How would you make a good magocracy?

How would you make a good magocracy?
>inb4 depends on the setting
Thread is obviously a worldbuilding prompt.

Like a theocracy but with mages instead of priests.

do you mean good as in morally good, or good as in interesting?

You realize that mages don't actually need muggles for anything - so the only thing they'll be ruling is other mages.
Thus, your magocracy is less of a country, with kings and peasants, and more of a univesity, with deans and studends.

>mages don't actually need muggles for anything
High-level mages, maybe, but high-level NPCs should very rare.

As much as it was Japanese propaganda GATE had a pretty good concept of how one ascends to become a master mage. Aspiring mages must go before a group of masters, and present their contribution to magic research. If it's deemed suitable by the masters they are approved to become a master, if their research sucks or they're ripping off anothers work without improving it significantly the masters throw ink or oil upon the presenters robes, and they're required to wear those stained robes until they succeed in becoming a master or leave the academy permanently.

What. That's fucking stupid.

You become a master wizard by mastering magic, not by sucking up to some crusty old men. What do I care what some miserable old farts cooped up in some college somewhere think of my work, when I can shoot time dragons out of my eyes?

because they're more powerful mages

>You become a master wizard by mastering magic

where do you think the magic comes from? you're working on the basis of what previous mages have figured out. you're going to need to suck up to someone because you won't get the secrets of arcane power in a public library.

Magic comes from your own study and hard work, not from the approval of old men. Once you're admitted to a Magical Academy and begin to learn, then all bets are off. Becoming a Master isn't a matter of approval, but actual skill and study.

What you describe isn't the "Become a Master Wizard" point, it's the "Become a Wizard at all" point.

Are you the most naive fucking person on the planet? You think an academy that teaches you magic is just gonna serve you all the knowledge you want without at least testing and forming your character to their liking first?
Could it be that the teachers might actually not be robotic xp-dispenser and have ulterior motives for sharing their hard earned magical powers?

The magocracy that runs the Kingdom of Pas does so from the shadows created by the "royalty" they themselves created. The nobles are all recipients of strange magical experiments, secretly the mindwiped surviving test subjects of many test runs, and serve their role as figureheads with excellence and poise.

As an example, the young princess Mirianelle has had a spirit of air magically grafted onto her soul, putting her on a permanent state of feather fall and granting great control over her voice, control which has been subverted to render her mute during public appearances, to maintain her mystique and prevent insubordination.

I could say the same thing about you.
You think that approval from a committee of old men means that you're ready to be a Master of Magic! Once you get one foot in the door of Magic, then Mastery is not as simple as a degree. If we liken magic to science in an academic setting, then many of the better theories have been initially rejected by the old men in their colleges. The approval of an old man does not make you any better at something or any more correct about something.

I like that.

The Tourmaline Order doesn't necessarily rule the squabbling city-states they reside in, but control a significant monopoly on magical services and take a transactional approach to the various princelings and aspirant warlords of the realm. They've used their finances and neutral position to further cement their hold by opening banking and messenger services. However they brutally deal with those who leave the order, continually fail to pay, or break a deal, punishing them with a branding that causes all citizens of the states to shun the branded, lest they invoke the order's wrath.

Well if you're just talking about magical skill you miss the point of the post you were replying to. This thread is about politics among mages and in magocratic societies so the term Master of Magic was implied to mean an administrative or academic position.

Ofcourse skill plays a major roll in impressing your fellow mages but when people are teaching you the ways of potentially limitless power their opinion of you (they are used to bending reality to their will, so why not you to) wil remain the most important factor if you want such a position. If you ignore their old and farty opinions you aren't just a guy with a whacky unorthodox theory on the mating habits of deep sea sponges you see.

Are you legitimately autistic?

Pic related that is until 'awesome McCool retards' decided let's turn it into an awesome McCool undeadocracy thereby strangling the life and any interest the original once held, you could also read 'The Scarlet Brotherhood' which is a similar concept but not quite, intended for the Greyhawk campaign setting.

>Magic comes from your own study
... study what, exactly? all of the study materials are under lock and key.

do you mean independent study? that's how you get hedgewizards and their hilariously unreliable wild magics.

How would a Magocracy be different from a Technocracy?

In a Technocracy power comes from being objectively right (usually trough AI and robots or something).
In a Magocracy power comes from mastery over the arcane and mystical (usually trough being a talented mage).

I love that so much FR lore refers to Thay as a horrible horrifying place where everyone is evil and things are absolutely shit for everyone.

Then you read that it's really only cutthroat when you get involved in politics, the average guy gets by pretty well in part due to magic being used to help people. It's even more diverse than a lot of parts of the realms in terms of "Yeah we hire orc mercenaries, and if you want to get onto the police squad you probably have to learn gnoll because it turns out having a supernatural sense of smell really helps with the job."

earthsea

>usually trough AI and robots or something
You do know that technocracy doesn't mean ruled by literal technology, right?

>it's a literal child who thinks technocracy is technology related
Adorable

You can be executed for walking around wearing red, TIDF.

>the average guy gets by pretty well in part due to magic being used to help people.
Is this a different Thay you're talking about?

Magic is not a skill that can be learned at all. In order to become a mage, you must be in close proximity to another mage at the moment of their death. Because of this there will always be a limited number of mages in the world, and when new ones are found (perhaps there is an ungodly small chance that natural mages can be born) they are either given the choice to join them or be killed and their powers given to someone more compliant. The immense power afforded to these mages is what justifies their power, and many noble houses have come to be over time where the magic is passed down through the generations. A catalogue of all existing magic powers (all of which are distinguishable by the unique mark they leave upon the body) prevents much assassination and plots of theft (but not all).

Looking at his posts, yes he is. He's fixated on the "Old crusty men," telling someone they're a master, and is completely disregarding how universities, research, and even basic collaborative study works.

It screams autism

So just don't wear red? As far as draconian medieval laws go that's not actually too bad.

>You become a master wizard by mastering magic, not by sucking up to some crusty old men.

Welcome to Academia. This is all but a mirror of real life university politics, just without the old magisters stealing your work and claiming it as your own.

>the average guy gets by pretty well in part due to magic being used to help people.
*Unless you're a slave

Incidentally, everyone who isn't a member of a specific racial caste is or can be a slave.

It's strongly going to depend on the system of magic, but as anons have pointed out, such a society would be more of a academicracy than anything else, and such a society would resemble University from SMAC.

Im fairly sure there is some writefaggotry about a goog guy Lich who started a sort of a magocracy and it all sounded neat

>They use technocracy as a hip new term for meritocracy.
You guys realise thats just rhetoric and not an actual system of government right?

I imagine it would trundle along nicely until some supergenius Tesla mage comes along and retcons large swaths of the status quo (on purpose or by accident), and then everything is chaos and you end up with multiple mage-nations. And then the fire nation attacks, or something similar. That sort of thing.

Lets see, going by how states work:
1. Strong leadership, across more than a generation(Or you get a Tito, where state collapses on leaders death)
2. Research doesn't interfere with social status
3. Foundation is solid enough that a Tesla, Edison, Luther or Alexander isn't going to kill it by merely entering
4. Hierarchy doesn't lead to mini states or coalition/gangs rivaling for power. If it do, then Great Leader needs to be literally Hitler, Tito or Alexander.

The techno of technocracy stands for techne, not technology.
Few technocrates litteraly technical experts to be rulers but it's all about these being important and influençal.

Technocracy is a subcategory of meritocracy where the valued merit is technical knowledge. Only fucking idiots think it means rule by computers.