The desire for immortality is a common one, given our innate fear of death. We share the same desire for immortality of our characters. Potions of immortality are often fakes, while spells of unending life invariably turn the caster into a vampire, or a liche or some other evil creature.

What if there was a genuine ‘potion’ that granted the consumer longer life? This could be as mundane as simply drinking elven wine to something as exotic as spice harvested from the lairs of dragons. Each dose added some years to the consumers life, but only to a certain amount. Immortality requires regular doses of the ‘potion’ with a frequency dependant on the strength of the potion. Dragonspice might only be needed once in a decade, adding another 10 years of youth and vitality to the consumer, while the elven wine would need to be comsumed daily.

How would this change your world?

Imagine a blight that killed off the grasses and grains. This is not an unheard off event. Mutant spores, molds, and diseases have killed off a wide variety, even who classes, of plants in the real world. Something that kills off grasses, sounds like science fiction (and the premise has been used in many “end of the world” movies and stories), but it is very applicable to a fantasy world… especially because they are mostly agrarian.

First, the human population will go away. Most human peoples have a society based upon grain. Humans need grain for food, for beer, and for feed. So the lowest level of the human society will soon disappear due to starvation.  That will have echos up the social change, as there will be no grain food for others, and very few left to grow other things. 

Secondly, without grasses and grains, many herbavores will be starving as well. Most forest and plains herbavores will be without much in the way of food.  After a big boom to the carnivore population, (which will then even out), the entire food web will shake and begin to collapse. New nitches will be carved out by animals eventually.

Thus the hunting people (including the Elves) will find themselves without game.  Gathering people will have issues as well. 

Population near the sea or waterways might do better, as they can have protein and food not based upon grain.  Inland societies might trade for sea based food, but there are limits to how far the food can go. 

On Arth, this is a non issue. The Biomic nature of the world prevents this from being a world wide catastrophy.   There are no microbes on the planet.  While there are molds and spores, molds and spores can only exist in their native biomes (normally).  Mass die off of plants… and the related species… would be corrected by a biome pylon no matter how many keys had been removed or added.  If it slowly became the way of a biome, the disaster would not spread to any other biome.

On Kerren, grasses are not very developed yet. Herbavores munch upon bushy, fern like things. Grassy plains have really yet to develop on Kerren. The Humans who have been trying to develop native grains would be quite put out.

Technology is one of the driving motors of cultural change. A Technology is really just “the way people get things done” though a body of knowledge. Active magic (the kind in most games) is nothing more tha a way that people get things done though a body of knowledge.

I want you, if you are old enough, to think about all the changes that have occured in your lifetime… how different the world is today than it was a decade or two ago, just because of technology - and the changes in society based on the foundation of those technologies.

If you are not old enough, think of two things… one) a world without an internet/ web/ or computers that weren’t any better than 25 cent calculators and two) how unable to deal with new technology and the world attached to it that most older people (and how you have to break most simple technology down into baby steps for them)

So imagine the impact on your world, initial and eventual, of a new form of magic emerging.

It could come from a Deity (like in Iron Kingdom), it could come from a Demon (and who determines that label?), or from one innovative/ enlightened person (Hermes Trismegistus (or a host of other names applied).

It could be one extremely useful spell (super fireball or a 2nd level spell that creates Golems/ jacks) or an entire range of magical techniques (Top Magic). How will the world change because of this new type of magic?  People will respond, either by using it or trying to stop others from using it. What can be done now that could not be done before (or done as easily)?

Would this new power threaten the status quo? It would upset the magical community some. Masters of all magical knowledge no longer are masters. (Just think of old unix programmer/ managers vs newer Window* programers/ managers vs newer elite programers). Depending on its power and who can use it, it might disrupt the religious, governmental, commercial, and social structures that exist. Those groups would respond and retaliate, to maintain their hard won position in society. It could create new groups, that too would disrupt the status quo.

And what are the common’s people response to all of this?  Do they know? Do they care? Do they believe the lies the various organizations of status quo might promelgate? Do they believe “the truth” of the new practioners of magic?

So, yesterday a new form of magic was discovered/ invented on your world (or any world), what will happen from there.

Magic should be just another form of technology, a means to do things.  In most games, it is nothing more than another weapon. Others utilize it as a tool of everyday life.  There are two axis that magic should be judged by:

Rare/ Common: How often does magic touch the lives of people? This is not adventuring people, this is the entire population.  How much of the population is touched by magic (including items) of any kind and how many times in their life. If only nobles (and their servants) lives are constantly touched by magic and they constitute only 2% of the population, magic is still quite rare, despite it filling nobles’ lives.

