#magic vs technology

[vexwerewolf]

One of the things I love about Gravity Falls is that unlike so many shows, it doesn't try to wimp out of magic by saying "actually there's a scientific explanation for everything, no matter how far-fetched."

Gravity Falls says "okay sure there IS a scientific explanation for some things, but magic is also very definitely real and WILL fuck you up"

[thelandswemadeofpaper]

I acknowledge that the Magic vs Technology theme is very important, with the mystical and science presented as opposing forces, specially within the historical context, with the Industrial Revolution, nature (which is often magical) paying the price of progress, old religious/supernatural beliefs replaced by modern ones...

But we also need to see the absolute beauty of a wizard with a gun

Edit:

my point

Not a wizard, but the Scarecrow from Wizard of Oz (1939) was not joking

[momentov1vere]

i need it to be june 24 already bc ironheart looks soooo cool

her suit combining magic and technology?? that’s literally such a cool concept, i can’t wait to see how that works :D

[willnotacceptalifeundeserved]

New video:

[eddeearts]

Idk why but I feel like I always see stories where Magic and Technology are against each other. For example, Good Hunting, an episode of Love Death and Robots, has magic disappear as tech advances, a character loses her shapeshifting ability due to this.

even before I watched good hunting I felt like this was the case, at least in the media I've consumed. and you know what? I'm over it.

enough worlds where the personifications of magic and tech are sworn enemies in a battle to the death.

what if, and hear me out- what if Girlfriends?!?!?!?

like, the personifications are Lovers, they know each other well, are perhaps married, definitely do the sex, and cuddle and talk and disagree and make up afterwards. they would fall asleep together. they could spend all of eternity laying together, staring into each other's eyes. there they would see their beloved, someone who they simultaneously know better than themselves, and also will never truly know.

they could also be boyfriends, or one or both could be non-binary, agender, they could be beyond gender, or a straight couple if you want.

but basically, tech and magic work in harmony to the point that sometimes they can't be told apart by mere mortals.

their personified forms would look rather human(oid), but they would have true(er) forms that are kinda like biblically accurate angels, they have that energy

[novadragoness]

World Building #2

What is the level of technology in your world?

How much and how common is magic there?

If you have enough of both, how do they interact? Do they interact at all?

[blacksanz]

Another Thalos pic finished!!! I wanted to apply a comic-ish color style here since the inks were quite strong....

tools: mechanical pencil, pentel ink brush, Photoshop CS 5+bamboo wacom

[froodycartographer]

Magic Vs. Technology thonking

I've been working on my specific system-agnostic (but lets be real, its almost always going to be D&D) campaign setting, and one of the things that gave me a lot of trouble was the mirror planes of the Feywild and the Shadowfell. (again, because its always going to be D&D) I, like most disaffected millennials, take issue with the classic fantasy approach to objective Good vs. Evil. I was raised on Game of Thrones, we say, I like my grimdark and morally grey characters. The problem is, as any discussion on new D&D releases will show you, is that the good - evil axis is pretty fundamental to the world of D&D, and one of the places it shows up the most strongly is in the Mirror Planes.

For those who are unaware, here is an extremely biased explanation. The mirror planes are reflections of the material plane (the "real world", as it were), with the same broad geography, settlements, and landmarks. But the Feywild is the world with the Goodness dialed up to 11, and the Shadowfell is the same but with the Evil Factor. Now, obviously this is System Lore, and most people toss it out. Fey are supposed to be capricious tricksters that screw over the party, that's more fun than a plane of happy good times. (The books seem to support this in the form of the Unseelie court, but I'm going to pay that lip service because this is still the preamble) However, I haven't seen much discussion on fresh takes on the Shadowfell, most people seem content to take it at bland, grey, boring face value. It certainly does not have the notoriety hat the Feywild has. But my players wanted to visit both, so both I will add.

So with the conceit that I need to add new planes, one bursting with life and one depressingly grey, to my pretty low-magic medieval setting, what's the game plan? Well, the simplest thing to do, is swap the good - evil axis for a new axis, one that fits the stories I want to tell. For my world, that ended up being magic vs technology.

Reskinning the Feywild to focus on magic was basically no work at all, which perhaps is why this specific mirror planar system confuses me so much. Has the Shadowfell been deprecated at this point? Either way, rather than being an untamed wilderness, its a place in constant flux, focusing on individuality and personal power above all else. I suppose its the closest I get to a self-critique of my libertarian ass, but as its the place my players want to go first, I wanted to really put them in a position of "too much of a good thing.

So with that in mind, what then should the Shadowfell be? It needs to be a dark grim world that focuses on technology. Wonderful, I've got ten thousand climate collapse posts on my feed to draw for inspiration there. But I also want it to counterpoint the Feywild and its individualism. And that brings to mind the classic way to balance magic and technology; while magic is wielded by an elite few, the machine is available to everyone. It is a tool for the masses. So then, should the Shadowfell, with its heavy clouds and dead landscapes, by a land of conformity, where the inhabitants work towards greater projects they have no personal knowledge of, and the adventurers instead have to protect their sense of self from the crushing force of will of the great social machine that churns out the steel to build itself further.

A while back, my friend and I had an interesting discussion on humans and bees. Bees and ants are hive beings, with each community behaving more as a single organism than as a collective. And, so my friend postulated, a similar argument could be made for human cities, as an intricate network that is more its own consciousness than a sum of many. I countered with many human-centric arguments as my nature would require of me to. Does a bee think itself a discrete unit separate from the hive? This is a strange concept to illustrate in a role-playing game, which is so steeped in the concept of Great Individuals, but hopefully it will make for good stories for my players.