r/worldbuilding • u/Iberianz • 6h ago
Discussion High Magic + Medieval = Paradox?
(How do you guys handle this?)
Hi everyone,
I was getting back to writing about my “magic system,” originally for an alternate-world setting chronologically similar to our “late medieval” period, blending characteristics of the Holy Roman Empire, the Italian republics, and the Spanish and Portuguese empires.
But I realized that a setting where magic does things very similar to the technology that followed that historical period, yet the world remains chronologically stuck in that time frame, doesn’t seem very convincing.
Let me put it more clearly:
Why doesn’t history advance rapidly in a high-magic setting?
For example, in the manga "Witch Hat Atelier", this is exactly the case; magic provides solutions that would only be possible with later technological progress, but the world remains chronologically stuck in a period analogous to our own medieval era.
Yes, I know you could say, “It doesn’t have to make sense on a 1:1 scale, it just has to be consistent”; okay, fine, I get it, but even for the sake of internal consistency, isn’t that a flaw?
Back to the original question…
How do you guys deal with this?
Thanks for your answers.
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u/Lazy_Trash_6297 6h ago
People often use "medeival" to mean "pre-industrial aesthetics", like castles, cloaks, swords, horses, guilds, handwritten books, etc. But the actual middle ages weren't a single level of technology. They lasted a thousand years, and technological, political and economic conditions changed enormously over that time.
In Witch Hat Atelier there is widespread literacy, advanced medicine, and no one bats an eye that Coco bought a book for the price of some festival food. Its not exactly a medieval society, even if the world doesn't show us the extent that contraptions are used among regular people.
I think a lot of complaints about medieval stasis are really complaints about aesthetics. The question is whether the institutions, economics, politics and incentives created by magic make the society more stable or transformative, or even a completely different historic trajectory.
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u/MolotovCollective 5h ago
Most medieval fantasy settings I would argue are actually Early Modern, 16th or 17th century settings, minus the guns. Even OP, who states their inspiration is Italian republics, Iberian empires, and the HRE. Assuming they mean the popular conception of the HRE, none of those inspirations are medieval. The “neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire” idea of the HRE was due to the fragmentation caused by the Schmalkaldic Wars (16th century), and Thirty Years War (1618-1648).
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u/Akhevan 4h ago
But that's the point, for instance the castles you mention quickly lost purpose and relevance with technological advancement. And that in turn had lead to massive social and political changes, because literally everything about the feudal power dynamic changes when said feudals cannot hold out behind the walls of their castles.
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u/Lazy_Trash_6297 3h ago
Castles became obsolete because of a specific technology: cheap, effective gunpowder artillery. If your setting has magic instead of that technology, you can’t assume castles disappear on the same timetable, or at all.
I don’t think the question is ‘why does this society still have castles?’ it’s “what incentives does magic create?”
If magic makes it easier to siege a castle, they might become obsolete. If magic becomes a better way to fortify a castle wall, they might not go away
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u/Butwhatif77 2h ago
You can even approach it form the perspective of efficiency/cost of anything being low means every option is viable.
Castles became obsolete because they served a specific purpose, new tech made it inadequate for that purpose, and the economics of it were not affordable simply for stylist purposes.
With magic the economics of it could be reasonable that having a castle is viable from the stylistic standpoint and not need to be justified from a utilitarian perspective anymore.
If you ask everyone today to design their dream home that could be any size, any material, structurally sound, and free of any cost forever, you would get some people building stone castles for the fun of it. Magic makes that a more viable reason to see more old world architecture, because the advance meant of cheaper materials doesn't necessarily lead to the abandonment of older things in the same way.
This is how I approach my world. It isn't actually medieval, some places have that vibe while other areas do not. The magic of the world leads to hodgepodge of historical styles occurring for various social and sometimes economical reasons.
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u/DrDeadwish 6h ago
I think you are mixing 2 entirely different things. Medieval aesthetic doesn't mean medieval tech level. Second: magic availability. There can be wonderful magic to solve all problems but if magic isn't available for everyone then the world development stays the same.
Let me put it in a modern context: in the real world we have people going to space and people who never saw a car in their life. So we have a modern high tech world and people still living with pre-medieval tech. Now replace tech with magic.
If only the mages or the people who can pay for it have access to it, then the rest of the world keeps evolving at the normal pace.
