Arminius, it's just that the theorizers' expectations do not match what I have actually seen in games with plenty of MUs running around. The way people actually behave in a free market is a lot more informative than ivory tower speculations!

Now, those game worlds do not look just like historical Europe, either -- and I don't recall any suggestion in the old books that they ought to! They look like worlds in which an elite is running around with capabilities that nobody is interested in mass producing the way we do cell phones and TV sets and whatnot.

The whinging would be more reasonably directed at some superhero comicbooks. Even there, I would expect that some things would make more sense if one considers the motivations of the characters who choose to do something with ray guns and rocketships other than selling them at Wal-Mart.

Quote from: The_Shadow;718441Is when people say that the game world should reflect the way that magic is in the rules, with easily available zap spells, or continual light etc.

Why would it possibly bother you to know that some people you do not know somewhere in cyberspace are playing D&D in a way different from you?

Yeah, sometimes I like to play where the game mechanics are how magic works.  Sometimes I do not.  What of it?

Quote from: Phillip;718490From what I've seen of the spiel, it's usually people coming either from 3E experience (in which I gather magic really is so common) or from no real D&D experience at all. At any rate, it's not likely to come from experience in a proper old-style campaign.

Nah, just look at Mystara/Known World. That's extremely high magic, in addition to magical street lamps (GAZ3 Glantri), you have things like flying ships (Alphatia boxed set, later Princess Ark), a magical floating city with magic powered bi-planes (Top Ballista), magic robots (Earthshaker!) etc.  

Heck, there's an adventure (or at least adventure outline) based on a magical flying version of the Love Boat.

And most of that predates AD&D 2e, much less 3e.

I don't think it'd be 3 coppers for a continual light spell, any more than a light bulb guaranteed to power itself and last forever would only sell for 3 cents.

And, for the right money, I'd totally tutor a first grader.

Quote from: Old One Eye;718516Why would it possibly bother you to know that some people you do not know somewhere in cyberspace are playing D&D in a way different from you?

Yeah, sometimes I like to play where the game mechanics are how magic works.  Sometimes I do not.  What of it?

Seems to me he is complaining about people telling him how to play, not the other way around. Note the word "should" in the text you quoted.

The availability of magic in a setting determines the "mage-tech" of that setting. If PCs are a rare breed, make that clear to the players. Of course, if PCs are so amazingly rare, how did they so conveniently find each other to become adventurers? If mages and clerics are rare, then why does every group have one of each?

The problem is "permanent" magic. If you make magic more transient, then its less useful to be made into tech.

Quote from: Spinachcat;718537The problem is "permanent" magic. If you make magic more transient, then its less useful to be made into tech.

Pervasive magic batteries too, a wand of fireballs makes any hedge wizard into an artillery piece.

Quote from: Old One Eye;718516Yeah, sometimes I like to play where the game mechanics are how magic works.  Sometimes I do not.  What of it?

You, sir, are doing it wrong. If I was wearing a pair of kid gloves I would remove one of them and slap you.

Quote from: The_Shadow;718539You, sir, are doing it wrong. If I was wearing a pair of kid gloves I would remove one of them and slap you.

Yeah, I was a bit testy yesterday, sorry 'bout that.

Campaigns with a magic item market in every village square can be great fun.  Campaigns where epic quests result in but a mere potion or two can be fun.  Campaigns in betwixt the extremes can be fun.

Good DM and good players are what makes a good game in my book, not the campaign premise.

Heck, I've editorialized on this one.  More than once.  But let me summarize:

Let's say you have a respectable sized city of 10,000 people.  (This really is a respectable sized city; it'd make the top five in England at most points in the medieval era.)  If wizards are as common as blacksmiths, you've got about 20.  Terrific, right?  Plenty of enchanting muscle!

Well, now, hold on.  Are all those folks practicing enchanters?  Of course not.  There are two major factors.  For one thing, most fantasy game systems require wizards to be of a certain power level to be a successful enchanter, excluding some -- or many -- wizards from ever doing it at all.

