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Hey guys, I've got a thought experiment going on that I thought you might enjoy/be willing to help me with. I'm exploring how the prevalence of magic in these fictional worlds might fundamentally change how societies would operate, and am doing so by looking at different spells and trying to extrapolate how they might warp cultures and economies. I'd love feedback and other ideas, so if you guys are curious you can check it out here: http://10by10room.blogspot.com/
It'll be an ongoing thing, and while I can't make any claims to brilliance or novel insight, I'm hoping this modest exploration will eventually lay the groundwork for a series I plan to write where magic has been fully integrated into society. I'm starting off small with cantrips, but plan to work my way up to more powerful spells in time.
Cheers!
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I hope I'm fixing your link here.
If you're trying to write based on this society, I'd recommend rather starting with a school of magic or a very small group of spells out of Core {of multiple levels}, rather than with cantrips. Or are you planning to revolutionize your society when magic suddenly gets more powerful?
Exactly. I'm going to start with your standard feudal/medieval world, and modify it incrementally as I examine more powerful spells. The idea being that by starting small, I'll be able to keep all the changes in mind as I tackle ever more world-changing spells. The more powerful the spells get, the more radical the changes they will effect upon society, and the more unlike our historical world the setting will become.
I'll only tackle the actual writing of the series once I'm done with this exercise; I plan to explore spells over the next few months, figuring out how they would change the world, and once I've done enough work, I'll sit back, put together the finished society, and only then start my writing.
The resistance cantrip, for example, changes the world just a little. Charm Person makes big changes. Teleportation, Invisiblity, Fly - all of these will make ever more radical changes. So by starting with the small stuff, I can keep my eyes on the ball and slowly work in the big stuff without losing focus.
At least, that's the plan ;)
You really have to say who all gets magical powers. If a scullery maid might easily have Prestidigitation that will help her with the pots & pans, that's very different from a society where when everyone in the kitchen sees her cast it the first time they're in awe, and promptly she gets elevated to (well) Housekeeper. And that's different from a society where only scullery maids who are of bastard but noble blood might possibly exhibit this cantrip in the first place.
{And I'm really certain this is the wrong board, but I don't know which one would be the right one.}
Yeah, I'm happy to move the thread to a more appropriate board, but this one was the best fit that I could find.
Excellent point on availability. In a previous post I was limiting magic usage by intelligence and access to education. You can see my reasoning here, though it's very possible my numbers are off.
For ideas, I'd suggest the Incarnations of Immortality series.
Thanks for the rec!
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well, create water isn't going to turn the sahara into a garden which is the first thing everyone thinks of
did a stint in africa with the peace corps. The amount of water they needed for irrigation FAR outstrips what a 1st level caster can put out.
427 Gallon per minute pump looks about what they had for a small villiage. Three of them. They ran the pumps for a few hours a few times a week.
A caster pump puts out 2 gallons of water every 6 seconds, 20 gallons a minute, 1,200 gallons an hour, 19,200 a day assuming 8 hours of sleep and an inhuman amount of concentration.
The pump can do that in 44 minutes.
The place was still, quite obviously, a desert as soon as you got about 40 feet from the river. In fact a sand dune is slowly but inevitably moving in the direction of some of the fields.
So yes, you can have small villiages in areas that wouldn't otherwise have them, but you're not about to make the desert bloom either. Thats before you consider the fact that a 1st level character standing anywhere in a D&D world is just asking to be eaten by something.
For more pedantic waterworks, see the thread on the aqueduct vs the decanter of endless water.
Decanter of endless water vs an aqueduct:
Geyser” produces a 20-foot-long, 1-foot-wide stream at 30 gallons per round.
30 gallons/6 seconds * 60 seconds/min * 60 min/hour * 24 hours /day
432,000 gallons/day.
The Pont du Gard could transport up to 20,000 cubic meters — nearly 6 million gallons and the combined aqueducts of the city of Rome supplied around 1 million cubic meters (300 million gallons) a day — a day,-wiki
Right. Exactly the kind of stuff I'm going to be looking at. I think many spells are going to lose some of their obvious utility when I try to extrapolate them to city-wide usage. So either the number of spellcasters will have to go up, or the effects will be limited to critical usages in specific situations - which in turn will revolve around privilege.
