Why so few games about Magic VS Tech?

[laclongquan]

And a critical difference, unsaid in game, is this: a rocket/grenade has cost. Once used, it's gone, shooting rocket = burning money. With fireball there's no cost associated except maybe time to regenerate (sleep, rest, etc). There's no material cost to it~

I mentioned it, that you can disarm a guy with a grenade but not with a fireball spell. But a lot of spells do have material component and some times are quite expensive. Anyway, I din't said "magic is exactly like tech", I said "magic is similar to tech".

And like I said, dumbass magic player would never accept such difficult and expensive concept like material components for magic spells. Which game use it? Hmm?

Any game that use an abstract mechanic nearly similar to THAT would get much less usage: note PST/BG/NWN series game where you can squint and pretend scroll/wand/potion for offensive magic as material cost... Very noticeable is the fact of so few players use such things and mostly rely on memorized spells with zero cost.

Witcher series. Let's pretend alchemy ingredients is the material cost for spells (witcher 1 mechanism)... And players keep whining about going around and picking up ingredients. To the point where W3 just simplify the whole damn thing into oblivion.

 

[Cryomancer]

dumbass magic player would never accept such difficult and expensive concept like material components for magic spells. Which game use it? Hmm?

Games with reagents :

• Ultima 7,8 and 9
• Ultima Online
• Gothic 2 uses to make runes (but not to cast from runes)
• ToEE uses in most spells but is simplified, the monetary value of the spell is deducted from your party.
• PF:KM and PF:WoTR has reagent requirements for a SOME spells(not all spells)
• DDO has it, a fireball requires reagents and a lot of spells can't be used with eschew material
• Mortal Online also has a lot of reagents
• Dark Souls 2 Hexes, a lot of then require souls, the "free" hexes like Dark Orb pales in comparison to Great Resonant Soul
• NWN + PRC. It only applies to epic level spells
• Meridian 59
• (...)

It is sadly not present in CRPG's, but in AD&D 2e Dark Sun setting, since there are no weave, casters regardless of being defilers or preserver has a really hard time gathering energy to prepare spells. They need to use the lifeforce of people, animals and vegetation as energy for their spells. And kits like shadow wizard which uses the plane of shadow to prepare spells can only do that in certain conditions and low level shadow risk taking so much damage that they can die while preparing spells. IDK if it can be considered "reagent", but I like that idea.

All games that I've mentioned above are great games.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

I liked the idea of animancy in Pillars of Eternity and that people actively researched it. I expected that they would explore to some degree the conflict of superstitions and science but sadly it did go nowhere and they failed to create something interesting based on their promising setup. Something similar could work as basis for a magic vs technology setting, where you have mages that wan't to stop scientist from discovering their secrets. The game could then let you start either as mage or scientist. But I doubt that there are many developers that could write a reasonable scientist/engineer perspective or a coherent plot at all ...

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I liked the idea of animancy in Pillars of Eternity and that people actively researched it. I expected that they would explore to some degree the conflict of superstitions and science but sadly it did go nowhere and they failed to create something interesting based on their promising setup. Something similar could work as basis for a magic vs technology setting, where you have mages that wan't to stop scientist from discovering their secrets. The game could then let you start either as mage or scientist. But I doubt that there are many developers that could write a reasonable scientist/engineer perspective or a coherent plot at all ...

it didn't go anywhere because they decided to take the setting they built and throw 90% of it out to do a retarded game on totally-not-standins-for-real-world-minorities-and-colonialism

 

[Reinhardt]

Because technology is white man's thing and magic is ghay men in dresses thing. In current year such conflict can be portrayed only one way.

 

[Reinhardt]

Both can be relative dominant. Look to Shadow and Bones for eg. Grishas are rare. Before the development of repeating rifles, is said thta one Grisha is in average deadly as 50 soldiers. In some countries, Grishas are persecuted, in other are tolerated as longs they serve in army and the fear of Grisha lead to more "non Grisha" to wanna to develop more technology, so they can fight Grisha with less causalities. After "lever action" rifles become common, Grisha lost a lot of his value. To the point that the general mentioned that 10 Grisha per enemy soldier killed is a "good" thing.

