I have read a number of essays on how magic would radically alter the development of society. Conventional warfare might become obsolete and economics might shift to post-scarcity depending on the rarity of magic.

https://mythcreants.com/blog/six-consequences-of-high-magic/
https://faustusnotes.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/post-scarcity-fantasy/
https://faustusnotes.wordpress.com/2011/08/31/scientific-inquiry-in-a-magical-world/
http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/magic/magicandsociety.html

For example, a wizard could use teleportation to assassinate a king. I heard someone casually suggest that the king would have fifty wizard bodyguards to prevent this, but they failed to explain where those bodyguards came from (is magic rare or common? this has massive implications) or why they serve a puny muggle king.

This is what I think would happen: Humans being humans, we are not going to see utopian societies where the wizards and clerics use their powers to end war and poverty. We will see dystopian societies. The wizards are going to use their powers to take over and once they realize they do not need peasants at all, they will probably go off to live in utopian flying cities or something similarly extravagant. The few times the magocracy would deign to take interest in the world outside their ivory towers would be for experiments, taking wild talents away to wizard school, or adventuring for knowledge and reagents and whatnot. This solves the paradox of how reality altering magic does not prevent the existence of pseudo-medieval societies. In fact, wizards might actually take steps to limit their power a la Discworld to prevent potential world-ending disasters.

The worldly societies themselves would probably be semi-isolated city states surrounded by monster-infested wilderness, not unlike the frontier in Vampire Hunter D. Living dungeons, a la 13th Age, would probably serve as kernels for city-states as in fiction like The Tower of Druaga and Overlord. But that's for another discussion.

What do you think? Do you consider how magic does or does not affect the development of society in your setting?

Not everyone wants to rule and some are too smart to want to rule. Let someone else handle that while the wizard gets on with research.

Also some are going to set up to counter others and at least in D&D there were various building tricks to counter magic and that is not even including the myriad personal spells wizards come up with to counter just about anything. Given the time and inclination a whole castle or dungeon can be made teleport proof or even cause low level spells to fizzle. Or just build on any given magic dead zone.

Also wizards do not exist in a vacuum and again at least in D&D there are things attracted to magic both supernatural and mundane.

But given enough organization you can end up with about any possible setting type up to and including ultra high magic settings like seen in some anime.

Also Dark Sun and Dragonlance are two settings set after high magic settings collapse.

I think it depends a lot on what magic can do, what it takes to develop the ability to do those things, what it takes to do the magic, what can be done to avoid hostile magic, and what can go wrong, and so on. And as a whole, what sort of power dynamic does the magic system create? (e.g. Is it easier to attack first, or to defend and react? Is it easy or impossible to find or hide? How does physical might stack up against magical power?)

And then too, what personality types end up being the people who have access to that magic. How many are benevolent or obedient? How many are scholars or eccentrics? How many are self-centered or megalomaniacs? Etc. It seems to me that the more powerful, self-sufficient, and uncontrollable they are, the less likely you are to be able to get them to do things to serve organized group plans, especially if using their magic the way you want would take a lot of their time, energy, resources, safety, privacy, etc.

Magic systems with large numbers of different spells, and very powerful spells, especially ones I haven't studied and played extensively, tend to make it really hard for me to answer many of these questions, which is why I tend to set the known spells in my game worlds to fairly limited sets known by different groups, and to limit the power and efficiency of them along lines I am familiar with from playing with them for a long time.

Also because I tend to have creative pro-active players who, if the world contains various strong magic powers, may put a lot of thought into things to do with them that I may not have considered and may lead to the PCs flat-footing the supposedly competent magicians of my world, mainly because I haven't thought them through as much as those magicians probably should have. Often that can be really fun and interesting, but it can also be a case of "er, someone should have noticed this before and it means various situations in the world don't make so much sense any more" which I would prefer to head off at the pass if I can.