For another, why would every wizard be a professional enchanter?  Take Master Elaina, the water wizard -- sure, she's the city's most powerful mage, but she's a full-time adventurer; she's not enchanting for a living.  Mistress Syrielle is a legend, but she's mostly retired now, and spends her time puttering in her garden from her wheelchair.  Master Ravenswing works for the Duke, mostly in divination; he's not enchanting for a living.  "Whisper" is the hired mage of the richest fellow in town, and they say her telepathy and anti-thief magics are why he's so rich; she's not enchanting for a living.  Master Nightflame is the professor of thaumatology at the local academy; he's not enchanting for a living, and neither is his sister Arathena, who got stuck with the Guildmaster job of the local wizards' chantry after Syrielle retired.  No one trusts Master Hamal any more since he fell into the bottle; he's sure as hell not enchanting for a living.  And Master Detheril is the new Knight Marshal of the city, and on the short list for a coronet the next barony that opens up; he's not enchanting for a living.

So you might have ten enchanters; you might have half as many.  Just remember, though, if everyone else is an enchanter, you don't have spare wizards for anything else.  Need someone to cast a divination spell for you?  No one available.  Want a wizard to teach your party's wizard a spell?  Sure, spend three months in Nightflame's next class (it's about necromancy, by the way), and you can; otherwise, not.  Need that magical scroll written?  You're SOL.

Well, alright, half of what's left.  Six enchanters, then.  How liberal is your game's enchanting rules?  I use GURPS, myself (and let's ignore that published material suggesting that only one wizard in ten be of a power level high enough to enchant at all, shall we?).  Purify Water sounds like a good, basic spell; an item that is self-powering takes 550 mage-days to enchant.  Which means that all six of those wizards, working together, can reasonably bang out an item in three months; it can purify nearly 3000 gallons of fresh water per day.  In a year's work, they can enchant enough to handle all the fresh water needs of the city for drinking.  (Unfortunately, the cooking, bathing and industrial needs for fresh water are about TEN TIMES as much.)

But sure, they stick with it.  Now the city has plenty of fresh water, magically created!

Fair enough.  But it doesn't have magical streetlights.  It doesn't have magical weapons.  It doesn't have magically created food. It doesn't have anything else enchanted.  And even that much rests on a few very flimsy premises:

* Every enchanter is a skilled water enchanter.  Why would they be?  Is every wizard you run?  Mightn't they just as likely be earth enchanters, or fire enchanters, or temporalists, or communications specialists?

* None of them have any better gigs going on than creating fresh water for the city.  What happens when agents for Countess Silvermist come and ask a couple of the enchanters exactly how long they plan on playing Third String Waterboy for the Duke, when they could come work for the Countess for double the pay and their own private towers?

* As I mentioned in the pertinent GGF post, nothing ever goes wrong.  The Purification items don't get stolen and sold on the black market, the city's enemies never decide to ruin them, the wizards never strike for more money, the city always pays on time and in full, none of the wizards ever gets sick, the Duke never concludes that the city has plenty of water already and the money's better spent refitting his cavalry troop after they got pasted in the last battle, the fire that torched a fifth of the city miraculously missed the Water Works, or the Duke's never an egotistical snot pissed off that Countess Silvermist's water purification items are made of gold, so his ought to be too, ditch the old ivory ones?

So sure; there are some ways wizards can have a material impact on life in a city.  If your system has a Predict Weather spell, one forecasting mage can save the lives of a lot of fishermen.  One wizard with long distance telepathy ... well, we know what instant communications can do.  A battery of wizards, as a long term civic project, well funded, might be able to implement ONE change - pure water, magical street lights - as long as that change is simple, and nothing goes wrong.

So do the math for your own systems.  How many people get to be journeyman wizards?  How many wizards are capable of enchanting?  How many wizards do you want to task to do other things: battlemages, teachers, researchers, detectives, adventurers, court wizards, mages-for-hire and fussy old coots who just want to putter in their gardens and not be bothered.  Does your magic system encourage/require specialization?  How long does enchanting take?  Can just anyone use an enchanted item?  Can an item work without supervision?  How fragile are magical items?

This is why you don't have "magical" economies.  Sure, I see Rincewind's example of always seeing at least one wizard in a tavern.  But that doesn't make a society pervasively magical any more than seeing a cop every time I'm in a restaurant means I'm living in a police state.

