The Gaming Den

On of the conceits of D&D is that you don't need to be born with the gift/talent/spark to wield real power. All that D&D magic requires is a Positive mental stat and some book learnin. Given that D&Dland is in still the iron age it's not surprising that the knowledge of how to shape reality is limited to the elite few, so is the ability to read. Mass illiteracy is partly a consequence of the fact that anything that's written needs to be written by hand, so just preserving knowledge in the hands of the few is the life's work of a substantial number of people.

Movable type changed everything, and it set of an information revolution that would not be surpassed until the invention. Suddenly that mass could not only know about political happenings outside their village but have an informed opinion about them. In Renaissance Europe the fact that books could be mass produced meant that suddenly everyone could have a bible and this lead to a thirty year long war the conclusion of which defined the global international system. The century after that saw the rise of modern nation states, liberalism, and democracy.

I can only imagine that in a world where magic and be learned out of a book the introduction of movable type would have even greater repercussions. So any idea what the would look like?

There's not much written in English about how moveable type affected East Asia when it came around the 1000's, but major population depleting wars (Jin/Song, Mongols, Ming) were pretty disruptive.

Another thing to consider is its application for 'modern' style terrorism, where you can have one or two guys in a cell inflict grave amounts of damage to public places with just knowledge of 1st level spells. Magic Missile will assassinate anyone without adventurer levels.

If everyone with above average intelligence can cast Charm Person, what kind of society does that make?

OgreBattle wrote: If everyone with above average intelligence can cast Charm Person, what kind of society does that make?

One where friendship is magic.

I suppose society would belong to the intelligentsia even more than our world. Who would give a shit about getting good at football when good grades equal infinite cosmic power. Isn't this the whole fantasy behind the book learning wizard?

If it's DnD magic the world would be stratified by the level of spell you could cast. Depending on how the percentages skew you'd have a lot of equality (many people can learn up to 9th) or the 99% that only make it to level 3 or something.

This could lead to an extreme meritocracy. Something like China's testing. Even the rich supplying their kids with intelligence boosting items can't increase the levels of spells they can cast.

Shady314 wrote:Who would give a shit about getting good at football when good grades equal infinite cosmic power.

Nonsense. Football is a frivolity in both worlds. With the right marketing, wizards could be persuaded to put down plenty of money on tickets to watch people employing that truly useless attribute, muscle, for the wizards' amusement.

Foxwarrior wrote: Nonsense. Football is a frivolity in both worlds. With the right marketing, wizards could be persuaded to put down plenty of money on tickets to watch people employing that truly useless attribute, muscle, for the wizards' amusement.

Right. That's one of those shit jobs for peopleidiots with Int 10. Of course the pay is good (relatively) because it's rather hazardous. Those summoned monsters and bound demons etc. the wizards make you play against are tough.

Lord Mistborn wrote:On of the conceits of D&D is that you don't need to be born with the gift/talent/spark to wield real power. All that D&D magic requires is a Positive mental stat and some book learnin. Given that D&Dland is in still the iron age it's not surprising that the knowledge of how to shape reality is limited to the elite few, so is the ability to read. Mass illiteracy is partly a consequence of the fact that anything that's written needs to be written by hand, so just preserving knowledge in the hands of the few is the life's work of a substantial number of people.

None of this is true. Becoming a Sorcerer requires a magical heritage of some sort, while becoming a Druid or a Cleric requires going into the forest/temple and praying really really hard. Literacy is not required for any of that. Only the Wizard requires 'book learning' and even then you don't technically have to be literate to become a wizard - you could get by on Read Magic spells if you wanted. Furthermore, literacy rates are near 100% in D&Dland - only barbarians and creatures without language are illiterate by default. Anyone who wants to become a wizard is not being hindered by their inability to read because everybody can fucking read. There is no need for to be copied by hand, as numerous spells exist to facilitate the copying of books. Or creating books out of thin air, complete with text, or producing various mindless constructs to copy pages of text out for you or any other workarounds.

In short, you are wrong and should feel bad about yourself.

Movable type changed everything, and it set of an information revolution that would not be surpassed until the invention.

of....

Lord Mistborn wrote:On of the conceits of D&D is that you don't need to be born with the gift/talent/spark to wield real power.

[citation needed]

Lord Mistborn wrote:All that D&D magic requires is a Positive mental stat and some book learnin. Given that D&Dland is in still the iron age

DnDland is a postmodern society (when it is not a postapocaliptic society). Adventuring just happens in its equivalents of Afganistans, Columbias, and Ugandas. It is also a postmodern society as cynical as cyberpunk. It has access to means of eliminating scarcity for everyone forever (even if the setting postulates that you literally eat people's lifeforce when you gain XP, so you need to go and murderize someone whenever you want to build yet another perpetual motion engine). But people in power would much rather vaste their time on their personal rivalries and increasing their personal power by yet another little bit. Those who look down at commoner level at all usually follow with imposing totalitarian control.

