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Superman... You're Useless Against COVID-19


Spacescifi

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I mean... what would he do? 'Punch' it?

Thought just came to mind how limited superheroes really are.

Since besides punching really hard, all Superman is good for is blowing away fires and storms... and maybe stopping earthquakes.

Diseases... the worst nightmare of superheroes.

They got nothing on it.

What do you say?

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Superman doesn't stand a chance...

Now it would be a different case if it was Chuck Norris punching the virus... then the virus doesn't stand a chance   :sticktongue:

(I'm sorry No I'm not I had to... hehehe)

Edited by Just Jim
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He can wear some lenses and use his laser eyes to disinfect moderately heat-resistant surfaces.

I'm pretty sure Superman's average duel has almost as high a mortality rate as COVID, given the number of inhabited high-rise buildings destroyed...

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38 minutes ago, cubinator said:

He can wear some lenses and use his laser eyes to disinfect moderately heat-resistant surfaces.

I'm pretty sure Superman's average duel has almost as high a mortality rate as COVID, given the number of inhabited high-rise buildings destroyed...

True.

If COVID-19 were a supervillan I am rather certain it's mortality rate is greater than most enemies have actually brought about, Lex included.

Yeah... Superman would likely be depressed if he had to live in a COVID-19 world. Lex would find the whole situation part gratifying, part frustrating, since Superman would prove useless for once, giving him the opportunity to outshine him with a cure... if only he could, which is the frustrating part.

Even Batman's billions of dollars would'nt stop COVID-19.

Only science has a chance here... and we are trying.

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Based entirely on the TV show, The Flash should be able to beat Corona by running slightly faster than he's ever run before. 

Regarding Superman, his biggest weakness (forget Kryptonite that's boring and lame) is the crushing guilt whenever he can't single handedly fix everything like everybody expects him to. So you just piled that on him. I hope you feel good about yourself.

(Edit just in case it's not obvious: That was tongue in cheek, as I expect this entire thread is)

Edited by Superfluous J
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10 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

Based entirely on the TV show, The Flash should be able to beat Corona by running slightly faster than he's ever run before. 

Regarding Superman, his biggest weakness (forget Kryptonite that's boring and lame) is the crushing guilt whenever he can't single handedly fix everything like everybody expects him to. So you just piled that on him. I hope you feel good about yourself.

(Edit just in case it's not obvious: That was tongue in cheek, as I expect this entire thread is)

 

Uhh... thank you?

:cool:

Edited by Spacescifi
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Superman could care about the social distancing by isolating local groups of people with artificial barriers or by putting them into isolated places, or by crashing the cities into isolated ruined places.

But this is slow and boring.

***

Fast & fun & no covid.

Spoiler

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Special caution: beware sharp wooden objects.

 

Edited by kerbiloid
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I remember, back in the day, me and my high school buddies used to play Traveller, a science fiction RPG set thousands of years in the future. One of my friends (who read lots of comic books) was very fixated on developing his character's psionic powers, powers of the mind to do semi-mystical things. My character was focused on making money, hiring mercenaries, and buying high-tech equipment for them. So, my friend was all, "Dude, my guy can fry your brain with his mind!" And I was all, "Okay. My guy can send a battalion of mercenaries in powered armor with blasters to shoot you dead at 1,000 meters while he sips his morning coffee. Or just bombard you from orbit. Or, if you really crank him off, just take over your whole damn planet."

I'm currently developing a new RPG setting idea, basically a high fantasy setting, except instead of the background technology being medieval-level, it is more 18th-19th century. And while the background and imagery is cool, the problem I'm running into very consistently is keeping magic relevant. Because once you start developing technology, magic becomes cumbersome and unnecessary. Why take months or years to teach a guy a complex spell for combat when you can just put a rifle in his hands? Industry radically changes society far more than magic could ever dream of. So that's actually the direction the setting is heading. It's old-world industrialism/colonialism vs new-world native magic-using cultures. In the long run, magic will be reduced to nothing more than myths and parlor tricks. But the setting is exploring the transitional period.

