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?

 

[tomBitonti]

Which means, fundamentally, it isn't about This and That and These. The components alone don't make the magic, there is something else. That was my point in the first place.

And, whether someone knows why can be handled on a campaign-by-campaign basis.

Could the something else be simple variation? Having the potential to have a reserve of spell could be as scarce, say, as being 7’ tall. That fits racial special abilities, and the existence of magical creatures, and fits, for example, Eberron’s breeding of magical creatures.

To address an earlier point, folks certainly were not stupid. But they were hobbled by superstition, a scarcity of writing, and by poorly developed analytic skills. And very probably, they were hostile to anyone deviating too far from a narrow norm of behavior.

Be safe, be well,
‘Tom Bitonti

 

[Bohandas]

The wizard has slots.
The commoner doesn't.

That's the magic. No one understands why the wizard can get 2 stocks of magical energy in their head capable to launch fireballs.

In the wizard's case it semi-explicitly comes from an understanding of the magic. Having high enough intelligence is a big part of getting and efficiently using those slots, which implies that having them comes in some way from knowing how they work (either that or it's a very VERY bad pun on the word 'genius')

 

[Minigiant]

In the wizard's case it semi-explicitly comes from an understanding of the magic. Having high enough intelligence is a big part of getting and efficiently using those slots, which implies that having them comes in some way from knowing how they work (either that or it's a very VERY bad pun on the word 'genius')

It's stated that wizards understand a bit of the system. Just enough to cast and edit spells. Put much of it is unknown and still makes too little sense to spread as general information.