Setting has incredibly powerful magic

Because the ones who rule the world are called "gods".

>Everyone is a walking talking nuke
>No one is really keen on wars between said Nuke People

Gosh I wonder why those people might avoid conflict.

>setting has magic at all

>intelligent creatures don't just fucking break the substance of reality with it

Why would they want to rule the world when magic can provide them with everything they could dream of?

>Q: Why don't we just fix all of our problems with magic?
A: Because if we 'fixed' all of our problems with magic, we'd be worse off than when we started.
>Q: But why is that?
A: Have you ever met a wizard?

Why would a billionaire want to run a country when money can provide them with everything they could dream of?

Any Wizard powerful enough to reasonably take over the world is instead involved, either willingly or unwillingly, with higher level problems.

You can't get that powerful without delving into the greater powers of time and space, which means tangoing with elemental guardians, outmaneuvering diabolic patrons, or protecting your vast magical reserves from eldritch monsters. And that's before you even get into conflicts with other wizards looking to steal your work.

Once you get to a certain level of power as a wizard, protecting that power and keeping yourself from becoming the plaything of magical entities even stronger than you are (who you now have the attention of because of the magic you throw around) becomes your #1 priority. Archwizards that fail to understand this don't last very long.

Channeling magical energy usually results in insanity for everyone but a very small percentage of people, and even then it has some rather unpleasant side effects.

Can they become a little girl with it?

>50664997 #
>Why would a billionaire want to run a country when money can provide them with everything they could dream of?

Most of the world doesn't provide usable resources to high-level wizards, so there is little gain from ruling. Ruling and magic are both time-consuming, so good rulers rule, and good magicians study magic, because no-one has the lifespan to be good at both, and being good at magic is a prerequisite for magical longevity. And while assassins are a small threat, the risk of that many people hating you, over a long life, and over the lives of all the other wizards now at risk from commoners, makes the chance of one getting lucky just high enough to be a pointless risk.

Hence, most high-level wizards refrain from politics and discourage other wizards from getting involved.

tl;r Jack Vance already covered this.

youtube.com/watch?v=sI0vtqxoG1k

My nations are run by Gods. So, even if there are major powerful wizards, most nations are being kept pretty static by their dieties only strongly defending their key border points. Most territory wars only go over non-essential areas and are pretty pointless.

There is one exception, but that is in the plot of the campaign.

Same reason Bill Gates isn't President. Why bother when you already have the means to get everything you want.

If they put enough money into R&D, probably. They can do some pretty crazy things with medical science nowadays, becoming the little girl probably wouldn't be too much of a stretch if they were willing to invest.

Also you have shit taste and should jump off the tallest building you can find.

If reverse-aging were available, you know people would have already signed up for it.

That's clearly who I was referring to. Good job deciphering my post.

>Setting has nuclear weapons
>World not ruled by a conglomerate of physicists and engineers

It isn't yet, but it isn't like the march of progress has stopped. The human lab-rats that are the Chinese are doing tests of human gene editing to cure cancer, and there's that one guy who's getting a head transplant within the next year. Sure, we can't reverse organ failure, but if some geezer feels like spending the last years of his life as a small child, it's theoretically possible. It would take money to actually make it viable, but having a lot of money is what's given in this situation.

The type of personality that would lead to someone becoming a legitimately great wizard is not the same type that leads to wanting to rule. There are exceptions, but they fall under two categories; wizard conquerors and wizard kings. The first tries to found their own kingdom on the relatively sound political logic of 'fuck you, I have magic' and tends to get put down pretty quickly by all the other mages who don't want to get a bad reputation.

The second is more incidental; a monarch who happens to be a wizard. They either sought the information out to give them an advantage, in which case their primary education is actually in rulership and thus they are typically less magically skilled than a decent advisor they could just pay, or they were not expecting to get the throne but were pushed into it after a few relatives ended up dead and have the typical pseudo isolationist wizard mindset; they are likely to adopt a foreign policy of neutrality and solve domestic problems by enhancing crop growth and finding new mining sources until everyone is wealthy enough that they stop complaining.

Cus being a Vizier is aaaaight!

>implying it's comparable
Anyone can use a nuke once it's built.

Only a wizard can use a nuke spell, unless wizard deliberate designs it to be usable by non-wizards.

Bioware had it right with their Tevinter imperium,

Mages were the ruling class

Nothing else makes sense

Because the setting is dumb.

>Only a wizard can use a nuke spell, unless wizard deliberate designs it to be usable by non-wizards.

You're making assumptions about the magic system. All the OP stipulates is "incredibly powerful magic."