Lord Mistborn wrote:it's not surprising that the knowledge of how to shape reality is limited to the elite few, so is the ability to read. Mass illiteracy is partly a consequence of the fact that anything that's written needs to be written by hand, so just preserving knowledge in the hands of the few is the life's work of a substantial number of people.

I can only imagine that in a world where magic and be learned out of a book the introduction of movable type would have even greater repercussions. So any idea what the would look like?

Forgotten Realms has movable type and the overwhelming majority of its population is literate, so you can just look there.

The world where learning wizardly magic requires no special talent would probably look exactly the same as any DnDland. You can learn quantum physics without a special talent, yet there are maybe a couple of thousands of people in the world who can maintain meaningful conversations about quantum physics instead of just parroting what they read in digests for dummies. The same goes for most scientific disciplines really. Mechanically you need pretty good inborn mental stat that only a tiny percentage of people have and, most importantly, living though a fuckton of horrible dangers and deadly battles, to become a high-end caster, so the percentage of people who have even a single spell or feat potentially beneficial to the society will inevitably remain tiny. Remember, every 10th level caster is supposed to walk to such exalted level over hundreds of corpses. Which perhaps might be the reason why so many of them are assholes.

13.3 encounters / level * 10 level = 133 corpses on average. More if there's group encounters, less if there's story rewards.

There can be lots of 1st and 2nd level spell users in the world of DnDland, and that's enough to disrupt a lot of assumptions about the iron age, so either there should be an explanation for why that's not disrupted much, or an explanation of how it all shakes out.

Or ignore it and hope that your players don't ask, which is what the actual DnD devs do.

Myself, I'm somewhat satisfied with the "years of training and the spark of a hero" type explanation.

Lord Mistborn wrote:I can only imagine that in a world where magic and be learned out of a book the introduction of movable type would have even greater repercussions. So any idea what the would look like?

Business as usual? After all, how many actual engineers do we have when compared to the total population?

I don't know about the US, but here in México only 27.8% of the population has a college degree... and we're talking all careers, now from among that, engineers would be 3% at most.

The fact that education is readily available doesn't mean people will choose it (just look at us! We're living in the frikkin information age and people still believe in the darndest things!).

Besides the setting assumption that everyone is literate to begin with, there is nothing to indicate that movable type would help with spell books. Reproducing diagrams or pictures in a book doesn't benefit from movable type - in this era, forming a plate would be required and it would be specific to that particular book.

In this sense, a 'printing press' that didn't rely on movable type might make a difference - if you have a copper plate of every page of the Necronomicon, you can make as many pressings as you like. But having movable type wouldn't make each copy any easier.

The question is then whether anyone is willing to put in the initial investment to transcribe the book into an engraving rather than a direct copy (taking more time and effort) allowing for multiple copies when it was completed.

Couldn't you just have a bunch of skeletons scribing books instead? Surely there's some magical solution in D&Dland more impressive than moveable type.

OgreBattle wrote:Another thing to consider is its application for 'modern' style terrorism, where you can have one or two guys in a cell inflict grave amounts of damage to public places with just knowledge of 1st level spells. Magic Missile will assassinate anyone without adventurer levels.

So not much at all to consider there. That's not much different than ubiquitously available rifles and arrows, except that you can kill more people with rifles and bows than via magic missiles. To kill even a level 1 peasant outright in D&D land you need at minimum 3 max damage magic missiles. Killing 1-2 people is horrible but it isn't grave amounts of damage to public places. Throwing flasks of oil into a crowd would be more horrific in about every way imaginable.


And to the people (it has already happened multiple times in this thread!) who compared wizardry to engineering and physics degrees...



Fuck no. If a course in school was offered that said "Bend reality to your will. Create realistic visual illusions from your mind, heal wounds with a touch, control the minds of your peers, telekinesis, understand any language, control your appearance, leap safely from buildings, and more." I guaranfuckingtee you that that class gets filled the instant registration opens. That class becomes the whole fucking reason people came to the school in the first place. You totally get magic academies because demand will be insane.

You are off your nut if you think "Oh, nobody would do that. It's no better than X college degree."

The wizard ability to create or copy your own first level spell means that any level 1 spell from any list will be converted into the Wizard list (and so on with the higher level spells too). So wizard academy will have cure light wounds as a wizard spell. Just a minor thing.