I also tend to like most gameplay to be fun and interesting for non-magical warrior types, which is another reason I don't like so much magic power that it tends to make them obsolete.

Quote from: Robert HeinleinThroughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded -- here and there, now and then -- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck."

The presence of magic doesn't change the nature of the Heinlein quote, only the details.  Dystopia is almost as unlikely as Utopia.  The more likely result is something rather banal, if you want to take things to their logical conclusions

If you merely want to rationalize a world that fits what you want to do anyway, you can justify almost anything, especially with a wink or a nod to smooth over the trouble spots.

Observation #1 Magic is completely made up arbitrary stuff. You can't say anything about the effect of magic on society without defining what magic is. If you have this discussion without defining what system of magic you are referring too then you will talk past each other as one person is talking about Oranges and the other person talking about Potatoes.

Observation #2 Unless stated otherwise the assumption is that everything works like on our earth. Metallurgy, agriculture, human psychology, philosophy, daily number of calories a person needs, etc. The different is of course whatever system of magic you are describing.

In short anything goes as long you spell out your assumptions and what varies from our history.

Observation #3 Our hobby is entertainment. None of this required to run a successful campaign. It interesting because you the reader find it interesting. If you don't fine.

For example Star Trek isn't the hardest of science fiction and yet it manage to present many entertaining and thought provoking stories. However it OK  if the all handwaves for warp, transporter, phasers, etc, mean you don't find the movies and TV shows interesting or enjoyable.

Observation #4 A problem is that history unfolds as a result of everybody choices. The lack of documentation and sheer numbers of people involved means that to get a grip on the past we selectively tease out certain ideas and people and focus on that. And then there are the debate on exactly what important to focus.

Like stating what you mean when you say "magic", stating what and why you are focusing from a given historical period  helps people understand your point.

Observation #5 Being capable of doing something doesn't mean it automatically follows that the person realizes that what they can do. Case in point, Mesoamercia (Aztecs, Maya, etc) had the wheel, except to them it was a toy and not used to make labor saving device like what happened among Old World civilizations. Even in the Old World there are areas where the use of the wheel all but disappeared because of cultural choices (Arabia after the introduction of the camel).


Observation #6 Human in all ages have a system of understanding their world that works most of the time. People are not stupid, in every age they use what they know to construct a system of understanding their world. Where this is important is when something like magic appears the first generation will tie it into what they know. This is the primary reason why an obvious application of magic won't immediately be widespread.

But given enough generations then this will occur. Given enough generations the ideas that fueled our Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment and all three Industrial Revolutions will be developed and that crazy weird so unlike Earth magical setting will come to pass.  But it highly unlikely it will happen within a handful of generations.

Yesterday I had considered how low level illusionists could dominate the entertainment industry. Theaters would probably be packed nightly.

The primary issue with the article the author doesn't state exactly which form of magic he is talking about. A system of magic can be anything the author can imagine it to be. Any debate will have goalposts moving around until that settled.

To consider whether any of Orin's assertions are accurate you need to take account how long it takes master different spells, and whether it something in-born or taught. When we are talking about divine magic, what role religion plays and how much of a free agent a divine caster is.

No Sickness

Broadly speaking there are several classes of health problems to consider. Trauma due to injury,  actute health problems like poison, or the immediate effects of disease, chronic health issues like disabilities, weak heart, or asthma, and long term illnesses like cancer.

If magic is taught or in-born magic then it needs to be considered how long does it take to do any of these spells. And if there any length of time involved in the process then one need to take into account that person not contributing to his support by growing or crafting.

As I stated in other thread, some health issues can only be dealt with if the caster understand how disease and illnesses work. Or if they recognize the symptoms as an illness in the first place.

Eventually through generational trial and error all of these issues will be overcome and the result with be an alien (to us) setting that largely free of illness. And it is perfectly plausible to say that the campaign is set before that time.