Maybe you don't need to be a wizard to do magic. Maybe you need to be a team of 500 wizards to do magic, like you need a team of engineers to build a WMD. Maybe the more powerful your magic is, the less free will you have, so powerful wizards are just forces of nature playing their role in fate rather than "ruling" anything. Maybe gods slap wizards down.

There are hundreds of reasons why you could have a magic-heavy system without a magocracy.

Because the divine forces from which magic stems rule through them. Or through mundane people, if they feel like it. Whatever they want, really.

Because a merchant and a mage are EXACTLY the same thing right?

No they're not, see me after class you fucking moron

George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Donald Trump, the Coke Brothers, Rupert Murdoch, Vladimir Putin (40 billion), the Saudi Royal family, the entire British house of Lords, every Chinese Billionaire whether they like it or not- do I really need to go on? Are you that fucking dense about human nature?

Well, 5/8 continents in my setting are ruled by mages. One of those is an ice cap and completely empty. Another is 90% desert and uninhabitable, and the wizards use it as a biologically sealed field testing center.

The wealthiest nation is a magocracy, and actually runs on a teleport based economy. They can haul huge shipments in seconds, and the only alternative is to put it on a boat and hope it survives the sea. There's like a 10% chance the mage is scamming you though and will teleport it to his own hidey hole. Still better odds than the ocean. Likewise, for personal travel, there's a similar chance you'll just end up in his harem. After teleportation, the next largest industry is slaving, because when the world is at your fingertips, what an omnipotent sociopath needs is to show up his friends with an even BIGGER harem. Think Tokapi palace, but for everyone in the aristocracy.

The main rival to this nation has to mass produce mages trained in abjuration and nothing else just to keep society together. Thankfully its ran by an ESPer who knows what he's doing, but the situation is unstable. Constant skirmish warfare results, but there's no organized nation to declare war on. Just a continent's worth of magical assholes.

Continent number 3 is ruled by an archlich. Both of the previous continents make fairly routine attempts to kill him- or at least prevent him from getting too big an army. To date, none have succeeded.

Continent number 4 is ruled entirely by dragons, who I'm counting as mages because of course they know magic. How the human mages managed to contain them to one continent is an entire campaign unto itself.

The remaining two continents are not ran by mages because there isn't anything of value there. One is adjacent to the dragons and are basically used for cattle tribute. The other tries to get by with naval shipping as an alternative to mage shenanigans, but otherwise doesn't have a lot of interesting resources in themselves.

associating with plebeian mundies would ruin their wizard cred

Perhaps upper-tier warrior-kings and their armies are even more incredibly powerful?

>Earth has incredibly powerful nukes
>Most countries that own them don't rule the world

>setting has incredibly powerful technology
>scientists still don't rule the world

>Why is this?

Because there are incredibly powerful Bards, Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers, and Warlocks who would object rather strongly to their attempting to.

you wot mate

Too much of a time investment, they'd rather work on whatever their research is

He has a point. Every third world dictator has couple scud missiles with low yield warhead these days. Most of those countries don't matter on the global scale and are scared shitless of potential repercussions to ever actually use them (maybe save for ISIL and Best Korea).

>conquer the world
>have to listen to peasants starving and shit
>have to run a government
>no time to study

>not conquer the world
>read books on how to traverse pocket dimensions
>read books on how to summon and fuck lots of sexy succubi
>read books and invent cure for herpes

Gee I wonder

That'd be a comparative metaphor for the purposes of satire, son. It went over your head. You might need to up your dosage or dislodge the stick out of your ass.

Not to mention cash in on charging the ruling body fuck tons of gold/loot to fix their problems

Magic power disappears when you take office

>Do you know how much power I'd have to give up to become president?

Real answer:

Because the Wizard will be expected to do things, while a leader delegates tasks and listens to advisers on different issues. Having your most powerful Doers in the country take on direct rulership would be counter intuitive. They would be too busy dealing with the politics of running a country and keeping the cabinet in check to actually have time to cast spells.

The only way a wizard ruler works is if the entire cabinet is made of simulacrums and other summoned minions. But even then, the simulacrums would require a wizard on par with the highest of magely people, which are supposed to be rare and won't be in most people's settings, or the summoned minions will be stupid and incapable of anything other than the most simplest of tasks.

because magic is a deeply academic discipline and research is more important and ruling and the researchers will often band together to stop upstart tyrants

I wasn't saying billionaires have no political power, I meant to say they have no reason to become President specifically. Just look at Soros, if he ran for office he'd never get the job but he has so much money and power he can just buy and sell any politician he wants.

Its like Merlin. He was arguably more powerful than king Arthur but he had no need to be a king himself.

Why would they want to rule the mortal world when they can shape demiplanes of their very own?

The Material Plane bores them.

Same reason I don't rule over the ants on my backyard.

