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Dire Panda
2012-06-25, 01:06 AM
With one final incantation, the wizard shattered the ancient Temporal Stasis spell. The hooded figure, sealed in this dank tomb during the reign of King Inbred III, drew breath for the first time in six hundred years. "Oi. Thanks for waking me up. Do we have starships yet?"

The wizard faltered, clearly not expecting this. "I beg your pardon?"

"Starships. Or a global communications network. Any sign of progress, really. How long has it been?"

"Six centuries, give or take. We're up to King Inbred XVII now. Also the eastern half of the kingdom was overrun by giants. Other than that, not much has changed. I'm the most powerful mage on the continent and I still poop in a bucket."

The hooded figure sighed. "Would you mind casting another Temporal Stasis? I'm not optimistic about the next few centuries."

Ever wondered why fantasy worlds never seem to make any progress? Empires rise and fall, the secrets of magic are discovered and forgotten, but the world as a whole tends to remain at the same stage of development - or worse, degenerates from ancient dungeon-producing empires into a modern dark age. Yes, a more or less static world is required by the genre (else kings and the like would eventually be phased out), but what sort of in-world explanation could there be?

With that in mind, I've had the following campaign idea kicking around in my head. Suppose that the protagonists are a group of unusually forward-thinking folk chosen by destiny (or the god, artifact, or oracle of your choice) and given control of an otherwise unremarkable kingdom. Their mission: to end the world's stagnation and improve the lives of their people through advances in magic, technology, and organization. Eventually their nation will become a shining beacon of hope and its culture will spread across the world and beyond. They have the intellect and the extended lifespan to see this ambitious project through. Will they succeed, or is mankind doomed to another thousand years of darkness?

I can see adventures in this campaign being like traditional fantasy roleplaying, but with a twist. The players would have a kingdom to run right away, but unlike typical heroes they'd have to be proactive about it. Should they pour gold into defense against the orc hordes or breeding better crops for the peasants? Sure, orcs are always a threat, but when the townsfolk are well-fed enough to avoid malnutrition it opens up opportunities for education - and increases the number of potential adventurers a population can produce. Those orcs will never know what hit them. And what about relations with neighboring kingdoms, various churches, and the like? Particularly if one or more gods are hostile to technological progress, the PCs might find themselves having to rescue the inventor of, say, the printing press and allow him to covertly continue his experiments.

The heroes might partake in the occasional dungeon crawl, but their goal wouldn't be shinies; any knowledge in the ruins of ancient empires, from lost magic to architectural techniques, could prove useful. When the party wizard researches a new spell or item, the goal isn't power but scalability - can this innovation be cheaply and reliably produced by apprentice mages and distributed across the kingdom? For that matter, can the heroes develop an arcane assembly line that revolutionizes item production? Once universal education has been instituted, what about a program to systematically identify and train potential wizards?

This sort of campaign would definitely require a flexible DM and creative players. Have any of you thought of something similar, and if so, any suggestions as to how a fantasy society could leave the dark ages or why it was stuck there in the first place? Or am I completely off my rocker?

Yora
2012-06-25, 04:00 AM
I see it as a simple case of writers having no sense of scale, just like in science-fiction. Just takes away one or two zeroes from the years and everything is just fine.

On the other hand, up to the 1500s progress was really slow. Technology became more precise and efficient, but really new inventions showed up very rarely.
What's the major difference between life in 2000 BC and 1000 AD?

Hel65
2012-06-25, 04:18 AM
Well, I thought about this and I've settled on an explanation for the stagnation of the world (in a standard D&D setting): magic.

No, really, magic is the problem that keeps such settings in the dark age. Wizards basically live a 21st century life (or even better) - they have quick transportation (via translocation), constructs to take care of their homes (that unseen servant or prestidigation spell can be a dishwasher and much more; also, golems and homunculi), worldwide communication and entertainment (scrying, sending); heavy firepower (meteor storm as an equivalent to bombardment?); perfect personal protection and comfort (various protective spells); medicine (healing spells).

However, magic can neither be mass produced (or at least it was not intended to be, rules shortcomings that allow things like Tippyverse to exist notwithstanding) nor easily learned - only the brightest and most persistent can do it.

Also, since the brightest and most persistent are focusing on magic, they don't have the time or inclination to invent technology or think about philosophy, therefore greatly slowing down development of societies - and even if some of them are trying to use their time for the betterment of others, they will have to contend with conservative wizards who want to keep the status quo (and also have extra time to become more powerful, because they're not spending it on philosophy, technology or trying to convince people to abandon their backwards ways).

So, I imagine a campaign about development of the fantasy world could be about dealing with all those problems.

Siegel
2012-06-25, 04:24 AM
You could easily run such a game but DnD isn't the best system for that. Try Reign (!), or Fate or maybe Burning Wheel. Not DnD, the experience won't be as fullfilling.

supermonkeyjoe
2012-06-25, 05:33 AM
I've always assumed the main factor is that in many settings the gods are demonstrably real and tend to actively meddle, It seems to me that the gods would have a vested interest in keeping the masses uneducated and undeveloped.

After all, why worship a god when you've invented some kind of particle-acceleration weapon that can kill it?

Zarrgon
2012-06-25, 06:02 AM
Ever wondered why fantasy worlds never seem to make any progress? Empires rise and fall, the secrets of magic are discovered and forgotten, but the world as a whole tends to remain at the same stage of development - or worse, degenerates from ancient dungeon-producing empires into a modern dark age. Yes, a more or less static world is required by the genre (else kings and the like would eventually be phased out), but what sort of in-world explanation could there be?


