So given a rather lively discussion in another thread about what would have happened linguistically if long-lived races were real, would anyone be interested in doing an alternative Earth (possibly also Venus and Mars) where magic is real?
It'd be near impossible to determine. For example, ease of magic use would reduce the necessity of slaves, thus preventing the collapse of the Roman Empire. By skipping the dark ages, we're at scifi levels of magitech by 2000. Alternately, magical talent might perpetuate class divide, extending the dark ages.
Not to mention potential precursor civilizations with Lizardfolk/Kobolds or even other things. All the same, part of the amusement of this sort of thing is trying to imagine how things might have been.
I'm running a game set in medieval Poland, but with dwarves, elves, and fey. I found adding magic into history was a more enjoyable idea than re-imagining it wholesale.
For instance, my elves are nomads, similar to the Roma, after their forests were burned during the crusades. They are generally distrusted, run out of town if they stay too long in Christian areas, and are both discriminated against but feared for their curses.
The campaign centers around a town trading hands after the Teutonic Knights (vampire slayers) are defeated by the new king of Poland and his allies. I've found lots of material delving into folklore and the area's history, so much so that adding to it felt better than trying to re-imagine things outright.
Well, it is a lot easier to add in magic to events rather than imagining them wholesale. A friend of mine is fond of points of divergence where things went a bit differently. Of course, it's also possible to keep magic so low or low-key that, ultimately, it doesn't matter that it exists because nothing really changes.
I'm a bit less than fond of this or "magic goes away" settings. I'm not the type to enjoy statements that the past was somehow objectively better than the present and, certainly, than the future.
The Earth you describe is called Mythic Europe, and it is detailed in the Ars Magica game.
And it's one of my favorites.
Well, for one, all the elves would be dead long before they discovered magic as no species can support a 100 year childhood :)
Well, for one, all the elves would be dead long before they discovered magic as no species can support a 100 year childhood :)
Pretty much. I think this would apply to most long-lived races unless their childhood was a bit more reasonable.
It'd be near impossible to determine. For example, ease of magic use would reduce the necessity of slaves, thus preventing the collapse of the Roman Empire. By skipping the dark ages, we're at scifi levels of magitech by 2000. Alternately, magical talent might perpetuate class divide, extending the dark ages.
The Forgotten Realms were full of magic, yet slavery is even more prevalent there than on Earth. Considering the use of human sacrifice in rituals, slavery is bound to be even more ugly with magic present.
The only reason that slavery fell out of fashion in the American North was the rise of technological industry. Magic leaves less of a need for tech progress. So less of an incentive to abolish slavery.
Didn't the sudden scarcity of silver as the empire's mines played out have the most to do with the breakdown of the empire? (Silver was the actual coin of day to day trade for the empire, gold was for political level dealings.) Slavery needed a trade network to support itself, so it's collapse certainly made the empire fall harder.
With silver being used in a lot of magic, the lack of silver would have disrupted the magicians' stability.
EDIT, scratch that if you are using Pathfinder economy. Silver is for personal trade, and copper is for ballast.
So given a rather lively discussion in another thread about what would have happened linguistically if long-lived races were real, would anyone be interested in doing an alternative Earth (possibly also Venus and Mars) where magic is real?
The faster breeding humans would exterminate them. Same way homo sapiens sapiens exterminated homo sapiens neanderthalis.
So given a rather lively discussion in another thread about what would have happened linguistically if long-lived races were real, would anyone be interested in doing an alternative Earth (possibly also Venus and Mars) where magic is real?The faster breeding humans would exterminate them. Same way homo sapiens sapiens exterminated homo sapiens neanderthalis.
I have heard of Neanderthals having shorter lifespans than ours, or close to the same lifespan as ours (unfortunately not a very good article -- Early Modern Human sample size is too small), but not of them having longer lifespans than ours.
On the other hand, regardless of the above link, other primates have shorter generation times than us, but we are driving them extinct, not the other way around.
So given a rather lively discussion in another thread about what would have happened linguistically if long-lived races were real, would anyone be interested in doing an alternative Earth (possibly also Venus and Mars) where magic is real?The faster breeding humans would exterminate them. Same way homo sapiens sapiens exterminated homo sapiens neanderthalis.I have heard of Neanderthals having shorter lifespans than ours, or close to the same lifespan as ours (unfortunately not a very good article -- Early Modern Human sample size is too small), but not of them having longer lifespans than ours.
On the other hand, regardless of the above link, other primates have shorter generation times than us, but we are driving them extinct, not the other way around.
The advantages of having tools and linguistics outweigh that factor. Elves have the issue of not being able to build their numbers as rapidly as humans and the longer time to raise a generation. Unless they have a very rapid head start in technology or magic, they're evolutionary meat on the grindstone.