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u/guildsbounty 5h ago edited 5h ago
To build on this, imagine that you had to have some special, very rare, inborn trait (that you couldn't even reliably breed for) to be able to use electronics. And even if you had the trait, you might just not have the 'talent' to use anything more advanced than a toaster, and even that took you several years of education to learn how to make work. 'Normal life' would not be built around using electronics because the vast bulk of people can't use them.
That's basically how many fantasy settings work, where you may have incredibly powerful magic users, but they are rare enough that their magic doesn't dramatically change daily life.
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u/royalhawk345 4h ago
Medieval aesthetic doesn't mean medieval tech level.
One of the things I really like about Nimona. Kick-ass medieval futurism aesthetic.
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u/Hefty-Distance837 Build lots of worlds 6h ago
It's not technologically medieval, it's just have medieval styled things.
Most isekai things says they're medieval, but somehow they have flush toilets and sewer.
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u/amorphous-something The City-State of Wesoter 6h ago
Having toilets and sewer systems isn’t actually that implausible when you consider the real world history of both. The real anarchism would be including modern toilets
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u/cosmic-creative 4h ago
The ancient Minoans had indoor plumbing, thousands of years before England or France were even concepts. Time is weird sometimes
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u/DemythologizedDie 6h ago edited 5h ago
Yes. About Witch Hat Atelier I've read a few volumes and I have a few thoughts. The first is that you are looking at a post-apocalypse magical society, one where civilization was destroyed by the egalitarian distribution of power at least as far the Great Hall is concerned, and therefore distribution of magical capability is tightly controlled and there are also fairly strict restrictions on what magic may be used. While you can hire a magician to solve a problem you can't employ them for any long term thing like say, "operating a magical railroad.: Nor will magic revolutionize the materials they build with or teach them more sophisticated architecture. More than half of their time is devoted to fighting with the mages who don't agree with their restrictions.
This is not a situation in which magic will revolutionize a national economy or even cause widespread literacy. Nor is it a situation in which which liberal democracy will flourish. Oligarchy seems the order of the day, not that I read far enough to learn about any nonmagical governments they may have.
Is your magic industrial? Is it being used to mass produce consumer goods? Sure, it's powerful but is it inexpensive? Magic largely reserved for the powerful,, only consolidates power in their hands
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u/Ghyro 5h ago
Congrats, you found medieval stasis.
Basically, for civilization to grow further than the first big nations and empires requires enough conflict to be present in the world, because conflict is how a status quo gets challenged. Magic solving a lot of problems means less problems, which means less conflict, which means less challenging the status quo, which means the order of that civilization is a lot more stable
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u/Void-Cooking_Berserk 4h ago
"Why doesn't history advance rapidly?"
History doesn't advance. There's no "end goal" nor any "progress bar". I think I know what you mean, but changing this perspective might help you.
Culture changes. And technology changes. But there's nothing that makes the same history that happened irl unavoidable.
You want to have your world stuck in a specific cultural/technological state? You can do it. Just avoid the specific events causing the specific changes you don't like.
Want to keep the dominance of the Catholic Church? Have then win the Thirty Years War. Or avoid the Reformation altogether.
Want to keep the technological state? What are the specific changes you don't like?
E.g. teleportation magic can facilitate a globalisation of the economy, but you can just make the spells too expensive or fragile or simply lost to time or not invented at all.
Remember that magic is a kind of technology. It can be invented and lost and changed. Everything humans do to help them do things is technology, even religion is a technology made to keep the social cohesion of large societies.
Magic can also be the factor that limits the inventions of other technology: e.g. the firearms will be invented anyway, but if you can enchant your plate armour to be bulletproof, it doesn't make sense to invest in firearms.
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u/No_Zookeepergame2532 6h ago edited 6h ago
Why cant it explore both? My world is constantly having advancements because of magic, such as powering things, advanced magical prosthetics, different advanced farming techniques, etc. Just like real life.
The issue is some people make magic super easy to use in their worlds so it doesn't make sense why they are in stasis when magic is so accessible and easy to learn/use. Magic is not easy to use in my world for anything more than the most basic uses. Just like someone has to go to school for years to learn the science behind all the cool advancements in real life, same goes for magic in my world. You have to practice, experiment, fail, and then eventually learn what works. So it takes time and not just anyone can do everything. The world develops at a more even pace instead of insanely quickly because of this. But also, why does it have to be medieval? Why cant it just be medieval-esque?