Population Explosion

The Green Revolution happened because of better crop through generations of selective breeding, and better agricultural practices. There were and still are regions of the world that enjoy season after season of excellent weather. Yet it took several leaps in agricultural technology before the huge leaps in productivity we have today were realized.  A 50% increase of the yield field of 9th Century BC Emmer Wheat is still crap compared to what a modern wheat farm can produce.

However better weather and crop blessings will increase crop yield and the food supply. Leading to growth in the population. Historically this resulted in all arable land no matter how marginal being utilized. And when that ran out, cultures started expanding outwards looking for new lands. Resulting in wars, migrations, and empire building.

Unlike disease, overpopulation and famine causing widespread collapse of society was rare in our history. Far more prevalent is the collapse of a realm's economy destroying trade in food. Without various surplus being distributed this caused major urban centers to implode (like last empire Rome).

No Armies

While a fireball is spectacular again all depend on easy it to learn to cast spell of such power. And how magic works in regards to such a spell. From the article, the author it taking the spell from D&D. He not taking into account the frequency of mid range spellcaster. Nor the fact that close order military formation each men cover about 3 feet of front. A fireball has a 40 feet diameter, capable of taken out dozens but still leaving the larger army of thousands intact.

Also the fireball as a range, depending on the exact edition of D&D it possible that the archers will outrange the magic users casting the spell.

Wizard Arms Race

Here the author does explore different assumptions of magic. And largely I am in agreement that various culture will harness and cultivate people who can cast magic. I view the likely scenario that at first both arcane and divine magic will be wrapped in whatever religious system a culture has. That independent arcane mages for a long time will be those living off the magical scraps so to speak.

Also I think equally likely is that once a sophisticated independent tradition of arcane magic  developed that mages will band together into magical orders for protection and support. The exception being if mind control magic has no effective counter or means of detection among arcane caster. I am assuming for divine caster and mind control that the final trump card is the power of their faith. You can mind control a D&D cleric but it plausible to say that the D&D cleric can never regain a spell due to the fact his faith in his religion undermined by his mind being controlled by a will of another.

Gods On Earth

If magic is easily learned, quickly learned and require little resource, Then the mages as gods or the magocracy becomes a factor. The longer the time it takes to learn magic, the more resource needed to support the student while they are effectively useless to society, the less this will be a factor.

Technological Acceleration

The advancement of technological is as much as about ideas as it is the ability to do thing. Many thing we know now can be replicated at the medieval level of technology. For example sanitary practices can be used even if one has access to a Neolithic tool kit. Even with auguries and communes one has to imagine the question in order to ask it. Or have the foundation to understand the answer once given.

I think there would probably be an arms race between magic and ways to counter magic. And overall, magic would be akin to technology/science. People would go for magical solutions as opposed to technological ones.

OTOH, I think the actual existence of Gods and clerical magic would be the thing that dramatically changes society.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1019897The presence of magic doesn't change the nature of the Heinlein quote, only the details.  Dystopia is almost as unlikely as Utopia.  The more likely result is something rather banal, if you want to take things to their logical conclusions

If you merely want to rationalize a world that fits what you want to do anyway, you can justify almost anything, especially with a wink or a nod to smooth over the trouble spots.

Yes, I suppose this is right. My own explanation was simply to rationalize why a setting would loosely resemble the medieval period when D&D style magic-users exist. Even cantrips cast by hedge mages can radically alter how society works. If magic-users are prevalent enough over time to have libraries of lore in the city of wizards, then there needs to be some reason they do not use low-level spells to revolutionize society. A class division where an egotistical magic-user society lives in ivory towers isolated from the muggles is the first explanation that came to my mind.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1020055Yes, I suppose this is right. My own explanation was simply to rationalize why a setting would loosely resemble the medieval period when D&D style magic-users exist. Even cantrips cast by hedge mages can radically alter how society works. If magic-users are prevalent enough over time to have libraries of lore in the city of wizards, then there needs to be some reason they do not use low-level spells to revolutionize society. A class division where an egotistical magic-user society lives in ivory towers isolated from the muggles is the first explanation that came to my mind.

