So, what do you think of magitech settings Veeky Forums?

I don't think it's impossible to do magic 'right' as you suggest while still also looking at ways people might make use of it. Exalted had some interested examples of this, with artifacts and complex magical mechanisms which, at their base, relied upon symbolism, belief and other abstract factors.

I still remember the 'gun' which propelled bullets via tiny temples down the barrel, filled with little gods whose blessings and prayers accelerated the projectile. It's such an odd way to reach a relatively mundane result.

I like your point of view a lot, but having written a chunk of my undergrad thesis on 17th century alchemists, what struck me was that even if they were trying to understand the world in symbolic terms, it's still driven by the same need to understand fundamental laws of nature as regular science is, just framed through a different lens (and the modern, scientific one wasn't really available at the time). I can only imagine that if alchemy actually worked, it would have been harnessed in technology in the early modern period in a way that isn't dissimilar to magitech in some settings.

my friends love magitech, I dont think one of them ever thought it was inherently bad

Decently put. Completely in error, but worded well enough that I was able to decipher what you were actually talking about.

Occultism.

Not magic. Learn your terminology. It will make your arguments much better. And it will make you look less like an idiot.

Well those are pretty much the same thing...

I think I've just said that in a different thread: there is a rule about fiction that there is NO idea that cannot be pulled off as long as the author is good enough. It's actually something that should be probably posted as a signature in every fantasy discussion:
Even if I complain about certain trope, stereotype etc... it does not mean that it's absolutely and totally bad and just CAN'T be pulled off.
It's just that it's probably going to be much more difficult, the odds that you pull it off are stacked against you.

Well, you are right, but 16th-to18th century alchemy (and astronomy) is a rather specific, unique and very isolated world. It has what I like to call "Aristotelian legacy" in magic (though calling it "Hermetic legacy" might be more appropriate).
I would however make a controversial statement. Hermetic alchemical and astronomical schools were not really magic. They were actually forms of proto-pragmatism and proto-empiricism. At least again, I will do the dick-move and shield that statement by the "authority" of anthropology and it's definitions and theories of magic.

Dude, no. Just no... This is going to get embarrassing very fast if you seriously want to keep this going. I'd rather avoid that kind of confrontation now.

>Clarke was not an antropologist.
But you are, I take it?

I'm just tired of the "Magic and Tradition is Good, Technology and Progress is Bad." Tropes that tend to pop up in games with Magitech.

Strictly speaking no, but it was one of the main parts of my studies. I studied psychology and philosophy, but I've found anthropology to be intrinsically connected to the two, so I studied it a lot.
Ironically enough, these days I mostly teach literature and study linguistics, but that is just kinda how one's professional carrier tends to twist and turn.

Does it? I don't get that impression. It's actually something that seems to be more common to settings that set magic and technology as opposing principles, while the way I understand the label of magi-tech is the opposite: the two are inseparable. I'd say that settings like Arcanum (where such dichotomy can be found, even if the "moral" judgement isn't quite present) are in a way the opposite of magi-tech settings.

I often find it interesting that 'Mad Science' style technology often operates more like magic than anything else, almost always always manifesting in singular, apparently unrepeatable devices with their function derived through bizarre logic from the elements that went into their creation.

Literally almost 1/3 of Final Fantasy games and some Final Fantasy clones tends to have a "Evil empire/company/etc that uses technology" fighting the "Good Traditional and Magic using kingdoms."

Oh yeah, now I kinda see where you are coming from.
But to be perfectly honest, I'm not all that versed in Japanese RPG's (I've only played FF7 and 8). I never got that impression though: I thought that the FF7 message in particular was more about simple greed vs. sensibility than some kind of inherent opposition between technology and traditional magic though. FF8 was completely devoid of such opposition and the biggest and most "technological" magitech faction was actually presented as the good guys, while it was the main villain that relied on more traditional magical and social models.

That's why I said I liked your point of view in the first place, user. Have you read anything by Keith Thomas? He's a British historian of the early modern period who used a lot of anthropological sources in really proprietary ways in his studies into magic, religion and witchcraft, as well as man's relationship with nature.