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The world changing spells are often fairly low level spells.
Charm Person/disguise self etc are world changers. Suddenly everybody becomes very paranoid, people aren't as trusting, security measures immediately change.
Cure light wounds (together with its fundamental assumption that almost everything can be cured by it) changes life expectency.
Access to magic establishes whole new class/wealth advantages and liabilities. How would the world react to the fact that the rich get to live to 200 and can survive all sorts of injuries?
Channel energy makes battlefield hospitals VERY viable, it gets soldiers back on their feet quickly.
While I agree with BNW that create water doesn't make the Saharah prime farm land it, together with create food and water, Myrlunds Spoon etc RADICALLY change warfare at low tech levels and even somewhat at higher ones (the old adage that an Army Marches on its Stomach changes dramatically).
Spells like fireball (if reasonably common) totally eliminate the viable of some military tactics such as the Phalanx that rely on closely packed troops.
In the real world, people would research way more "non adventuring" spells such as birth control spells.
Plant Growth can increase agricultural output substantially.
Etc, etc, etc.
Short form - the world would very rapidly look VERY different from any real world equivalent.
Exactly, Paul. Hence my dissonance when I see medieval settings very similar to our own with prevalent amounts of magic. Exactly what I want to explore in as methodical a manner as I can.
I've seen other people take stabs at assumption before and I think the fatal flaw in the analysis is relying on an RPG's minimum stats as a significant gatekeeper to the ability to wield magic. It's good that you're looking into limiting the pool of potential casters by social class and literacy as well, but there's a huge difference between using a game's internal rules and metagame concepts and trying to assume that means much of significance to a real-world setting. Those stats are used to govern a character's options and gauge their utility in a game once we've already made the presumption that this is a character we're going to play, not model the real world or the relative prevalence of a particular D&D class in a real society.
Let's consider: all spellcaster classes base spellcasting on the same levels of their stats. You need 10+ in the main spellcasting ability. But is that the only realistic requirement - assuming we're already out of the serf/peasant, illiterate social classes? Probably not. How expensive would it be to obtain the appropriate training or apprenticeship? Would it make sense for wizard training to be the same cost as sorcerer training? Or bard training, or druid or cleric? Probably not. Or let's compare to being a ranger, or paladin. Or maybe a rogue. Going by stats, since all stats are independent variables on the same normal curve, there's no reason to think sorcerers and wizards have any difference in distribution. Yet the expected network of resources behind the two approaches to magic suggest different. Wizardry is learned so that presumes a history of theory and knowledge, a history of social structure that manages the preservation of that knowledge and it's dissemination to a new generation, and a need for resources to fund that structure. Sorcery assumes none of that. So already becoming a sorcerer should be a lot cheaper and there should be a lot more of them running around. But that's not very good for most settings. It's a very complex idea to cover that goes far beyond achieving a 10 or better on your casting stat.
Something create water DOES change is exploration. A cleric with create food and water can keep a ship alive for YEARS at a time. meaning societies are probably going to run into each other sooner. Heck, purify food and drink alone would make circumnavigation possible.
What I'm gathering is that as a mental exercise, you're iteratively adding more powerful spells the world and reflecting on how that would affect the culture, then when you're done iterating, what you have is the setting for starting a campaign. I think that could provide a fun foundation for a campaign!
I could also see the exercise itself being the premise for a campaign - magic has just been discovered and societies are in the midst of reacting to it as all these people come out of the magic closet. I guess that's kind of what X-Men does... (I don't follow X-Men much, but that's my interpretation.)
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Death would only be an affliction of the poor (with cure, neutralize, and resurrection spells available for purchase).
Succession crises would be nearly impossible (if a ruler couldn't be raised, they could be contacted through Speak with Dead to find out who they select as successor).