Some other possibilities:

1) Magicians have an ethical code that they adhere to as a result of their studies, including a non-interference directive to not change things too much - a Zen-like code. Clerics could similarly be directed by their deities to maintain the medieval order.

2) Magic carries with it an inherent taint that sticks to things after it is cast. So using magic on people or places brings them into the adventurer's world of gods, monsters, curses, etc. There are scattered magic-users who use magic, but they are very sparing in using magic on or for anyone that isn't already into adventuring.


That said, though, I think it can be interesting to let magic have an effect on the development of society. To do this, though, one needs to be specific about the magic system and the world. Different magic systems - or the same magic system with different assumptions - could have very different effects.

Quote from: jhkim;1020114Some other possibilities:

1) Magicians have an ethical code that they adhere to as a result of their studies, including a non-interference directive to not change things too much - a Zen-like code. Clerics could similarly be directed by their deities to maintain the medieval order.

Or, if you are willing to fit the nature of magic to specifically support such, you could even make it stronger than an ethical code.  Make it so that the practice of magic inherently requires such to even function past a very primitive level.  

It's not as if the various myths haven't supplied enough taboos and other strictures for magicians at times.  For example, just requiring celibacy for magic to work well would tend to seriously restrict the supply of magicians in a world.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1020121For example, just requiring celibacy for magic to work well would tend to seriously restrict the supply of magicians in a world.

First that requirement would have to be one of natural law not the prescriptive laws of society.

I could see a requirement like that giving rise to a caste if eunuch mages. I suppose there'd be some sort of neutering process to get the equivalent for females. And if magic is an inherited characteristic rather than a product of learning and culture then you'd have an in-built limitation on the number of mages. Sounds like a pretty unpleasant setting to game in though.

There is nothing a priori about allowing magic that would require the rest of the world to opperate on the same natural principles as our own does, quite the contrary. It would likely take quite a profound rewriting of the laws of reality. Disease might very well be caused by evil "Disease Spirits" as it is in RuneQuet rather than by microorganisms, just to give one example.

Is Clerical magic sourced from actual, living gods? How does this effect society and the world?

Really a lot needs to be defined about what magic is, and how it works, who can work it, how common it is, etc before any meaningful discussion can take place. What are the parameters?

Too many authors don't really think things through. Magic just sort of exists side by side with a world much like our own. This is part of why Harry Potter failed to work for me. Whole great chunks of plot could have been undone with a simple cell phone, a device which would have been known about and quite probably even owned by the characters who would have done the plot disruption. We had wizards born into non-wizard families, and a whole Ministery of the Government devoted to keeping magic a secret, for reasons that were never adequately explained. And magic in general seemed rather silly and ineffective, wordprocessors would have been much better than those self writing quill pens, flashlights, emails?

#Magic has been insufficiently defined here for me to be able to effectively answer the inquiry.

Quote from: Omega;1019873Not everyone wants to rule and some are too smart to want to rule. Let someone else handle that while the wizard gets on with research.

The problem is #ThoseWhoRule tend to get up in everyone's business rather quickly, which means one has to participate in the rulership game in some capacity order to continue one's research.

Unless of course there's a spell to fix that.

Quote from: Bren;1020129First that requirement would have to be one of natural law not the prescriptive laws of society.

I could see a requirement like that giving rise to a caste if eunuch mages. I suppose there'd be some sort of neutering process to get the equivalent for females. And if magic is an inherited characteristic rather than a product of learning and culture then you'd have an in-built limitation on the number of mages. Sounds like a pretty unpleasant setting to game in though.

Right, that's what I meant by more than a code.  The nasty example is just one example.  Point is, if you want to make it work, you can make it work.  It's not as if magic has some kind of predefined reality that you must emulate.