The biggest disadvantage elves have is gaining no substantive advantage for having hundreds of years of experience. This is an artifact of the fact that this is a game and realism does not compete with fairness. You can rationalize it any way you want.
Agreed on the mercenaries, it is just irritating that they don't just vanish when you fail to pay them.
On the Neanderthal DNA issue. At this point the gene trackers are saying that only Sub-Saharan Africans have no DNA from Neanderthal, Denisovan or that one other stock that I can never remember. I'm sure there has to exist the odd person somewhere who is an exception, but I couldn't find an example in the articles I have read.
Its not clear that we exterminated the Neanderthals. Most non-African humans have some traces of their DNA, so its likely that we interbred with them.So given a rather lively discussion in another thread about what would have happened linguistically if long-lived races were real, would anyone be interested in doing an alternative Earth (possibly also Venus and Mars) where magic is real?The faster breeding humans would exterminate them. Same way homo sapiens sapiens exterminated homo sapiens neanderthalis.I have heard of Neanderthals having shorter lifespans than ours, or close to the same lifespan as ours (unfortunately not a very good article -- Early Modern Human sample size is too small), but not of them having longer lifespans than ours.
On the other hand, regardless of the above link, other primates have shorter generation times than us, but we are driving them extinct, not the other way around.
We interbred with them some, but they only got to contribute a small fraction of our DNA, so they went extinct for the most part.
Also, at least part of the reason for the Roman Empire's collapse was decadence, e.g. people paying non-Roman citizens to fulfill their military service.
Other causes include the barbarians getting better while the Romans stayed more or less the same. From what I've read, the barbarians already had better weapons, so they just needed to get better organization, which they eventually did; and some important technical innovations (better horse harnesses, for instance) occurred AFTER the fall of the Western Roman Empire. It seems from all the assassinations and intrigue even in the early Roman Empire that they were pretty decadent all along.
Didn't the sudden scarcity of silver as the empire's mines played out have the most to do with the breakdown of the empire? (Silver was the actual coin of day to day trade for the empire, gold was for political level dealings.) Slavery needed a trade network to support itself, so it's collapse certainly made the empire fall harder.
With silver being used in a lot of magic, the lack of silver would have disrupted the magicians' stability.
EDIT, scratch that if you are using Pathfinder economy. Silver is for personal trade, and copper is for ballast.
My assumption is that somehow things work out more like Pathfinder or fictional societies in general given things are going to be pretty fundamentally different anyway, what with the presence of magic and all.
It'd be near impossible to determine. For example, ease of magic use would reduce the necessity of slaves, thus preventing the collapse of the Roman Empire. By skipping the dark ages, we're at scifi levels of magitech by 2000. Alternately, magical talent might perpetuate class divide, extending the dark ages.The Forgotten Realms were full of magic, yet slavery is even more prevalent there than on Earth. Considering the use of human sacrifice in rituals, slavery is bound to be even more ugly with magic present.
The only reason that slavery fell out of fashion in the American North was the rise of technological industry. Magic leaves less of a need for tech progress. So less of an incentive to abolish slavery.
Well, something like the Creation Forges of Eberron could reduce the need for slavery and become points of mass manufacturing. Of course, this would cause a lot of issues for crafters of any sort.
The Romans were always ruthless and cruel, but not always decadent.It seems from all the assassinations and intrigue even in the early Roman Empire that they were pretty decadent all along.
My working assumption is that the Roman Empire would likely have been Lawful Evil if it had an alignment by modern standards of morals.
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I would guess that, on this Alternate Earth, Lizardfolk could be a Precursor race, though what caused their civilization to collapse and never spring back can be debated. Given that dinosaurs lived some 65 million years ago, if Lizardfolk are at least that old there's going to need to be some major explaining.
It wouldn't be too hard to have Dwarves be replacements for the Neanderthals here in terms of where they live. Maybe the Orcs or Hobgoblins are this world's Denisovans. Maybe Halflings are Homo Floresiensis. Goblins could be a hybrid of Orc/Hobgoblin and Halfling.
Elves could be a hybrid of Humans and Fey. Gnomes could be a hybrid of Halflings and Fey.
If the Fey homeworld is in a parallel dimension to this alternate Earth or even Mars or Venus, magical portals could allow for interbreeding.
Thoughts?
The lizardfolk detected the upcoming calamity that killed the dinosaurs and abandoned the planet. Most are now a starfaring culture.
The lizardfolk detected the upcoming calamity that killed the dinosaurs and abandoned the planet. Most are now a starfaring culture.
Millions of years ahead of humans technologically and magically. They could keep an eye out on their old home world, though.
They're so advanced that they walk unseen among us, trying to help us from going over the edge. Well, we hope they are beneficial.