The same reasons as any other motherfucker: no right to rule given to them by the gods.

Theres a reason why all kings and rulers are 20 pc levels with great stats, blessings from their god/s and somethimes the fey. A wizard with no legetimazy on the throne would just face misfortunes.

Also because you dont have enough spell slots to stop the other wizards from assasinating you.

>setting has incredibly powerful atomic bombs
>nuclear physicists don't rule the world
Why is this?

That's the magical equivalent of knowing how to cast a single third-level spell once.

>the Coke brothers
user, you might want to read things for yourself instead of just repeating what you hear.

Because the scientists needed the manpower of 200,000 people and billions of dollars to make the bomb. In this scenario we are assuming that a single mage can cast spells without any help.

Scientific Knowledge doesn't equates to actual power like Magical Knowledge in most systems.

Understanding how to build an atomic bomb and how it works does not make you able to assemble and use one. The same level of knowledge about magical fire makes you able to carbonize a small village with ease.

In Elder Scrolls there are several nations ruled or at least partially ruled by Wizards, the problem if that said Wizards are of medium power level usually.
The actually powerful wizards that can erase parts of reality and stop time at will are instead playing 10th dimensional chess level sneaky cuckery against each other, the Psijic doing shit against the Mirror Logicians who are trying to fuck with individual great Telvanni mages who are trying to steal from Marukhati branches of Elder Council and Ancestral Moth cult etc. Because wizards that can plane walk at will and turn armies into cinder at that power level reach a certain grand agenda where just simple conquest and rule does not fulfill them, in fact I would say that because of the way magic works and even the way you cast magic, you can not become a powerful enough mage without "Ascension" similar to WoD, a grander agenda that concerns the whole universe.
As for medium power level mages, the reason why they don't rule everywhere is because great warriors can achieve supernatural level of power and strenght just through sheer training if they try hard enough because everything in the world is innately magical so it's not that hard to fuck them with good enough army.

All of that being said, most of the settings are like that, weaker mages can be defeated while more powerful mages might try to erase concept of death from the universe instead of just conquering the world.

Also, never forget to account for powerful magical bloodlines and such that often can be more powerful than arcane magic

Why would you want to saddle yourself with their petty issues? Not worth the time or effort, leave it to kings and emperors who can take care of the boring shit and do you favors while you retire to an ivory tower/sprawling dungeon/pocket dimension and continue to study the mysteries of the multiverse.

They do. They're the illoominati confirmed faction. Except they're kinda shit at it so everyone just pretends they don't know because otherwise they'll send some shitty wizard to cast alter memories on you 'till the cows come home.

Plus they mostly just argue between themselves in their grand council and never actually get anything done because the second one of them tries to, the other wizards use it as an excuse to rally the others against them.

Because rpgs - being fictional systems - are constructed according to symbolic codes as well as codes of 'real world' social cause and effect. The symbolic character of a wizard is one who is both supernaturally powerful and one who is an outcast genius on the fringes of civilization. A civilization of wizards, or a society of wizards that rules through anything other than obscure and diffuse conspiracy, is no longer - in the symbolic system - wizardly in any king of imaginatively effective way.

read Roland Barthes, geez guys

because once you get that powerful on the plane, you draw attention from certain extraplanar entities, and then all your time and effort is spent defending yourself from those, not worrying about the affairs of mortals.

The Black Prism by Brent Weeks had an interesting take on it.

Magic existed as light, different colors of magic held different properties. Red materialized as gel, yellow was fragile like glass, blue was hard, etc. A person had to be a natural user, and most people could only use one or two colors.

Every magic user has a natural 'lifespan'. Their iris' fill with their color of magic until they eventually burst, and bleed into the whites of the eyes. The mage soon goes mad after that, and every color follows a unique, but similar path (all blues eventually try to replace their skin with armor plates, or something).

It was cool.

Because why would they want to rule the world? They have much better things to do with their time and largely lack the responsibility to not cause it to crash and burn within weeks.

So they stay in their space towers researching the next best method to jump across planes and summon mountain sized gelatinous cubes.

I have a functional knowledge of how an atomic bomb functions.

Given access to materials, I could probably construct the facilities to construct the bomb in a random warehouse

What I cannot do, however, is wave my hands and spawn a nuclear explosion from thin air. Just because you have 'Nuclear' in your title doesn't mean you can assemble a nuke from duct tape and chewing gum. Most nuclear physicists will never get within 20 square miles of 20% of the materials and facilities needed.

>In that plot, Lex Luthor is possessed by Brainiac
>Therefore, Donald Trump is possessed by Brainiac

He really was playing 4d Mahjong.

The same reason a sailor can harness the wind and water, but too much or either and the boat capsizes. Magic is a force of nature. It's arrogance to think one controls it.