The magic of Grisha is only called "small science", large scale reality warping magic per say exists in Grishaverse but are way deadlier. It happens once during the entire season and it has dangerous consequences, dividing a country and teh consequences of it preserves for many generations. Heres is a video

Grisha is kid version of male name Grigoriy. When i was little kid i had pet goose named Grisha. Sorry, can't take this shit seriously.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Magic and tech aren't that different

Magic is the equivalent of throwing a tantrum to get seated at a full table.
Tech is bringing your own chair to the table.
Glorious barbarism is taking the table home with you.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Magic is only an extreme advanced tecnology used for trivial matters.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Magic is only an extreme advanced tecnology used for trivial matters.

Basically ultra fast internet

 

[Stoned Ape]

Shadowrun has tech and magic.

Rifts tabletop RPG also had both (along with capeshit, aliens and pretty much everything else), would have made an interesting CRPG, but was also a bit of an unbalanced mess.

Spoiler

The Obsidian: Age of Judgement tabletop setting was also pretty great, sort of a mashup of Judge Dredd and Doom with a lot of holy/unholy and spiritual magic sprinkled on top. Would probably have made an even better CRPG than Rifts.

Spoiler

 

[Norfleet]

With a straight line of eyesight fireball and rocket, if there's an obstacle between the two it would be disabled, blocked, uneffective to target

With a lobbing over grenade that can bounce around, an obstacle is not that much of an obstacle.

So you accept that a fireball and a rocket launcher are functionally equivalent, but then try to compare a fireball to a grenade and argue that the grenade can be arced and the fireball can't. But that's not an argument of magic vs. tech. That's an argument of one specific item vs. another specific item.

And a critical difference, unsaid in game, is this: a rocket/grenade has cost. Once used, it's gone, shooting rocket = burning money. With fireball there's no cost associated except maybe time to regenerate (sleep, rest, etc). There's no material cost to it~

Guns run on bullets, magic runs on mana potions. I'm not really sure what the fundamental difference is from a gameplay standpoint. A gunman that runs out of bullets can't use. A wizard that runs out of blue potions can't shoot either. What are you going for here?

 

[Grimlorn]

If magic can be improved, we will certainly see some kind of arms race.

Yes and this can be reasonably done within a setting. Magic users can cast spells to kill people. People (tech faction) develop guns to counter them. Magic casters use giant fireballs or meteor like stones to rain down on people. Tech people develop artillery to counter. Magic users can fly or have some sort of airships powered by magic. Tech faction develops planes. Could be very interesting.

 

[Reinhardt]

If magic can be improved, we will certainly see some kind of arms race.

Yes and this can be reasonably done within a setting. Magic users can cast spells to kill people. People (tech faction) develop guns to counter them. Magic casters use giant fireballs or meteor like stones to rain down on people. Tech people develop artillery to counter. Magic users can fly or have some sort of airships powered by magic. Tech faction develops planes. Could be very interesting.

 

[Grimlorn]

Yeah I guess the beginning of that with the development of tech to combat a threat, but no vampires and no regular humans somehow becoming superhuman making the development of tech obsolete.

 

[Erebus]

I liked the idea of animancy in Pillars of Eternity and that people actively researched it. I expected that they would explore to some degree the conflict of superstitions and science but sadly it did go nowhere and they failed to create something interesting based on their promising setup.

True, it's a missed opportunity. There could have been some interesting conflicts between traditional wizards and the rise of animancy, but the subject is completely neglected.

it didn't go anywhere because they decided to take the setting they built and throw 90% of it out to do a retarded game on totally-not-standins-for-real-world-minorities-and-colonialism

Deadfire has some flaws, but its setting is not one of them. It's in fact considerably better than the setting of PoE 1.

Accusing it of wokism is absurd : the game never tries to idealize the Huana, and their caste system is obviously unpleasant.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Deadfire has some flaws, but its setting is not one of them. It's in fact considerably better than the setting of PoE 1.

it's absolutely garbage
codex hipsters like it because they jack off to LOLSOQUIRKY settings, yet I bet if pressed you couldn't actually name anything good about it.