To address your point more directly -- astrology and alchemy both existed in very self-contained bubbles, and I didn't mean to imply they were the C17 equivalent of modern scientific discourse. They were probably the definition of eldritch lore that's completely impervious to the uninitiated reader -- but it occurred to me as I was writing that that higher-level physics and math are impervious to most of today's public in much the same way. I think you're correct in differentiating them from traditional views of magic -- one thing Thomas' seminal text discusses is how fundamentally separate popular ideas surrounding alchemy and astrology were from popular ideas surrounding what was then defined as magic and witchcraft, even if we, dismissive of our ancestors' rudimentary sciences, are tempted to lump them in with that stuff. But at the same time, I think it's fair to say that late medieval/early modern alchemy and astrology both arose out of attempts to apply that sort of proto-pragmatist, proto-empiricist way of thinking to source materials that were steeped in myth and legend.

Do you think there's really that much of a difference between that and characters in your setting applying the same proto-empiricism to the world's magic system?

I enjoy magitech a great deal. Though as a term that could cover a pretty wide area, from the anachronistic *punk-esque to the slick full integration, to the hodgepodge of mix of conflicting systems done by eccentrics, to the mix of fantasy style cities with a touch of magic to make modern conveniences work, to modern and futuristic seeming city-spacecraft of the ancients based on advanced magic.

Love 'em

For my purposes when I think of magic and technology I naturally tend to imagine them progressing together because magic is more than just the spells you cast but rather, like real life science, is a particular discipline of scienitific pursuit of knowledge about that aspect of the universe.

I mean, I look at real life sciences and see something a bit of that magic in there. Esoteric concepts that, while I can look them up on wikipedia thanks to our modern day and age, would be beyond me if I was not initiated into that knowledge through scholarly learning and pursuit and being enlightened to it by one already learned in the field as well as achieveing the pre-requisite level of knowledge and training before hand.

Golden numbers, Higgs-Bosin Effects, Maxwell's Demon. When you look at the names they sound fairly esoteric by themselves and that, to me, is the magic aspect of it where the mage-scientist spends the bulk of their time understanding and testing various theories and principles about how their world works and then applying them to do what we see as magic.

Naturally that means you develop technology based on these concepts and principles. Just because you know the exact depths and widths to make the various runes of the summoning circle doesn't mean you're going to be doing them by hand when you can have a computer make perfect copies every time.

>Have you read anything by Keith Thomas?
Sadly, no. But I think I'm familiar with similar authors.

>but it occurred to me as I was writing that that higher-level physics and math are impervious to most of today's public in much the same way.
I agree, but that kinda makes me believe making parallel between hermetic sciences and modern sciences more apt than associating them with classical magic.

>I think it's fair to say that late medieval/early modern alchemy and astrology both arose
I agree that they are amalgamation of both, but I would argue that the proto-emirist aspect of it was much larger than the mythological and magical one. Let's not forget that they were all also deeply rooted in Christian cosmology, which (despite being mythology) does not view itself as such, and that the fundamental ambition was to discover regular, empiric and comphrehensible laws of the universe: the metaphorical and analogical aspects of it were largely just filling in the gaps that they could not fill out otherwise. Although: I'm not actually a great expert on this particular time and field, so take it with a small lake worth of salt.

>Do you think there's really that much of a difference between that and characters in your setting applying the same proto-empiricism to the world's magic system?
I actually think they are EXACTLY the same things, and that much of the magi-tech sensibilities is a direct attempt to recreate the late medieval early modern hermetics sensibilities: that magi-tech basically treats those fields the same way steam-punk treats futurism of Jules Verne.

I just don't think it's very interesting or compelling idea. I don't think it actually brings much to the table. The alchemy itself was basically just a short transition: half way magical thinking, half-way rationalism: interesting historical episode, but DEFINED by the transitionalisim. It speaks about how our philosophy changed, but I don't think it speaks about things otherwise universal much.

