Worlds of Design: Magic vs. Technology

In connection with my discussion about differentiating science fiction and fantasy, here’s a related question: How do we tell what’s magic, and what’s technology, especially in light of A. C. Clarke’s famous maxim?

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke

Having a strong grasp of differences between magic and technology is useful to both role-playing game designers and to game masters. Sometimes it's hard to say what the difference may be.

A Matter of Knowledge​

My take is that the familiar or knowable tends to be technology, and the unfamiliar or unknowable tends to be magic. Technology and science aren't quite the same thing: technology is applied science. But here we'll speak of them together.

Keep in mind, with our current technology we could reproduce many of the miracles that any particular set of religionists are said to have witnessed. Those are magic to the religion, yet we could use technology.

Magic has an air of mystery that technology does not (or shouldn’t, anyway). Someone can explain how tech works. That's rare in magic, magic just IS.

Does technology require machinery? To create it, perhaps; to use it, I don't think so.

Novelist Brandon Sanderson's magic systems have rules and bases, but then get to the "black box" stage: "this works because it does, we don't know why or how." Science attempts to understand the black box, tries to keep working deeper and deeper into "why". Magic systems rarely bother. Perhaps that is the fundamental difference between magic and technology: we understand why technology works, but no one really understands why magic works, it just does.

In a game, magic inevitably becomes "hard" to the extent that the rules of the game must explain exactly how things work. Yet heavy reliance on the "black box" is still there.

If you’ve ever read a tome purporting to be about real-world alchemy (yes, they do exist), you've seen the author trying to turn alchemy into a kind of technology with rational explanation, but entirely BSing it—a bogus "explanation" amounting to "it just is" if not "it's magic."

Isaac Newton famously said, "if I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" (previous scientists). Technology tends to derive from previous technology. Magic frequently just happens through "mystic discoveries."

Mass Production​

Are everyday items, items that are technology in our contemporary world, producing many of the same effects through magic? So which is it?

Mass production implies technology. Individual production implies pre-technology (which can include magic). Obviously, we had individual production before the Industrial Revolution, but I nevertheless regard mass production as a sign of technology, not magic. (Of course, we can conceive of a magical world where mass production exists: but is that natural, or forced by the creator of that world?

The Frequency of Magic​

How often do you encounter someone who can cast magic spells/make magic (as opposed to use a magic item)? How often do you encounter someone who can create magic items? For that matter, how hard is it to make magic items? (I'm reminded of the vast number of potions cheaply produced in the original version of Pathfinder. This "smells of" technology even though it is magic.)

If magic includes an air of mystery, then is anything that is commonplace not magic, even if it is mass production of potions?

Star Wars: Magic or Technology?​

Many call Star Wars science fantasy. The Force, and light sabers, are mysterious, unknown, and to an extent unknowable (despite the "midichlorians"). Some of the technology is "indistinguishable from magic," such as the instantaneous communication throughout the galaxy (that is nevertheless easy to jam). I'd call Star Wars magic, tacked onto a more or less science fiction setting.

Knowledge vs. Familiarity​

In the end, familiarity is less important than whether something is knowable. Knowable as in, understanding what happens to make the black box work. If it's mysterious, something we don't think can be figured out, we tend to think of it as magic. If we think it can be figured out (even if it has not been, yet), it is more likely technology.

Your Turn: Where do you draw the line between magic and technology in your campaigns?

 

[embee]

I played in a game once where I wanted to buy a grappling hook and was told they hadn't been invented

Sure you could buy plate armor and crossbows, but a hook on a rope? Nah to advanced.

The guy just wanted to make us climb the wall with a skill roll versus using a tool. Needless to say I didn't play another game with this bozo

That GM needs to do some homework. Specifically, s/he needs to watch the 1970 classic "Five Easy Pieces."

The iconic scene features Jack Nicholson's character butting up against a land of inexplicable rules and an unthinking obedience to same. (It is not a stretch to see the scene as a metaphor for how America became embroiled in Vietnam.)

Dupea and three companions sit at a table in a diner. He politely gives his order to the waitress: "I'd like a plain omelette. No potatoes. Tomatoes, instead. Cup of coffee and wheat toast."

"No substitutions," the waitress responds, pointing to a notice on the menu.

