Balance between Magic and Modern

[skip.knox]

I second what WooHooMan said, though I'll rephrase it. Why do we insist on seeing technology and magic as opposites and antipathetic? What is this "technology" anyway? Do you mean the ability to smelt metal? To extract the essence of plants? To whittle?

I will take a leap here and say that most people mean the stuff created by and since the Industrial Revolution. If so, that's fine, but an author who makes the distinction needs to be very clear about both sides of the equation.

At one extreme, I could see defining technology very broadly. That would set up the paradigm that only things that could be seen by others and reproduced by others are "technology", while things unseen are by definition magical. That could have some interesting consequences.

At the other extreme, magic might be so narrowly defined that it encompasses only things done by certain people (the gifted), or in a certain manner (spellbooks). Remember Clarke's aphorism regarding technology and magic.

Finally, you might not have to give up the treaty, but I would give up imagining it was effective. It might be that society has made several runs at demarcating the line between the two worlds, and that this treaty is the most recent attempt. Perhaps everyone is rejoicing, sort of like declaring world peace ... only to find out in the course of the story that it's not working at all well.

 

[ThinkerX]

After going a long ways with 'AD&D' style magic and running into multiple issues, I took a different approach:

I read a stack of books on 'psi abilities,' focusing on the more legit research and most often cited abilities: healing, levitation, telekinesis, clairvoyance, couple other things.

Combined with this, I read up on how people in the ancient world viewed magic and what they deemed magic capable of doing. Much of that focused on divinations, charms/curses, healing, and learning the 'true names' of demons/spirits to bind them to the magicians will. Shape changing was another biggie.

Then I combined the two, and tossed in a few extras. The big extra being that I'm a fan of Lovecraft, and some of his creations are just to awesome to ignore. Plus that fit right in with the 'true name' deal, but is also very, very dangerous. Story potential, there, because these entities are capable of things beyond human magic and technology. I also added a long training regimen in order to use these abilities reliably.

So, what I ended up with are relatively wimpy mages by fantasy standards who can do things like levitate coffee cups, tell the future, or tell somebody what their reclusive uncle three hundred miles away is up to...plus a few others with dangerous connections to very powerful alien entities. What is usually beyond their abilities are curses affecting entire nations, spells that decimate armies, and similar grand enchantments.

Plus, magic takes a fair bit out of them. One or two mediocre spells a day? No problem. Serious bit of ritual work or half a dozen mediocre spells? Doable, but they'll be both famished and falling asleep on their feet afterwards. More than that...well, not real likely.

 

[Tim Tim]

X men had the same problem except they called it mutation and not magic. Still boils down to the same thing. The politics of the thing is phenomenal to say the least. It has always been understood that reasonable thinking peoples or beings can come up with a solution to any problem if everyone works together. A central theme of the two working toward one society is feasible. I think no treaty should enforce separate societies. Let them work toward a union. Why can't magic exist along side of technology? For that matter let magic assist modern technology and visa versa. Let science research the ways that magic can be expanded and better used.