03-27-2012, 07:48 AM | #1 |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Banestorm without technophobic wizards?
Anyone ever played, or at least given much thought, to what Banestorm might be like if there wasn't an artificially imposed technological freeze? I believe that it could be quite a fun setting.
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RyanW - Actually one normal sized guy in three tiny trenchcoats. |
03-27-2012, 07:49 AM | #2 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Banestorm without technophobic wizards?
I believe it would be very similar to Technomancer, wouldn't it?
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03-27-2012, 08:06 AM | #3 | |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: Banestorm without technophobic wizards?
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Adding Reverse Missiles to a modern world has one effect, but a world that already knows Reverse Missiles would likely have a completely different effect on the development of TL4+ warfare, for just one example. Of course, it's always difficult to make a fictional society without resorting to "Just like <X>, except <Y>." It's doubly difficult when <Y> is something that doesn't exist at all.
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RyanW - Actually one normal sized guy in three tiny trenchcoats. |
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03-27-2012, 08:58 AM | #4 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Banestorm without technophobic wizards?
It also threatens to raise the practical problems of advancing a preindustrial society to the industrial era. I think that most nations of Yrth would be in the middle of massive political struggles, some with newly strengthened kings would be trying to impose it from the top down, and some would have rejected it. The focus of the campaign would likely be on these struggles, not adventuring in fantasyland. There would be massive frustration that for the past 30 years or so, new Banestormees rarely know anything useful ...
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature |
03-27-2012, 09:06 AM | #5 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Banestorm without technophobic wizards?
Well adding modern TL8 people to TL3^ could end up with TL(3+5)^ instead of the Technomancer TL(6+2)^ true.
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03-27-2012, 09:15 AM | #6 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
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Re: Banestorm without technophobic wizards?
I think a good fix to the anti-tech Conspiracy would be to steal a page from Harry Potter, and just say Yrth's Ambient Mana fields keep electronics from working. As a result, no technology above TL5-6 works reliably.
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03-27-2012, 09:21 AM | #7 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Banestorm without technophobic wizards?
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Yrth is not a plausible alternate history, but an exercise in putting a gloss of versimilitude on a cool fantasy setting. You can't remove the technophobic wizards and ask how that logically changes the setting, because none of the features of the setting, not even the tech ban itself, proceed from that in the first place. It's part of the gloss, intended to make a setting decision (no guns or industrialization) superficially plausible. What you need to be doing is deciding what you *want* the setting without the ban to look like, impose one or two other bits of background to make your decision look sorta plausible, and run with it. Don't stare at the background too closely. One reason I dislike the entire Ministry of Serendipity scheme is that it has encouraged lots of people to look way too closely at part of it, to the extent of getting some of the circumvention plots written into 4e Banestorm, and that's a *bad* thing both for the plausiblity of the setting (it's shot through with anachronisms and standard fantasy tropes supported mostly by handwaving you really don't want to focus attention on) and for it's core function (generic fantasy, with a tacked on option of playing yourself).
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03-27-2012, 09:49 AM | #8 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Banestorm without technophobic wizards?
A whole heck of a lot of high tech has nothing to do with electricity. Microscopes, germ theory, guns, modern tactics, economics, .... the list goes on.
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03-27-2012, 10:03 AM | #9 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Banestorm without technophobic wizards?
Hard to say. One that that has never been made clear is how often new Banestorm arrivals show up from Earth or comparably advanced places. The fact is, very few new arrivals would be capable of re-inventing gunpowder much less drilling an oil well. They would probably have steam engines at the least. Guns seem likely...but so do deflect and reverse missiles items as a countermeasure so that swords and bayonets never quite go out of style.
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03-28-2012, 09:30 AM | #10 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Banestorm without technophobic wizards?
Quote:
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