A couple of explanations:

1.Powerful Enemies. Unlike our world, a fantasy world is full of races and creatures that are more powerful then man(and elves, and dwarves, and). Just your average clan of giants is far more powerful then your average group of humans. Plus you have creatures like demons and angels, and things like dragons. In short there are lots of people keeping mankind in check.

2.No Free Time. Unlike our world, man kind does not have free time to simply create whatever they want. With monsters all around, it's hard to find time to do simple experiments. It takes years and years and lots of trial and error to invent something. Something most fantasy world simply don't give the time to let happen.

3.The Two Models. As we only have Earth to go by, we only have two models for development. The European Way and the Native American Way. In Europe(and Asia and Africa) they invented and discovered things, yet the Native Americans did not. Why? There are lots of answers, and they demonstrate how people can be different.

Cerlis
2012-06-25, 06:27 AM
I know this isnt the 3.5 forum, but i think races of destiny(and star trek) suggests that humans are the only ones that capable of such quick advancement.

Im given the impression that , though you may find some dwarves that are less stubborn than some, and half orcs less aggressive than other half orcs that , compared to the average human they are still more so. That the potential to have any personality is a unique feature of humans. That Elves are ALWAYS flighty. Even if they learn to control themselves better and think from a different perspective. Whether or not an Orc acts on his killer instinct, he still has it.

Bellana Torres off star trek voyager , and T'pol from Enterprise (especially in later seasons) are great examples of races who's mental state are literally different from humans, but they still act fairly human because hey've learned to adapt their behavior. Just because Bellana doesnt punch someone in the face for disagreeing with her, doesnt mean that urge isnt there.

Point being that Non human races can learn to act differently, but will always be the same. Humans are the only ones capable of changing the status quo. and most fantasy settings have races that prevent humans from ever doing that. Elves are fine living in trees, orcs are fine ravaging villages, Dwarves love tradition. And if humans ever progress to far they either kill themselves or are taken out by a non human kingdom worried about them.

Oracle_Hunter
2012-06-25, 09:14 AM
This sort of campaign would definitely require a flexible DM and creative players. Have any of you thought of something similar, and if so, any suggestions as to how a fantasy society could leave the dark ages or why it was stuck there in the first place? Or am I completely off my rocker?
Step #1 -- If you're running this in D&D3.5, google "Tippyverse." This is what happens when folks decide to use science magic to Uplift a society.

Anyhoo, obviously Magic is the best way to leave the Dark Age and Magic is the best answer for why it's stuck there. The reason that D&D is usually set in a post-apocalyptic world is that apocalypses leave ruins to loot and power unmatched by the current age. It is a lot less exciting to be looting an ancient tomb for a powerful magic sword if you can buy find its equivalent in the local armory. As a result, I too would advocate against using D&D for this sort of campaign -- indeed, any sort of granular system is probably a poor choice for a game with such sweeping themes. Perhaps you could adapt Shock: Social Science Fiction (http://glyphpress.com/shock/) to fit this sort of world-building aesthetic.

Good luck :smallsmile:

JoshuaZ
2012-06-25, 10:05 AM
I see it as a simple case of writers having no sense of scale, just like in science-fiction. Just takes away one or two zeroes from the years and everything is just fine.

On the other hand, up to the 1500s progress was really slow. Technology became more precise and efficient, but really new inventions showed up very rarely.
What's the major difference between life in 2000 BC and 1000 AD?

Books. Extreme improvements in engineering and architecture and metallurgy, too many to list. Much more advanced mathematics. Better astronomy(you can actually predict stuff with some accuracy). Ship-building was drastically improved (multiple masts on boats, dry docks, sturdier construction, improving trade routes and the like. Canals. Water wheels.

Now, if you instead said say 100 CE to 1000 CE you'd have a much stronger argument, although even then, math and astronomy improves a fair bit in that time period.

I'm actually running a campaign in a setting now where the printing press with moveable was discovered about fifty years prior, but because it can't be used to reproduce spellbooks (due to thaumobabble), and the highly educated are often wizards, the spread of printing has been slow compared to what actually happened historically in Europe.

Most standard fantasy settings are such anachronism stew t start with that having a slow tech progression isn't that big a deal. Platinum isn't known in the Old World until the 1700s for example, but the standard D&D settings have platinum coins. Plate mail as we normally understand it doesn't arise until the 1400s. And in 3.5 the default rules imply that commoners are generally literate, but it is clear that until the 1700s more than half the population of Europe was illiterate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy). And then you have wizards understanding "electric" as a separate energy type, whereas the connection between lightning, electricity, and amber wasn't understood until the late 1700s.

Dire Panda
2012-06-25, 11:31 AM
These are all great ideas. Keep 'em coming! (Unfortunately we're stuck using d20 because nobody in my group has time to learn a new system, but please do keep suggesting other systems in case someone else wants to run a similar game)


I've always assumed the main factor is that in many settings the gods are demonstrably real and tend to actively meddle, It seems to me that the gods would have a vested interest in keeping the masses uneducated and undeveloped.

This was actually the plot of the last campaign I ran. The gods conspired to keep mortal races primitive (for reasons that would take several walls of text to explain), and the heroes ended up overthrowing the entire pantheon by completing the god-killing superweapon of a lost technological civilization.

For a Dungeons and Development campaign, though, it might be more interesting if even the gods didn't have any concept of progress - after all, an immortal being has all its needs taken care of and would naturally assume that mortals will always suffer and die. Then one day they look down at humanity and see printing presses and steam engines... "I don't think we built them to do this, did we?" Perhaps in the end of the campaign the PCs are themselves elevated to godhood to embody the new concept of Progress.


Well, I thought about this and I've settled on an explanation for the stagnation of the world (in a standard D&D setting): magic.