In any case, the moral of the story is clear: Once you apply any sort of logical consistency to a fictional setting, money and technology trump superpowers.

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2 hours ago, TheSaint said:

Because once you start developing technology, magic becomes cumbersome and unnecessary. Why take months or years to teach a guy a complex spell for combat when you can just put a rifle in his hands?

See Arcanum Of Steamworks And Magick Obscura as an example of the dichotomy if you wish.

Briefly the idea is that Technology is based on determenistic, predictable world, where same input conditions give same output results.
So, you can predict how the mechanisms or chemical processes work, and they work stably.

The Magic is based on spontaneously implemented one-time events, seemingly against the laws of nature.
So, it's based on non-deterministic world.

***

As a result:
The areas, rich with Technology (say, factories), suppress Magic, so the spells often fail, the amulets and talismans fail, magic shields and healing fails, etc.
The more technological is the area, the worse it's for magic. So, the mages should avoid battles in industrial areas.
Also, industrial areas make mechanisms and chemical reactions (powder, medicine) run better, with less fails.

On the other hand, the areas full of Magic (sanctuaries, magic gardens, dungeons, etc) vice versa, enforce spells and make them stronger and successfuller, while the mechanisms often break, medicines and powder fail, etc.
So, in the magic area you need either magic weapon or healing, or the most primitive, melee weapon.

So, to take a rifle and grenades to a derelict monastery is same bad idea like try to cast fireballs in a factory. Both will likely fail.

***

A complicating factor is that every person either follows the way of Magic and his nature gets magical (casts good, but breaks any tech in hands), or of Technology (and no amulettes work on him, on another hand is a little more resistive to the opponent's magic, on the third hand can be hardly healed with magic).

So, a character can be either magically effective, or technologically, or neutral and equally bad in both senses.
His alignment follows his dids. Using magic, you get more magic, using tech, you get more tech.

***

A special place is the Raiilroad.
Basically, it's a Technology, and the magic passengers must go in a special rear boxcar, far from the engine.
On the other hand, it follows across the whole continent, so it has some special nature.

***

The detectors of Magic are basically just precise clockworks mechanisms.
When the Magic around is weak, they work properly. When the Magic gets stronger, they start failing, so show wrong values.

*****

Another game, seemingly having no relation to this, is Ultima VIII: Pagan.

It has a very special magic system, having very little common with Arcanum (and most of other magic settings).

But what is interesting in its magic system, two magic orders are the most significant for the player: order of Fire (ruled by titan Pyros), and order of Ground (ruled by titan Lythos).
The former ones are usual pyromaniacs (fireballs, etc), the latter ones are typically chtonical (necromancy, flesh, food, etc), no Technology at all at that epoch.

But if follow the probable future way of the Fire and the Ground orders, the former ones should finish with metallurgy and so, technology (btw, compare this to the American Gods, the Vulcan town).

So, we can presume that in future the order of Fire will result in Technology, while the order of Ground should keep following Magic, and hence we get a bridge from the Ultima VIII  to Arcanum.

(I know two more settings, nicely matching and expanding this system, but both are in Russian, so they won't tell you much),

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16 minutes ago, DunaManiac said:

But would he be resistant to the virus? Y'know, him being from another planet and all.

 

Yes.

Two ways I think this would play out:

DC comics writes it: Superman is depressed but uses his DNA to make superman pills that both heal the virus and make people super strong for a limited amount of time. Some of the cured go rogue and Superman feels needed once he has to use his fists on temporary rogue supers. Ultimately the whole plan is called off as a bad idea, and they find out Lex or some other villain made COVID-19, they (his hero team) beat him up and take the antidote cure.