A good example of this, in my mind, is the Skies of Arcadia setting.
>World is orbited by six different-colored moons actually seven, but we don't talk about the black one shhhh
>Each moon is attuned to a particular element (Yellow Moon has electricity, Red Moon has fire, Green Moon has Earth, etc.)
>Different countries are aligned with different moons
>The basis of all the technology in the setting is moonstones: shards of rock that match these moons and their powers
>Technology is built around these moonstone rocks/shards: the bigger the rock(s) and the more efficient the tech, the more power is put out

I imagine when people think of magitek they often think to much of steam punk and not enough about stuff like this but throw in modern medical technology as well.

That said, I hate the fact that healing magic is almost always locked away behind some kind of divine type deal. Of course, it would make sense for some religious organization to have healing magic but having wizard doctors who can manipulate the body (or their own bodies) with their magic is a concept I highly enjoy especially when you imagine that knowledge filtering down to other groups such as warriors who have magic enhanced training regimes that allow them to do seemingly super-human feats in combat.

Healing magic in general is woefully unimaginative in most fantasy, which is curious because healing magic rituals actually constitute the LARGEST and most detailed portion of real-world magic rituals. It's pretty safe to say that very first magic rituals people have done were actually healing ones. Even curses and charms are probably just concepts derived from older healing magic.
Sickness is like THE oldest and most terrifying human trauma in the world, probably the first thing people were so baffled with they had to start inventing magic to somehow explain and rationalize.

Exactly. For my own purposes I've been tryinig to come up with my own system of magic for a setting that will probably never come to fruition but is fun for me to ponder upon never the less.

Healing is highly associated with Necromancy because understanding the processes of the body was a fundamental part of finding the secrets of immortality so from these studies, complex healing rituals and practices came about being a branch of the discipline that allows one to understand, interact, and communicate with spirits.

However, as you said, people would have been coming up with various charms and rituals for this sort of thing already so it's simply another way of approaching the same problem or would enhance those. On top of having a proper clean room with which to do surgery you have charms and wards to keep away spirits of sickness away which consist of not only washing your hands but having charms hanging around the operating room.

Love 'em and currently run a magitech Weird West fantasy game. Have been running it for, what, half of a decade or so? Absolutely love good magitech.

>a vampire is simply a dying person who has been kept alive on healing magic for so long, its biology cannot sustain itself independently anymore and must use the blood of other living beings to live
>a werewolf is (typically) a soldier, warrior or guardsman that has been overcharged with healing magic (imagine overcharging like having 300/50 HP instead of 50/50 HP) so often that all kinds of evolutionary subdued and vestigial systems are empowered and begin to mutate the body into something more feral

But that's boring.

I can dig that source of vampirism, but I much prefer werewolves to be part of an officially-canceled super soldier program.

blue had water AND wind, and Purple was Ice, the bastard child of fire, water, and wind.

fucking stupid as fuck. What was silver again? Generic healing?

Silver's domains were Life and Death.

I like this so I'll throw my own two cents on it.

Liches and Vampires are technically all the same thing as they require blood enriched with the soul of the victim to essentially keep themselves nourished. Probably get about 50 or 60 years out of someone before you have to do it again.

Rather then going around biting people they do bloodborne style transfusions with a complex machine that not only pumps out the blood but siphons out the soul as well making the victim uber dead and then you either use the body to craft flesh golems or just toss them out and seeing all the holes used to stick the various needles in them people would think you'd have a bunch of "vampires" having an orgy feasting on this person.

I like this because it reminds me of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward who pretty much did this (minus the blood transfusions) he was practically immortal and occasionally had to drink blood to keep his vitality.

>tfw you will never experience the opening cutscene of ff6 for the first time ever again

Try Mage: the Ascension. I think it's the one setting that clearly addresses this predicament and it does it extremely well.

I've been working on a setting with heavily interwoven magic and (early 20th century) technology. My healing magic is a mixture of the passive charms and the like, that aren't even apart of any magic system due to their proliferation. Then you get the active sort which at its current state is sort of a last resort.

If someone is injured their life force begins to fade. Healing magic is essentially taking a portion of someone's soul (usually the injured person, though there are plenty of rumors surrounding certain doctors), ripping it out of its normal place, and jamming it into the leak. The downside is that it lowers your lifespan a bit, hence why medical practitioners usually try something else if possible.

Hey that's exactly how my vampires work, just sub soul for blood.