This makes a lot of sense, and I used something similar in the aforementioned campaign. Technology's primary advantage over magic is scalability, but most powerful characters are more concerned with personal power and so they turn to magic. On the other hand, in a D&Development model, perhaps there's an entire branch of magic that has never been researched because it offers no opportunity for personal power. Let's call it assembly-line spellcasting: with a short training period from an experienced wizard (the "factory foreman"), perhaps dull commoners who could never master spells on their own can each contribute a simple somatic and verbal component to a collective spell. Maybe it takes a dozen trained villagers working together to cast a first-level, but that still puts a properly organized village far ahead of the norm. This sort of magic would never be developed in a standard D&D world, but maybe with the right sort of forward-thinking protagonists...


1.Powerful Enemies. Unlike our world, a fantasy world is full of races and creatures that are more powerful then man(and elves, and dwarves, and). Just your average clan of giants is far more powerful then your average group of humans. Plus you have creatures like demons and angels, and things like dragons. In short there are lots of people keeping mankind in check.

Good point, quite a bit of 'monster extermination' work needs to be done before permanent infrastructure can be built. Perhaps the PCs have to do some good old-fashioned adventuring in each part of the kingdom before they attempt to develop it, and even then their improvements won't last long if they don't systematically recruit adventurers to keep the beasties' population down. ("Okay, so the dragon that threatened your town for the last hundred years is dead. We've sent some people to build a schoolhouse for the Universal Peasant Education Program. When we teleport in copies of the Adventuring Aptitude Test once a year, please don't throw them out - if you don't start producing your own heroes, something is going to eat the schoolhouse eventually.")


Humans are the only ones capable of changing the status quo. and most fantasy settings have races that prevent humans from ever doing that.

How racist... and what a good idea. Having other humanoids be neurologically incapable of progress should force the PCs to make some difficult choices down the road. If elves instinctually view technology as the enemy and gather their forces to attack humanity when the steam engine is developed, how do the PCs respond? Once they've won, what do they do with the elves? If the old elven ways will keep mortals locked in a life of starvation and disease, would it be the lesser of two evils to ban elf-on-elf reproduction in order to produce a new generation of half-elves who can understand progress? (Damn, now I need to come up with a less rigid alignment system... fantasy eugenics is not 'good' by the usual standards)


Step #1 -- If you're running this in D&D3.5, google "Tippyverse." This is what happens when folks decide to use science magic to Uplift a society.

Anyhoo, obviously Magic is the best way to leave the Dark Age and Magic is the best answer for why it's stuck there. The reason that D&D is usually set in a post-apocalyptic world is that apocalypses leave ruins to loot and power unmatched by the current age. It is a lot less exciting to be looting an ancient tomb for a powerful magic sword if you can buy find its equivalent in the local armory. As a result, I too would advocate against using D&D for this sort of campaign -- indeed, any sort of granular system is probably a poor choice for a game with such sweeping themes. Perhaps you could adapt Shock: Social Science Fiction to fit this sort of world-building aesthetic.

Interesting. I don't like the abuse of resetting trap rules, but the Tippyverse is good food for thought. You're right about the ruins, though in most D&D settings I've played in there has been more than one apocalypse ("Wait, you thought these were Imadrethan ruins? No, this runic circle clearly indicates that this dungeon was built by Ur-Baska, which fell a thousand years earlier." "You're both wrong, the Valthorians built this place six thousand years ago before giants ate them all."). I can actually see the existence of dungeons inspiring a sort of fatalism in adventurers and other powerful types - if all of the lost empires used the same model of "rule by high-level types with +5 swords", then what other course is there for the world but to repeat the cycle?


I'm actually running a campaign in a setting now where the printing press with moveable was discovered about fifty years prior, but because it can't be used to reproduce spellbooks (due to thaumobabble), and the highly educated are often wizards, the spread of printing has been slow compared to what actually happened historically in Europe.

Most standard fantasy settings are such anachronism stew t start with that having a slow tech progression isn't that big a deal. Platinum isn't known in the Old World until the 1700s for example, but the standard D&D settings have platinum coins. Plate mail as we normally understand it doesn't arise until the 1400s. And in 3.5 the default rules imply that commoners are generally literate, but it is clear that until the 1700s more than half the population of Europe was illiterate. And then you have wizards understanding "electric" as a separate energy type, whereas the connection between lightning, electricity, and amber wasn't understood until the late 1700s.

Good points. I can see each of the anachronisms in D&D as maybe being the one thing that stuck around from some long-gone empire, with the exception of literacy - for the sake of this campaign, I'd probably house-rule that commoners have the same illiteracy issue as barbarians. Gives the PCs something to overcome. (I would think that even wizards would have use for a printing press, though - sure, they can't replicate spellbooks, but what about those libraries from Stronghold Builder's Guide that give up to a +6 bonus on Knowledge checks?)

Geostationary
2012-06-25, 11:33 AM
A couple of explanations:

1.Powerful Enemies. Unlike our world, a fantasy world is full of races and creatures that are more powerful then man(and elves, and dwarves, and). Just your average clan of giants is far more powerful then your average group of humans. Plus you have creatures like demons and angels, and things like dragons. In short there are lots of people keeping mankind in check.

2.No Free Time. Unlike our world, man kind does not have free time to simply create whatever they want. With monsters all around, it's hard to find time to do simple experiments. It takes years and years and lots of trial and error to invent something. Something most fantasy world simply don't give the time to let happen.

3.The Two Models. As we only have Earth to go by, we only have two models for development. The European Way and the Native American Way. In Europe(and Asia and Africa) they invented and discovered things, yet the Native Americans did not. Why? There are lots of answers, and they demonstrate how people can be different.

None of these make sense. Let's look at them:

1.Powerful enemies only works if they're actively trying to keep us from progressing technologically, and even then it's questionable. Conflict drives development, so in these cases you'd probably see advances in military technology and in support, as to effectively defend themselves from the threats these factions pose.

