TL 3+2 Magitech

[Jürgen Hubert]

As some of you might now, I've been developing a fantasy setting which is currently going through a magical industrial revolution - powered by fairly abundant magic and magic items instead of steam (hence TL3+2). This abundance of magic items is made possible by a substance called "azoth", which can be used to provide the energy necessary for powerful enchantments, thus avoiding the traditional "slow and sure" enchantment method (however, you can't use your own energy for the "Quick and Dirty" method except for specialized wizards' tool such as staffs and powerstones).

This means that enchantment is no longer limited by the time powerful enchanters have available for enchanting, but primarily limited by the supply of azoth. With this in mind, the price for enchantments has stabilized at $50 per energy point - which considering that Starting Wealth for TL5 is $5000 instead of $1000 for "traditional" TL3 fantasy campaigns still makes them comparably cheap, though not necessarily affordable for every family.

Even though no steam is used, I still want to recapture the flavor of the Industrial Age - locomotives, powered ships, and so forth. But instead of being powered by steam, powered mechanical items are powered by specialized golems integrated into their very structure (often taking the shape of pistons and the like, instead of the traditional humanoid form).

But I really, really don't want to calculate how strong each variety of golem needs to be to power each particular machine. Therefore, my guideline is to take typical TL 5 steam-powered machinery and double the price - and that doubling represents the cost of the golem enchantment. While this is expensive, it also means that such machines will never need any kind of fuel - effectively, they are perpetuum mobiles powered by enchantment.


So, these are my working assumptions. Now feel free to criticize the concept and think about all the implications.

I will be way over here, watching.

[Varyon]

For starters, rail transportation is going to be a lot cheaper - startup costs are a bit higher (I think the rails still cost more than the trains, however), but there's probably less maintenance and - more importantly - no fuel costs and no need for extra workers keeping the fires going.

You're probably also going to have more of a problem with Luddites - golem power is probably going to put a lot more people out of work than the comparatively minor labor-saving devices historical Luddites were targeting.

On the bright side, there's less pollution.

[thulben]

When you brought this up in the other thread, my first thought wasn't that the golems were the trains and such, but rather that the golems replaced the coalmen on board a regular train. It's a little less "cool", but it does make it easier to back into costs and such.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by thulben

When you brought this up in the other thread, my first thought wasn't that the golems were the trains and such, but rather that the golems replaced the coalmen on board a regular train. It's a little less "cool", but it does make it easier to back into costs and such.

I think it's more interesting if the actual control over the heavy machinery is still done by people. After all, that makes it far easier to misuse them.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Varyon

For starters, rail transportation is going to be a lot cheaper - startup costs are a bit higher (I think the rails still cost more than the trains, however), but there's probably less maintenance and - more importantly - no fuel costs and no need for extra workers keeping the fires going.

Yeah.

Personally, I'd price 'no fuel costs and no low-skill labour requirements in stoking' as a bit more than +1 CF on steam engines, myself, just from a balance point of view. From a world-building/economic modelling point of view, I'd think that the amazing variety of stuff you can do with azoth would justify more of a mark-up on golem engines than just double the cost of normal steam engines.

Since there is a hard limit on supply of these things and everyone will want one, much more so than steam engines, which furthermore are not artificially scarce for most of TL5, I'd go to CF +4 or even CF +9. Or, actually, just figure out if you really want transport costs to be much cheaper with golem trains than steam trains and if not, add a cost factor that takes into account the savings on fuel and labour.

At the very least, have the savings pay for themselves in 5-6 years at best, but probably you'd want to match expected RoI for typical TL5 projects, so you'll have a similar economic climate as the historical period and golem trains aren't far and away the best investments anyone can make.

[whswhs]

Do you have GURPS Steampunk? The Qabala setting there has somewhat similar assumptions, though its golems are created by devotional enchantment rather than by burning azoth. It paid a little attention to the social issues, with rabbinic law saying that golems must be made not to replace men, but to do things they couldn't do, because they demanded too much strength, or endurance of hostile environments, or other such things—there's even a vignette about specialized tiny golems that can cut gems or perform internal surgery.

Is azoth a nonrenewable resource, and is anyone in the setting worrying about "the magic goes away" as a scenario? (Jevons's The Coal Question discussed this during the Victorian era, for a different resource.)

My rule of thumb is that a living creature's sustainable power output, in watts, is equal to its Basic Lift, in pounds, times its Basic Move, in yards/second. Divide by 1000 to get kW, of course. You can push that up by a factor of 5 or 10, but only for well under a minute; that probably doesn't work for inanimate beings like golems that neither have nor spend FP.

Bill Stoddard

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Is azoth a nonrenewable resource, and is anyone in the setting worrying about "the magic goes away" as a scenario? (Jevons's The Coal Question discussed this during the Victorian era, for a different resource.)

The process of its generation is described here, but for the purpose of this discussion it suffices to say it is a renewable resource and its generation scales with the population in the big cities.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

The process of its generation is described here, but for the purpose of this discussion it suffices to say it is a renewable resource and its generation scales with the population in the big cities.

That sounds like a positive feedback process.

Have you ever read Walter Jon Williams's Metropolitan and City on Fire? He portrays a future hyperurbanized landscape that might have evolved out of something like what you describe.

Bill Stoddard

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by whswhs

That sounds like a positive feedback process.

Have you ever read Walter Jon Williams's Metropolitan and City on Fire? He portrays a future hyperurbanized landscape that might have evolved out of something like what you describe.

Bill Stoddard

Nope, though this sounds worth checking out.

Anyway, this setting is just starting out in the process. Its city-states have populations in the low millions at best so that I can capture the "Early Industrial Age" flair. Which of course includes all the social disruption and conflict that makes for interesting gaming...

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

Anyway, this setting is just starting out in the process. Its city-states have populations in the low millions at best so that I can capture the "Early Industrial Age" flair. Which of course includes all the social disruption and conflict that makes for interesting gaming...

Isn't "low millions" a bit later than Early Industrial Age? I had the impression that in 1800 London was the only city in Europe with over a million inhabitants.

Bill Stoddard