Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 alpha 4/15/85; site weitek.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!hplabs!turtlevax!weitek!robert From: robert@weitek.UUCP (Robert Plamondon) Newsgroups: net.games.frp Subject: Re: Social implications of magic Message-ID: <391@weitek.UUCP> Date: Fri, 28-Mar-86 20:39:58 EST Article-I.D.: weitek.391 Posted: Fri Mar 28 20:39:58 1986 Date-Received: Sun, 30-Mar-86 03:26:09 EST References: <9865@ucla-cs.ARPA> <386@weitek.UUCP> <1249@udenva.UUCP> Organization: Weitek Corp. Sunnyvale Ca. Lines: 94 > >[me] > >If the average person can become a Cleric (and he can), and being a > >Cleric looks like a good deal (and it is), you'd expect a society of > >Clerics! I don't find the idea very appealing. In article <1249@udenva.UUCP>, showard@udenva.UUCP (Mr. Blore) writes: > Well, the average person can become a cleric, if he's willing to invest > the time, money, effort, and risk in training. Being a cleric looks like > a good deal until you realise that a cleric is described as a servant and > emissary (read 'pawn') of his/her deity(ies). In a medieval society (which the D&D universe claims to be), most people are peasants, living a precarious, impoverished, powerless existence. Being a D&D Cleric would be preferable, no? > And if there are too many who want to be clerics, the gods and their > temples will start to be more selective about whom they accept as trainees. > If you think of the world as a market economy, the producers of clerics (the > gods and high-level clerics who train them) will attempt not to flood the > market. There will not be more clerics in a society than that society could > reasonably support. All of which is distinctly different from medieval society and the way things are presented in D&D. My point is: D&D's rules and the D&D universe don't go together. > Remember that the builders of the castle > will have just as much access to magic as the attackers. In the official > D&D/AD&D rules, there aren't a lot of large-scale defensive spells, but there > are: wall of force, anti-magic shell, protection from evil/good, globe of > invulnerability, as well as lots of magic items which could be used, like > the magic of a ring of spell turning or certain ioun stones. But the fact remains that a society with widely available magic would never develop the elaborate castles of medieval Europe: the things you are defending against are entirely different. In spite of this, D&D is presented with medieval-style walled cities and castles, as if they were useful against the real threats. > > Men-at-arms aren't > >enough to guard towns, so SWAT teams of mages (or something even > >stranger) would be necessary. > > Agreed, again. But what's wrong with that? If there is magic available, > why wouldn't cities and armies use it to their advantage? While we're on > the subject, why should city watchmen always be untrained rabble? Sure, they > were in the real world, but this isn't the real world we're talking about. > A city's militia should have trained military (read 'high-level fighters') > in command of it, or the city won't last long. Militia *ISN'T* always untrained rabble; but that's not the point. The point is that city guards as they existed in the middle ages or as they are described in D&D are inappropriate to a world with D&D magic and characters in it. > > Armored knights would (by and large) be > >dogmeat when they encountered their first medium-level mage, so > >armored chivalry as the dominant force is highly unlikely. > No they wouldn't. The armored knight is in all probability a medium-level > fighter or cavalier. His retainers might be in trouble, but I'll play a 7th > level fighter against a 7th level MU (or the other way around) and give you > even odds any day of the week. You'd lose your money. The imporant thing about armored chivalry is that they have no missile weapons, and the imporant thing about medium-level mages is that they have long-range high-damage spells. If the fighter lived long enough to get close, the mage could simply ride away on his less encumbered, faster horse. In any event, the point is that armored chivalry was dominant because they were virtually unbeatable by the arms of the day. With a high level of magic, this is patently not true. If the reasons for armored knights dominating society don't exist, they probably won't dominate the society. Ancient Rome, for example, was dominated by unarmed, unarmored civilians. > >My own campaign is a medieval campaign with custom rules, which (like > >PENDRAGON from Chaosium) has no PC spellcasters, and few NPC > >spellcasters. > That sounds interesting, and plausible. But how do the players feel about > being unable to use magic? Let's face it, being able to decimate those pur- > suing orcs with a fireball is fun! It's even more fun to decimate them with sword and lance! -- Robert Plamondon UUCP: {turtlevax, cae780}!weitek!robert FidoNet: 143/12 robert plamondon "How about a little fire, Scarecrow?"