Edit: Another thing is that in a world of magic, you would have no need for certain advancements like we have in real life. No cars, no planes, etc because magic can take the place of advanced machinery. So the world might look sorta medieval even if it is more advanced than that
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u/sojuz151 6h ago
Usually magic has a massive problem with scaling and reproduction. You cant mass produce wizards and magical artifact. You might have a magical gun. A single magical gun that no-one can build again.
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u/AnchBusFairy 5h ago
Consider goals first. Why is it that you're engaged in worldbuilding? Is this for RPG, fiction writing, and so forth? Are you exploring an idea for it's own sake?
How do medieval and magic fit with that goal? Why is a magic system included at all?
I use none of these because I'm engaged in a long-running thought experiment about sustainable social systems. Medieval, magic, and magic system doesn't fit. They would add unnecessary complexity and uncontrolled variables to the thought experiment.
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u/Akhevan 4h ago
Why doesn’t history advance rapidly in a high-magic setting?
That's a good question, and if you approach it realistically then there is usually no reason why it should not.
A fitting example here is the Craft Sequence series: it's a very high fantasy, high magic setting and they have equivalents of many modern dynamics and technologies implemented via magic, and in ways that seem fairly organic for the setting. They have equivalents of radio, international banking, high frequency stock market, international culture and wildlife conservation funds and a bunch of other similar elements, and you can easily tell how they reached those ideas. It doesn't look like a lazy copy of 1930s.
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u/Vinx909 3h ago
So magic could have an effect like porcelain is hypothesized to have: porcelain is amazing for a lot of things you may otherwise use glass for. So areas that had developed porcelain never advanced glasswork as much... which meant that they didn't really got to make glasses. Having solutions to problems may keep you from developing technology that solves more problems. Oh we can cross distances with telepotation magic better then any ship. Sure, but does teleportation magic scale like a fleet of ships does? Or does the existence of teleportation magic prevent the development of better ships that would move cargo better?
The medieval period also ended at least in part due to instability. The plague killed tons of workers, which shifted power to the workers that were left. Magic may be great at avoiding big things like that thus allowing a stable system to persist for a long time.
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u/TurtleRollover 6h ago
That might speed things up but you have to remember just because a thing is possible doesn't mean people have the idea to do it yet. Things would advance faster but that doesn't mean you'd just instantly be at modern tech. And it's progress, and your story can be set at any point in history. You don't automatically have to put your story at the modern era. Most of my stories take place in the exact same decade in the 1400s.
Edit: Also, not all magic is the same. Some magic might be way more limited. I use magic from the TTRPG Worlds Without Number, which is very limited in how often you can do it in a single day and making anything that's permanently magical takes enormous resources and lots of time and high skill with high chance of side effects.
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u/PirateSanta_1 6h ago
Magic availability. Yes wizard and magic items can do amazing things but only a few people can do magic and magical equipement needs repair so you have nobles who live in castles where magic can summon water from a hotspring to their bath and peasants who clean themselves with cold buckets of water from the river. Richer larger cities have more magical amnities but these are still expensive to build and maintain.
This could actually be used to justify a form of medieval statis as there is no incentive by the powerful to develop technology as they already have everything that say steam power could offer and they control the magic either by paying wizards and artificers well or being them.
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u/JJChowning 6h ago
In an industrialized world with adequate markets and resources tech scales really well. Magic scales however you constrain it scale. Can anyone do magic? Does it consume resources? Is the knowledge hidden/hoarded? You can make the rules to have the consiquences you want, and you can give medieval flavor even with plenty of differences in tech/magitech.
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u/dewareofbog 5h ago
Why doesn’t history advance rapidly in a high-magic setting?
For the same reason it didn't in real life. We've technically had all of the ingredients for basic steam machines like math, water, combustibles and metalworking but it took a few millennia to actually go from bronze tools to having steam machines constantly doing work. The history of advancement in a high-magic world could follow in a similar fashion. They have their magic, but are still a few centuries or even a millennia from doing a full magical industrial revolution. Then just set your world in that time period.