2.I think you're underestimating just how much free time the average commoner has. Even in real life, the average medieval peasant had a surprising amount of free time. You don't even need to run experiments- you just need to be able to make something that works well enough (invention is not as hard as you may think once you have the initial idea). Refinement can happen later; so long as your thing more or less works from the start. Once you develop agricultural societies, you have more time for people to do things that are not vital to survival, such as develop & improve technology.

3. What is this I don't even. Native Americans did a whole lot over in the Americas; hell, they had some of the largest cities in the world around the medieval period, along with the infrastructure needed to sustain these large populations. The problem is that ~90% of them all died shortly after contacting the Europeans, meaning most of the tribes you're familiar with were the equivalent of post-apocalyptic survivors. Europe in no way had a monopoly on development, it's just that we haven't been able to figure out what the Native Americans had accomplished due to the massive die-off and following colonization. Additionally, you're attributing far too much credit to Europe and its developmental prowess. "The European Way"? The rest of the world had a much larger role in development than this acknowledges.

JoshuaZ
2012-06-25, 11:52 AM
Good points. I can see each of the anachronisms in D&D as maybe being the one thing that stuck around from some long-gone empire, with the exception of literacy - for the sake of this campaign, I'd probably house-rule that commoners have the same illiteracy issue as barbarians. Gives the PCs something to overcome. (I would think that even wizards would have use for a printing press, though - sure, they can't replicate spellbooks, but what about those libraries from Stronghold Builder's Guide that give up to a +6 bonus on Knowledge checks?)

Yes, they have a need but not as large a need as the educated might in a setting without magic.

Oracle_Hunter
2012-06-25, 11:55 AM
Interesting. I don't like the abuse of resetting trap rules, but the Tippyverse is good food for thought. You're right about the ruins, though in most D&D settings I've played in there has been more than one apocalypse ("Wait, you thought these were Imadrethan ruins? No, this runic circle clearly indicates that this dungeon was built by Ur-Baska, which fell a thousand years earlier." "You're both wrong, the Valthorians built this place six thousand years ago before giants ate them all."). I can actually see the existence of dungeons inspiring a sort of fatalism in adventurers and other powerful types - if all of the lost empires used the same model of "rule by high-level types with +5 swords", then what other course is there for the world but to repeat the cycle?
(1) The key of any Tippyverse is actually Permanent Teleportation Circles. Free, safe, and instantaneous travel is a tremendous force multiplier for any nation that sets them up. Once you set them up within a nation your merchants have a tremendous export advantage, your armies can concentrate force anywhere in the kingdom with minimal supply lines, and any magical or cultural developments can be instantly disseminated across the land. Beneficial Magical Traps are just the icing on the cake.

(2) Fatalism is one thing, but there can be magical forces that knock down any empire that reaches above a given level. Perhaps the Gods become jealous/fearful of the Empire's rising power and smite it; a Lovecraftian Horror feeds on Empires of a given power (i.e. ME's Reapers); or even that Magic Itself is unstable if overused and destroys Empires before they realize the problem. Maintaining a medieval stasis is easy with magic or sufficiently advanced technology (e.g. OSC's Homecoming Saga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homecoming_Saga)) and breaking out of it quickly with magic is just as easy.

Dire Panda
2012-06-25, 12:16 PM
Geostationary:

Yeah, #3 is just plain ignorant and possibly racist, which is why I ignored it in my reply. I can see #1 applying in D&D, though. Something like a dragon is closer to a natural disaster than an enemy army, at least as far as peasants are concerned. It strikes at random and you can't stop it by throwing money and soldiers at it. With so many monsters running around it's not unreasonable to assume that the peasant death rate in D&D is much higher than it was in history.

Oracle_Hunter:

(1) I did see the bit on teleportation circles, but it would take progressives like the (hypothetical) PCs to make them a free public utility. I've used similar things in past campaigns, but human(oid) nature being what it is, the powerful wizards who created them always charged high prices for use and reserved the right to deny passage to anyone. Still a good idea.

(2) This sort of universal regulator was actually the reason the gods kept development in check in my last campaign; the original god, "That Which is Mother and Devourer", seeded the universe with life so that it could later consume the souls of the sapient beings which evolved. With sapient life came lesser gods naturally spawned by mass collective emotions (hence why each deity represents a specific facet of humanoid experience)... and the original god ate those too. It only awoke from its slumber once the population density of a planet became high enough to attract its attention, so after a few cycles the most recent gods - those of the humans, elves, and such - hit upon the idea of keeping their worshipers primitive and ignorant, hence low in population. This state of affairs lasted for eons until the PCs came along...

Wow, tangent. Anyway, I'm thinking of combining the regulator concept with Cerlis's ideas about nonhumanoids. Perhaps an eternal - yet still stagnant - elven empire across the sea has cast down human nations time and time again when they became threats, and it's up to the PCs to break this cycle. I've always like the idea of the "better than you and we know it" elves being the world's primary villains. Thanks, everyone, this hypothetical campaign is starting to take shape.

kyoryu
2012-06-25, 12:34 PM
[I]
Ever wondered why fantasy worlds never seem to make any progress? Empires rise and fall, the secrets of magic are discovered and forgotten, but the world as a whole tends to remain at the same stage of development - or worse, degenerates from ancient dungeon-producing empires into a modern dark age. Yes, a more or less static world is required by the genre (else kings and the like would eventually be phased out), but what sort of in-world explanation could there be?

There's an article floating around out there called "D&D is the apocalypse," which basically says that the setting of D&D is implicitly post-apocalyptic. There's even some quotes to that effect from some of the guys that ran the original campaign, as to their players never knowing if this was happening in the past or the future (srsly, look at some of the 1e artifacts).

