Yeah, guns have the potential to be a major factor in the way a post-industrial D&D setting works, though again, there are only a small number of classes that actually get access to them, and as I demonstrated in the previous post, they're not actually going to shift the power level of your game very much, thanks primarily to the fact that no major feats interact with them (actually, Piercer does, but I don't actually think this is going to make a huge change, because it doesn't add a ton of damage).
Other factors, like explosives, can certainly affect combat (though I don't think much more than magic like Fireball will). However, beyond combat, there are other factors to consider.
In D&D, if you want to "call" someone who is far away, the most obvious way is Sending. A 3rd level spell, meaning that you'll need to get to tier 2 to access it even on a pure caster, this spell only allows 25 words of communication one way, and then another back.
Now, lest we sell Sending short, this can also transmit across planes (with only a 5% failure rate,) so unless you get unlucky, you can talk to basically anyone you know with it.
But it's a very limited and very expensive way to communicate.
At higher levels, spells like Dream (if you know when your friend is asleep) or Project Image can allow for much more free-and-open communication. There are, of course, also some other spells, like Message or Animal Messenger that can play a communication role here.
But in the late 19th Century, the telephone, and a little later radio were invented, and in the early part of the 19th Century, the electrical telegraph had been invented.
Now, these are of course more limited in range than Sending. Radio's range is limited by the strength of its transmitter (and the sensitivity of its receiver). Telephones and telegraphs largely relied on wired connections, though of course today most phones are cellular phones that transmit via radio.
As I see it, what we want to preserve here is the balance - to still make Sending a worthwhile spell to cast, even as we introduce technological forms of long-range communication.
The first question we should consider is how advanced the technology is in your setting. I'm working on coming up with a few categories for this, but we'll simplify this to three:
Steampunk/Dieselpunk: maybe some rudimentary electronic technology, like radio and phones
Modern: Handheld communication devices on a global network
Futuristic: Extremely sophisticated communication technology that can bridge worlds.
My sense is that if you don't want to make communication tech more powerful than magic, you're going to have an easier time in the Steampunk/Dieselpunk technology era, which I'd say is most likely to have a 19th-Century vibe, though it could go up to around the 1970s is you push it.
Here's how I'd implement limitations to keep it from getting too powerful:
Faulty Tech:
First of all, if this is all fairly new, the technology might not be very reliable. Radio towers go dark, phone networks go down. This, of course, also happens in the modern day, but when these technologies were brand-new, they were much more likely to fail. If it's important to the story that the players are isolated and unable to communicate easily, you can pull this.
Limited Coverage:
Radio's only going to be able to broadcast in a limited area, and things like mountains can block the signal. Likewise, your phone network might only reach certain areas. A wealthy district of a major city might have tons of phone lines, but if you're out in some tiny village or remote Rangers' lodge, you probably don't have a connection.
Fixed Locations:
I think it's well within reason to have it so that your world does not have easily mobile communication devices. Phones can be tied to wired phone lines, and likewise, radios might be bulky enough that you can't carry them around with you, or perhaps need too much power for a simple battery to provide. This holds especially true if your players want to transmit a message via radio: they'll need a station with enough power to transmit to a receiver elsewhere, and they probably can't carry that around with them as they go.
Energy Dependent:
If the party gets a portable receiver, they'll need to have batteries or some other power source to keep it working. If they're at a stationary phone or transmitter/receiver, it'll also need power, which might need fuel or break down.
Now, beyond these physical limitations, let's also remember that we're playing a fantasy game! How does the supernatural interact with this advanced technology?
Ghosts in the Machine:
Hey, with all of those cables and wires (or airwaves) connecting everything, could something beyond mere information be transmitted? I think fiends (for some reason demons in particular feel the most appropriate here, but follow your instincts,) incorporeal undead, elementals, fey, and aberrations all feel like the kind of thing you might accidentally invite into your presence by opening up communications these ways. They might manifest physically, or they could live within the wires themselves, altering messages, assaulting characters' minds through the signal. I think a really cool thing would be to hear some subtle sound underneath the audio you're currently getting, and eventually discovering that some dangerous creature is living in the wires.
Signals from Another Place:
While yes, we said one limitation we were placing on this was preventing interplanar (or inter-planetary) communication, what if that's actually because the way that these technologies actually work in our fantasy cosmos is that the message passes through some other plane. This could be the manner in which the previous suggestion actually functions: that a fey spirit isn't literally in the wires, but the signal reverberates in a very different form in the Feywild that fey creatures can easily see and mess with.
Communication isn't going to break a game of D&D - Dimension 20's Fantasy High and Unsleeping City both have worlds where characters have access to cell phones or the equivalent, and these work just fine. But you can get some interesting challenges and new storytelling potential in a world where similar technology exists, but has new limitations.
No comments:
Post a Comment