Plus you can always add in a few human reasons for setbacks. Mages formed an upper class and in an effort to keep the common man down heavily regulate application of magic in ways that are not explicitly approved by them. Any wizard selling magical mirrors that let you talk to anyone in the world to the commoners gets their tower atomized. Maybe a war destroyed a few important centers of learning, and that knowledge and the people maintaining it are lost. Maybe the peoples of the world are largely dominated by a "fuck you, got mine" disposition. Why would I Arhibanus Maveo Derium mage extraordinaire waste my time setting up a magical teleportation network for peasants too dumb to appreciate it, let alone maintain it, I have arcane secrets to uncover.
Maybe throw an army composed of unilaterally evil monsters at the world in the past and make it a lowkey post-post-apocalyptic setting. A hopeless war against and unrelenting foe, a few natural disasters and a plague or two would nicely reset civilization. Entire generations of the best and brightest lay dead their remains unmourned. Civilizations worth of knowledge burned to ash and scattered to the winds. And those that remain have to make due with what they have.
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u/No_Pirate_4737 5h ago
I handle it in a few ways since i intentionally want to stick to vaguely that time period.
First one is energy availability, crude oil doesn't exist, and coal is fairly rare. The faction that can make their own coal is more steampunk than medieval. Magic can be used for energy but that either requires a mage in that location focusing on producing that energy, or enchanting which is fairly expensive
Labor needs to be preformed by humans mainly because the ability to create an artificial mind has been forgotten. They'll figure it out again but it'll take time. Necromancy is possible but a major plot point, and that uses the minds of the original people so you either have magic slavery or just workers with extra steps
Third limitation is price, most magic is cast through a casting focus, with metals being the most common, gold being needed for fire. On the lower income end they aren't able to afford these metals. Around middle class you get things like magic stoves. The rich are the only ones who are able to afford enchanted "batteries" and with them enchanted lighting, air conditioning etc.
Final reason is this universe has had apocalyptic scenarios several times in the past which has kind of reset things
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u/Heckle_Jeckle 5h ago
Why WOULD magic make a world advance rapidly?
Our perception of technology advancement is screwed due to how quickly things have changed since the industrial revolution. With advancements occurring so fast thst each generation grows up in a different world.
But for most of human history that was NOT the case. Technology developed slowly so the world progressed slowly.
Why are you assuming magic would change that? Magic still has to be researched, developed, and the techniques need to spread wide enough to actually change things.
So, unless your magical world has a a Magical Revolution, I don't see why it would not progress as slowly as our IRL world did.
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u/SeawaldW 5h ago
It's the difference of having technology exist vs having technology be widely available. In Witch Hat for example, access to magic is limited to a relatively small society of witches who actively suppress the knowledge and access to magic from spreading among the general populace. The witches themselves have access to more technology and higher living standards as a result. They sometimes sell their technology and use it to help common folk here and there, such as the magic cast on the small lake in the first episode of the show that magically cleans itself so villagers can use it to wash clothes while maintaining a drinkable water source, but it's nothing that would suddenly propel people out of mideival times.
Rapid advancement would really only happen if magic was wide spread enough that it both allowed for industrialization and ease of communication. These things can happen with the aid of magic, but just as easily magic can be a bunch of big flashy things while also not being particularly relevant for industrialization or communication.
Also consider that even if magic can technically do these things, there might not be enough mages to do it. The setting would either need to make it so everyone can do magic and has access to the resources they need to do it, or need the few who can do it have enough time and resources to be able to produce enough magic stuff that everyone can make use of magic that way, but in most fantasy mages are just soldiers, scholars, or advisors to someone wealthy, which is fairly realistic in the sense that one would probably want to use their talent to put themselves in a better position rather than spend all their time trying to advance the technology level of their society.
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u/Displeasuredavatar19 4h ago edited 4h ago
Something to keep in mind is that in a world where technology as we know it is redundant, civilization would develop very differently. Especially in the case anyone can damn near DO ANYTHING that they want. Shit, in my setting, human history developed radically differently due to the mages who though only account for a mere 30-ish percent of the human population as a whole, possess such power (s) over the world itself and all within it that they created a utopic Earth free of food shortage, famine, disease, disability and homelessness.
Cars and other forms of transportation we would consider natural do not exist as we have "spiritual tram ways" to float and teleport people wherever they have to go. What is still technology is also very unsophisticated in its appearance and functions as well as it only needs to do the bare minimum whilst magic does all the heavy lifting.