I write it: Since I am willing to change the status quo by a lot more than DC comics... Lois dies of COVID-19. Superman's grief causes him to hang up the cape and start working with Luthor for a cure. Supes never becomes evil, and Lex still is Lex, but over time slowly but surely they become friends. Lex and Superman. As Lex sees that they both need each other's help for once... to beat COVID-19 once and for all.

After they do all bets are off though LOL. The one thing that will have certainly changed though is that now they at least respect each other far more than they do in canon.

 

Edited by Spacescifi
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18 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

See Arcanum Of Steamworks And Magick Obscura as an example of the dichotomy if you wish.

<snip>

I did look into those settings, and I decided to go in my own direction. One of the fundamental assumptions made in that setting is that technology affects magic. A mass of iron in the ground doesn't affect magic, but if you take that iron out of the ground and change it into the shape of, say, a steam locomotive, or a drill press, it does. Combining carbon, sulfur, oxygen, potassium, and nitrogen into natural compounds in the environment doesn't affect magic, but combining them into gunpowder in a laboratory or factory does. And only certain degrees and types of technology. Woven cloth is technology. Clothing buttons are technology. Leather shoes are technology. But apparently none of these things affect magic in any way. It all just seemed very arbitrary to me. To me if magic exists in a setting, then it follows natural, reproducible laws that predate human (or demi-human, or whomever) endeavors. If it didn't, then how was it discovered in the first place? Why would very specific patterns of technological development disrupt magical processes when other technological patterns, or even just simple patterns in nature didn't? It just struck me as a game mechanic in search of an explanation. You are correct, the Arcanum-style setting does make magic more competitive. But (to bring it back to my original statement) I think it does so by removing a certain degree of logical consistency.

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(Just a disclaimer. Here we talk about the magic world structure, not about the standard trial setting, commonly known as "the real world (tm)".)

 

1 hour ago, TheSaint said:

A mass of iron in the ground doesn't affect magic, but if you take that iron out of the ground and change it into the shape of, say, a steam locomotive, or a drill press, it does.

Not the iron (or wood, or stone) mass itself, but the human perception of this place, their conviction and expectation, changing the probabilistic picture of the place.
Don't forget, all material objects are material in your imagination, from the information brought by your senses.
As well, all listed chemical elements are just clouds or elementary particles, which are "material" only when they interact with your senses. In other cases they are just places with specific distribution of physical fields.

***

When you raise an arm, you move more atoms than the galaxy has stars in the "arm".
Like a whole galactic arm suddenly changed its position with no visible reasons.
You can describe the galactic arm motion (of which you are aware just from measures) with a small set of simple equations.
Can you do this to your own arm, which is definitely material?

You can describe the motion of particular atoms affected by neighboring atoms, caused by electric current coming from the brain, and the moment and the place in the brain where it starts.
Can you describe the moment when your immaterial intention becomes the material physical process? And how does this not violate the conservation laws? Does it stop you from raising your arm?

***

I guess, the closest equivalent to use as an example is Roger Zelazny's "Nine Princes in Amber".
Briefly, a family of magical anthropomorphic entities is able to change the reality with the help of their will.

***

Say, you're walking along the road. there are random trees, grass, rubbish aside.
You start expecting some particular change. If you wish the road to get golden and the trees to get crystal, this is unlikely probable, so you unlikely get this, it's too unusual to appear suddenly.
But you are expecting a tree with a little darker leaves, or an empty pack of Marlboro between other junk. These objects are usual, nothing stops them from appearing in your "reality bubble" just several steps later when they were laying, and you just have seen them.
So, the longer you walk, the more lesser details you implement in your "reality bubble" (i.e. in the local part of the Universe you can hope to percept with your senses). the more changes you implement on the road, and at last you are walking along the golden road with crystal trees.

The stronger is the mage, the faster he can change the details. Or he can just cheat and accept real a turn to the golden road right after that bush to the right, so he doesn't need to bother with long walking.

***

Say, you are waiting for a carriage somewhere in countryside and start guessing, like probably in childhood. Kinda "When I finish counting to 100, the bus appears. 1, 2, 3, ..." or "When that crow flies, the bus appears".

