BG world dynamics
I got to wondering some things about the world BG is based in over the years. I've always loved classic D&D, sword and shield and magic.
Some things in the world of Faerun (or at least the BG setting world) seemed out of place. I have not read many books based in the Forgotten Realms campaign though and wondering if anyone knew if some/all of these things exist in the world setting. Anyone want to take a stab at them?
1. The start dungeon has a series of humanoid sized tanks, similar to the healing tanks in Star wars that seem very Sci-Fi (at least to me). And above all that they are powered by energy cells.
2. The mechanical gyros, spinning wheels, sphere, contractions, ect. Like in the first level start dungeon, and the Temple of Talos and places like that.
3. The large multi-pipe lines traversing through the sewers and the shadow thief guild near Aran's room. I looked up the history of sewers and even in the 16th century we had only a primitive form of drainage, nothing like what you would see Athlatka has. http://greywateraction.org/content/history-sewers
Off handed question; Why was the start dungeon made so large? I heard that the developer said once if he had a go over of the production he probably would have downsized the dungeon to one level. We've got a genie crystal section, a library (I guess recreated either from the protagonists mind or from Irenicus's), and a whole section for dyrads, lab imps, and so even a ship and a workshop. Don't know why it was all there and who built it all and why.
Some things in the world of Faerun (or at least the BG setting world) seemed out of place. I have not read many books based in the Forgotten Realms campaign though and wondering if anyone knew if some/all of these things exist in the world setting. Anyone want to take a stab at them?
1. The start dungeon has a series of humanoid sized tanks, similar to the healing tanks in Star wars that seem very Sci-Fi (at least to me). And above all that they are powered by energy cells.
2. The mechanical gyros, spinning wheels, sphere, contractions, ect. Like in the first level start dungeon, and the Temple of Talos and places like that.
3. The large multi-pipe lines traversing through the sewers and the shadow thief guild near Aran's room. I looked up the history of sewers and even in the 16th century we had only a primitive form of drainage, nothing like what you would see Athlatka has. http://greywateraction.org/content/history-sewers
Off handed question; Why was the start dungeon made so large? I heard that the developer said once if he had a go over of the production he probably would have downsized the dungeon to one level. We've got a genie crystal section, a library (I guess recreated either from the protagonists mind or from Irenicus's), and a whole section for dyrads, lab imps, and so even a ship and a workshop. Don't know why it was all there and who built it all and why.
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Comments
In my view, the world of the Forgotten Realms, owing to it's access to magic and all that entails, probably doesn't follow traditional history and technological levels. Basically, why invent the lever if you can cast a spell to do the same thing (and who can't cast magic in the forgotten realms?).
My point is with necessity being the mother of invention and all, technological advances necessitated by urban expansion (aqueducts turning into massive sewer pipes as for example) may have existed whereas other advancements may not have. Technological paths which exist as a direct result of a need that doesn't exist in the alternate realm may not have been developed, leaving other technologies to keep pace with or even surpass that of conventional reality.
And with Wizards constantly RETCONing the realms, there's probably some continuity issues anyway.
And then there are gnomes.
in the end, appreciate the artistic license of the whole thing, because trying to reconcile even a fantasy reality can really give you a headache. Speaking of which, anyone got any aspirin?
Why bother with medical science when even 5th-level clerics can cure light or moderate wounds as well as curing diseases? This means *any* disease, even ones for which our current medical science has no cure.
Why bother with developing small engines to do things like run a water pump when a mechanical pump could be powered by a skeleton or zombie (in pencil/paper the spell "animate dead" was permanent)? They could be given the simple command "turn this crank" and then you walk away, leaving them to turn the crank on the pump until you tell them to stop.
Although not implemented in computer games, the pencil/paper spell "detect lie" makes criminal justice and the court systems mostly pointless. Once you find a suspect, you cast the spell and ask them "did you do x?". Finding the suspects might still require detectives, presuming the crime isn't murder, in which case you cast "speak with dead" and ask them who did it.
Anyway....I always thought that BG2 had a "futuristic" feel for a "medeival" fantasy setting.
For instance, 5th level clerics curing all diseases can be a real blessing, no?
Let's consider that only 10% of fantasy population are adverturing types . 5 out of 10 adventurers are fighters, the other four are roguish/cleric/other and, finally, 1 out of 10 are mages.
It already makes clerics a bit less common, no? Well, there is a 1st level character for every 10 people, a second level one for every 20 people... and there is a 5th level character for every 160 people.
A bit more rare now. Considering that such a cleric might cure diseases or detect lies ,he will do it according to his alignment.
Of course it depends on the fantasy setting, but it makes sense that there aren't that many magic users, comparing to other adventurers, and they might be quite uncommon among simple peasants.
But keep in mind that 'Wizards' aren't merely adventuring sorts. After all, someone needs to be cranking out all of these magic swords, wands, armor and other miscellaneous magic items. it is probably a mundane profession such as butcher or carpenter. Granted, they may not necessarily get to be 18th level Arch-wizards, but they can't be zero levels either.