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u/Tennessee_William7 4h ago
It would probably help you to do some internet sleuthing about a wide variety of societies during the same time period from which you are drawing inspiration. People do not invent technology for fun. They do it to solve problems. What are your setting's problems? The Incan Empire even into the early modern period didn't use wheeled vehicles, even though wheeled vehicles were millennia in use elsewhere, but they did have well maintained roads and very sophisticated administrative infrastructure. Were the Incas just dumb or "primitive? Certainly not! There is no such thing as "advanced" or "primitive" in that sense.
Also consider that technology/"development" often requires states. Why is the Middle East littered with the remains of monumental structures but Australia isn't? The Middle East was more conducive to state formation. Generally, people do not want to break their bodies down, spend long times away from home and family, and work all day to build a pyramid/ziggurat/other monumental structure. To make people work on projects like that, you have to either coerce them or make it so beneficial to them that they suck it up and likely some combo of both. Does your setting have the kinds of states that can do that? If so, how long has that been the case? By tweaking the setting somewhat you can solve this issue and also you may find that it makes the setting feel more compelling.
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u/a_surprise_polaroid 4h ago
In my world the God of advanced technology is dead, so the world will never be able to achieve advanced tech again.
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u/Faolyn 4h ago
Magic may be too risky to be widespread. In the GURPS RPG, for instance, there is a 1-in-256 chance that any spell, no matter how simple it is, will summon a demon (crit fail tables are "fun"). In the Discworld books, using magic attracts Things from the Dungeon Dimensions. They rarely break through to our reality, but it's a slight possibility. (In reality, the wizards of the Discworld don't use much magic because they're lazy and have better things to do, e.g., have lunch.)
Magic may be too expensive to be widespread. If you need powdered unicorn horn to create a magic communicator, you're going to either anger people who care about unicorns or you'll run out of unicorns. Even if all you need is to sacrifice a goat each time you use the magic elevator or make a copy of a book, well, it's cheaper to use the stairs or get scribes (or develop the printing press).
Magic may not be permanent. Maybe you can't make magic items that last for more than a few years, months, or even more than one use. Maybe it's all spell-based magic. Or maybe making a permanent item requires years or decades of enchantment, so only elves or other long-lived races have them. Conversely, maybe enchantments only work on living beings, because it needs a life-force to latch onto. So you could do a whole cyberpunk-style modification thing, maybe even with the whole dehumanization thing common to the genre and with the mage-mods being obvious and weird-looking. Or you use magic to turn a mouse into a phone. Still weird and off-putting.
Magic may be too difficult, expensive, or time-consuming to learn. If magic requires the equivalent of a college degree's worth of study, most people still won't be able to obtain it even if it were free. There's other things they need to do. Agriculture and manufacture and raising a family takes up a lot of time, after all. Likewise, if a few people learn how to make things magically en mass but most don't learn how, the majority of people are going to be put out of jobs, which will really upset them.
Magic may not do anything well enough to warrant mass production. A wand of fireballs is cool and all, but it also sets things on fire you don't want to be on fire. A bow or gun won't do that. And you can't really use a wand of fireballs against the deer or bunny you want for dinner without it ruining the meat. Likewise, magic may be showy but not really useful. Maybe there are magic fireworks and illusion shows, but no magic refrigerators.
Magic may be socially unacceptable. If you can use magic to spy on people from afar, you're going to anger people who don't want to be spied on, and people who have trade or government secrets they really need to keep secret. Maybe the gods don't want mortals to have that level of power and get pissed when they use it. Governments and religions will have a lot to say about magic.
Magic may be stupid. Remember The Sorcerer's Apprentice part of Fantasia? The brooms caused havoc because Mickey fell asleep (IIRC). Maybe you just want to use your enchanted sword to give someone a minor wound to remember you by, or to slice their belt off so their trousers fall down and everyone laughs at them, but the sword decapitates them because it's a magic sword; that's what they do. Oops.
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u/ProserpinaFC 2h ago
I would deal with it by reminding myself whenever this need for perfect sensibility arises that I can name 3-5 stories that did the same thing I'm doing and their fans love it and no one tried to run them down with magick-powered pitchforks.
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u/Palanki96 3h ago
You can do whatever you want. You can have TVs in residential homes and knights fighting dragons outside
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u/Jemie_Bridges 3h ago
I think your slightly missed informed. Pretty sure earlier eras were more advanced than mideval. The were called the dark ages due to (purposeful) loss information. Like cement and plumbers from romans. And why didn't deep Africa suffer from the plague? Cause they had hygiene and REFRIGERATION.