If there is a modern autobahn, and the buses stop every five minutes (i.e. purely industrial place) this makes not much sense, as you just know that the bus appears at 10:42.
So, are you a mage or not, the bus will stop exactly there at 10:42.
To change this circumstances plausibly, to let your "reality update" pass the "plausibility filter", you need at least a bus crash or a road damage.

If this is a road when you can wait for 2-3 hours, the surrounding reality gets less deterministic. It can appear a minute later, or three hours, so it's easy to you to believe in your update and see it around.

If it's a medieval forest road, it's easier to meet a witch on a broom than a bus.

So, as you can see, the less deterministic is the place, the wider is the range of applicable reality patches, i.e. the magic.

***

Say, you are a mage in a plant, full of automated machinery, which are synchronously working.
There's just not much to change magically, everything is determinated, and any change looks unlikely.
While in a garden you can implement a weevil which will right know crawl from under that leaf.

***

Say, you are a farmer with machinery. Your harvest depends more on the time and efforts rather than on random events.
So, magic will hardly help you to repair a tractor without engine, because you wouldn't believe in it yourself. It's very deterministic, magic-free place.

But when you are a medieval peasant and don't know if the rats and rains let you gather something, it's obviously less deterministic place.

1 hour ago, TheSaint said:

Woven cloth is technology. Clothing buttons are technology. Leather shoes are technology.

Not the particular change of materials play role here.

The "magic world" is a world of superposition of "reality bubbles" where the characters live in.
The more characters at the place are sure that the stone will fall down at 9.81 m/s2, the less probable and the more unbelievable gets any unexpected change in observed reality making it fall at 8.4 or fly up, so the harder is to do magic.

The less deterministic is the place, the more unpredictable gets the reality to a gunner, because it's hard to be sure that the powder burns, and the trigger will not be locked, when there are speaking flowers, burning water, and soft iron grass around.
So, the more magic is the place, the more "negative magic" is doing the gunner itself, ensuring himself "oh, it won't burn", "oh, it won't shoot", so the probability of the gun failure starts exceeding the probability of a successful shot.

***

So, as the magic requires unpredictable events to be more probable, the magic place gets too much chaotic and non-deterministic to let a mechanism work,
while a technological place is too predictable and deterministic to allow a mage to apply some reality patch.

*****

You can make an experiment, and find such magic places in your network.
Now you can understand more clearly, why they act so. That office guy doesn't believe it works, and it stops.

Edited by kerbiloid
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On 8/26/2020 at 1:27 PM, TheSaint said:

I'm currently developing a new RPG setting idea, basically a high fantasy setting, except instead of the background technology being medieval-level, it is more 18th-19th century. And while the background and imagery is cool, the problem I'm running into very consistently is keeping magic relevant. Because once you start developing technology, magic becomes cumbersome and unnecessary. Why take months or years to teach a guy a complex spell for combat when you can just put a rifle in his hands?

(Somewhat off topic, but...)

If magic use is based on knowledge and training, perhaps the more accessible information that the 18th-19th centuries brought could simplify the process. Rather than climbing a mountain to learn Fireball I from a sage of yore over months of training, you could just pick up a book or take a class and learn the spell in the same time you might take to learn to shoot a rifle. Additionally, a greater understanding of the “science” behind magic could simplify and strengthen the processes of learning and casting. 

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Can SuperMan even catch such bugs?   I mean, he's technically not really "human".     

Also, he's an illegal immigrant, as far as those things go....

I mean, dogs for instance can't catch most human diseases. And that's simply for them being dogs, not even super or anything... 

I reckon a far superior creature from another planet who just so happens to look exactly like a human being (albeit one who wears his underpants atop his trousers) wouldn't be subject to puny human maladies.   