And...

FatR wrote:[Mechanically you need pretty good inborn mental stat that only a tiny percentage of people have

Depends upon what stat generation methods you're using I suppose. But even a 10 intelligence gives you gems like Mage Hand, Mending, Light... and more importantly the ability to use wands and shit along with a Familiar. Even this is cooler than any college course offered in reality-world.

An 11 intelligence opens doors further. 12 Int is enough to be a passable adventurer anyway. At level 4 you get it to 13 int and start using int booster items you can create at higher levels so you never miss out on a spell level.

Most important for high level magic is what conceits about leveling up are kept.

erik wrote: Fuck no. If a course in school was offered that said "Bend reality to your will. Create realistic visual illusions from your mind, heal wounds with a touch, control the minds of your peers, telekinesis, understand any language, control your appearance, leap safely from buildings, and more." I guaranfuckingtee you that that class gets filled the instant registration opens. That class becomes the whole fucking reason people came to the school in the first place. You totally get magic academies because demand will be insane.

You are off your nut if you think "Oh, nobody would do that. It's no better than X college degree."

In real life there are degrees that near-automatically set you for a life of luxury. Much better than one a beginner wizard can expect. Why people aren't earning those left and right?

FatR wrote:

erik wrote: Fuck no. If a course in school was offered that said "Bend reality to your will. Create realistic visual illusions from your mind, heal wounds with a touch, control the minds of your peers, telekinesis, understand any language, control your appearance, leap safely from buildings, and more." I guaranfuckingtee you that that class gets filled the instant registration opens. That class becomes the whole fucking reason people came to the school in the first place. You totally get magic academies because demand will be insane.

You are off your nut if you think "Oh, nobody would do that. It's no better than X college degree."

In real life there are degrees that near-automatically set you for a life of luxury. Much better than one a beginner wizard can expect. Why people aren't earning those left and right?

Which ones are those because I haven't heard of them.

DnDland is a postmodern society (when it is not a postapocaliptic society). Adventuring just happens in its equivalents of Afganistans, Columbias, and Ugandas. It is also a postmodern society as cynical as cyberpunk. It has access to means of eliminating scarcity for everyone forever (even if the setting postulates that you literally eat people's lifeforce when you gain XP, so you need to go and murderize someone whenever you want to build yet another perpetual motion engine). But people in power would much rather vaste their time on their personal rivalries and increasing their personal power by yet another little bit. Those who look down at commoner level at all usually follow with imposing totalitarian control.

This is worth remembering. In the Wizards Three stories, you see that Elminster and other powerful Wizards think of modern Earth as a primitive backwater that is, at best, quaint.

OgreBattle:
> Couldn't you just have a bunch of skeletons scribing books instead? Surely there's some magical solution in D&Dland more impressive than moveable type.
There are spells cantrips for copying books. Well, in 3.5 they are for Chained mass-detonation of Explosive Runes (or making grenades/landmines), but intended purpose is copying written (non-magical) texts. That's 1k gp for magic xerox churning out ~10 books per day.

I think getting paper will be real problem. Europe got both excess of linen and paper mills at approximately the same time as printing press.


erik:
> The wizard ability to create or copy your own first level spell means that any level 1 spell from any list will be converted into the Wizard list (and so on with the higher level spells too).
That's ... debatable.

> You are off your nut if you think "Oh, nobody would do that. It's no better than X college degree."
I'll bite.

If there are lots of Wizards then good degree is better (and much cheaper: $40.000 - that's how much scribing one first-level spell or summoning talking bird costs).

You can't cure diseases and most of the wounds regular urbanite gets is paper cuts; average gun is better than magic missile; telekinesis is really low-level (what do you need it for? stealing alcohol from bar?); appearance control lasts 10 minutes (i.e. hardly useful for non-criminal activities; even getting laid will be problematic); leaping from building is not something you need to do every day.


If there are lots of Wizards, most useful things will be immediately banned (or are already banned) by any semi-functional government and police (armed with Detect Magic) will be hunting any smart-asses like there is no tomorrow.

Basically, unless you are a criminal, you get to work as EMT or summon horse for 2 hours to amuse kids. Neither occupation is particularly impressive.


Of course, you might get "lucky" and government will not ban or regulate magic. Then you'll get witch-hunts: "The only reason why you might not want to kill mind-bending Wizard is because he already Charmed you."

Let's note that moveable type wasn't what threw gasoline on to the Reformation Wars and the Protestant schism. The really explosive thing that set the whole powder keg off was Martin Luther translating the Bible out of latin and into "vulgar" languages (initially German, I think he did another but I can't remember, and a bunch of other people translated it into French, English, and so on). It was the dissemination of knowledge to the common person and the concept that you didn't have to go to the Vatican and join the priesthood to read your own holy book.

