What is Cidri's average tech?

[mark hill]

What historical period do most folks assume the Duchy of Dran is at an equivalent level of development to?

Im mainly asking because Im making costuming decisions on my counters, but also for what has/has not been invented yet, and whats ABOUT to be invented .. probably.

Do some of you reckon its not that simple? Maybe theres a mix of different tech from different periods in our history? Like, Cidri is unusually advanced at X and retarded at Y?

My own feeling is its equivalent to early 1500s, (lets just say 1500 exactly) possibly JUST reaching into early-mid Tudor/Elizabethan at most (so some clever dwarf in the mech guild is probably prototyping the first wheel-lock gun for instance) and developments in armour design mean that chainmail is probably going to be obsolete in the next 20-50 years or so .. the snootier armourers are probably saying it already is :)

thoughts?

[FireHorse]

Cidri seems roughly 1300-1500ish to me, but with much less development of Gunpowder (arguably because Magic is a better weapon). And of course, with various spotty aberrations lying around, from unpredictably distant points in time going in either direction.

[Shadekeep]

Give the size of the planet and diversity of intelligent races, I presume that it's actually a patchwork of developmental levels. Many areas are indeed Late Medieval/Early Renaissance, but co-exist with less developed areas ranging from Iron Age to Bronze Age to Stone Age. A few areas might be conversely more advanced than their neighbours, especially those with access to Mnoren artifacts. I wouldn't put any more advanced than the Regency Era however, and even that would be stifled in some ways due to how unreliable gunpowder is on Cidri.

Also, technology is a much different beast on a world where magic exists. It's been argued that the primary function of technology is to give us advantage over (and exception from) the rules of Nature. When you've got magic to do that, technological advancement is less of a priority. I would see artisan technologies, like weaving and dyeing, as more likely to develop quickly, since they arguably have more utility outside magic.

[mark hill]

Well Id guess that the 'arquebus' is a matchlock musket. It needs a cross-stand, requires several turns to ready (even if already loaded), and does not require an aimer and a firer, one guy does both jobs .. therefore, == matchlock musket (with an integral serpentine). Those things appear around 1450, and they do seem to have been around on Cidri a while .. theres nothing more advanced yet, no pistol for instance, no 'self-igniting' guns, so 1500 is my guess.

I agree that there are much more backwards areas than Dran, I regard it as a maximum development for its time. If there are significantly more advanced areas, they are not trading with their neighbors.

The current rules (especially the weapons and armour tables) do not at the moment have the 'wiggle room' to handle bronze and stone age gear (lest the humble club be superior to a bronze sword lol) .. probably roman tech is the lowest its practical to GM at this time (unfortunately).

There are no significant improvements in steel between 100 BC and 1500 AD, 'Iron Age' is totally covered.

[TippetsTX]

It's important to remember, however, that (assuming you are using the default premise for Cidri) none of the technology evolved organically over many millennia. Cidri is an artificial construct, populated by transplanted or genetically engineered flora and fauna. The Mnoren likely established a specific level of technological sophistication intentionally in order to facilitate certain social, political and anthropological norms as well as controls over their 'guests'. As such, I would assume that the tech level is fairly uniform across the planet.

But as with all campaign settings, it's ultimately up to the GM to flesh out the dynamics of their world regardless of whatever idea the original authors may have had.

[mark hill]

I cant agree that the local tech has stood still for any significant amount of time. Isnt it true that the Wizards Guild has been developing new spells (maybe slowly) for quite a long time? And haven't the Mech Guild been competing directly with them, presumably making their own discoveries, for just as long?

Medieval societies are not as quick to produce new tech as we were in the 20th century .. but if the Mech Guild achieved basically nothing for a thousand years, why would they even exist?

[FireHorse]

Technological (and Magical?) development isn't always forwards; sometimes societal collapses cause it to go backwards. You can't have a Renaissance without first having a Dark Ages. You can't have lost Atlantean tech if Atlantis never fell. And so on.

[mark hill]

This is all true .. but did Cidri have a thousand year period of the pope burning any troublesome doctors and scientists alive? No single social entity has that much control over all Cidri.

Id prefer to assume the Mnoren left Cidri in a state of high-end Roman development (in the more developed areas) .. and everything invented since then the normal-humans have achieved on thier own (even if guns, the telescope, the compass etc took em a while) .. we are not presuming humans on Cidri are remarkably stupider than ourselves are we?

[FireHorse]

Lack of technological development is less a result of stupidity than of necessity. If you don't need to develop the compass, you won't. If Magic is perfectly good at killing your enemies, why bother to play around with Gunpowder?

Plus, knowledge builds on knowledge — the more stuff you already know, the faster you figure more stuff out. (That's why tech development is an ever upward-sloping curve, not a flat incline.) But that means if you take a few key developments out, everything that would have been built upon them goes away too.

[Shadekeep]

Just to clarify my comments about Iron/Bronze/Stone Age, I'm not just talking technologically, but culturally. I believe there are Stone Age cultures on Cidri, which are hunter/gatherer and use mostly bone and napped flint tools. I personally game most Neaderthal settlements this way, and my Reptile Man race the Sumalakai are at Stone Age development as well. Bronze Age would have early agriculture and irrigation tech, but probably still be arranged in city-states culturally, like Athens and Thebes. Iron Age culture would be more imperial and have the trappings of wider-spread literacy and a more cosmopolitan citizenry, but could still lag behind peak Medieval tech and philosophy. Again, it's not just the technology, it's the civilisation. Things like the nature of religion and the role of magic in society change markedly in each of these ages as well.

Cidri is vast, far larger than Earth, and if we can still have pockets of Stone Age tribes living in remote rainforests here, there are certainly earlier Age cultures there.