 

In any case, SuperMan is totally not helping out with the pandemic - Like, what the hell, Kent, It's not like it's Kryptonite or anything... :/

Edited by Moach
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On 8/26/2020 at 6:27 PM, TheSaint said:

I remember, back in the day, me and my high school buddies used to play Traveller, a science fiction RPG set thousands of years in the future. One of my friends (who read lots of comic books) was very fixated on developing his character's psionic powers, powers of the mind to do semi-mystical things. My character was focused on making money, hiring mercenaries, and buying high-tech equipment for them. So, my friend was all, "Dude, my guy can fry your brain with his mind!" And I was all, "Okay. My guy can send a battalion of mercenaries in powered armor with blasters to shoot you dead at 1,000 meters while he sips his morning coffee. Or just bombard you from orbit. Or, if you really crank him off, just take over your whole damn planet."

I'm currently developing a new RPG setting idea, basically a high fantasy setting, except instead of the background technology being medieval-level, it is more 18th-19th century. And while the background and imagery is cool, the problem I'm running into very consistently is keeping magic relevant. Because once you start developing technology, magic becomes cumbersome and unnecessary. Why take months or years to teach a guy a complex spell for combat when you can just put a rifle in his hands? Industry radically changes society far more than magic could ever dream of. So that's actually the direction the setting is heading. It's old-world industrialism/colonialism vs new-world native magic-using cultures. In the long run, magic will be reduced to nothing more than myths and parlor tricks. But the setting is exploring the transitional period.

Your setting, your rules of course - and the way your setting is turning out sounds pretty cool. But in general, I'd say that keeping magic relevant, even in an 18th-19th century context isn't too hard. It just depends what your magic can do and how advanced your technology is. Rifles for everyone might well beat fireballs from a highly trained few in terms of shooting at the enemy but there's more to warfare than that as I'm sure you'll know. Some ideas off the top of my head.

Scrying.      Being able to keep tabs on your enemy from afar has obvious tactical advantages. For that matter it makes coordinating your own forces a lot easier.
Invisibility.  A potential boon for spies and assassins.
Illusions.     Terrify your opponents, confuse enemy scryers, keep your enemies distracted investigating things which they know are probably illusions - but might not be.
Weather alteration.   Obvious advantages even if that's only tiring your enemies out by forcing them to march through foot deep mud on the way to the battlefield
Healing.       Enough said.
Armour.     I don't care about your double line of riflemen - my six handpicked commandoes are bulletproof.
Create water.   Clean water on demand for a marching army?  Yes please said the the quartermaster!
Technology enhancements.   Gun barrels that don't burst, unbreakable saddle straps, boots that remain waterproof without dubbin or wax, being able to reliably light a fire, or get a stove working even in the wind and rain? The little things that make logistics easier and keep morale that bit higher.
Far-speaking.  Giving orders at a distance before the advent of easily portable radios.
Teleportation.  Move your troops faster than the enemy can move theirs.

Then there are the civilian applications of course. 

Edit:   All in all, I'd say that the problem with magic is not keeping it relevant but keeping it consistent and balanced for your setting. My opinion only of course.

Edited by KSK
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5 hours ago, KSK said:

Your setting, your rules of course - and the way your setting is turning out sounds pretty cool. But in general, I'd say that keeping magic relevant, even in an 18th-19th century context isn't too hard. It just depends what your magic can do and how advanced your technology is. Rifles for everyone might well beat fireballs from a highly trained few in terms of shooting at the enemy but there's more to warfare than that as I'm sure you'll know. Some ideas off the top of my head.

