How often in fiction is there an advanced technological world (whether a planet or a galaxy) that lacks an infrastructure? There are always factories, transportation networks, training facilities, hospitals and resource acquisition complexes (mining & lumber camps, farms, etc). Off hand, the only fictional worlds I can think of that have higher technology in any quantity but don’t have any sort of infrastructure are post-apocalypse worlds, where the advanced society crumbled some time ago and all that is left is the people and a few (or many) technological remnants.
How often in fiction is there an advanced magical world (whether a single plane or mass of them) that lacks an infrastructure? Quite often actually, due to the fact that most magical worlds are somewhat based on medieval Europe or Eurasia. There are no magical factories, no transportation networks (few magical vehicles are available at all), no hospitals (maybe one major place of healing in a kingdom, but magical healing usually isn’t for the commoners). There are often magical academies (again, one per kingdom, though there may be multiple in a vast empire), but most magical training is from magus to apprentice with little or no mass education. There are always mining and lumber camps, farms and so on, but they are often unimportant when considering the idea of a magical infrastructure, because they aren’t used (or even necessary) to fuel the advance of magical development.
Technology (such as today, or as suggested by d20 Future and Star Wars) is better than magic (in Faerûn and Greyhawk) because those magical worlds have no infrastructure, while most technological worlds used as examples have an advanced infrastructure. This means that the actual comparison is flawed. In a technological world that lacks an infrastructure it would be as difficult and expensive (or possibly more difficult and expensive) to build a fighter jet, than find a mage in Greyhawk to make you a faster magical carpet that can shoot scorching rays. To compare Faerûn with RL, use late renaissance level technology. Then consider which is more advanced.
Magical items are standalone; once created they either have a number of charges (and then are useless when all charges are expended), or else offer unlimited use. Technological items require support; they need fuel or electricity, they often require maintenance, and many technological materials have a shelf-life (they’ll eventually spoil or burn out). A magical world that had an infrastructure would have support system to make magic cheaper, to facilitate travel and to allow even the common person to use spells and lesser items of magic. The only world I can remember off hand that fits the description is Netheril (forgotten realms history, destroyed some thousand years before present day Faerûn). The common people (on the flying cities) all knew a few spells (they where probably sorcerers or magewrights rather than commoners), and most have some weak magic items. How?
The Netherese wizard Ioulaum created the mythallar that gave power to nearby items, negating the need for expenditure of a spellcaster’s energy to create magic items.
Why would the scientists, inventers, and entrepreneurs of a fantasy world pursue steam power, clockwork, and flintlock pistols when they have seen teleportation circles, golems, and fireballs? Naysayers may argue that such magic is not reasonably attainable to the average commoner. Naysayers said the same thing about cars and computers. The assembly line and the microchip shut them up nicely. Inevitably, magic will be developed and refined, marketed and distributed, until it achieves a form usable by the masses.
Take a look at Netheril. (If you really want to, I think that there's still an old .pdf document on the Wizards downloads page.) Those mythallar were huge glassy globes that would kill you if you touched them. They were sort of like power generators mixed with wifi. The arcanists (This is before wizards and sorcerers became distinct) could mass produce magic items.
Here's how it worked. The arcanists would normally have had to infuse their creations with some of their own essence (XP), and invest time and money to make the weave stable and permanent. In order to make these new items (I think they were called quasi-magic items), the arcanist invested greatly reduced time and money, and the weave was powered and made permanent by the mythallar. The mythallar made their cities float, it let people have water faucets to the elemental plane of water, and gave the Netherese countless other conveniences to boot. Shipping was handled by--get this--floating bubbles of arcane energy that drifted from city to city. Pirates caught on, and the Netherese started escorting their bubbles as well as making them faster and tougher. What a world that would be! In my opinion, Netheril is the perfect juxtaposition of fantasy and our modern conception of the world.
For another well implemented example of magic as technology, take a look at the Thran of MtG's universe. There's a book, conveniently titled The Thran, that documents their society, powerstones and all, in a fairly entertaining manner.
Thanks for this thread, Draken. It brings me joy to see that I'm not alone.
Perhaps the reason why there's less of a magical infrastructure anywhere is because magic items tend to be very, very expensive compared to technological ones? I think Eberron's comes closest, though, partly because its magic is supposed to work like technology. House Cannith's schema (creation patterns), for instance, allow them to quickly and reliably replicate magic items.
