High Tech, Low Tech, What’s your Fantasy Tech?

This may seem an odd way to start a fantasy tech discussion, but stick with us for just a couple of paragraphs:

Some folks have complained that the price of foods in our Grain Into Gold fantasy economy book is wrong.  The biggest issue is that fresh beef is generally the same price as wheat flour.  Now there are some real reasons for this, but the main one is that Fletnern is not really based on medieval England.  Medieval England was running out of space.  They didn’t have vast prairies on which to raise beef cattle.

But the Central Plains of Fletnern is a vast prairie.  The farming isn’t that good, but there is land as far as the eye can see, and there are cowboys leading huge herds from pasture to pasture.  So certainly in the Council of Baronies where the farming is poor and the noblemen are typically Cattle Barons, beef is cheap and wheat flour (which has to be grown, harvested, transported to a miller, milled, transported to a market, etc.) costs about the same.

But why?  Is it just because it isn’t England?  No, it’s because of the technology!  Fletnern has been stuck at a single point in technology for centuries, probably at least 2,000 years.  Now most fantasy fiction looks at thousands of years of history and focuses on what technologies have been lost.  {In my most somber voice}  Man has forgotten how to forge the magical steel required for these swords.  Now they can only hope to find it in the wastelands.

Yeah, we have that too, but we have actually developed in-game reasons for the technology stagnation.  Not only that, but we’ve tried to think through what the other ramifications of this stagnation would be.

The point here is you need to know your world.  Not every blade of grass, but if they have been using swords and sorcery for ages, why?  Maybe magic is so cool that they have abandoned science, but if that’s the case, you need to have little things that happen because of it.  Maybe every farmer chants a little spell or cantrip when he’s plowing because no one bothered to invent tractors.  Maybe the chicken and goose tenders hum a little cantrip to make the fowl lay more eggs.  If magic really has replaced science, then it must have penetrated to the fundamental base.  If they don’t have chicken wire, do they have fox wards?

Maybe there is a ruling class that is good with magic and therefore wants to prevent technology from rising, because that might put power in the hands of the peasants.  But then this tyrannical government or ruling class (or whatever) must have other impacts on the world.  This would absolutely be a world of the haves and have nots - and that can be really cool to adventure in!

Or, like Fletnern, there may be a “secret” group who is opposed to technology because they have seen what it can do (like sunder a continent) and therefore they are “protecting” the world by not allowing anyone to develop the steam engine or gunpowder.  But there are ramifications to this one too.  No gunpowder or steam engine, so no industrial revolution.  OK, but the titans (the “invisible overlords”) are not stopping clockworks, so there are grandfather clocks, animated tin toys, and intricate locking mechanisms.

If your game world is a magical England, then you need to have beef more expensive than flour.  And that’s OK!  But few of us are adventuring on alternate Earths, so we need to think through what the technology is and what the ramifications of that level of technology are.  You are not on a mission to write an entire science book, but to plug some of the most glaring plot holes, should they exist.

This won’t just plug your plot holes.  It will make you think about your world, understand your world, and then write really cool adventures in your world based on its history.

This post was written as part of the upcoming The Circuitry of Magic aka All About Magitech, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one is showcasing all sorts of ways to use magic in different ways, including some that might resemble technology and/or machinery.

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 62 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.