Scrying.      Being able to keep tabs on your enemy from afar has obvious tactical advantages. For that matter it makes coordinating your own forces a lot easier.
Invisibility.  A potential boon for spies and assassins.
Illusions.     Terrify your opponents, confuse enemy scryers, keep your enemies distracted investigating things which they know are probably illusions - but might not be.
Weather alteration.   Obvious advantages even if that's only tiring your enemies out by forcing them to march through foot deep mud on the way to the battlefield
Healing.       Enough said.
Armour.     I don't care about your double line of riflemen - my six handpicked commandoes are bulletproof.
Create water.   Clean water on demand for a marching army?  Yes please said the the quartermaster!
Technology enhancements.   Gun barrels that don't burst, unbreakable saddle straps, boots that remain waterproof without dubbin or wax, being able to reliably light a fire, or get a stove working even in the wind and rain? The little things that make logistics easier and keep morale that bit higher.
Far-speaking.  Giving orders at a distance before the advent of easily portable radios.
Teleportation.  Move your troops faster than the enemy can move theirs.

Then there are the civilian applications of course. 

Edit:   All in all, I'd say that the problem with magic is not keeping it relevant but keeping it consistent and balanced for your setting. My opinion only of course.

Well, Shadowrun is doing both (Magic AND Technology). In fact it's a cyberpunk fantasy RPG, involving things such as spirits, dragons, elves, dwarves, cyborg, fixers, gunslingers and other kind of people. 1% of the population have the potential of using some form of magic (which is a lot in fact, that's a lot more than doctors for instance).

There's very few thing only magical stuff can do in this settings. Mostly they involve wrecking havoc in the mind of people (and well, with time you can do it the tech way), and messing with everything present in the magical planes (which are out of reach of all technological things). Same goes for the tech way of doing things.

There's been some balancing tricks also, like magical armor (which makes you immune to non magical damage source), and some limitation on being an hybrid of both world (you can be a cyborg with magical abilities, but it will cost you a lot of experience points and money).

But you can have both in a world. Usually the magical way is a bit faster and cheaper (money wise), which allows you to be versatile and grant you the capacity to improvise, while the use of technology requires planning. And unless you want to move everywhere with duffel bags filled with items "just in case", you can't be ready for all the situations that will come your way. That's where magic have an edge. It's just knowledge in the end, and knowledge fits in your head. And you usually brings it with you.

But I'll agree that when you reached the point of having the personal power of starting war between nations or political cults around the world just to make a point, technology and magic are just tools, and the difference between them is not that pertinent anymore. Because I can assure you a battalion of sniper infused by magic power, shooting at you with mystical bullets that will shred your soul no matter the armor you can carry, is something scary. Why pick only one when you can have it all ?

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9 hours ago, KSK said:

Your setting, your rules of course - and the way your setting is turning out sounds pretty cool. But in general, I'd say that keeping magic relevant, even in an 18th-19th century context isn't too hard. It just depends what your magic can do and how advanced your technology is. Rifles for everyone might well beat fireballs from a highly trained few in terms of shooting at the enemy but there's more to warfare than that as I'm sure you'll know. Some ideas off the top of my head.

Scrying.      Being able to keep tabs on your enemy from afar has obvious tactical advantages. For that matter it makes coordinating your own forces a lot easier.
Invisibility.  A potential boon for spies and assassins.
Illusions.     Terrify your opponents, confuse enemy scryers, keep your enemies distracted investigating things which they know are probably illusions - but might not be.
Weather alteration.   Obvious advantages even if that's only tiring your enemies out by forcing them to march through foot deep mud on the way to the battlefield
Healing.       Enough said.
Armour.     I don't care about your double line of riflemen - my six handpicked commandoes are bulletproof.
Create water.   Clean water on demand for a marching army?  Yes please said the the quartermaster!
Technology enhancements.   Gun barrels that don't burst, unbreakable saddle straps, boots that remain waterproof without dubbin or wax, being able to reliably light a fire, or get a stove working even in the wind and rain? The little things that make logistics easier and keep morale that bit higher.
Far-speaking.  Giving orders at a distance before the advent of easily portable radios.
Teleportation.  Move your troops faster than the enemy can move theirs.

Then there are the civilian applications of course. 

Edit:   All in all, I'd say that the problem with magic is not keeping it relevant but keeping it consistent and balanced for your setting. My opinion only of course.