Powerlevel: Minor to Major: How much effect does magic do.  Can a single magic user rock a city or is the best they can do is slighty manipulate the weak willed?

If magic is rare, then the loss of magic will have little impact. If magic is common, civilization as they know it ends.  In odd cases where one class/ caste are involved with magic, they will have to change and that will alter their world.

PowerLevel determines how much the world will need to change.  Will they need to find a replacement for the magic or change their way of life to meet the lack of effect.  If magic is required to keep floating castles in the sky, and the magic goes away… unless they create powerful baloons or can make rocked… the castles will fall. 

IN MY WORLD….
Society will only change at the top.  The Imperium is based upon their mastery of many arts including magic.  With the use of their gates, 32 Imperial High Elventi soldiers (and a few hundred Elventi Militia) can rule over an area greater than the Earth’s.  The lack of rapid response and the lack of their magical toys will cripple the Imperium’s rock hard control over the Known World.  So the world would be less safe. Since the Imperium seldom interferes with local affair, the local governments would continue on much the same way they always have.

Civilization would not fall, the Imperium would eventually shift gears enough to allow their continued rule.  Elventi societies of FirstLand would be damaged, given their dependence on HearthStones and Tree-Shaping magics.  It would take some time, but they would adapt. The Dwarventi would be living in the dark, but they would work on new ventilation and lamps.  Most of Humanti life would change very little, as none of their biomes allow for the regular use of high powered magics.  The only Humanti land dependent on magic is that of the coastal FourthLanders where the clerics dominate life.

Time. The ever-onward, eternally turning wheel. Often in games the branch of Time Magic is given a level of power unequaled by any of the other branches of magic. Time magic is one of the only schools of magic that most GMs outright ban within their games. And rightfully so, as messing with time can produce horrifying results, both in terms of the game world and gamemastering.

Once the players can manipulate time, what’s to prevent them from eliminating your prized super villain, reducing your carefully crafted campaign to a single cold-hearted adventure of time-hopping genocide? Kill the baby before he threatens the world. Better yet, kill the mother too, just in case she produces another child that turns into the Antichrist. Pretty soon your characters are starring in their own remake of Terminator, except they don’t have an Austrian accent going for them.

Plenty of games have portrayed the results of time travel, as well as a number of movies and a few t.v. shows. The common theme is the same in all of them, however: time must not be changed, or the world and future will suffer in unimaginable ways.

So, keeping in mind such wonderful movies like Terminator and The Time Machine, and video games such as Chrono Trigger and World of Warcraft, what would the general result of time travel be within your game world? Who would be able to travel the streams of time? What would they do? Would a time-watcher organization pop up to manage things?

What would your world be if time travel were possible?

Small-scale invasions, such as raiding parties, barbarians, or pirates, are fairly common (or perhaps should be) in most gaming worlds.  However, some invaders come full-force, and are a previous unknown to the current inhabitants.  This can be either a military invasion, or a steady influx of immigrants.  Uncertainty & fear will both follow and preceed these new invaders.  They will have cultural, linguistic, and perhaps technological &/or magical differences with those who came before them.  This can be successive waves of newcomers, as people generally stop thinking of themselves as “new” and become natives after a generation or two.  That is, if they are not kept down by those that came before them, by limiting jobs, education, & property ownership, or making them live in ghettoes, work mines, etc.  Depending on the game world, these new visitors may be a completely different species or subspecies. 

Do the newcomers fully integrate into the native society, losing their language & customs?  Do they become the dominant culture (possible even without military conquest or superior numbers)?  Are they kept apart from native society in some way? Variations on these are possible.  To use some real world examples, ancient Romans incorporated Etruscan culture into themselves, and made their customs Roman—this was long before Rome became a military & political powerhouse. Following the Norman invasion of England, a new King took the throne, and society was shuffled at the upper end, but for the common peasant, not much really changed, certainly not quickly.  Much of the world is seeing an invasion of American culture, even without being invaded by Americans themselves (although some might feel that this fact is soon changing—with military conquest only a matter of time—such is beyond the scope of this thread). In the United States, there is a current increase in number & culture from Spanish-speaking areas. 

An invasion need not be an actual invasion, nor need it be considered a bad thing.  It all depends upon one’s viewpoints. 