A new category of law would need to be developed, to deal with the status and rights of Clones or Reincarnated individuals.
Any serious government building would need to be heavily warded against magic to insure that no outside interference took place. Meanwhile, Zone of Truth would be standard in any kind of courtroom.
Those are my initial macro impressions.
I'm going with only arcane - adding verifiable religions suddenly makes things even more complex, and I'm trying not to bite off more than I can chew.
Larson has it exactly right - this is a mental exercise in incremental changes, working from the ground up, in an attempt to grasp what a realistic society would like (ironic, I know) given the existence of long term and relatively common magic.
I'm using Pathfinder rules as a springboard mostly to have somewhere to start from; my end result won't be limited by these rules, nor copy them directly (copyright!) but will rather reflect the benefits of having mulled over the impact of generic spells like invisibility, charm person, etc.
Scythia, great ideas. I personally think that a zone of truth paid for and installed in the center of a market place would have a huge impact on the economy, for example. Or even a freely available permanent zone of truth that anybody can step into. Refusing to enter it when discussing contracts or declaring love could have huge impacts across all of society. That's precisely the kind of stuff I'm looking to explore.
I've seen other people take stabs at assumption before and I think the fatal flaw in the analysis is relying on an RPG's minimum stats as a significant gatekeeper to the ability to wield magic. It's good that you're looking into limiting the pool of potential casters by social class and literacy as well, but there's a huge difference between using a game's internal rules and metagame concepts and trying to assume that means much of significance to a real-world setting. Those stats are used to govern a character's options and gauge their utility in a game once we've already made the presumption that this is a character we're going to play, not model the real world or the relative prevalence of a particular D&D class in a real society.
Let's consider: all spellcaster classes base spellcasting on the same levels of their stats. You need 10+ in the main spellcasting ability. But is that the only realistic requirement - assuming we're already out of the serf/peasant, illiterate social classes? Probably not. How expensive would it be to obtain the appropriate training or apprenticeship? Would it make sense for wizard training to be the same cost as sorcerer training? Or bard training, or druid or cleric? Probably not. Or let's compare to being a ranger, or paladin. Or maybe a rogue. Going by stats, since all stats are independent variables on the same normal curve, there's no reason to think sorcerers and wizards have any difference in distribution. Yet the expected network of resources behind the two approaches to magic suggest different. Wizardry is learned so that presumes a history of theory and knowledge, a history of social structure that manages the preservation of that knowledge and it's dissemination to a new generation, and a need for resources to fund that structure. Sorcery assumes none of that. So already becoming a sorcerer should be a lot cheaper and there should be a lot more of them running around. But that's not very good for most settings. It's a very complex idea to cover that goes far beyond...
My working requirements for magic are intelligence, education, and a patriarchal bias. Thus, in a feudal world, you would only have relatively wealthy, male, educated people as potential mages, with a few true geniuses bubbling up in either gender. You would need a patron or access to an academy of some sort. To keep things simple, however, I'm only exploring wizards, not clerics, alchemists, sorcerers, druids and so forth.
Which is a long way of saying you're precisely right in your above comment, but I'm seeking to keep things relatively simple and only using the Pathfinder system as a starting point to get my own mental conversation going.
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"My working requirements for magic are intelligence, education, and a patriarchal bias. "
You lost my interest here. But your culture should look very "bad parts" Victorian.
Edit/Add
I should explain. Education was NOT such a big deal in the Fuedal Age, since it really did not grant a big advantage to a ruler. It DID allow for some upward mobility to lower classes. With the addition of it being the big gateway to a very real advantage of magical powers, it will become both highly desirable and often jealously guarded. It will get out anyway, and will destroy the Feudal Society as cities develop their own magic academies, breaking the power of the feudal lords.
I don't like your assumption that Wizardry is biased towards the male caster, but whatever blows your robes up.
Arcane magic only, of divine magic, too?
Because consider the impact that religions are going to have when they're provably able to back up their scriptures with magic. (On the bright side, heresies won't make much sense when Commune spells can ASK a god what exactly they meant in Book 3, Chapter 7, Verse 6....)