D&D is a game about going into nasty places, killing stuff, and taking home superior technology magic. Yes, I understand that people do other things with it, but that's kind of the default assumption. Who built the places that people go into, and who made all those magic goodies for people to find?

So for the wizard, maybe it's less "they haven't developed it YET?" and more "shoot, I missed the window between 'developing neat stuff' and 'blowing ourselves to the four winds' AGAIN. I've really gotta recalibrate the sensors on this thing."

BRC
2012-06-25, 12:41 PM
Personally, I see no reason why stability or stagnation is a required part of the setting. Some of my best campaigns have been set with a backdrop of progress, expansion, or great social change. Mind you, I rarely run traditional "Swords and Horses" Fantasy, but even within that setting, the idea of social or technological progress can exist side-by-side with standard issue dungeon crawls.

Really, the only problem is the following line, which shows up in one form or another in many, many settings:
"Ten Thousand Years Ago, the Great Heroes defeated the ultimate evil and sealed it away". And the Great Heroes wielded weapons and armor similar to what is being used today, with swords and bows and full plate. The Great Heroes served the same kingdoms, they defended the same fortresses, ect. But it all occurred "Ten Thousand Years Ago", or "In Ages Past", or some similar nonsense.
I personally find a campaign dealing with progress much more interesting than another version of Find Ancient Sword to Defeat Ancient Evil and Maintain Ancient Status Quo.

As for explanations, it could just be poor memory. The Great Hero may have lived a century ago, but for the peasants, who die off at the age of 40, that's "Countless Eons".

Or, here is an idea.

A Thousand Years ago, the Mighty Archmage did battle with an evil being, a terrible creature that no blade could harm. The Archmage created a powerful spell and set out to do battle with the creature, eventually destroying it. However, feeling that this magic was too terrible to use, he sealed it away forever.

So the PC's go to the Temple, fight the guardians, and eventually find the Archmage's Study. Seeking to find that powerful spell. They find a stone slab with the Archmage's formulas on it. The Party wizard studies it, makes his rolls, and then turns to the DM, waiting to hear what power they have unlocked.

The DM says: "After deciphering the Archmages notes, you gain the ability to cast...Magic Missile".
Wizard: "WHAT!"
DM: "Yeah, magic has come a long way in a thousand years."

Oracle_Hunter
2012-06-25, 01:21 PM
(1) I did see the bit on teleportation circles, but it would take progressives like the (hypothetical) PCs to make them a free public utility. I've used similar things in past campaigns, but human(oid) nature being what it is, the powerful wizards who created them always charged high prices for use and reserved the right to deny passage to anyone. Still a good idea.
Progressives, nothing! TP Circles are sufficiently game-changing that any self-interested Wizard can establish his own empire with that alone.

(1) Set up a mercenary company in the biggest city you can conquer safely.

(2) Use Permanent (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/permanency.htm) Teleportation Circles (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/teleportationCircle.htm) to conquer cities without high-level casters to protect them. Link those cities with your base via Permanent TP Circle. Adventure with mercenaries to regain XP.

(3) Establish Trading Company with exclusive use of TP Circles. Use Trading Company to undercut all other trading companies with low transport costs, high success rates, and superior price information.

(4) Declare mercenaries the official army of your new kingdom and permit any city willing to surrender sovereignty in exchange for prosperity from Permanent TP Circles. Annex as many cities as you can, using the mercenaries to defend new territory.

(5) Gradually replace mercenaries with golems and other constructs to infallibly safeguard TP Network.
Using 3.X rules, there needs to be a good explanation why anyone capable of casting TP Circle hasn't tried this already. I mean, they usually have ridiculous INT, right?

In my 4e campaign I gave a race (Githzerai) something similar to the above capabilities. The only reason they haven't done this is (1) All portals, by necessity, go through their sanctuary; (2) said sanctuary has no natural resources so they spend most of their gains from TP Network funding their race and (3) Magic in 4e is nowhere near as powerful, cheap, and easy as it is in 3e.

The biggest reformers are actually the Deva (an ageless, reincarnating race with capped population) who used their limited access to past memories to invent Artifice (read: magitek) and are creating a Warforged army to defend themselves. This Warforged army is slowly being turned into a tool for expansionist powers in the Deva nation -- for the greater good, of course :smallamused:

Deepbluediver
2012-06-25, 01:30 PM
having a culture that remains technologically less advanced isn't exactly rare. For one reason or another, many highly developed empires and kingdoms throughout history reached some level of technological development and just stopped there. And then often the empire would crumble or get conquered, destroying any progress and setting everything back several centuries.

There have been several books written about what it takes to get a society moving forward, or what causes them to backslide, and a lot of it boils down to two main characteristics: population size and cultural attitude.

In any non-developed society, a HUGE percentage of the population is devoted to food production (agriculture, ranching, fishing), meaning that very few people are left over to advance other things, like science, art, philosophy, etc. In many civilzations, a good decade would only have 2 or 3 bad years and one major famine/drought/locust swarm, etc. Also, because travel is slow and inefficient and food preservation primitive, most people stay spread out, so that they don't have to transport food or supplies between a central city and their own little patch of farm.

Just as an example, suppose every 10 farmers produce enough food to sustain 11 people. This one non-farmer in every village might invent the wheel, but he never get's any farther than that. If you can get 2 of them together, they have the time and brains to invent the wheel and a cart to put it on. If you can get 20 of them together they invent the steam engine and a railroad.
Depending on how long-term your campaign may be, give your players opportunities to stabilize food production and set up schools so that they can start converting Commoners into Experts. :smallwink:

The second major obstacle for many civilizations, and good possible plot hook for your players, is the kingdoms attitude toward advancement. Many ancient cultures had extremely static economies and societies, where from one generation to the next the IDEAL goal was to maintain the status quo. New ideas are frequently seen as dangerous and revolutionary.