He then tries unsuccessfully to order a side of toast. The pair jostle, each getting more frustrated by the moment.

"Okay, I'll make it as easy for you as I can," Dupea says. "I'd like an omelette - plain - and a chicken salad sandwich on wheat toast. No mayonnaise, no butter, no lettuce. And a cup of coffee."

"A No. 2. Chicken sal san," the waitress repeats, exasperated, through clenched teeth. "Hold the butter, the lettuce, the mayonnaise. And a cup of coffee. Anything else?"

"Yeah. Now all you have to do is hold the chicken, bring me the toast, give me a check for the chicken salad sandwich and you haven't broken any rules."

Grappling hooks don't exist? Then sell me a rope and point me towards the town blacksmith.

 

[tomBitonti]

I once had a DM insist that while chain mail existed in the world, plate mail hadn't been invented yet. Obviously, since, well, plate mail is better than chain mail.

When I pointed out that they had plate mail in the bronze age, she still wouldn't back down.

The primary difference between magic and science when it comes to fiction is the role they play in the narrative. Magic is used as a plot device to overcome some challenge - That potion of really neat water is just perfect when you meet that giant spider - not before or after... Whereas science in the narrative, is used as the central point of the story. Spice allows you to see the future - what does it mean to be human if you can know the future?

This does seem to be more often the case. But, some fiction uses magic as a central point, for example, Niven’s “The Magic Goes Away”. Or Stross’s “Merchant Princes” novels. I’m still deciding how to fit the anime ”Gate”.
Be safe, be well,
‘Tom Bitonti

 

[Jeff Carpenter]

Grappling hooks don't exist? Then sell me a rope and point me towards the town blacksmith.

That is a classic scene.

I tried that, but that was also denied. The DM was set that the only way past the cliff was to have the thief climb walls because thats how he wanted to run the adventure.

This was 1e so a low level thief had a good chance, but even a short fall would kill them so we wanted to play it smart unfortunately the DM was a obstinate clown.

 

[Jeff Carpenter]

I once had a DM insist that while chain mail existed in the world, plate mail hadn't been invented yet. Obviously, since, well, plate mail is better than chain mail.

Thats a big impact on game mechanics as well. If you take out that level of armor it penalizes some builds regardless of eddtion. The least she could do is say plate doesnt exist, but good smiths build superior chain that has the ac equivalent of plate.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

As C.S. Lewis put it, science and magic were twins, born at the same time and of the same impulse, to control the world around you. Magic doesn't strictly require mystery, what it requires is the direct connection between the will of the user and the physical reality that manifests. Magic MAKES the world behave the way you want it to behave.

Likewise, technology does not require us to know HOW it works in order to know THAT it works. It is of course helpful to know the how. But we knew nothing of how gunpowder worked, yet the Chinese invented fireworks long before the advent of chemistry; we knew nothing of Snell's Law and yet could make refractive lenses for centuries; we knew nothing of quantum mechanics and yet benefited from things like the compass, which depends critically on the fact that electrons are fermions (and thus their wave functions cannot stack together in the same state).

Fundamentally, technology takes what is practical and finds an application for it. Magic, in the fictional settings where it exists, starts from an intended application and finds a means to produce that effect. They are mirror images of each other in this sense. This is why technology works in the real world and magic doesn't; you cannot simply make reality be what you want it to be, no secret rules or hidden passages exist. But if you take known physical effects and look for ways they can be used, you can find them.

This, incidentally, is why it is totally possible to have "magic technology" or "industrial magic" or the like. Once magic has produced a consistent, reproducible method by which an intent is forced upon reality, it thus becomes a part of that reality, and can be viewed from the technological perspective, turning it into an applicable tool rather than an intent made manifest. Magitech is thus technology that has incorporated established magic into itself, while D&D Wizard-style spellcasting takes a technological approach to developing new means of forcing the world to obey your will.

The two methods OFTEN don't work together, and have a lot of thematic and historical baggage that can keep them apart, but fundamentally they are not contradictory. Had real arcane rules existed IRL, we would use them right alongside using "technology."