In D&D terms I guess the equivalent would be if you could use scrolls and wands without UMD or the equivalent.

$40,000 for a familiar or scroll...
Wait. Are you up and using gold pieces converted by mass to dollars?

Fuck you. I will forget school and sell magnifying glasses for 100 gold pieces using this disingenuous reasoning you have provided.

And if you think it is debatable that wizards can research spells from other lists then I guess you could lose that debate at your pleasure.

erik:
> Are you up and using gold pieces converted by mass to dollars?
Yep.

> Fuck you. I will stop by Walmart and sell oil flasks for gold.
Nope.

Scribing spells requires "speshul ingredients". Nobody knows what that means. For all we know Wizards has to use liquid gold to write spells. But I'm quite certain we do not mass-produce those ingredients. Unlike oil.

EDIT: or magnifying glass.

For example, price of silver in gold didn't change much, while saffron, ivory and tiger pelts got more expensive. It is reasonable to assume that the price of Whatever in gold does not differ greatly from PHB price. Especially if you consider increased demand from all those would-be Wizards.

> And if you think it is debatable that wizards can research spells then I guess you could lose that debate.
Your point being? I explicitly allowed for the possibility of getting CLW as a 1st level arcane spell. Even if it is retarded, because healing is Divine territory and no sane GM will translate it into Arcane without some penalties.


Either way, you did not explain how Wizard among Wizards is supposed to be better than someone with real profession. Barring crime, of course.

Reynard wrote: Either way, you did not explain how Wizard among Wizards is supposed to be better than someone with real profession. Barring crime, of course.

Well, there's always the high INT requirement that tends to result in an excess of skill points that are not necessary to your wizarding prowess. So this wouldn't be a world where you were a Wizard or an Engineer, you'd be a Wizard with a side-PhD in the Engineering flavor of your choosing just for the hell of it.

Your wizards wouldn't be worthless, it would be all the professionals that weren't also wizards that would be out of a job. At low levels there might not be a big difference between an Oncologist and a Wizard (Oncologist), but at higher levels the Wizard (Oncologist) gets to cure cancer in 6 seconds with a wave of his hands.

Let's compare some things that probably are about the same product as today, and whose price is based on utility, rather than scarcity:

Firewood: 1cp / 20lbs

One cord of wood is about 4000lbs, and should cost 2gp. This costs about $150 nowadays, so this gives us a data point of 1gp = $75

Beer/Ale: 1sp / gallon = $10/gallon -> 1gp = $100

Iron: 1sp/lb = $0.2/lb -> 1gp = $2

Salt: 5gp/lb $7/26oz = $4.30/lb -> 1gp ~= $1

Summary: if a pseudo-medieval peasant can get it for himself use ~$100/gp, otherwise ~$2/gp

---

Now, does it pay for itself?

A 1st level Wizard with 11 INT can cast 3 cantrips per day and 1 1st level spell, for a total income of, by the costs in the PHB, 25gp/day just from that, compared to 0.1gp/day for unskilled labor or 0.3gp/day for skilled labor. Even a barrister (lawyer) only makes 1gp/day, per the DMG.

100gp per page (per spell level, minimum 1), so the first cantrip (probably Arcane Mark) pays itself back in 5 days (20gp/day because you don't have a 1st level spell for the extra 5)

Adding a 1st level spell pays itself back in a further 20 days.

That leaves just the cost of training, which can presumably be done by the 1st-level wizards in your organization between time spent casting spells, which leaves the cost of feeding, housing, and clothing them, which probably doesn't cost more than about 12gp/month, over the course of 2d6x12 months, for a total of 2d6x144gp + spell scribing costs.

That's... about 1kgp in costs, which pays itself back in 50 days of cantrip-labor, or 40 days after adding a 1st level spell.

If you make the agreement be that they work for you as tutor and wage-mage for long enough to tutor their successor, with 50% of the wage-mage income going to you to pay off the loan, you're getting the income of about 1280 days of labor, which goes up to about 32kgp back from them.

Divide that by the input, and you're getting 26.5x the amount you paid in, which is about 26% interest per year.

EDIT:

Reynard wrote:Of course, you might get "lucky" and government will not ban or regulate magic. Then you'll get witch-hunts: "The only reason why you might not want to kill mind-bending Wizard is because he already Charmed you."

Witch hunts only work when the "witches" don't have real ultimate power with which to dump an army of demons on your sorry ass.

Let me get this straight. Are you telling me that first level Wizard will get good job because of spellcasting prices in PHB?