The same is true of Clerics. I bet every town or borough of a town has at least one temple. Further, I'd bet that quite a lot of the midlevel and even higher level clergy are quite powerful. After all, how else do you explain all of the money I've put into temples over the lifetime of my game plays through BG (I die a LOT).
Just take a look at Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. Every town has a temple with at least one healer capable of raising the dead (and you know that guy has at least half a dozen apprentices). And Magic shops are practically proliferate in BG2 with there being sometimes two or three or more in a city.
As for "Lab mages" , well... I prefer to think that most of them are secluded , and usually feared/admired by common folk. Magic shops could exist, but how many adventurers could afford thousands of gold coins on a single sword or potion?
I'm not saying that I disagree with a fantasy world where people use magic the same way we use technology and, in fact, forgotten realms is much more "futuristic" than other worlds because magic is out there to be used by either those who have the wits and opportunity , or those with enough power to take it by force. I just don't think that,so far, just like we have universities, they'll have a "Hogwarts" in each town .
If the gnomes are making guns, then they've almost definitely made clockwork in the terms of the rotating gears and the like you see in say, the temple of Talos. IIRC, Gond himself gifted the gnomes with the gift of firepowder in the Time of Troubles, and the gnomes of Lantan are just becoming more and more advanced as time goes by. (Until 4E wipes them out, anyway.) Amn is a trading partner with Lantan (as well as with half the world- Amn trades with everyone), so that could explain where things come from.
Nothing will ever explain the spacious sewers of BG2 (not to mention the BG1 ones, which were even bigger), I think. But technology definitely could develop differently in the FR setting- after all, knowledge can be directly given by the Gods themselves, so who says some random God didn't give someone somewhere the blueprints of sewers? It's weird, but hey, the psionic slime who sees your future in the sewers of BG1 is weird. Weirdness sort of comes with the setting.
Gears arent that advanced actually until you get to clockworks, and the gnomes of Lantan are into such tech actually. Gondites anywhere would be interested in tech too. For motion, animating magics are attainable in Faerun.
However, the pipe thing is a good call. Pipe that size isnt easy to extrude/weld, so you have a point here.
A lot of large pipes for old sewers were actually made from ceramics and not metal, and in sections that could be fitted together. I'm not saying that's what those pipes in the Athkatla seweres look like but, just saying you could make some large pipes in the ancient world. Plus the main problems with forging metals and extruding them, is heating them high enough, and materials that can hold the hot metal. Both of which are covered by magic in the realms.
As for clockwork, there's the Antikytheran device from around 100 BCE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
The ancient Greeks also had the idea of early steam engines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile
Just by simple chance, we could be way more advanced than we are today, if technology hadn't been repeatedly lost. In another world, technology could progress in a slightly different directions at different times. Throw in magic, as others have stated, and that'll skew things even more.
Yes, also the Aeolipile, a wonderful device. The Greeks were right on the cusp of developing steam-powered engines, if their researchers had wandered in that direction.
The only one you didn't mention was automata, some of which were reputed to have been built by Hero (or Heron, if you prefer) of Alexandria. He also invented the first coin-operated vending machines for use in temples as well as an offering pyre which, when lit, would open the doors to the temple via hydraulics.
Anyway....ancient technology is more advanced that we think it was. I am also really far off-topic.
I wonder I the Irenicus dungeon is inspired by Planescape Torment, though, with its dark and surreal look, its weird technology and the 'amnesia' (if one doesn't know BG I).
The Antikythera device sounds pretty interesting, but its fairly big. By clockworks I meant the making of small watches. I did not specify clearly at all, and worth a read.
Temperature isnt the issue. There is a temperature range wherein you can hotroll or extrude, and you cant get hotter than that, or the metal will be too soft; it'll collapse. You need to maintain the correct temperature, which would have been possible quite far back. The issues I see are consistent application of force, the amount of force applied, and moving finished bar stock, let alone such massive pipe, hot or cold. Lots of pipe is made by rolling it from flat metal and buttwelding it. This technique is actually far beyond early smiths, and anyone thst could do it wouldnt, because they would be a master armourer! There is no coincidence that romans used valuable lead for water pipes, lead is much easier to work and never wears out.
I've heard theories that argue pretty convincingly that technology is extremely stagnant in cultures with excessively cheap labour vs capital costs, as well as in societies in which conspicuous consumption is encouraged (ie everyone having massive entourages, or traveling everywhere via palanquin, or wasting resources by living in an ridiculously large or ostentatious house) and civil rights are very unequally distributed. The theory argues that without a certain level of democracy/modesty, so much money is spent on labour and luxories that nothing is left for research or capital investment. The joy of economics, eh?
Calimshan is Arabic more or less.
Mulhorand is like Ancient Egypt.
Kara-Tur is like Feudal Japan and ancient China.
Chessenta is like Ancient Greece.
Lantan is like the Steam Age.
Chult has freaking dinosaurs.
The North is like Viking-era almost.
For everything else: fantasy and magic.