They're all passive aggressive to a woman and almost never leave their city state. The few that do go out into the world have have either tremendous success or embarrassing failure. All these efforts are hampered by the superstion of the small folk, who only know the wizards from legends, and have a healthy mistrust of them.
A wizard will throw anyone under the bus if she deems it necassary, no matter who it alienates. Wizards will see themselves as entirely blameless when entire sections of the continent will kill them outright instead of dealing with their shit.

What the fuck was Robert Jordan's problem?

They do.

It's just easier to have a puppet-King look like he's actually the ruler. Prevents coups from targeting you, and it lets you delegate the shitty parts of absolute authority to the puppet.

Because they're too kooky/egotistical/eccentric to join forces and secure world-domination. As long as enough wizards aren't on board, there will always be too many who stay neutral and too many who join forces with the GoodGuys™ to take down the EvilEmpire™ for it to be viable.

This is why most world-domination schemes are doomed to failure. "Good guise" won't want to participate, and "bad guise" can't be trusted.

Because you can't buy much legitimate power with just money.

You answered it better than anyone else could.

>Because rpgs - being fictional systems - are constructed according to symbolic codes as well as codes of 'real world' social cause and effect. The symbolic character of a wizard is one who is both supernaturally powerful and one who is an outcast genius on the fringes of civilization. A civilization of wizards, or a society of wizards that rules through anything other than obscure and diffuse conspiracy, is no longer - in the symbolic system - wizardly in any king of imaginatively effective way.

This is fantasy in general. It's not based on what should logically happen, but what works best on a symbolic/emotional/thematic/moral level.

The setting has incredibly powerful magic, but very few wizards ever get close to attaining it. Those that do usually ascend past mortal politics and start dealing with the divines.

>Be the greatest Alchemist/Wizard/Whatever in the world
>Use your power to be the Little Girl
I always new Wizards were the most Veeky Forums class

>Fantasy cold war.
>Adventurers are used to wage proxy wars in satellite states.

I'd play it.

Being the only magic users that don't go batshit insane and try to reshape the world physically goes to your head.

>Magical Stalinism
Hell fucking yeah I'd play that.

Is this a setting where magic has a much higher power level cap than the alternatives? If not, there could be groups of people who don't want mages in power for whatever reason (their god doesn't like it, mages have a history of being terrible rulers, whatever) and send high level assassins/heroes/etc after any mages that try to get political power.

How come that the only country that has a firm understanding of economics isn't already running the world through banking and trade?

Not everyone has the intelligence to become a wizard.

What makes you say they don't?

Haven't you ever wondered how 'leaders' could be so incompetent and yet everything seems to work out?

Bad writing.

because we make sure that the other aspect of the world are scaled up similiarly
all-powerful wizards need all powerful checks and balances

Because the church does, duh.
>Clerics also have magic?

>All sides have invested heavily in nationwide counterspelling.
>All sides have some serious heavy duty contingency spells active.
>As soon as anyone drops their counterspell barriers to let loose spells some nasty spells are coming their way. Presumably. No one will drop it to check.

Yeah. I'd run it.

This.

When you can summon up a harem of succubi/incubi to do your bidding and build a whole new world to turn into your pesonal harem, why bother with world domination?

Why would you bring Nyx up in that context though, when Nyx is not only not evil per se, but she's literally the only being in Persona's setting confirmed to be 100% real, predating life on earth and the Sea of the Unconscious entirely?

Like, that could not be a more contradictory thing to pick for where you were going with the rest of that sentence.

If we had wizards in our world, they would not only rule the world, but prevent people from learning magic, hunt down all magic users, who could potentially be a threat.

Better question: setting where anyone can lean magic through dedicated study; why isn't there a preposterous high standard of living? Hunger and healthcare would be non-issues. Transportation would be in a nationwide scale. Construction would be a one man job. Even if wizards charged a fucking fortune they'd still be adding much more strength to the economy.

The real question here isn't the standard of living, but the drastic shift in technology that would drastically shape society and its political economy. I mean, shit, we wage fucking wars irl over black liquid that lights fire. The invention of the tech necessary for mass production alongside the growth of various social/economic institutions completely changed everything. Man, if I could just say a word and fire could come out of my palm, imagine the technological ramifications that this would make on society?

>Why is this?
Because setting has also incredible powerful martials

Anima

There are like twenty mages total, and they know that if they started arguing there would be no world left to rule.

World of Greyhawk, AD&D. Because a mega magic war took place thousands of years ago, turning to ash 3/4 of the known world to the west and wiping out most of the magical knowledge. Now the only magic is scattered remanants and leftovers that only a few have the knowledge or power to use, let alone replicate, with the rest of the population ignorant or fearful of it.