Quote from: The_Shadow;718441Is when people say that the game world should reflect the way that magic is in the rules, with easily available zap spells, or continual light etc. So if a PC can cast a light spell, then according to this way of thinking, it follows that streets should be lit by magical light. Thus ending up with Eberron or a reskinned pseudo-21st century, or just magic being generally boring.

To which I say:

1. Magic might be rare, due to only a few people having the gift, or due to the knowledge or physical resources required being scarce. In my long-running Rolemaster game, magical knowledge was jealously guarded by arcane covens, and if someone managed to steal the scrolls of a another group, and spent years first deciphering it and then learning the spells, their reward would likely be being hunted down like a dog.

2. Setting and atmosphere come first, period. If I want a game with mysterious rare wizards a la the Hobbit, that's how it is, and PC wizards are the exception. The rules have little to do with this.

In practice, it works fine when the GM creates the expectation for his setting. It's only certain types who think that the mechanics are the physics engine for the universe rather than tools to achieve your own vision.

Who cares what people say? If its your game then what they say doesn't mean jack shit and if its their own game then you can choose not to play in it.

The way magic works is one facet of an imaginative game. Some people have different ideas about these things. If it is bothersome to the point of irritation then simply game with more like-minded people.

Everyone has different dealbreakers that will be the tipping point between playing or not playing in certain games. This just seems to be one of yours.

I think Ptolus had one of the best integrated magical societies I've seen. In my Amherth setting (home campaign + published material) the ability to cast magic and cleric spells is genetic. Because of a long history of magic and science going awry, magic and new technology are actually distrusted and feared by the common populace. So sure, continual light lanterns throughout the city may seem like a good idea, it may even be practical if you have a dozen or so magic-users living in the city, but no thanks.

Here is a tavern scene of how it would probably go over:

"It's sorcery and that means only something bad can come of all those magic lights. Why, I was walking past the light post on Tanner Street the other day and my leg started cramping up."

**rumble, rumble, rumble**

"Hey, Elana the Midwife said she was called to the house next to that same light post and the child was stillborn."

**Rumble, Rumble, Rumble**

"And you remember those adventurers had to come in and kill all those giant rats living in that abandoned house down the street."

**Rumble, Rumble, RUMBLE**

"Evil, Evil I say! Lord Governor, tear down those lights!"

**RUMBLE, RUMBLE, RUMBLE!**

The problem might be that D&D magic rules do not feel very mysterious. I have seen several threads and heard discussions indeed where people talked about clever ways to employ this or that spell and how the world would look, if that was done on a regular basis.

The following points might lead to a technical approach for D&D magic:

- Magic is safe. Magic cannot accidently rip reality apart or summon a demon as per the rules.

- Magic is very reliable. Spells are finite and defined. The work the same way every time. Peaceful spells do not require die rolls.

- After casting spells just work without concentration or upkeep. They will even continue after the caster died.

Changing these elements might change people's reactions.

Quote from: The Traveller;718538Pervasive magic batteries too, a wand of fireballs makes any hedge wizard into an artillery piece.

In original D&D, creating magic items could only be done by a "Wizard," that is, 11th level or higher.

Furthermore, it took money, and TIME.  A Wand of Cold took 10,000 GP, but, more important, it took SIX MONTHS.

A Wizard isn't going to sit around for half a year making a Wand of Fireballs to give to some hedge wizard; it's a backup weapon for when they have to leave their tower because the idiot Orcs they sent to retrieve Essence of Angel Farts botched the job.

Frankly, the story of post-2nd Ed. D&D is "The game got turned over to people who didn't understand game balance, and they took out all the game balance mechanisms because they're still pouting from when they were 14, and now everybody wonders why the game isn't balanced."

Quote from: Old Geezer;718586Frankly, the story of post-2nd Ed. D&D is "The game got turned over to people who didn't understand game balance, and they took out all the game balance mechanisms because they're still pouting from when they were 14, and now everybody wonders why the game isn't balanced."

I think that is the most succinct and accurate description of WOTC D&D ever.