On the other hand, consider what happens when every church is equally "right" in the sense that no matter what you think is right there's some god that agrees with you.
"My working requirements for magic are intelligence, education, and a patriarchal bias. "
You lost my interest here. But your culture should look very "bad parts" Victorian.
Yeah, agreed. Not an ideal culture by any means, but one that starts off with the realities of our past, and then warps beyond recognition due to the infusion of magic.
To be clear, it's a patriarchal cultural bias, not any biological limitation. Women in this world are equally adept, just given less opportunity to nurture their talents.
Actually, why specifically Victorian? There's lots of cultures that'd fit. In fact, if magic becomes so prevalent and is so gated, one might imagine that theocracies ruled by wizard-kings would become pretty prevalent. That makes your setting WAY more interesting (to me anyway) than just leaving it at "Victorian-esque poor/rich divide."
Heck, even if you don't have wizard kings, you'll have Merlin-esque advisors, grand viziers plotting against their masters in secret and allying themselves with dark powers... Hm.
I don't have time to seriously discuss the implications of magic right now (I'm about to start a writing project), but I'll chime in later with some thought concerning whatever spell level you're currently at. I'm sincerely interested in knowing how this setting advances.
First society to a printing press wins: even if a spellbook doesnt work, a comprehensive theory of magic for dummies book would give you a field of wizards like no other country.
It's hard to imagine kings and queens being a thing when charm person lets you start a rebellion, unless you go full on birthright where the power of the nation rests gives the ruler power, or ancient wizards made thrones and crowns that provide magic resistance at the very least.
Why wouldn't magic have immerged in ancient Egypt or earlier?
Why wouldn't magic have immerged in ancient Egypt or earlier?
Works better with a phonetic alphabet?
Yeah glyphs runes and sigils aren't a thing.
I just ruminated on the earth shattering consequences of Acid Splash being commonly available here.
Why wouldn't magic have immerged in ancient Egypt or earlier?
They might have. My end result is a society that has been living with magic long enough to adapt thoroughly to its existence and consequences. There's no telling when magic first appeared.
Personally, I'd decide WHEN you want magic to start appearing when you design the world. That's just as critical to deciding what impact it has. If you're designing a setting, think about what time period you want the setting to be played in, too. Decide how magic is researched (if researched) and why it's coming in stages (cantrips-first-second-etc).
Don't forget to decide what sort of magical creatures exist at the start of the setting and what races are around, etc.
Basically, start a timeline of history, then start running a magic timeline alongside it and decide how and why it advances at what rate. Perhaps cantrips like Read Magic and Detect Magic can speed it along?
Light that doesn't cost fuel would be a big difference on its own. Shift work is basically impossible without cheap light, it makes investments in machinery a lot more profitable. This in turn makes manufactured products cheaper (you wouldn't believe how expensive simple clothing could be relative to incomes) which changes the world again.
Even at the level of someone doing a little stitching in the evening it saves money or saves your eyes.
Good points. What I'm running with is this: all magic has been available for some time now. It all was researched/discovered a long time ago, and today (whenever that ends up being) it's commonly known and has affected society.
So I won't be playing out the 'reveal' of magic, as it were. It's there, fait accompli, and people have adapted already.
But you're absolutely right. Having an alternative history will be as important to the setting as an accurate present.
Of course, it's possible that new magic is being discovered as academies and wizards focus their knowledge on it and methods of study improve. But that's outside the scope of what I'm tackling.
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Even if you're approximating the real world, the assumption that only men would be educated enough to be wizards is wrong. There were many opportunities for upper-class women to gain an education. See here or here for more details.
I don't know what the numbers are like and I wouldn't be surprised if the male literacy rate was, say, twice that of the female literacy rate. But there were certainly more educated women than the odd Int 16+ genius.
Decanter of endless water vs an aqueduct:
Geyser” produces a 20-foot-long, 1-foot-wide stream at 30 gallons per round.