To look at things differently, it helps to step outside the bubble. First, let's look at the similarities between magic and technology. Both depend on energy for their function. Both can help living beings accomplish what they're normally incapable of. There's likely more, but probably none as obvious.
Now the differences:
Technology can be completely explained/dissected with formulas, equations, etc., down to the sub-atomic level. Magic can't. It's like the difference between logic and faith - one can be proven, the other cannot. And speaking of faith, gods usually grant spells, not machine guns, although they may imbue technology with magic. Technology is not found underlying every single atom in the universe. It does not find itself growing in a person naturally without mortal assistance. Even the gods seem to prefer magic in their own dwellings.
Now let's really leave the bubble, and examine if magic would really fade as technology grows.
We'll look at the first reason for technology, necessity. Why would anyone need to build a plane if they already could fly? Why attempt a flame-thrower if you can cast fireball? Etc. But still, an argument can be made about simple curiosity as a motivator for tinkering with technology. After all, Dragonlance gnomes invent all the time. And what about people who can't cast spells or who lack the knack for magic? Well, they can still buy what they need from merchants who sell magical goods.
But I believe that any "tinkering" will remain just that, a hobby. At the dawn of technology, why would anyone think to abandon magic when teleportation is still unfathomable by inventors? If Europe had the magic of D&D, would we really have built up to today's "marvels" of technology when it can't even read minds, grant you a wish, teleport you to another plane or world, create food and water, communicate with the dead, etc? How amazed would anyone be at the Wright Brothers flying across the ocean when wizards have been doing it - and much faster - for millennia? How astonished would readers be at science fiction about strange new worlds, when spellcasters regularly bring back tales about otherplanar creatures? Why build a NASA or even search for extra-terrestrial life, when everyone knows about the life on previously visited worlds?
And I doubt people with vision would be so enthused to invent what already exists unless, like the gnomes above, they do it for kicks. But the point is that a lot less people would be inventing, and we would likely then have a lot less technology.
Now, still outside the bubble, let's stick two people - a magically gifted sorceress and a technically inclined human - on separate deserted worlds. The sorceress can use her magic regardless of materials, but let's give the human all the technology we have on Earth today. Even with all that at his disposal, the human finds himself unable to use much of the technology. There is no one to ensure that the electrical grid stays on, no one to help keep a factory running to produce new goods, no one to maintain the roads for car travel, to guide and maintain airplanes, etc.
Even if every other planet on that system is inhabited, he cannot communicate with them unless they also have technology - and it would have to be compatible. The sorceress on the other hand, doesn't need a whole society functioning just to keep her magic "on", and inhabitants from nearby planets don't need a magic device in order to receive a magically delivered message. They don't even have to be spellcasters.
Now, back inside the bubble.
The lack of infrastructure is not because a world with magic is incapable of it. No, the reason is because a world of technology needs everything close together. That's why homes in the countryside have a history of being technologically neglected. Big cities need lots of workers close-by who will run the equipment, supervise the equipment, fix the equipment, build the equipment, power the equipment, train others to use the equipment, design newer equipment, etc., etc. and if any of the pieces are removed it all comes crumbling down.
Magic wouldn't. That's why a magical world doesn't need infrastructure. Technology may someday become virtually indistinguishable from magic, but perhaps only to the ignorant mind, just as a cigarette lighter may be "magical" to a savage tribe.
I think that a magic society would need "an infrastructure". Of course, the "workers" could be scattered across the countryside and teleported to work, but doesn't that seem decadent? It would be easier to just employ people who live in the city. Certainly, if they were going to teleport to work everyday, it would be more efficient to build portals than to have each "worker" teleport himself personally, right? The portals would constitute an infrastructure.
Travel, communication, and fabrication are the chief concerns as already discussed, but there's a another big one that nobody's brought up. Food and medicine. Druids and clerics would be instrumental in creating a "magical revolution" that would civilize a D&D world. Food could be created as necessary (one shot spells like Heroes' Feast), but I imagine that it would be simpler and cheaper to cast a spell over farm animals and crops (probably everyday, at first) that would increase their yield. I don't think a Plant Growth spell would work because it's indiscriminate about what plants to grow. Perhaps with further study it will be discovered that the gods aren't really all that closely connected to divine magic. Maybe, it comes from the planes and the gods are just valves turning it off and on. Maybe, a powerful enough civilization could "convince" them that it was in their "best interests" to leave the valve on.
Sooner or later, to have real impact, magic will have to be brought to the common people. Either by serious mass education in magic (with new and improved teaching techniques possibly including hypnosis, sleep teaching, arcane drugs, temporarily increased INT, WIS, and/or CHA), or by magic items that don't require any magical training on the part of the user.