Several European based cultures in the middle ages considered it taboo for some one to strive to do better than their parents. Guilds where frequently set up to run an industry as a monopoly and stifle any competition. There was no saving or re-investment towards the future; every extra penny some one earned was spent on instant gratification. [Obviously not every single area is like this, but it was reasonably widespread.]
Although we can look back on this as a poor philosophy, any period of rapid change has nearly as many pitfalls as opportunities, and many people can't deal with that.

A good enemy for your players somewhere down the line might be a luddite-like group upset over the changes that are being made. They could be anyone from farmers who where forced to move to a city to mages who are upset at being replaced by engineers, to nobles who don't command the respect they once did. Perhaps all funded by a foreign power who is jealous or fearful of your success.



Your idea sounds like a very interesting concept, I really hope you can make it work.

JoshuaZ
2012-06-25, 01:39 PM
A Thousand Years ago, the Mighty Archmage did battle with an evil being, a terrible creature that no blade could harm. The Archmage created a powerful spell and set out to do battle with the creature, eventually destroying it. However, feeling that this magic was too terrible to use, he sealed it away forever.

So the PC's go to the Temple, fight the guardians, and eventually find the Archmage's Study. Seeking to find that powerful spell. They find a stone slab with the Archmage's formulas on it. The Party wizard studies it, makes his rolls, and then turns to the DM, waiting to hear what power they have unlocked.

The DM says: "After deciphering the Archmages notes, you gain the ability to cast...Magic Missile".
Wizard: "WHAT!"
DM: "Yeah, magic has come a long way in a thousand years."

That's an absolutely amazing idea. I'm so going to use this.

Zarrgon
2012-06-25, 05:26 PM
None of these make sense. Let's look at them:

1.Powerful enemies only works if they're actively trying to keep us from progressing technologically, and even then it's questionable. Conflict drives development, so in these cases you'd probably see advances in military technology and in support, as to effectively defend themselves from the threats these factions pose.

It does not really work so smooth though. First off, if there is even the threat of an enemy, you will always have War Hawks that will only want to spend money on defense. Spend a pile of gold on some guards or on some sages? That's a no brainier for a war hawk.

And sure a war hawk would love to pour tons into military research, but you have the combat readiness problem. They need to put the gold into direct things like walls, instead of research.

And that is if you really have people in charge that even really care about things. And as is quite often found, they simply don't.






2.I think you're underestimating just how much free time the average commoner has. Even in real life, the average medieval peasant had a surprising amount of free time. You don't even need to run experiments- you just need to be able to make something that works well enough (invention is not as hard as you may think once you have the initial idea). Refinement can happen later; so long as your thing more or less works from the start. Once you develop agricultural societies, you have more time for people to do things that are not vital to survival, such as develop & improve technology.

Well, we do have real life to look at. If commoners can do so much with free time, then why did they not do anything in real life. Most inventions took forever to be made.

Plus the average common might not have had as much free time as you think. Start with at least an 8 to 12 hour work day, then remember that everything a commoner does, they must do the hard way. And at the end of the day they can't even relax as even simple tasks take effort and work to do.




3. What is this I don't even. Native Americans did a whole lot over in the Americas; hell, they had some of the largest cities in the world around the medieval period, along with the infrastructure needed to sustain these large populations. The problem is that ~90% of them all died shortly after contacting the Europeans, meaning most of the tribes you're familiar with were the equivalent of post-apocalyptic survivors. Europe in no way had a monopoly on development, it's just that we haven't been able to figure out what the Native Americans had accomplished due to the massive die-off and following colonization. Additionally, you're attributing far too much credit to Europe and its developmental prowess. "The European Way"? The rest of the world had a much larger role in development than this acknowledges.

Well, not to get too deep into it, you just need to compare Earth in say 1600. Most Native Americans were close to stone age, while Europeans were pre-indurstral. In 1600 Europeans had guns, while Native Americans had bows and arrows. In 1600 Europeans could make items out of metal, while Native Americans could not. Did the Native Americans greet the Europeans with ships of the line with 100 cannon, or with just sharp sticks?

Now I'm not trying to put down Native Americans, I'm just using them as an example. 1, 500 years and they did not advance 'that' much.

BRC
2012-06-25, 06:12 PM
It does not really work so smooth though. First off, if there is even the threat of an enemy, you will always have War Hawks that will only want to spend money on defense. Spend a pile of gold on some guards or on some sages? That's a no brainier for a war hawk.

And sure a war hawk would love to pour tons into military research, but you have the combat readiness problem. They need to put the gold into direct things like walls, instead of research.

And that is if you really have people in charge that even really care about things. And as is quite often found, they simply don't.
You seem to be assuming that all these "War Hawks" are idiots who will say "We don't have time to work on that dragon-killing device! WE HAVE DRAGONS TO KILL!" When faced with an overwhelming enemy, military research becomes that much more important. Constant war only leads to stagnation if innovation is either being actively stifled, or if the nation is full of idiots who don't realize that one engineer designing better weapons can be worth a hundred soldiers using inferior ones.


Well, we do have real life to look at. If commoners can do so much with free time, then why did they not do anything in real life. Most inventions took forever to be made.

Define "Forever". The point of this thread is that Fantasy-world esque periods of stagnation are unrealistic. Technological growth is a process, with each inventor standing on the shoulders of those that came before them.
The first Automobiles showed up around 1769 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile), but it wasn't because it took thousands of years for somebody to think "Hey, what if we make an engine and then hook some wheels up to it!". The prerequisite technologies had to be developed first, and those required their own prerequisites, which in turn required their own prerequisites.




