What will your medieval setting's modern age look like? How about industrial or age of exploration?

What will your medieval setting's modern age look like? How about industrial or age of exploration?

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>Medieval age: DnD
>Industrial Age: Shadowrun
>Exploration Age: Rogue Trader

It won't ever reach any of those because gunpowder doesn't work

>implying gunpowder is the only driving factor of European modernisation
>implying you can't have steam-powered airships with swords, grapple crossbow boarding actions, and firebolts
>a thousand other implications

Read a history book, you shitbeard.

What... what's going on with that sword, is it made of rubber? Is it curved?

Full blown magitech combined with normal tech, so more like FF8 than Shadowrun, maybe FF12 if I want to keep it more exotic.

This. It was global trade, industrial scale production and the scientific method that changed the world. Gunpowder doesn't even come close.

It's like saying that fully automatic rifles and not computers brought us the information age.

A modern setting without gunpowder (or other propellants) would be interesting. It means no guns and no rockets.
What other modern weapons would work?

I see stuff like air guns, steam torpedoes and steam rockets.
Railguns, gaussguns and energy weapons would all work, so future weapons do work.

It's quite easy to build railguns in a fantasy setting btw. With adamantine as quasi indestructible rail and lightning magic for that immense power needs, you have a solution to the biggest challenges of this tech.

Traditional guns seem like they'd be easy enough to do with magic as well, just replace the gunpowder with some kind of spell or enchantment. It wouldn't even necessarily need to be an explosion spell either, anything that generated enough air or gas pressure would do it.

Come to think of it it actually seems to me that you could jump straight to repeating and maybe automatic rifles in a typical fantasy setting. The big things in history that held back progress in guns were metallurgy (which is plenty good in fantasy settings) and the ability to mass-produce brass or steel casings so you could combine projectile, powder, and ignition in one easily loadable package, which is avoided by using magic, so you only need to load the projectile itself, and that's easy enough to do with medieval/renaissance tech.

It's kind of a shame that most fantasy settings and many DMs don't allow for firearm-style weapons, there's a lot of interesting possibilities with them and making them work differently from our guns means you can balance them however you want without having to worry too much about realism.

We did a fantasy world that actually advances once.

The world was always better of than our own, because druids could boost agriculture and healing magic meant that nobody would be sick or crippled for long. Only very large epidemics that outmatched the healing capabilities of the clerics could even kill that many people, because smaller ones would just get healed away.
As a result, the population pool was always FAR larger than in our pre-industrial time.

The moment someone discovered the electric motor, the industrial revolution started. The main power source was lightning magic/elementals.
Steam power was never really used to it's full potential. Instead, the industry was driven by electricity.

But still, magic was expensive and only the very rich could pay for lightning spells in their cars, houses and personal gear. So it was mostly used in ships and cities with big central generators. Just like in our world, when steam power was not really portable and the internal combustion engine had not arrived yet. Cities became quickly electrified on a whole though.

The discovery of high grade batteries changed all of that ofc and now personal cars and portable electric devices became standard.

Simple golems and, in some places, zombies provided cheap unskilled labour and became some kind of early robotics. So unemployment skyrocketed and the class conlicts of that time were far worse than our own and led to large scale revolutions. In the end, the only way to stop fantasy communism was to provide social security and equal access to education. That had always been blocked by the magocratic caste, because education included thaumathurgy and that was the one thing their power was based on.

Would the world become an utopia, with labour automated by machines and golems, a magical healthcare system and everybody able to use magic? Or collapse in world wars worse than ours with magical WMDs? I do not know, because we did not play further.

If guns weren’t so much better, presumably today we’d use really, REALLY good crossbows.

It's complicated because humans in my setting have a complicated relationship with magic. You see, human sacrifice is/was the major "power source" other races use for magic.

While magic isn't necromancy per se, any death releases 'something" that magic requires. Bacteria, insects, plants, animals, you name it. When life dies, something magic needs is released. That means the environment itself provides "power" for magic if you're willing & able to wait long enough to gather & store it. Killing a lot of life in a short period releases more "power" as does killing sentient life. Because humans were low man on the totem pole for some time, elves, dwarfs, orcs, and others routinely sacrificed humans for for all the big & showy magic they needed to perform.