Reynard wrote:Let me get this straight. Are you telling me that first level Wizard will get good job because of spellcasting prices in PHB?

Economy in D&D is fucked. News at 11.

That being said, seeing how much people in D&Dland are expected to pay for a casting of dancing lights or cure light wounds is a decent start at figuring how is life there.

First off, sorry for editing whilst you were crafting your post. I was posting via phone on my lunch break and felt like I could spruce and clean up my brief post since nobody had replied yet.

Reynard wrote:Let me get this straight. Are you telling me that first level Wizard will get good job because of spellcasting prices in PHB?

Okay there appear to be 2 discussions here.

1. Wizards in medieval D&D world where it is easy to become a wizard and copy spellbooks.

2. Wizards in modern reality world are suddenly easy to become.

Trying to mix $ and gold pieces is a clusterfuck of failure that can only beget greater failure. I don't care if you want to use the argument "Durrr, special materials makes it okay to equivocate economies!" because that simply will not do. If you're using the D&D economy then yes, you do get to sell 1 magnifying glass to get a familiar. As you stated, you don't know what the special materials are made of, only that they are equivalent in value to a magnifying glass in D&D world. Best to keep the two worlds separate since you cannot make a coherent argument by mixing economies.

World 1. D&D world. It is of course a good idea to be a wizard.
It is a good idea as a job since your wages even starting at level 1 are reasonable especially considering it only takes you an hour or so of work each day and the rest of the day you can do whatever.
It is a good idea as an adventurer, because wizards are fucking boss.
It is a good idea as a humanitarian, because wizards can make life so much nicer.

World 2. Modern reality. It is of course awesome to be a wizard.
You can do things no normal human can do, and again it only takes an hour of meditation and a good night's sleep and you can still be an engineer the rest of the day. Durations and spells per day do limit your awesomeness per second but you are set on a career path where you can only expect to do more and more awesome things, and even level 1 spells are more exciting than history of pre-modern china, and I say this knowing that that was one of my favorite classes I took in college.

What do spell books cost? How do we earn XP? What are hit points? Fuck if I know. These things are unknown or even unknowable in actual reality. But if we grant that we can learn higher level spells then it is incredibly worth it since the payoff for high level spells includes "all the money" and "cure all diseases"

Reynard wrote: Your point being? I explicitly allowed for the possibility of getting CLW as a 1st level arcane spell. Even if it is retarded, because healing is Divine territory and no sane GM will translate it into Arcane without some penalties.

My point being you were trying to allude something wrong and now you have outright stated it, that arcane casters cannot put any spell into their spellbook for the appropriate level. It is within the rules as written. It is not retarded. It is not insane. Healing is not divine only.

[url=http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/arcaneSpells.htm#addingSpellstoaWizardsSpellbook wrote:"SRD"[/url]]Independent Research

A wizard also can research a spell independently, duplicating an existing spell or creating an entirely new one.

Any spell can be written as arcane, and you don't have to try very hard even for healing since Bards have that. Furthermore, wizards aren't even just limited to copying spells that exist, they are allowed to create their own spells.

Why would a GM create penalties with no rules basis to do so? Are we assuming that all "sane" GMs are capricious pricks? Please take your no true scotsmen and insert them into a barrel before sucking them off.

Reynard wrote: Either way, you did not explain how Wizard among Wizards is supposed to be better than someone with real profession. Barring crime, of course.

This appears to be referencing the real world since obviously a Wizard is mechanically superior than a peasant or expert,

1. As already noted by VitM, being a Wizard does not preclude you from learning other professions or crafts and may well compliment them (and make them obsolete on their own).
2. Wizards as noted by me above, are capable of making all the moneys.
- not right away at level 1, but the only way you get to level 2 spells is by starting with level 1. And level 1 spells are neat fun. They won't break the world economy but they move you from being merely human to being superhuman.

One level of wizard and set a new world record for jumping (maybe not on my first try, but give me 3 jumps and I'll likely get er done) or sprinting.
One level of wizard and decipher ancient scripts that have baffled archaeologists.
Get an invisible roomba/remote control/doer of house chores.
Put the kids to bed.
Suffer no harm or discomfort from summer heat or winter cold.
If I could instantly make images from my mind so good that they can fool observers into thinking they are real, I would be able to do all my art that I've put off because I lack the commitment to stay in practice and draw routinely (I think you can take photos of figments).

For my typical day I'd probably prep Unseen Servant, Endure Elements and Deathwatch.
Sometimes I gotta know who is undead and who is a robot. Also detect people around corners for 10 minutes a day. I'll need to put something in my necromancer slot anyway.