Well, not to get too deep into it, you just need to compare Earth in say 1600. Most Native Americans were close to stone age, while Europeans were pre-indurstral. In 1600 Europeans had guns, while Native Americans had bows and arrows. In 1600 Europeans could make items out of metal, while Native Americans could not. Did the Native Americans greet the Europeans with ships of the line with 100 cannon, or with just sharp sticks?

Now I'm not trying to put down Native Americans, I'm just using them as an example. 1, 500 years and they did not advance 'that' much.
Ignoring the problems with the idea that technological progression is not as simple as a linear timetable, with everybody following the same path and some people being "Further Along" than others, I would be careful with that particular example. The reasons European and Native American cultures were as they were in the 1600's is the subject of quite a bit of historical discussion. I'm sure you're just using the first example that comes to your head, but talking about how "Europeans invented and discovered things, while Native Americans did not" (Paraphrased) is getting awfully close to the old Eurocentric worldview that western culture is currently trying to distance itself from/apologize for. Native Americans are a particularly sensitive issue, seeing as what happened to them.


Also, remember, those guns and big ships you were talking about were not just the inventions of Europeans, they represented thousands of years of innovation by people from all over Eurasia and Africa.

kyoryu
2012-06-25, 06:16 PM
Define "Forever". The point of this thread is that Fantasy-world esque periods of stagnation are unrealistic.

Indeed. Most D&D-esque fantasy worlds work better if you instead assume that you're playing on top of a previously-existing, advanced culture that has been lost for some reason. That can explain the existence of artifacts beyond normal understanding, as well as the ubiquitous ruins and technological stagnation (it's not stagnant, it's just recovering).

Endarire
2012-06-25, 07:24 PM
What would cause the world to break out of the dark ages and industrialize?

I call it The Metaphysical Revolution (http://campbellgrege.com/).

dps
2012-06-25, 09:30 PM
Books. Extreme improvements in engineering and architecture and metallurgy, too many to list. Much more advanced mathematics. Better astronomy(you can actually predict stuff with some accuracy). Ship-building was drastically improved (multiple masts on boats, dry docks, sturdier construction, improving trade routes and the like. Canals. Water wheels.

How much of that actually affected the day-to-day life of a typical commoner, though? As you point out:


until the 1700s more than half the population of Europe was illiterate

Geostationary
2012-06-26, 12:21 AM
Wow, tangent. Anyway, I'm thinking of combining the regulator concept with Cerlis's ideas about nonhumanoids. Perhaps an eternal - yet still stagnant - elven empire across the sea has cast down human nations time and time again when they became threats, and it's up to the PCs to break this cycle. I've always like the idea of the "better than you and we know it" elves being the world's primary villains. Thanks, everyone, this hypothetical campaign is starting to take shape.

If the empire is in some way sponsored by the entity preventing progress, this would also feed into their superiority as they have the "divine right" to rule over the ignorant masses. Additionally, they could believe that they had reached the pinnacle of development, and are prevented from going further by their society and the sponsoring deity.

JoshuaZ
2012-06-26, 08:35 AM
How much of that actually affected the day-to-day life of a typical commoner, though? As you point out:

It depends. A commoner in 2000 BC isn't going to see almost any multi-storied building. By 1000 CE they aren't uncommon in cities. The improvements in astronomy mean better predictions for when to plant crops, which together with other agricultural improvements mean that one is less likely to starve. A lot of these improvements (like the presence of major trade routes) will have the most impact not on the very low income commoners but on those with some moderate income or high income. A minor feudal lord in 1000 CE has more options for spices and foods to choose for his table than a king in 2000 BC, if the lord wants to make some effort.

Similarly, the presence of reliable ships for commercial travel means that even a commoner can save up money to pay for a boat trip across say the English channel or the Mediterranean whereas that would previously have been more expensive and unreliable. The use of better boats and better sail designs and techniques also improve the range and speed of transport.

The differences won't be that severe, but they will be noticeable.

Ravens_cry
2012-06-26, 10:37 AM
There probably was a lot going on, in fact there was, see the Bronze Age collapse, but the distance of time has made details pretty sparse on the ground.
Still, the entire science of Archaeology is about reconstructing those details.

Thinker
2012-06-26, 11:27 AM
3.The Two Models. As we only have Earth to go by, we only have two models for development. The European Way and the Native American Way. In Europe(and Asia and Africa) they invented and discovered things, yet the Native Americans did not. Why? There are lots of answers, and they demonstrate how people can be different.

There were a lot of developments in the New World prior to encountering Europeans. They may have been behind in chemistry, but they were at least as advanced, and often times more advanced, in astronomy, architecture, and agriculture. They also had different priorities, for example, metal was seen as a material for adornment, not for war and the civilizations in South and Meso-America were just as advanced as those in Europe, with access to alloys and smelting techniques.

The Native Americans developed an astounding number of different types of food for consumption, which changed the world once they were being exported from the New World. Corn and potatoes are the most important, but pumpkins, tomatoes, chili peppers, cocoa, onions, strawberries, blue berries, etc. Over two thirds of the food crops grown today were engineered by the indigenous people of America.

I highly recommend 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.

Mastikator
2012-06-26, 04:00 PM
Magic is a trap. It's nearly impossible to make better, cheaper or more efficient in any way, but people keep using it RATHER than science because they already have it.

Take for example the invention of paper in china, it was such a huge success that it retarded development of other things that would've been better, like glass for lamps.

Another thing could be anti-science culture, the arab world was way ahead of the rest of the world by significant margin, but eventually adapted a pro-superstition culture that is a dead end in terms of scientific discovery and is precisely because of this lagging behind even today.


