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?

 

[dwayne]

Amethyst - Fantasy & Technology Collide

 

[Bohandas]

If magic exists in-setting than there is no distinction. Any well thought out setting ought to eventually look something like Ghostbusters, Incarnations of Immortality, Guns of Avalon, Discworld, Star Trek, Widdershins, Rings, Fistful of Boomstick, or Fairy Tail[sic].

 

[Umbran]

Did kites exist? Did string exist? Did keys exist?

Wrong questions. And the GM gave the wrong answer.

The first question needed to be, "Is the lightning from this storm elemental the same thing as electricity in our world?" If the answer to that is "No," then all the stuff you expect to affect lightning are not relevant. And, the drow could still use plain old electricity.

And, the major difference between magic and technology is not whether it is "knowable" - insofar as the basic wizard archetype can rattle along all day about how magic works. They have knowledge, so that cannot be the differentiator.

I think, upon examination, we'll find basic difference between magic and technology is more like reproducibility. If two people, using the same physical tools, performing the same physical actions, can produce the same result, then it is technology. Technology works, even if you have no special connection to the sources of its energies, or knowledge of physics or chemistry.

In magical systems, the practitioner needs to have a connection to a source of magic (divine casters, sorcerers, and warlocks in D&D, for example) or understanding of how the system works (artificers and wizards in D&D) in order to make a magical working happen.

 

[embee]

Wrong questions. And the GM gave the wrong answer.

The first question needed to be, "Is the lightning from this storm elemental the same thing as electricity in our world?" If the answer to that is "No," then all the stuff you expect to affect lightning are not relevant. And, the drow could still use plain old electricity.

Cue Yoda saying to that GM "That is why you fail."

The GM there was at fault. Not for giving a wrong answer but for not showing his/her math to get to that answer. "It's magic lightning, not electrical lightning," is all the GM had to say.

 

[nevin]

When Clarke said any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, it was not the same as saying that any sufficiently advanced technology is magic. One way to distinguish between the two in your game is to take the position that, however similar their effects are, the two are fundamentally different things. Technology sits squarely in the realm of the physical (i.e. it works on the principles or laws of physics). Magic however could be described as being squarely in the realm of the Spiritual. i.e. Magic works according to "spiritual laws" not physical ones.

In a world like this Magic relies on the belief of the user (and maybe those around them as well), not just that it will work but that it should work. Spiritual or magical laws such as the law of contagion ("this object once belonged to the target of my spell") and similarity ("this wax figure looks like the target of my spell") are thus related to a belief that they "sort of make sense" rather than being hard and fast rules. This makes magic "unknowable" in that it does not behave the way we would expect technology to. It is not something that can be reproduced in exactly the same way each time under experimental conditions.

I've seen this sort of explanation used more often in contemporary fantasy settings (I'm thinking particularly of DC's Hellblazer comics, but there are lots of examples) than in medieval fantasy where, because of the relative absence of technology, there is less of a need to define the difference. However, while this approach works well for story telling games (where magic's job is often to fulfil fate's plan) it can be a pain in more mechanically heavy role-playing games where most players want their spell to do the same thing each time and not be held hostage to "fate", "karma" or the whims of the GM.

that's true but it can also be a pain in games like pathfinder where the magic is so codified and spelled out that it feels more like some wierd version of technology than magic. In some games there is nothing unknowable about magic. it's completely spelled out and Known. I'd argue that's one of the problems 5th E and Pathfinder both have is that Magic isn't really magic anymore. It's a two edged sword. If you define it so the DM can't "hold it hostage to "fate"" then it becomes a science that always works the same way and doesn't feel magical.

 

[nevin]

Wrong questions. And the GM gave the wrong answer.

The first question needed to be, "Is the lightning from this storm elemental the same thing as electricity in our world?" If the answer to that is "No," then all the stuff you expect to affect lightning are not relevant. And, the drow could still use plain old electricity.

And, the major difference between magic and technology is not whether it is "knowable" - insofar as the basic wizard archetype can rattle along all day about how magic works. They have knowledge, so that cannot be the differentiator.

I think, upon examination, we'll find basic difference between magic and technology is more like reproducibility. If two people, using the same physical tools, performing the same physical actions, can produce the same result, then it is technology. Technology works, even if you have no special connection to the sources of its energies, or knowledge of physics or chemistry.

In magical systems, the practitioner needs to have a connection to a source of magic (divine casters, sorcerers, and warlocks in D&D, for example) or understanding of how the system works (artificers and wizards in D&D) in order to make a magical working happen.

but you just defined a "technology" that simply requires a person to have the right Genetic coding, or coding of thier "soul" to perform a codified predicatible set of "recipes" that always (in D&D/pathfinder anyway) produce the same result. I don't see any difference. Just one more requirement for the "science" to work.

 

[Umbran]

The GM there was at fault.

I wouldn't say that. After all, the players seem to have been trying to use metagame knowledge. The GM can be forgiven a bit if they didn't have the best answer on the tip of their tongue at the moment the players set aside the norm to get a solution.

 

[Umbran]

but you just defined a "technology" that simply requires a person to have the right Genetic coding

What are these "genetics" of which you speak? They don't exist in my game world.

....coding of thier "soul" to perform a codified predicatible ....

You keep using this word "coding", as if it has meaning in the fictional world. In the magical world, the soul is the real thing, the "coding" is the thing in quotes.

set of "recipes" that always (in D&D/pathfinder anyway) produce the same result.

There's recipes, and there's recipes.

Have you ever watched the Great British Baking Show? It is a cooking competition. One of the segments on each show is the "technical challenge" in which the contestants are given a pared down recipe that leaves much to be desired - including directions like, "Bake until done", without giving the baker a temperature, time, or even what "done" looks like.

Some contestants fail these challenges entirely. Some succeed... but do so by having done rather different things to get the same result.

That's what I think the "recipes" are in D&D magic. They are pared down, lacking a lot of information, and leaving space for finding different ways to get a satisfactory result, and not everyone can manage to get them to work out.

I don't see any difference. Just one more requirement for the "science" to work.

The human mind is such that if you look hard enough for a thing, and take active steps to inject it, you will find it. If you insist on using modern technological terminology to describe magic, of course it'll look like technology to you.

Do not mistake, "I can always describe magic to make it a technology" with "magic is always technology."

Reach into your Gygaxian lexicon, for different words with different connotations. There is no coding. There is gnosis. There is no genetics. There is heritage. "Verbal components" are game language. The character speaks words of power. And so on.

 

[nevin]

lol the point is modern games have been moving towards more and more definition in everything, to make it easier on the DM. this makes magic less magical. The cool thing about magic used to be it was it was unknown. That isn't the case anymore. Playing a mage in modern D&d isn't much different that playing a scientist in a scifi game. Everything has a pattern, everything is knowable and everything predictable within certain parameters.

 

[Umbran]

lol the point is modern games have been moving towards more and more definition in everything, to make it easier on the DM. this makes magic less magical. The cool thing about magic used to be it was it was unknown. That isn't the case anymore. Playing a mage in modern D&d isn't much different that playing a scientist in a scifi game. Everything has a pattern, everything is knowable and everything predictable within certain parameters.

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.