In one part of the world that changed about 4 generations back. There's a human-only polity there now. All other races have been either killed or driven off. The humans there use magic because it's too damn useful not to. If there's a non-magical way to do something, they prefer it. A lot of human magic is involved with "using up" the constant "power" nature produces. During a harvest, for example, farmers will have something akin to Tibetan prayer wheels spinning in their fields as they "kill" the crops.

Because of all this, magic supplements rather than replaces a lot of technology.

Late development would be akin to a more pastoral FF8 next to a modernized war-time "Isengard but with the undead" with a pocket of a country that remains in the pre-industrialized state but begins to use dragons and Dragon people as slaves. Basically a mix of Mt. Athos and Erebor.

Highest level of development is a chaotic time where all major nations are destroyed by the arrival of great numbers who can manipulate matter directly, leading to much surrealistic destruction but leading to a position where the dead are a community of gods over humanity. Advanced infrastructure and full bellies made out of thin air. It leads to the most surrealistic of "mage" wars though.

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Can i give the cop-out answer that i have a good (enough) reason for the 'medieval stasis' in my setting?
The whole world is locked in slow but inevitable circle of destruction and restoration, of death and rebirth, that slowly 'chews' through the land. Each part only exists for only a few hundred years; five hundred if they are lucky, barely a hundred if they are not.

It's already edging toward industrialization but colonialism came late and in the form of more and smaller colonial powers that are culturally alien to eachother. There is no standard to globalize to and no modern era. We had western proto-liberalism and then liberalism, this world remains under slave empires and colonial rule into its centuries of nuclear wars. Cultures, landscapes, and human populations are more readily crushed under the wheel of advancement. The world staggers along to the singularity where power is abdicated to an AI technocracy that harnesses every life and inch of land as energy towards its ascension. Unfortunately it only manages to conquer a few stars before getting killed by a more powerful AI from another world.

I just wanted to say I really like this and want to play in your setting now.

The older man looks like a steppe nomad, so it probably is the latter. You're not going to stab from a horse

Thanks. My players have enjoyed it for a couple of years now. To try and further explain magic in the setting, think of it like the water cycle. You see water evaporate from oceans, seas, lakes, etc. condense in the sky as clouds, move around, fall as rain, snow, etc., run back to the oceans by various routes. Whatever powers magic, manna, thaums, etc., works sort of like that. Death is a constant, the stuff gets released, slowly accumulates, and "flows" as ley lines of various sizes towards "sinks" where it "returns" to the Earth. The Earth cycles it back in various ways. Most of it "percolates" slowly up through the crust, but places like volcanos and mid-ocean rifts release a lot of it. The amount of life/death in the oceans plus those rifts make the setting's version of Lovercraft's Deep Ones EXTREMELY dangerous.

I added some other old tropes like gods being created/powered by worship and iron "short circuiting" magic. The last bit is important because it gives humans some kind of defense.

Frankly I haven't thought about it. The metallurgy, physics, and inherent limits of the different populaces are all radically different from what you'd see in a human society. Atoms/atomic particles don't exist, for instance. You can slice a piece of matter in half for all eternity and you'll still get two new halves every time. Electricity doesn't work (though still lightning exists as an extension of the domain of fire) so magnetism and modern technologies would have to be developed using either a mechanical analogue or through an intensely clever use of magic.

Minor issue there is that working magic into items is actually ludicrously difficult unless you're doing something simple such as strengthening metal or canning single spells inside gemstones, which have hard size limitations which would prevent miniaturization. Powerful magical artifacts do exist, but they're either so ancient that they might not even be of the same era of existence or created by deity-level casters as one-offs.

I imagine you'd wind up with a society (or rather set of societies) reaching something similar to modern day technology through a mass trade of magical items and materials but stuck in the trappings of a late medieval/early renaissance style of building their cities as mastery of magic surpasses the limitations of their material science. They'd probably hit a pretty firm ceiling in that department as well, though.