So maybe it's the wizards who use magic that cause the fantasy world to be such a harsh crappy place, because they prohibit any progress and offer expensive magic in its place, it keeps them at the top of the food chain and the rest of the world in the gutter. Which may also ring historical bells.

jseah
2012-06-26, 06:14 PM
Rather than give yet another theory for medieval stasis, I'll take up the other side.

Here is why I think an industrializing fantasy society will develop far faster than an RL society, given a certain interpretation of magic:

Assuming,
1) Magic isn't completely formulaic. Spell lists and levels are a simplification of the rules and fireballs actually come in a million and one variants.
2) There exists some logical rule that explains the behaviour of spells. A logical causal explanation where a hypothetical mage who knows the rules can identify exactly what variables would be required to be changed if some other effect was desired, and conversely what variables a spell must have had given a certain observed effect.
3) magic operates on a similar kind of scale to D&D magic, aka. fireballs and lightning bolts. Am not talking about the other types, Excalibur or multi-generation curses.

Given these, the operation of magic as depicted in many fantasy settings requires magic to be able to process information. A bit like an inference engine or something very similar to computer logic.
You simply cannot get "intelligent" behaviour from spells so often seen without having a way for the caster to impart that intelligence. Or worse still, have it built in.

The main thing is that this makes magic a way by which intelligent casters can convert their thoughts into action, without going through the real world. And in many many fantasy settings, magic appears out of nowhere, and certainly much much faster than doing it the slow mundane way.
You snap your fingers and get a fireball. The idea of a fireball has been translated into the action of burning things, without the need to build a flamethrower.
Sure, the wizard is skilled. Getting that skill takes a very long time, often much longer than building a flamethrower. But once a wizard has the skill, he can not only be a flamethrower, but many other things as well!

This shortcircuits the cycle of hypothesis -> test -> observation. Instead of building a new test, you just do magic, which directly translates your idea into a thing.
And because (sword and sorcery type) magic's effects are depicted as being fast, on the time scale of minutes to seconds, this is hundreds of times faster than even today's science process.


The moment a mage gets the idea of the scientific method and applies it, his understanding of magic skyrockets immensely. The amount of effort needed to test some particular point of theory is as simple as doing magic a few dozen times.
We have to build particle accelerators.

Translating magic theory into useful things is just a matter of technological concepts and need. The advancement is helped along by the fact that understanding of magic allows the control of many different forces (fireball and lightning bolt alone represent two fundamental forces; not to mention more esoteric requirements that are needed to make spells that find things work), unlike say, the understanding of the periodic table and redox reactions.

Serpentine
2012-06-28, 01:25 AM
I'm gonna go ahead and leave the historical discussion alone - I do think no one's gotten it quite right, but it's been too long since I've studied history for me to give any specifics. I will suggest that the OP could possibly benefit by studying Egyptian, Chinese and Arabic cultures, and possibly comparing the Australian aborigines and the Maori.
(also: developments in the plow were a pretty damn big deal - certainly to commoners, and also to society as a whole. And very major advancements in plows happened in China)

So anyway, in my game, I have a two-fold explanation for why advancement is slow in my world:
1. It's easiest just to copy-paste from my world building thread:
The planet as a whole is in the shape of a disc which is convex on both sides - or rather, two convex discs pressed together back-to-back. It has a cool upper crust which contains the Underdark, a hot mantle, and a liquid-hot core - similar to our own planet. However, the planet's oceans cycle through the planet itself: the waters flow to the planet's edge, over the side into the cleft that divides the two planetary plates, and through to the centre as the Hypogean Ocean.
As the water travels through the centre of the planet close to the mantle, it heats up to an amazing degree until it surges up the Pelagic Bore to the surface. This water is extremely hot, but cools down relatively quickly. The water directly over the Bore is far too hot for anything but the most extreme thermophiles to live in. The area immediately surrounding it is similar to those around volcanic vents in our world, and quickly around that it turns to more normal tropical climates and ecosystems. As the water heads for the edge, it gets cooler and cooler, producing first temperate and then, right at the edge, frigid climates - much of the water going over the edge is in the form of ice.
The area around the Bore is extremely volatile, volcanic eruptions being extremely common. These volcanoes are the primary source for new landmasses, as continents are gradually - over thousands or tens of thousands of years - pushed by the constant flow of water to the edge of the planet. There they fall into the cleft and are ground up and melted down into the core - or follow the water along as rocks and sand - to be eventually recycled by the aforementioned volcanic activity.In other words, the geology of the planet means civilisations are constantly in flux, compared with those on Earth. A couple thousand year flux, but still. Basically, the environment naturally changes significantly quicker than it does on Earth, and all the remains of really ancient civilisations are eventually wiped off the planet.

2. The planes cycle around the Material Plane, sorta like planets around a sun, except on a different level of reality. The cycle of the elemental planes result in the seasons. The cycling of the aligned planes influences cultures and things like that. As an example, because of really epic magics the Good/Evil cycle has been halted, making the planet stuck on "a little bit Good" (the other side is stuck on "a little bit Evil". This means that, overall, the good stuff is on top: the good guys usually win, most governments at least intend to be benign or will be overturned at some point, people are on the whole decent (or at least aren't quite as bad as if Evil was in ascension), and so on. The Chaos/Law cycle continues.
The relevant bit here is that these cycles mean that the planet goes through regular cycles of dark ages and light ages, and of stagnation and creativity. The dark, stagnation ages go a long way towards wiping out the progress of the light, creative phases.

You got that? Good.

There is progress going on, very slowly. For instance, the gnomes are in the process of inventing warforged - not as soldiers, though, but as domestic slaves to run their homesteads, harvest their crops and guard their lands while they're off at war.