My point about the Minoans wasn't that they had sewers, but that they had the basic technological elements far earlier than Rome, and if not for their destruction, may have gotten to sewers earlier. Like I said, earlier, they didn't have sewers, but did have running water. It was more a point on technological progression to illustrate knowledge being lost, and having to be worked out again. If somebody can build on knowledge gained by earlier generations, rather than spending the time having to work out everything for themselves, it can really speed up technological development.
The Antyketheran device was very complex, check out the gear scheme
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#Known_gear_scheme
Ya it wasn't something that could fit in your pocket. But it was more than just something that could be used to tell the time of day. This was a computer, built around 100BCE. The point being that if the Greeks could figure that out over 2000 years ago, it wouldn't be a stretch for a roughly renaissance level civilization to have clockwork devices. I'm just reinforcing the point that the geared machines seen around are not out of place.
You're probably right about it being more temperature control than just raw heat, but you'd think that some mage would work out some sort of controlled heat spell. I do know that the blast furnaces that were used to make Damascus steel were capable of much higher temperatures than what the Europeans were using at the time, though, so straight amount of heat output was at least a contributing factor. Also the switch to coke for fuel was partially for higher temperature, the other part being cleaner burn so the amount of carbon going into the steel could be better controlled.
As for economics, I definitely agree with you there. There's a story about the Aeolipile. I only roughly remember the details, so I can't recall the names and exact places. But when a king of a Greek city state was shown an Aeolipile, he was told about some of the applications it could be developed for, such as vehicles and transportation machines, digging, lifting machines, etc. His response supposedly was "That's great, but what do we do with all the slaves?" This is just a story, and maybe complete bull flop, but it does a good job of illustrating the point that the industrial revolution probably could only have happened in an environment that shunned slavery.
Well, I'm not sure if you have much experience or background with manufacturing (especially metal fabrication), but its almost exponentially more expensive (this expense is based on time expended, skill level required, and tools required) to make the same object more precise, ie to a narrower tolerance. Gears always require infuriating percision, and smaller gears require more precision. Even ignoring metal purity requirements (watch makers pretty much invented consistent steel manufacturing out of frustration), making smaller gears requires vastly more technology, but I must still admit you're using the same premise... its like comparing an old stoneshooting barrel bombard to a fully automatic machine pistol.
Damascus steel is actually less advanced, though admittedly more complicated, than modern carbon steel. Damascus and wootz are the fully realized version of wrought iron. The British furnaces developed to make consistent cast iron in large quantities are the tech I was referring to. It might seem intuitive to us, but the step took at least 2000 years, and required many unrelated advancements. The use of coke vs raw coal is significant, but pipes require vadt quantities of ore, and it must be affordable at least to mine and transport the ore. Magic fire could replace the coal, and force effects could replace rollers/extruders, but mining and processing the ore would probably be fsr beyond Forgotten Realms magic, short of a Mythal. Honestly, it might be more plausible in Eberron, but Eberron is in many ways a more modern world than FR, which is early reneisance tech.
The institution of slavery has been shown to cause economic stagnation... look at the USA; many parts of the South still lag far behind the areas that either did not use slavery, or had already ceased. Slave economies tend to create a sluggish economy in which the number of slaves you own is a significant method of reckoning wealth. This discourages capital investment. When the former confededate states lost their slaves, a vast amount of 'wealth' disapeared overnight, and the locals didnt have enough capital to offset this. Until fairly recently, the divide was much more marked, with the South being much poorer. Serf keeping societies were occaisionally even worse, as many land owners cared very little for their serfs, ie feudal Europe, which also featured slower than potential advancement. Essentially, investment in capital tends to result in more growth, as long as the capital is useable... see China in the 20th century.
I think one thing you're missing about the Antyketheran device was that it was made from bronze, and not steel or iron. It's a lot easier to work with than steel. It had some very fine toothed gears, and some were quite small. Ya, they never made anything like pocket watches, but clockwork can be big too, look at Big Ben. We're pretty far off topic on this now, since the real point was that the larger gears seen in machinery in the game aren't out of place. I'm not saying gnomes are rocking pocket watches.
And of course Damascus steel isn't as good as modern carbon steel. No argument there. You do have a point about needing the ore, though. But this is a world with magic, so I suppose an alchemist might be able to make it. They might also have spells that could detect the ore, and help them decide where to build mines. You did point out that the Romans used lead, too, so maybe those pipes are lead. There are also the fictional metals, like mithril and adamantite, that are supposed to be supernaturally tough, but still workable by some smiths. I'm not sure if that implies their smiths are better than ones from renaissance era Europe or not. I suppose with centuries to perfect a craft, a gnome or dwarf might be a super human craftsmen. Not saying any or all these are the case for the presence of those pipes, just offering possibilities.
Another totally different reason for those large pipes might just also be the limitations of the medium. It is an older game, and the pipes could have just been drawn large looking to clearly convey that they're pipes.
Just wondering @DreadKhan have you ever watched an older BBC series called Connections, By James Burke? One of my favorites