 

[Hand of Evil]

The device still needs to be built, rules have to be followed, be it casting and ingredients or wires and pipes. The question is more about creativity of devices using magic as the power source and the cultural they are found in. I just see Guilds being restrictive on letting their trade secrets out and people share how they do something because they would be faced with disapproval from their peers or of religious groups. It becomes the GMs duty to think about how the device is created and how the culture will respond to it. In Harry Potter it was the Ministry of Magic and took a sever view of doing things different.

One of my favorite, Animated Object, a simple spell can produce an elbow joint that is always moving, from that you can build a lot of tools and devices.

 

[Hussar]

Science and Sci-Fi are not near as interchangeable as we fans want them to be. At some point, most Sci-Fi tropes dissolve down to the same handwaving that Magic in a fantasy setting does. What's important is serving the story you want to tell and the themes and mood you want the setting to operate under. For example, Doctor Who presents itself as Sci-Fi but it makes tenuous attempts at best to root anything in actual scientific explanations of effects. It's all ultimately just how you skin the same effects. The Doctor is a wizard. They even use a magic wand.

Well, not really. While certainly the "science" in Doctor Who is a load of bokum, that's not the point of it. The stories are science fiction, not because of the tropes of aliens and time travel, but because of the themes - what does it mean to be human? what does it mean to be a "good man"? Is the Doctor a "good man" was the theme of an entire season. Fantastic stuff. The SF tropes are there to service the themes, not really the plot.

 

[Professor Murder]

Well, not really. While certainly the "science" in Doctor Who is a load of bokum, that's not the point of it. The stories are science fiction, not because of the tropes of aliens and time travel, but because of the themes - what does it mean to be human? what does it mean to be a "good man"? Is the Doctor a "good man" was the theme of an entire season. Fantastic stuff. The SF tropes are there to service the themes, not really the plot.

I feel you are making my point. Sci-Fi isn't science. It's just a series of typical themes and tropes.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

If you’ve ever read a tome purporting to be about real-world alchemy (yes, they do exist), you've seen the author trying to turn alchemy into a kind of technology with rational explanation, but entirely BSing it—a bogus "explanation" amounting to "it just is" if not "it's magic."

Isaac Newton famously said, "if I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" (previous scientists). Technology tends to derive from previous technology. Magic frequently just happens through "mystic discoveries."

I'm having a hard time moving past these two paragraphs. They seem...ill-considered, and indicative of a low level of research into the subject matter.

Newton was, after all, a hermetic alchemist, and a numerologist, in addition to everything else he was. He might say that the giants in question were natural philosophers, or he might say they were alchemists, because the world hadn't abandoned the nomenclature of referring to people like him as alchemists, yet. We hadn't started calling alchemists scientists, but that is what they were.

I assure you, when someone who has studied history reads Paracelcus, they aren't scoffing at the "BS" of "bogus explanations" or "mystic discoveries", because they're well aware that Paracelcus invented what we now call toxicology, and that invention wasn't spontaneous, but rather built on the foundations of discovery in a lineage of writings and study tracing throughout the European Middle Ages, the Muslim Golden Age, and beyond into the work of ancient Greek and Hindu alchemists. Work done in laboratories and workshops in the Muslim world underpin things we take for granted ranging from the camera, to several complex surgeries, to anatomical knowledge, to literally the discipline of the study of Chemistry. Alchemists invented the alembic and most other basic tools of chemistry, and the processes of scientific study that Bacon is erroneously given credit for simply because he put into a pithy package.


So, it's hard to keep reading your post when you speak with such dismissive authority from a position of such apparent ignorance.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

When I was a kid, I fell in love with the Victorian and Wild West meet Tolkien and D&D aesthetic of the computer RPG Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura; but I never cared for that game's conceit that technology and magic are diametrically opposed forces that interfere with each other's workings and are eternally at war. I much prefer a setting where technologists can build inventions and gadgets that a mage can subsequently enchant. (I'm less enamored with magical artificers and the idea of magic itself and magical items being used as reliable technology, à la Eberron. When magic is too reliable, it's not as fun and mysterious.)

Loved that game, and had the same reaction to it's conceit. I also love the Dresden Files, but I would love it even more if magic didn't interfere with technology. Then again, DF uses that idea to help keep magic feeling like a weird thing whose rules are always changing.

In my own modern supernatural game world, tech and physical magic are easily intertwined, while spirit/intangeable magic are harder to work together, because intangible magic is less logical and more emotional.