Quote: JFerio wrote:
In other words, a not so subtle cue that the player has gone too far, and the character will now suffer for it.
That said, my personal preference is to actually take the player aside and explain to them they're not working out.
Which is good, because solving out-of-character problems with in-character punishment is perhaps the worst form of GMing that exists.
As for the complaint that magic = technology.
Well, duh.
Magic, in the D&D universe, is a science. That means that people will treat it like a science. They will explore and understand its rules, and then
ruthlessly exploit them to make their lives more convenient. They will develop magic the same we we developed physics, chemistry and biology and toiwards much
the same ends. And a lot of it is going to end up looking like stuff we have because that stuff is damn convenient. Flashlights were developed because
flashlights are a useful and obvious application of portable power source + lightbulbs, especially when dealing with places that are dark by nature. I fully
expect once "continual light" is developed that anybody who wants to explore someplace dark and nasty will be able to go down to the store and pick
up a half-dozen continual light wands for their convenience.
My only beef with the magic as technology thing is that it doesn't go far enough. Typically magic in D&D-land has been around for thousands of years
and yet everyone is still living in medival mudhuts, building (utterly useless) giant stone castles and engaging in war with fucking arrows and knights on
horseback. Just like the existence of the cannon utterly changed the face of warfare the existence of people able to cast Fireball would utterly change the
face of warfare in D&D-land. The existence of the D&D universe breaks my suspension of disbeleif so hard I can't really force myself to play in it,
except as a deliberate parody.
If you want to make magic not a technology in your setting, I suggest you create a magic system that does not respond well to science. That is, you'll need
a system that can not be studied or predicted. In other words, one that is totally unplayable.
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Epsilon