When gunpowder was first discovered in China, the formula included a number of items that aren't necessary to make gunpowder. Perhaps the very nature of magic as it taught in the D&D worlds today is inefficient, including extraneous sounds and motions.
It also seems reasonable to assume that given further development of the "magical technology", people will invent more efficient ways to create magic items such that less "personal energy" needs to be invested in them.
Mass-produced magic items seem like the simplest way to bring magic to the people. The Netherese thing-a-mah-bob is a good example. But it seems to be missing one concern, it takes mundane craftsmen to make mundane objects to be enchanted. If that's to remain the case, we need manufacturing, mundane or magic. I see a "magic factory" where mundane workers build items on an assembly line WHILE one or more thing-a-mah-bobs is enchanting them, so they are ready for use by the time the craftsmen are done making them. Wondrous magic would work, but eventually we'd like to make cheap and disposable stuff like scrolls, wands, and staves that ordinary people can use. That would be a big step, right there. Wands and staves wouldn't necessarily have to be disposable either. In the current D&D world (renaissance-level magic and mundane technology), it isn't any cheaper to recharge a wand or staff than it was to create it in the first place. But that reeks of inefficiency, and someday someone will come up with a better system.
And it just takes one genius enchanter WHO SHARES HIS DISCOVERIES to change the world.
A magical infrastructure in progression
The ancient past was pretty civilized (maybe a little Jordanian) and the transport of goods and services was run mostly by the alliance of wizards towers. Ring gates, teleport circles that kind of stuff. and low commerce abounded
Nowhere was farther away than to and from the nearest mage tower. The wizards were pretty secretive (as usual) about their methods, and every portal had keys - and every mage made a good living off of simply facilitating trade. The only other way to get across any kind of great distance was with some sort of caravan or by luck come across a traveling cleric. The miracle of instant relocation was reserved for the truly faithful, and then the bad stuff happened as it often does.
Disputes between towers (fueled by greed of course) became wars and soon the towers were blowing themselves up with eldritch disasters of all kinds. Meanwhile the rest of society is sort of out of sorts, they had specialized production much as we do today. Goods that were once readily available and noble families that maintained contact over great distances were now gone.
In their place three groups grew to fill the demand for travel that the wizards ability had developed in the society; Holy men with their miracles drew people to church, and from there anywhere they could imagine. Renegade mages and psions with promises of a "simple passage through astral space" gambled the lives and fortunes of others. Lastly, artificers (from the gnomish school) developed means of harnessing magical energy into a reusable power source.
No longer limited to charges, or the arcane skills of the operator, devices that could be operated by any man so long as they kept a powersource in the machine's core. Any magic object you have handy (so long as it fits) will do. Call it "technomagic" devices that simply take a proficiency to use, that can emulate to some degree or another most arcane transmutations, and enhancements. Perfectly sized, power capacitors are available for a "fair" price at you local technomagic shop.
Conjurations are beyond the reach the technomagical devices, but flight, in mass, was most certainly not. It took some time before the first airships took flight. The towers were long in rubble, the faith had spread like a wildfire amongst the rich and powerful, and society had almost begun to forget the way things used to be. Then the airships came, and life worldwide seemed to leap back into full force.
Perhaps even twice as fierce to make up for the setback they had suffered. No one minded that it now took days to fly a distance the wizards could teleport you in an instant.. it didnt take months, and the airship was yours. The wealthy built fleets, and the spirit of adventure seemed to whistle on the winds when you stood on the deck of your airship. Exploration, something not common in the era of tower travel, became common.
The seas of this world were far more than dangerous, but skimming from isle to isle along the airways was more than safe, it was pleasant. Sure stormy weather and dark skies can be disheartening, but nothing less than a passing dragon is going to pull you out of the sky! Civilization expands to the horizons
The remnant of the tower mages are not gone however, their secrets are still kept in books that were recovered from the rubble of their great misfortunes. Still working gate keys are stored in short stout houses on the outskirts of town. The once noble mages are now the highest priced service of the underground market. An edge that can beat technomagic any day, and one that doesn’t cost you your soul.
The holy men never let loose of the power they gained with the destruction of the tower network. Where the mages had made sure no city was further than a day or two away, the priests made certain that no city went without a church. Society had become accustomed to a certain level of existence and they were willing to behave (and tithe) to get it. The larger cities are still run by religious councils, whereas the smaller townships are veritable communes to one diety or another.