>age of exploration
There isn't really a single large age of exploration. The world is flat and explored already, though pieces occasionally float up and attach themselves to a free spot on the edge. They have a series of small bursts of exploration, meeting the new natives of whatever floated up out of the abyss, and cooling off again as the new continent smell wears off and everyone either sets up trade agreements or goes home.

At least until the whole thing collapses under its own weight and we start over again.

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The formation of the first major empire concentrated a lot of various skills and naturally the demands of empire building helped to accelerate various technologies (i.e. metallurgy such as using Adamantine for buildings and what not) so the "old world goes thorugh its industrial phase fairly quickly going from Late antiquity to 18th century level tech within the span of 500 years and the current age is 200 years later so we're in the 20's tech wise

The setting has reached something of an industrial nature. Magical energy naturally condenses into a solid state making for easy access to raw magic which led to a sort of magical nuclear reactor that generates the energy for spells. So there's now magitech on a large scale. Counts are owners of these facilities and have their seats in massive art deco style towers where their personal airships dock. Meanwhile giant robots duke it out on the frontier with monsters from the North and things such as mass production have led to things like repeating rifles or in the elves case 'needlers' complicated rifles that use magical energy to hurl metal darts at a speed that can cause serious damage.

Well, my fantasy worlds are usually regressing, with the golden age behind them (ala Tolkien). They've been stuck in a perpetual medieval/dark age for thousands of years. If you go far enough in the future, they likely will have regressed to the stone age.

Is there any stuff left from those golden ages?

>A lot of human magic is involved with "using up" the constant "power" nature produces. During a harvest, for example, farmers will have something akin to Tibetan prayer wheels spinning in their fields as they "kill" the crops.
This is very cool

Well, it's already in an early Modern Age. So.

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Not done enough really.

Don't want to be picky, but early modern means between medieval and French revolution, not what your pic is.

Looks roughly late 20th century. So by early modern he means "beginning of my life"

>This is very cool

My players think so too. You'll see those "prayer wheels" on old battlefields, on piers where fishing vessels land their catch, outside stockyards, and so forth. They work with a simple spell that "sucks" up stray "manna" or whatever to keep the wheel turning. Locations with a lot of stray "manna" either have a lot of wheels or big/heavy ones - think mill stones.

I got the idea from a Larry Niven short story from his "Magic Goes Away" series. A character realizes that magic can be used up and builds a "warlock wheel" to do just that. It sucks up manna to keep spinning, and keep together because it's spinning so fast, until all the magic in a given area is gone. The humans in my setting use something similar for much the same reason, just not as fast or violent.

Once I really spooked my players by having them visit the former main religious site of the elves the humans had killed/deported. A number of ley lines met there meaning "manna" was constantly flowing in from around the region. The elves had performed plenty of sacrifices too so the area was pretty "hot". The humans had placed dozens of huge stone wheels in timber frames all revolving to suck up the "manna" at the site. The center of the a site was capped by a 3 story dome made out of iron girders which shielded the various underground altars and whatnot from the ambient manna flow and vice versa. The whole place was eerie and considered a hardship post by the people working there.

That's really neat, magic kinda works in a similar fashion in my setting I'm Though people are after high density areas as that's where arcite(solidified magic) forms so much so inter dimensional invaders seeded the planet with 'pyrestones' which draw it in and create artificial deposits of the stuff along with altering the environment to be more hospitable to them.

>people are after high density areas

Humans in my setting are slowly getting over their cultural squeamishness regarding magic. It's just too damn useful for too many things to ignore and it's been almost 4 generations since the wars which stopped human sacrifices in their part of the world.

Magic is mostly used for healing, protection, and the like. No flashy stuff, no fairy castles, just everyday activities. The government tries to hire or at least identify anyone with talent. There are schools, government regulated naturally. R&D occurs too, if only to keep up with their enemies. "Manna" can be stored too, so the humans aren't just sucking it all up with wheels. They collect, store, and distribute it. There's a "health service" of sorts using "hedge wizards" and "wise women". They treat the population and the government gives "manna" to do it.