Yes and no. Because, you're right, it totally depends on how magic works in the setting. In this particular system, magic drains fatigue from the user, so a particular mage might be able to do one or more of those things for a short time, but not over a wide area or for a large group. So, for example, he might be able to teleport himself and a couple of others, for a short distance. But he couldn't teleport an army to another continent. If you wanted to do something on that scale you'd need an army of mages in addition to your army, and that adds a whole new level of logistics to the equation. There are a lot of limitations. And, again, the setting is exploring the transition. Many of the examples you give are valid for 18th-19th century technology. But once technology advances further, they start to go away as well.

So, yes, it all comes down to how the system of magic works. If your magic system allows someone to perform incredible feats with only a little training and staggering amounts of power, then it would trump technology. But in a world where such magic existed it's unlikely that technology would ever be developed at all. Why would they go to the trouble? That's true of any technology, not just guns or locomotives. If it's easy and convenient for anyone to light a fire by snapping their fingers, why would anyone develop the technology to light one by striking flint? If it's easy for the average person to wish clothing into existence why would they develop textiles? If it's easy for an average person to cloak themselves in illusion and keep themselves warm why would they develop clothing? So in order for technology to develop, there has to be limitations on magic in the setting that make such technology practical. If the setting has reached this technological level, there has to be a logical reason for it. Otherwise it isn't logically consistent.

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It's not only how the magic works. It's also how rare it is. If the magic is rare, it might tend to raise societal issues such as paranoia toward mages, which can lead to pogroms for instance. Or if there's even less mages, it ca lead to weird conspiracies. Some being false, some none. You can, after all, have a world with in total of 10 mages, each having gain extraordinary social and political power due to some minor tricks (mind reading, magical influence and stuff), and waging economics wars against each other from the secrecy of their lair (a bit like Vampires do in Vampire the mascarade. Or at least how vampires pretends to do in Vampire the masquerades).

You can have the X-Men situation, where you end up with hundreds or thousands of people having special abilities / magical power, but being persecuted for that, meaning they don't really have a lot of power to wield on society, just barely enough to protect themselves. And to blow some government buildings up.

The thing is, existence of magic, like existence of technology, does not happens in the void. It belongs to a worlds of people, with their own fear, cultures, prejudices and needs. Some of them conflicting with each other.

For instance, in Shadowrun (yeah I played the game for twenty years), there's the interesting point that spirit seems to exists. So how do monotheists religion adapts to that ? Well, they did. Some consider magical users being touched by the demon and persecutes them, some others see the spirit as the manifestation of the saints for instance, or djinns. Magical tricks being the expression of the will of their god. Of course both views are present into the same religion, leading to internal fights that are not solved forty years after the re-apparition of magic.

And then there's how you study magic if it needs to be studied. There's some magical courses in the MIT in Shadowrun. And one of the jokes we have with friends is to figures out what are the first spell that you'll learn as a student on campus. Some of them might be Detoxification (it helps with hangover), some Influence spells (because you're a jock who just wants to impress people), Sustenance (because you then don't need to feed, because food is to expensive, you're crippled with students debt after all). Probably not fireball.

Thinking about the impact on the daily lives of both magic and technology will defines what's acceptable which aspects of magic and technology will be pushed forward, where the R&D is going, etc. Eberon is a good example of that. The world have an industrial view of Magic. There's no steam engine there, but still you have trains and airship moving fast with cargo hold. Some engineers just figured out a way of bindings elemental in those and uses those as an engine. It is both a feat of magic and technology. They even have some sort of magical smartphone (using enchanted stones), and there's entire guilds working around that magic to build infrastructure.

So, if you want to make magic relevant decides what makes it relevant, what problems does it solves and why technological solution are not common. Or, on the contrary, if magic is falling in disgrace in profit of technology, then why did it happened ? And what does it means for all the people that relied on magic to live. If there's a world wide web of interconnected devices, there's no need for people magically sending message to their recipients. What are those magical messenger are going to do next ?

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