Accusing it of wokism is absurd : the game never tries to idealize the Huana, and their caste system is obviously unpleasant.

It most certainly did, to the point where Sawyer went on a rant on a podcast about how it's TOTALLY NOT OKAY for players to side against the Huana because you're doing a colonialism and a heckin racismino and that's a toxic no-no buddy.
And he blamed the caste system being bad on colonial powers messing with them and making it bad.

 

[Reinhardt]

Every thread is poe thread.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

IMO the best take on Tech vs Magic is Spellcross (https://www.myabandonware.com/game/spellcross-db9), a cult TBS inspired by Final Liberation in terms of systems. It deals with the topic of magical invasion (Orks, Dark Elves and many other races controlled by a group of magicians) of Earth in early 2000s. Great thing is that both sides adapt to each other over the course of the game, with humanity making some use of magic (for example by integrating magical substances in tank armor or ammunition), while Orks later start using modern firearms. Havin Leopard 2s and Abramses going up against golems and dragons is pretty cool, generally it is in one of my top 5.

Its too bad there never was a sequel, the devs decided to chase money and international success by moving into FPS genre (making Chaser and SoF3) only to fail and now the reminder of that studio is part of the BIS (makers of Arma).

 

[Faarbaute]

I think it's a mistake to assume that tech and magic coexisting wouldn't make sense, just because it wouldn't make sense in reality.
It's fiction. It onley has to make sense internally, if at all. It dosen't have make sense in the light of modern sensibilities like psychology, game theory and darwinism.

As for why there are so few games of this kind, I think the biggest reason is that it takes too mutch time and effort to implement sufficiently meaningfull and fun distinctions between magic and technology for it to be worthwhile from a gameplay perspective. It usually boils down to differently colored bolts and explosions and at that point, why even bother.

Of course, this is assuming they aren't all creatively bankrupt frauds in the first place.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Any setting where magic isn't an innate gift but can be learned through study would have technology absolutely nothing like ours. Attempting to make it as "real life PLUS MAGIC!!!" is incredibly shortsighted.

 

[Tyranicon]

If magic can be improved, we will certainly see some kind of arms race.

Yes and this can be reasonably done within a setting. Magic users can cast spells to kill people. People (tech faction) develop guns to counter them. Magic casters use giant fireballs or meteor like stones to rain down on people. Tech people develop artillery to counter. Magic users can fly or have some sort of airships powered by magic. Tech faction develops planes. Could be very interesting.

By far the best part of the movie, but the entire premise of well-trained combat monks beating modern (hell, scifi) weaponry is absurd. Yeah, it's really cool, but requires you to abandon logic based on the premise alone.

 

[Reinhardt]

Animated movie about WWI-style trench warfare against vampires would be cool af.

 

[Tyranicon]

Any setting where magic isn't an innate gift but can be learned through study would have technology absolutely nothing like ours. Attempting to make it as "real life PLUS MAGIC!!!" is incredibly shortsighted.

Imagine living in a world where reality warping can be learned and is relatively accessible. Now imagine that people still want to be accountants.

I mean, hey, people need accountants.

Animated movie about WWI-style trench warfare against vampires would be cool af.

I would 100% prefer that over the Priest movie. Although you'd have to give the vampires something other than being fast zombies (that are allergic to light).

 

[Pink Eye]

I need to rewatch that film. Saw it many years ago when I rented it, but I've completely forgotten it. Remember the action sequences being so hilarious.

it's really cool, but requires you to abandon logic based on the premise alone.

Meh. Most films are like that, to be frank. You have to suspend logic when watching movies. Otherwise you're going to be questioning everything and not having fun. The Dirty Dollars Trilogy, favorite films of all time, even masterpieces like those have hard to believe moments - like Clint Eastwood somehow always being in the right place at the right moment; or having main character plot armor. If you scrutinize a piece of entertainment for too long. It falls apart, and thus, so too, does your enjoyment.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS ABOVE NECROVISION

WW1 TRENCH FIGHTING BECOMES DEMON WAR SHIT

MIGHT AND MAGIC AND WIZARDRY HAVE TECH TACKKED ON TO MAGIC