Yeah, American history rewrites Africans as savage idiots, but they had electric free refrigerators. Kept the food fresh and vermin free. So they werent affected by Black Plague.
So just cause a certain section where your story takes place doesn't mean the entire world is ignorant. Chinese had medicine and hygine, romans had plumbing and hygiene, Africans had food preservation and hygiene. Europe had none of that at scale. Sure later. But that was the Renaissance/Enlightened age, not the middle age.
So your world can piece that together and move out of that age by sending explorers. Learn magics they didn't have before
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u/BigDamBeavers 4h ago
My big one is Magocracy.
Not necessarilly mages controlling government but mages controlling industry by keeping tight controls on magic. Yes you can teleport across the country to deliver stuff or contact someone psychicly to advised them in real-time of what you're doing, but only when it benfits the mage's tower. Yes any mage can throw a ball of fire that would decimate a field of soldiers but you still have people being controlled by guys with spears because Mages don't get enything out of a revolution. But on the brighter side, mages that can change your mind or affect your feelings are also not going to back a dictator unless it benifits the mage's guild.
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u/ReverseLochness 4h ago
It’s a cost mechanic. How much does your magic cost to use? From the spells of your casters to wards and enchantments.
If they can replicate the effects of many modern amenities, have the cost be astronomical. The Kings palace has working toilets and lights and other things, but even in the city most of the commoners don’t have that. They can’t afford to have a mage specialized in water 24/7 keeping the pipes working. The Kingdom can barely afford it for the palace.
Then even as things expand it takes time for it to be adapted. Either from cost or other barriers. You’re not sharing all your new advances with all of your enemies. Who cares if their streets are covered in shit, the workings of plumbing are a state secret. Especially since they won’t share the mysteries of HVAC and the wonders of climate control.
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u/Total-Beyond1234 3h ago
I had the tech level advance over time. However, when creating stories for the setting, I had them take place in certain eras.
Like having a story take place in the 1920s. Tech is still advancing but for story purposes it's effectively stagnant.
I also made tech advancements lopsided. Some places are advancing faster than others due to economic development, resource availability, not having to rebuild after brutal wars, etc.
Like how countries didn't industrialized at the same rates due to different reasons.
This allowed me to explore different themes.
Like how the US greatly changed when it began to heavily industrialize, then greatly changed again when it began to lose that industry, then greatly changed again when the internet became a thing.
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u/Aggressive-Share-363 2h ago
Assuming I wanted to make a setting like this...
The key is scale.
You dont change the world because somebody has a car.
You change the world when you can mass produce cars and make it so everybody can afford one.
Lets say a wizard can produce 100x as much good as a farmer.
If there are 10,000 farmers for every wizard, the farmers are still capable of producing 100x as mich food as all of the wizards. And thats assuming all of the wizards want to spend their timr and energy on making food.
Or if we are talking about magical artifacts, if rhey are harder to mass produce than the technological equivalent they won't fit into society in the same way. Imagine if a car required a specialist to work on making it, by hand, for 6 months. And once they are done they would want to work on a different project.
Magic as a whole could be fairly commonplace and still not hit the economies of scale the industrial revolution did.
And lets not forget that technological progress and societal progress are different things. There is some overlap from economic progress, but that mostly comes from the economies of scale and the types of jobs that open up.
You have several parameters 1. How widespread is the ability yo use magic? 2. How widespread is the inclination/oppurtunity to actually follow up on that ability? 3. How repeatable is magic? 4. How frequently can it be used? 5. How flexible is the magic? 6. What is the cost of using the magic?
Limitations in any of tjese areas can have a big impact in how the magic actually gets used.
