictional magic systems started coming up with the origin or source of the power involved for magic around the same time that these conservation laws started to become common knowledge!)

 

[tomBitonti]

You hang this on "modern games", but the structure of magic for PCs in D&D has been pretty much the same from the start. There's nothing "modern" about the specified spells and slots that casters use.

Well, 3E (and forward) made the codification much more precise, especially in the use of keywords and consistent power levels.
Certain unpredictable effects were removed, for example, potion miscibility.
Be Safe, Be Well,
Tom Bitonti

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The main problem with most of them is that they didn't work.

There is no context in which that is relevant to the discussion.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

There is no context in which that is relevant to the discussion.

The intended context was "unlike fantasy, where such knowledge is useful to communicate, it wasn't useful IRL. This is why we perceive such a hard gap between the two of them, when in truth [as I said earlier], they are often complementary."

 

[Umbran]

Certain unpredictable effects were removed, for example, potion miscibility.

The thing about magic isn't that it is unpredictable. It is merely seems unpredictable to the uninitiated.

 

[Minigiant]

To me
One definition of science is the systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.

Magical science is when much of OR a major part of observation is unknown and thus parts of the knowledge is unknown and can never be known.

Technological science is when much of OR a major part of observation is known and the part that are unknown now can be known in the future via the development of other technology

Magic has gaps that require being a god to see. Technology just needs technology to be better.

It isn't unpredictability nor repeatability nor mystery. It's that the wizard knows that wiggling his fingers this way, saying these words, and thinking of that makes a crack then a foosh then a boom. The wizard doesn't know why those actions, speech, and thoughts does it. He may know how to tweak the boom with his fingers but he doesn't know exactly why it the tweak happens.

 

[bonnieshona]

Magic is by definition the exercise of supernatural power or supernatural phenomena. Since anything supernatural is by definition not observable or able to impact the real universe it either does not exist or can never be observed.

So everything is either natural or technological (if you exclude humanity from nature).

You don’t have to know how the technology works to identify it. I know CGI for example even if I cannot explain how it works.

You may not always be able to differentiate natural phenomena from technological ones.

 

[Umbran]

It isn't unpredictability nor repeatability nor mystery. It's that the wizard knows that wiggling his fingers this way, saying these words, and thinking of that makes a crack then a foosh then a boom.

Except, of course, that isn't how D&D magic works. Merely doing the dance is not sufficient, or every commoner would be able to cast fireball.

 

[Minigiant]

Except, of course, that isn't how D&D magic works. Merely doing the dance is not sufficient, or every commoner would be able to cast fireball.

Except it is. The issue is the average commoner doesn't have the education, training and Intelligence to go through the process academically. So they need a demon pact, dragon blood, a god, or being the chosen one to cheat the process even more.