We forget often about the flow on effects of everyday life in roleplay games. Treating things like a peer to peer equal of medieval earth, but often in conversations around the table we discover how different things NEED to be, to give that sense of magical whimsy, and make our games feel more live
Magical Worlds Differences
This might be a re-occurring talking point, since it seems to me, most RPG games ignore it, most writers ignore it, most GMs and DMs ignore it, and yet, it should be common and used regularly, and I'm very interested in it enough to deep dive into the whys and hows of these differences.
Lets start with a common one. Lighting, in Towns.
Many magic spells lists have some form of continuous light as a low level spell. Mages need high to very high incomes or wealth to afford the costly materials, so they should be hiring themselves out, even as apprentices, with their abilities that the common public need but can't do.
I see Mages as programmers. Once in the 1990s we realised that 'math' could be done for accountants on a localised PC, average business could transfer their whole systems from paper to digital, do their accounts 10x faster, hire less book keepers, make less mistakes, hire cheaper uni student programmers to make ad-hoc programs to help, to now where we have massive dynamic systems that can cope with billions of businesses details.
Magic is on par with this kind of technology upgrades to lives, depending on your world, and your mages, it makes no sense that supremely high level magic is tied up in a university of spell casters, and the rest of the world is completely unaware of magic. That puts magic back into the University Univac of the 1960s, and what happened back then? people tinkered in their sheds, and invented Microsoft and Apple.
So the world builder need to take into account, where there magic is, Unis and Sheds? the start of Win 95? the dot com boom?
So lets return to magic lighting. Kids, with some magic talent are born, they get to apprenticeship age, and the schools come say they'll sponsor a kid, but his parents are poor, so the kid needs to earn some living.
Nearby the nobles are occasionally being robbed by very clever theives, and the guards that are hired, complain they can't properly see by lantern light. someone somehow remembers that continous light is a low level spell, and suggests that mages apprentices are hired to light up street lanterns at nightfall, and again X hours later, when the spell begins to fade (light lamp lighters in the 1800s)
Within a few years, an enterprising Mage, has a 'street lamps' business, where they hire out lanterns that last for 12 hours, being cast by apprentices, charged by apprentices, and the spell improved on by masters to last longer.
Now, noble families sleep better, having paid the lamplighters build for 12hour street lights that also glow red when someone moves nearby, or when someone with a low morale score comes close to their property.
Would theft become scarce if every street had cameras? automated detection systems? face recognition systems? no.. the theives will counter it, IF the worth is high enough to try. So the rogue career doesn't end, it just gets more interesting.
Another: Light, nearby Healing.
Admittedly, healing isn't usually a low level spell, in some systems, it might be a d4 and stop death, giving the victim enough time to be taken elsewhere for deadlier blows, but the fact that a mortal wound is now negated under controlled conditions.. Warriors can train at full strength, like they do in Anime, not fearing serious damage or death, because one, both or also a nearby priest, has a healing spell that can do enough to pause bleeding or prevent death, giving them time to do greater healing.
So with Two warriors, fighting at full pelt, sure, pulling blows to help the situation, but accidental deaths will be mitigated, reduced to a manageable number, they're learn faster, and be better, much quicker than 'practice bouts' that we have to do.
What DOES light healing do? will it prevent a cold? diahorea? pregnancy? Is the morning after pill as easy as ducking down to the local church and speaking to a priest? There are gods of sex in some games, so surely those participants even have healing spells that prevent pregnancy, and are more than willing to provide that service to the public, (for a coin)
If cantrips that kill diseases and germs can be cast by even non mages, would it make sense that some young hedge wizard or druid or bard is employed at all food markets, to "clense" the tables each morning?
I think you get my drift.. So my idea for a few blogs and podcasts is to go through the general spells lists and discuss how they 'should' have changed your game world, and the continued after affects of generational usage.
Seriously, consider just how a cheap, non consumable, no flammable, light source, would have prevented the fires of Rome, the library of Alexandria, and the effect of those lost knowledge's. If the last 2 thousand years had retained those studies, would technology be leaps and bounds ahead of where we are today?