Travel, light, water, food, good fortune, good crops, life itself. All things that the churches offer the faithful parishioners, so long as they maintain their obedience. With almost unlimited access to funds in some cities the churches have spread hallowed ground nearly everywhere. To better enable us and our god to serve your needs my son.
The powers that be each serve functions for the society, magic and miracles move goods and services, machines serve huge functions, but are not for the less than very wealthy. True arcanery is perhaps the most effective (and least costly in the long run) but in low supply. The demand of the people for that which they don’t have is pretty much secondary to the supplementary benefits (creation, healing, resurrection) that the holy men provide, and Druids.. well I figure they wouldn’t want to be bothered with all that nonsense
The ancient past was pretty civilized (maybe a little Jordanian) and the transport of goods and services was run mostly by the alliance of wizards towers. Ring gates, teleport circles that kind of stuff. and low commerce abounded
Nowhere was farther away than to and from the nearest mage tower. The wizards were pretty secretive (as usual) about their methods, and every portal had keys - and every mage made a good living off of simply facilitating trade. The only other way to get across any kind of great distance was with some sort of caravan or by luck come across a traveling cleric. The miracle of instant relocation was reserved for the truly faithful, and then the bad stuff happened as it often does.
Disputes between towers (fueled by greed of course) became wars and soon the towers were blowing themselves up with eldritch disasters of all kinds. Meanwhile the rest of society is sort of out of sorts, they had specialized production much as we do today. Goods that were once readily available and noble families that maintained contact over great distances were now gone.
In their place three groups grew to fill the demand for travel that the wizards ability had developed in the society; Holy men with their miracles drew people to church, and from there anywhere they could imagine. Renegade mages and psions with promises of a "simple passage through astral space" gambled the lives and fortunes of others. Lastly, artificers (from the gnomish school) developed means of harnessing magical energy into a reusable power source.
No longer limited to charges, or the arcane skills of the operator, devices that could be operated by any man so long as they kept a powersource in the machine's core. Any magic object you have handy (so long as it fits) will do. Call it "technomagic" devices that simply take a proficiency to use, that can emulate to some degree or another most arcane transmutations, and enhancements. Perfectly sized, power capacitors are available for a "fair" price at you local technomagic shop.
Conjurations are beyond the reach the technomagical devices, but flight, in mass, was most certainly not. It took some time before the first airships took flight. The towers were long in rubble, the faith had spread like a wildfire amongst the rich and powerful, and society had almost begun to forget the way things used to be. Then the airships came, and life worldwide seemed to leap back into full force.
Perhaps even twice as fierce to make up for the setback they had suffered. No one minded that it now took days to fly a distance the wizards could teleport you in an instant.. it didnt take months, and the airship was yours. The wealthy built fleets, and the spirit of adventure seemed to whistle on the winds when you stood on the deck of your airship. Exploration, something not common in the era of tower travel, became common.
The seas of this world were far more than dangerous, but skimming from isle to isle along the airways was more than safe, it was pleasant. Sure stormy weather and dark skies can be disheartening, but nothing less than a passing dragon is going to pull you out of the sky! Civilization expands to the horizons
The remnant of the tower mages are not gone however, their secrets are still kept in books that were recovered from the rubble of their great misfortunes. Still working gate keys are stored in short stout houses on the outskirts of town. The once noble mages are now the highest priced service of the underground market. An edge that can beat technomagic any day, and one that doesn’t cost you your soul.
The holy men never let loose of the power they gained with the destruction of the tower network. Where the mages had made sure no city was further than a day or two away, the priests made certain that no city went without a church. Society had become accustomed to a certain level of existence and they were willing to behave (and tithe) to get it. The larger cities are still run by religious councils, whereas the smaller townships are veritable communes to one diety or another.
Travel, light, water, food, good fortune, good crops, life itself. All things that the churches offer the faithful parishioners, so long as they maintain their obedience. With almost unlimited access to funds in some cities the churches have spread hallowed ground nearly everywhere. To better enable us and our god to serve your needs my son.
The powers that be each serve functions for the society, magic and miracles move goods and services, machines serve huge functions, but are not for the less than very wealthy. True arcanery is perhaps the most effective (and least costly in the long run) but in low supply. The demand of the people for that which they don’t have is pretty much secondary to the supplementary benefits (creation, healing, resurrection) that the holy men provide, and Druids.. well I figure they wouldn’t want to be bothered with all that nonsense