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Old 03-27-2012, 07:48 AM   #1
RyanW
 
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Default 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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Old 03-27-2012, 07:49 AM   #2
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Default Re: Banestorm without technophobic wizards?

I believe it would be very similar to Technomancer, wouldn't it?
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Old 03-27-2012, 08:06 AM   #3
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Default Re: Banestorm without technophobic wizards?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
I believe it would be very similar to Technomancer, wouldn't it?
That was my first thought, but there is some significant difference. Technomancer is a modern world that adapted to sudden magic, while TechnoBanestorm would be a world that has had a thousand years of magically influenced technological development.

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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Old 03-27-2012, 08:58 AM   #4
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Default 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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Old 03-27-2012, 09:06 AM   #5
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Default 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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Old 03-27-2012, 09:15 AM   #6
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Default 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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Old 03-27-2012, 09:21 AM   #7
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Default Re: Banestorm without technophobic wizards?

Quote:
Originally Posted by RyanW View Post
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.
The real problem is the true answer is it can look like whatever you want.

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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Old 03-27-2012, 09:49 AM   #8
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Default Re: Banestorm without technophobic wizards?

Quote:
Originally Posted by LoneWolf23k View Post
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.
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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Old 03-27-2012, 10:03 AM   #9
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Default Re: Banestorm without technophobic wizards?

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
I believe it would be very similar to Technomancer, wouldn't it?
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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Old 03-28-2012, 09:30 AM   #10
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Default Re: Banestorm without technophobic wizards?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran
I believe it would be very similar to Technomancer, wouldn't it?
I'd say so. Any differences you want to assume would probably come more from dramatic, rather than historical, imperative. Not to say that cultural differences should not show up.
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