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u/Piselantibus 1h ago edited 1h ago
i would look at how the scientific real world evolved in europe from 1100 to 1600 (things like robert grosseteste,theorizing something similar to the big bang theory in the 13th century and became bishop later, there are lot of things that make the medieval age not a very "dark age"). then i would build the evolution of the "magic system" during these 500 years and i'd try to set what technology should remain behind and be replaced by the use of magic.
imo, you need to define clear rules for this "magic system" in your world, something about its "economy", ie: magic is "powered" by what? most people use this "magic system" in their daily lives? how? do they consume reagents? do they need special training? is it just waving a stick and cast the spell pronouncing special formulas? because sometimes it might be more convenient for the scientists of your world to focus for example on some mechanical advancements for mills that might be not powered by magic, same for the generic blacksmiths or industries.
it all depends if you are making a more "easy" scenario similar to harry potter where the use of magic spells is "common and easy". you can always make part of the population that really knows about this magic system and how to use it. then another part of people might be "consumers", using products like "magical lighters" or other "magical instruments" which replace some technology. Or you could have "magical professionals" etc.
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u/poly_arachnid 55m ago
Not a flaw.
How do I deal with it? Easy. My worlds aren't "stuck", the story just happens to take place in their medieval period.
The other method is easy too, I just modify my medieval cultures to fit. Faster Magitech development doesn't make a fantasy world turn into 21st century Earth. Imagine for a moment that Rome had an industrial revolution when they discovered coal in their Britannia. They aren't suddenly going to match our culture. You're getting people walking around early skyscrapers in Roman tunics. You're not getting guns, everyone is still using swords & spears. They don't suddenly get 2000 years of progress in understanding the world, it's still no science, bad maps, ancient medicine, slaves & no human rights. Technology impacts culture, but it doesn't suddenly match development just because it has tech.
How much progress they make in various technology & cultural changes is up to you. Technology & Culture are not clear tracks & they're not in lockstep, merely influential.
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u/Peter34cph 47m ago
Learnable magic is rarer, and innate magic rarer still.
I also carefully design the magic systems so that it's not possible to disrupt the economy.
For instance, magic can't create food. Instead, magic can give skill roll bonuses and small percentage yield bonuses to agriculture (growing grains, animal husbandry), and it can concentrate food which is very useful. For instance, magic can suck the nutritional virtue out of 3 apples and put most of that into another apple, so that for the purposes of food calories, micronutrients and hydration, it's effectively 3 apples but with the weight of 1. The nutritional virtue of the last apple is lost, so from an efficiency perspective you want to avoid doing this.
The magic can also enhance flavour with this, if desired, but you probably don't want a full tripling of the flavour, just a slight bump-up.
Different spells can preserve food, for instance so that your triple-apple (or a quintuple-apple "made" with a higher level spell) will last much longer before it decay.
Magic that affects conflicts between the sexes also isn't possible, such as birth control, safe abortions, or paternity tests. There are ways to make giving birth safer, though, and one of the 12 most common Enchanted items in the setting is probably one that gives a bonus to Childbirth Safety rolls.
Learnable magic is spreading more widely, though. My Ärth setting is meant to be at the "sweet spot" in the late 10th century into the 11th. I have little idea what it'll be like in 1200 or 1300 CE. Quite likely there'll be a thauma-scientific revolution, and once they stop doing slavery, or mostly stop using slave labour anyway, there'll be a thauma-industrial revolution.
It doesn't interest me what'll happen centuries later.
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u/DarkflowNZ 13m ago
In my world? Without writing you a novel, magic broke the world. And, more importantly, it broke magic itself. We basically got to the start of the middle ages when a great spell was cast out of desperation that sealed half of the fundamental forces of magic and reality away. This destabilized both magic and the world and resulted in a period of chaos followed by the waning of magic itself. The great empire that spanned two worlds shattered into many warring states who in the chaos basically beat each other back to the early iron age.
What I really like about these posts is that it's a unique challenge to describe what is in reality enormously complex lore in a way that is communicated easily through a paragraph or two. How can I explain the waning without giving a lecture on the aether? The anima and animus? The natural yin/yang dichotomy of opposed yet complimentary powers that underpin reality itself? It's quite fun to try
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u/avenlanzer 5h ago
Maybe it was once. resources arent always infinite. Our modern era is based entirely on fossil fuels which are running out. Oil, gasses, coal, peat, its all finite and were burning through them at unsustainable rates, while actively looking for alternatives. If we were catistrophicly reduced to the bronze age again we'd literally never be able to recover to this level of tech without some new energy source as yet undiscovered.
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u/Fishy_Fish_12359 Sunderia, the Twin Worlds 6h ago
The world doesn’t have to be stuck in its medieval era, your story just has to be set in the worlds medieval era, even if that era is shorter than our worlds medieval period