30 gallons/6 seconds * 60 seconds/min * 60 min/hour * 24 hours /day
432,000 gallons/day.The Pont du Gard could transport up to 20,000 cubic meters — nearly 6 million gallons and the combined aqueducts of the city of Rome supplied around 1 million cubic meters (300 million gallons) a day — a day,-wiki
So with 695 Decanters of Endless Water you could supply the city of Rome with all the water it needs?
Crafting costs would be 3.1275 million gp, or the combined wealth of 3.5 20th level PCs. Crafting time 3475 days (9.5 years), assuming the crafter can make the check to work at double time (which, if they're one of those 20th level PCs funding the thing, they certainly can). You could also potentially fund this thing through taxes, with a 10.5 gp average contribution from 300,000 people being sufficient.
Now I actually think this is a low estimate. I wanted a desert city in my setting so I crunched some numbers based on agricultural output and determined that in an actual desert with no other water supply and speedy evaporation you'd need about one decanter for every 20 people. Those 645 decanters would only support a population of 12,900. That's a far cry from Rome at its peak but still a solid city by medieval standards - and you can push it a bit farther with food imports or some amount of natural water. So you can justify more than just a "small village" in the desert as long as someone in the world is willing to pay for it.
I know you wanted to start with Cantrips, but my favorite world changer is teleportation circle. it's even permanency-able.
Relatively inexpensive and will pay for itself if you charge a small fee per traveler. I imagine it would be limited to major cities with the arrival point heavily guarded. Like airports, but without planes. Probably also with loyal agents on the departure side with some mechanism to destroy the circle should the need arise. See an army coming? Destroy the circle and teleport away. Or even some explosive device with a one round delay. they could use the circle itself. I digress. There would obviously be good security and a backup plan, but you get the idea.
Small expensive goods would probably travel this way, not to mention individuals on vacation. Shall we pop over to Shanghi and visit grandma for the afternoon?
Hey guys, I've got a thought experiment going on that I thought you might enjoy/be willing to help me with. I'm exploring how the prevalence of magic in these fictional worlds might fundamentally change how societies would operate, and am doing so by looking at different spells and trying to extrapolate how they might warp cultures and economies. I'd love feedback and other ideas, so if you guys are curious you can check it out here: http://10by10room.blogspot.com/
It'll be an ongoing thing, and while I can't make any claims to brilliance or novel insight, I'm hoping this modest exploration will eventually lay the groundwork for a series I plan to write where magic has been fully integrated into society. I'm starting off small with cantrips, but plan to work my way up to more powerful spells in time.
Cheers!
Important thing to remember is that D+D/Pathfinder don't have working economic models as they are. There really isn't such a thing as a working simulated economy.
You also have to describe what is your base assumption without magic. Impressing magic on a feudal world is going to have different effects than on 21st century Terra.
Magical integration is a spectrum. Magic is hardly integrated in the default assumption, somewhat integrated in places like Eberron, and heavily integrated in ancient magic empires on the Forgotten Realms and Golarion which have subsequently been blown off the map.
So with 695 Decanters of Endless Water you could supply the city of Rome with all the water it needs?
you could replace one aquaduct. I think rome had at least 7.
That would cost 6 million gold pieces. And be far more prone to theft than a bunch of rocks. But more secure against siege. So there's more than enough reason to have both.
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*Casts Modify Memory*
It wouldn't change anything. Go back to your mundane life.
So with 695 Decanters of Endless Water you could supply the city of Rome with all the water it needs?you could replace one aquaduct. I think rome had at least 7.
That would cost 6 million gold pieces. And be far more prone to theft than a bunch of rocks. But more secure against siege. So there's more than enough reason to have both.
When players start stacking magic like this you have two choices.
1. Let the rules carry your campaign into the Tippyverse.
2. Go beyond the rules and start making consequences for magic item abuse. Classic example was the second comic book Star Lord who found the first Star Lord's ship and Element Gun. He decided to create a meteor of ice and rock and drop it on the base on one of his foes, using far more material than was usual. He later found out that his act caused an environmental disaster in the planet the material was being transported from. When players or a society starts abusing the rules of magic on a massive scale, a price needs to be paid.