In My World

Midian suffered a pretty significan invasion a couple of millenia prior.  So drastic was this fated to become, that psychics & seers on the other side of the globe forsaw visions of the event.  Even the very sky bled when these violent newcomers arrived. These invaders are intimately familiar to the readers of this site:  Humans. 

Most of them left their original point of invasion in southern Osterre (the eastern continent) within a few decades.  They quickly hopped islands in the southern portion of the Greatsea, and swept through Suditerre (the southern continent).  Little traces of any pre-Human inhabitants survive there, especially in the southern areas—now known colectively as the Elder Kingdoms. There, Humanities numbers grew immensely, as did their knowledge, especially of warfare & its related industries.  As Humans’ growth stretched their boundaries ever northward, they eventually encountered the southern edge of the Olde Empire of the Hobgoblins.  The Olde Empire was ill-equipped to defend itself on its remote reaches in Suditerre.  Humanity quickly spilled north across the Grim Sea into Norditerre (the northern continent), home of the Olde Empire.  For the Humans, this was simply emigrating to a new area, to find cultural freedom, and to escape overcrowding.  To the Hobgoblins, this was a full-scale military invasion, the likes of which they had never before encountered.  The Humans had a number of innovations to the art of war unknown to the Olde Empire, such as horsemanship, superior ships, tactical formations, advanced polearms, leaders who led by means other than direct physical intimidation, and the Humans had somehow replicated the Elven art of archery.  The ancestors of what is now the Formourian people landed on the southern tip of Norditerre, and began a program of agriculture, fortified defense, population growth (possible far beyond the means of the Hobgoblin’s hunter-gatherer & herder society), and conquest.  Meanwhile, the ancestors of the Heldanns who spearheaded the invasion travelled further north along the coastline.  They pillaged and raided (and some say never fully gave up this habit).  Since the Human’s ships, nautical skills, and weapons were superior, and since the Olde Empire’s coasts have long suffered from the occassional bout with the Killians, the proto-Heldanns and their few super-warrior Gaijin sailed north without even being slowed by the Olde Empire’s efforts. 

The proto-Formourians spread west—assisted numerically by further Human migration across the Grim Sea, north following the Heldannic efforts inland, and began pincering the Olde Empire.  The Humans carved new lands for themselves from what was once unopposed territory of the Olde Empire.  Within a few generations, the balance of power had drastically shifted.  The final death-knell of the Olde Empire came when the five Duchies of what would become the Kingdom of Formour were united under an adventurous couple who acted as war-leaders (who later became the first King & Queen of Formour following unification).  In the north, the Heldanns had encountered a resistance movement of Dwarves, who had been long enslaved by the Hobgoblins.  The very presence of the Humans, and the promise of alliance, gave the Dwarves the courage to rebell across the Olde Empire.  The combined Dwarf & Human army (aided by Gaijin & Troll) conquered the mountains & northern forrests, driving many Hobgoblins into the inhospitable area known as the Farreaches.  The Formourians swept north & west, and eventually surrounded the last dying remnant of the former government.  The Great-grandfather General, warlord & sovereign of the Olde Empire, was trapped in a densely wooded area with his kinfolk & few remaining imperial guards.  To their credit, the Hobgoblins never actually surrendered.  The Great-grandfather General eventually died from infection of his wounds, and the remnants of the Juran tribe (his kinfolk and guards) remained in what is now known as the Hobgoblin Enclave, where their descendants still survive today.  These are a sad reminder of their own glory days.  The eke out a living selling trinkets to tourists, keeping small herds of goats, and gathering what they can from the forest.  Two other tribes were forced back south, into the very heart of Human-dominated lands.  There, they were largely incorporated into local society; many of them no longre even speak Gobley.  Those Hobgoblin tribes that escaped to the Farreaches have far more difficult lives than their Enclave bretheren, albeit one with greater dignity intact.  There, they try to maintain their traditional lifestyle—and as much of their culture as could be remembered—while incorporating the techniques they learned from the Humans:  horse, bow, & tactics. 

An additional Human invasion occured much later, and with far less fanfare.  Two tribes of the Goths—those Humans who stayed near the original invasion point in Osterre—emmigrated to southern Formour & northern Byzant (in Suditerre).  Coincidentally, the areas that are now inhabited by these Goths (as much as 50% in some cities), are the very same lands where Humans first began their conquest of the Olde Empire.

Before the invention of a printing press, books were copied mainly in monasteries or in commercial scriptoria. In either place, scribes wrote them out by hand. (Apprentice Wizards would have to copy each book they have, taking a year or two of their lives just doing that). These scribes often applied beautiful illuminations to their text. Books were therefore a scarce resource. (Books are just bound scrolls, so the same thing would apply to scrolls.