Other uses for the collected & stored stuff involves "national defense" and exploration. That dome I mentioned above has all sorts of spells built into it all powered by stored manna. Exploration is helped by magic telepathy between exploring parties and home, levitation, and "astral" projection. With the latter, the government has a program which is slowly mapping sections of the planet from the equivalent of 1km altitude. They don't need to sail around looking for islands, for example, because they already know where the islands are.

All these modern terms I'm using like "health service", "programs", or "national defense" are just quick ways to explain what's going on. The people in the setting don't call or think if them like that.

Makes sense. Mines far more modern in terms of it acts though things such as telepathy, are not possible in setting but, air travel has made for rapid expansion. The main nations have invested heavily into developing industrial,output and 'standard' magic through training programs helps that during what was called the 'vrath wars' a means to create magical talent through an alchemical drug was discovered. Though its not as powerful as raw talent it made for easier access to magical users for things such as medicine. One of the big advances however was Phoscrysts, basically magical TV they're still expensive and limited to either luxury homes or public venues but Phossies are quickly catching on and several actors have made a name for themselves in them. Its also led to rapid spreading of information and a shift in how the public views certain things.

I like your setting very much. It sounds more "hopeful" if that makes sense. Not that there aren't dangers, evils, etc., but there isn't the Us vs Them foundation my setting has. Doom doesn't seem to be hanging over everything.

Mine has almost a Cold War type feel to it, something I didn't realize until one player mentioned it a while back. The human region is relatively small, about the size of South America's Southern Cone and has no real friends. Humans everywhere else on the planet are property, just slaves and serfs waiting for their inevitable sacrifice to meet the magical needs of their elf, dwarf, orc, etc. owners. There's a detente of sorts with nearby elves, but the dwarfs are still pissed about being deported and the orcs attack whenever the opportunity presents itself. The humans are only just now coming to grips with how scary dangerous the Deep Ones are and they don't even suspect there's another human majority government a hemisphere away which sacrifices it's own subjects for magical reasons.

My players have enjoyed it for a couple years now, but I'm becoming more aware of just how grimdark the setting could turn - something I never intended it to become. I've got some hard thinking to do about what to tweak, change, and just throw out.

I mean its very much stuck on the precipice of another war. The major empires are finally re settling the Midlunds. Which had been left vacant after the vrath wars. This frontier has started to see escalating conflicts between proxy states as well.

There anyway to more efficiently use manna? Like more streamlined spell casting.

Hmmm... I've introduced fluff to that effect but nothing mechanically. Stuff along the lines of the other races thinking you need X, Y and Z for spell A but the human research only B is needed. I stole the idea from Discworld. IN one of the books Pratchett explains how it was once thought a certain spell required all sort of weird ingredients until UU proved all you need was an egg or something.

The humans in my setting have developed a lot of anti-magic magic if that makes sense.

It does, one thing to remember is if you're treating anything as s resource there's going to inherently be refining of how far thst resource goes efficiency of utilization is a huge driving factor for innovation.

So how would things like mithril effect shit like aeroplanes?

Doesn't happen. The world ends long before that.

I just assume it's just high-availability Titanium.
What intriges me are Adamantium heat-tiles for space shuttles.

I realize that and I feel like an idiot.

Also depends on whether it can be alloyed or it's strength relies on it being pure.

For ages I assumed that Shadowrun was literally a DnD setting in the modern age. Then I looked closer and saw that it was meant to be our world but one day half the population turned into elves and orcs and shit. Disappointing.

How is "Future but also D&D" disappointing compered to "D&D but also Future"?

I found it more interesting to see what happened to the generic fantasy setting as it matured and technology advanced, rather than seeing everyone in our world suddenly have to larp all day every day.

Miniaturised interlocking magic circles on a clockwork system, using a variety of incomplete circles with set your spell choice, range, intensity, push tab to actuate and channel mana.

No more needing to draw shit with stylus and goat's blood.

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