I know you wanted to start with Cantrips, but my favorite world changer is teleportation circle. it's even permanency-able.
Relatively inexpensive and will pay for itself if you charge a small fee per traveler. I imagine it would be limited to major cities with the arrival point heavily guarded. Like airports, but without planes. Probably also with loyal agents on the departure side with some mechanism to destroy the circle should the need arise. See an army coming? Destroy the circle and teleport away. Or even some explosive device with a one round delay. they could use the circle itself. I digress. There would obviously be good security and a backup plan, but you get the idea.
Small expensive goods would probably travel this way, not to mention individuals on vacation. Shall we pop over to Shanghi and visit grandma for the afternoon?
On the other hand, one bit of treachery in the right place, and you've got major Trojan Horse action on the city.
First society to a printing press wins: even if a spellbook doesnt work, a comprehensive theory of magic for dummies book would give you a field of wizards like no other country.
With an average intelligence of 10, they won't be casting that much. :)
The alternative to getting levels through book-learning is just murdering things, right? Might you see wars happening just because some wizards want to get more powerful at magic?
Also dystopian.
EDIT: Also, you know how magic items granting enhancement bonuses to stats count as "permanent" after 24 hours and you can take feats/classes that require the new stat you have? Suddenly, rich people giving their children magic headbands of intellect so they can be wizards just like their parents becomes true. The rich-poor divide broadens with that.
at One day per level geas probably won't let you mind chip your barony. They'll stay in line longer if you fireball one of their huts.
On the other hand, one bit of treachery in the right place, and you've got major Trojan Horse action on the city.I know you wanted to start with Cantrips, but my favorite world changer is teleportation circle. it's even permanency-able.
Relatively inexpensive and will pay for itself if you charge a small fee per traveler. I imagine it would be limited to major cities with the arrival point heavily guarded. Like airports, but without planes. Probably also with loyal agents on the departure side with some mechanism to destroy the circle should the need arise. See an army coming? Destroy the circle and teleport away. Or even some explosive device with a one round delay. they could use the circle itself. I digress. There would obviously be good security and a backup plan, but you get the idea.
Small expensive goods would probably travel this way, not to mention individuals on vacation. Shall we pop over to Shanghi and visit grandma for the afternoon?
Hence the high security on both sides. In a world with telepathy and zine of truth I suspect it'd be easier to find loyal minions.
On the Decanters of Endless Water, wouldn't they just make them large and immobile much like all those wonderful fountains all over Rome?
Inlaa
I think the education requirement for the Wizard would be reflected in the minimum starting ages the rules cite for Wizards. Applying adventurer style experience to the discussion rathe muddies things, with no real value added.
Arbane,
IRL the subject of educated slaves varies according to where and when. The U.S. was not even uniform in this regard.
As to your cited methods of controlling access, they won't hold up over time, the advantages to a group breaking those prohibitions will eventually overcome, just by having a larger pool of potentially powerful wizards to draw from.
Magic, not gender, not lineage, will be the primary currency of power.
Hence the high security on both sides. In a world with telepathy and zine of truth I suspect it'd be easier to find loyal minions.On the other hand, one bit of treachery in the right place, and you've got major Trojan Horse action on the city.I know you wanted to start with Cantrips, but my favorite world changer is teleportation circle. it's even permanency-able.
Relatively inexpensive and will pay for itself if you charge a small fee per traveler. I imagine it would be limited to major cities with the arrival point heavily guarded. Like airports, but without planes. Probably also with loyal agents on the departure side with some mechanism to destroy the circle should the need arise. See an army coming? Destroy the circle and teleport away. Or even some explosive device with a one round delay. they could use the circle itself. I digress. There would obviously be good security and a backup plan, but you get the idea.
Small expensive goods would probably travel this way, not to mention individuals on vacation. Shall we pop over to Shanghi and visit grandma for the afternoon?
IF one side is looking to invade the other, than only one side has security that needs to be suborned.