A printing press expands this.  No matter who developed it (Chinese, Korean, or German) it came from a press (used to squish fruit, grapes, olives).  Originally pages were cut from single blocks of wood.  Each block was good for approximately 10-25 pages, making printing presses faster than a manual process but still fairly slow.  The invention of movable type (first of clay, then of metal) speeds this process along.  The Chinese/ Koreans invented this process first, but it was of less usefulness given the word/symbol nature of their languages.  In Germany the process was re-created independently (though there are arguments about it not being independent).  Guttenberg, being a goldsmith before a printer, was able to carefully craft movable type. Given the alphabetic nature of European languages, movable type was vastly more useful.

Once movable type was created, it multiplied the speed of page reproduction by a factor of 50. With advances in paper placement (which was originally done by hand, but later had mechanical assistance), this number increased. 

On Earth, book content has been centered on religous texts, either main foci of religious thought, commentary, or support (such as a hymnal).  Following a close second is the works required by government or nobility to rule.  These two powerful groups Religions and Government have a vested interest in controlling the words printed. By controlling books, they can control ideas, or at least limit their easy disemination.

The supplantation of hand copied manuscripts with printed works was not received with unanimous encomium. The papal court contemplated making printing presses an industry requiring a licence from the Catholic Church, making sure they published works only authorized by the Church.  Similar resistance was later encountered in much of the Islamic world, where calligraphic traditions were extremely important, and also in the Far East.

Despite resistance, the printing press spread across the European world quickly once it became known.  For the first time, anyone could read the Bible and no longer required clergy to interpret the word for them. The press also allowed the distribution of Bibles in the venacular (local language), further tearing down the clergical control over religion. The press was also key in Protestant Reformation.

The Press also led to the establishment of a community of scientists (previously scientists were mostly isolated) that could easily communicate their discoveries, bringing on the scientific revolution.

Though late in catching up, occultists also published their works. Admittedly it was two centuries after The Church and Science had been doing so, but Occultists have always been an insular and secretive bunch (especially since being an occultist had a death penalty in many places).

In Korea and China, there were no texts similar to the Bible which could guarantee a printer return on the high capital investment of a printing press, and so the primary form of printing was wood block printing which was more suited for short runs of texts for which the return was uncertain.

Some credit the printing press with giving Europe the technological and communication edge over Eastern countries in the end, one of the major questions in world history.

So what would happen if someone created a printing press in your game world? 

Kerren has always had the printing press. These presses are manually opperated but have technological advantages that begining manual presses never would have.

In Arth, this is happening right now, as a current Meta-Plot. On Arth, Magic users are the primary producers and consumers of books. One of their own, utilizing the theory that matter was nothing more than magical energy in a different state, applied magical theory to material objects.  Ariones MageSmith of Antioch, now known as Ariones Impressor created a number of items before the Guild took action against him. (If his theories were true, eventually there would be no need for wizards or magicians). He developed the theory of optics, improved metallurgy, and created a printing press.  The Mage’s Guild originally held seige around his workshop, awaiting approval of the Guild Council to take action.  In those intervening eight days, Ariones printed 50 manuals of spells of the 8th rank (basic apprentice spells). It would of taken one scribe 64 days to do one basic book.  He presented them as a gift to the Guild and presented them with several copies of his Magic Theories: A magical material world. The Guild realizing the advantages of having their works mass produced (more books, more magic users). They also realized the potential revenue to their guild. The accepted Ariones’s work as Guild Acceptable.  Eventually a new subguild, the Impressors (as in Printing Impressions) is created to take care of bookmaking and developing new items based on a magical material world.  On my world, a technical revolution of sorts has begun. It has only been going for about a year at this point.

Of course, magic is a skill based system on Arth. So your religions might be more upset by the possible existance of “outside ideas” existing; or governments might try to control the
easy access to information”. The existance of cheap books allows information on a number of subjects to be quickly dispersed.  Someone could go from ignorant to the local expert on a subject after a day or so of reading.. The printed word will rock your world.

So what would happen on your world?

From the basic Swords and Sorcery fantasy up through the Weird West/Wild West eras of fantasy, the noble steed is a constant companion. He is not abandoned until Modern, and futuristic settings, and even then the horse finds ways to sneak back into the game. There is a certain mystique to the image of a knight riding astride his destrier with lance lowered, or the man at arms swinging his sword in a killing arc.

So what would you world be like without horses?