How do you feel about Techno Magic?

[Naruzeldamaster]

Technology + Magic covers a wide range of different levels of technology. Plenty of different styles from steam punk all the way to star wars nonsense.
I've seen various angles of it and all of them are quite fun to tangle with.

 

[ThinkerX]

'Techno-Magic' is a fair description of the 'ancient aliens' abilities in my worlds. They were a naturally psychic race who incorporated that ability into their technology. Later, they terraformed assorted worlds, imported bands of humans, goblins, and others, and then genetically imbued select members of those races with vastly increased PSI ability when their numbers declined. (The ancient aliens are not humanoid.)

The vast majority of present-day 'wizards' are descended from those PSI-enhanced folks.

When it works, the ancient alien tech is on a par with that of Star Trek.

 

[El_d_ray]

To be fair, it's my favourite direction. I love alternative technology development, where humanity or whatever civilization went slightly different rout. It's way more attractive than old "sword and shield" type of fantasy. No reason to cling to sticks when people would build and use science even in world of different physics.

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

To be fair, it's my favourite direction. I love alternative technology development, where humanity or whatever civilization went slightly different rout. It's way more attractive than old "sword and shield" type of fantasy. No reason to cling to sticks when people would build and use science even in world of different physics.

I think my favorite version of it is where it's clearly magic driven (oh you need a hydraulic crystal thingy in the zapadoodle) but like, the logic is sound so your brain just kinda works out how it works. Because while it's absolutely fictional technology (AKA star wars or similar) it's based on the logic of real technology.

Magic technology where it's explained away as 'it's just cool magical tech' kinda annoying tbh, I like it when stuff has a reason to work the way it does. It's some of my favorite parts of lore in fantasy based lore.

 

[pmmg]

Star Wars nonsense? You must be talking about the disney stuff

I think its all good. If the story is there magic and technology mix pretty well. Thank you George Lucas for making that abundantly clear.

Steampunk seems to have captured a lot of interest. Cant go wrong with that.

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

Star Wars nonsense? You must be talking about the disney stuff

Eh the first one was fine, at least I think, we don't really talk about the rest lol

I think its all good. If the story is there magic and technology mix pretty well. Thank you George Lucas for making that abundantly clear.

I agree, if the fundamentals of magic and technology are driven together in a good way, like star wars it makes the story better.
If it's casually thrown together with a bunch of technobabble, then...I can't think of any nice words hehe.

Steampunk seems to have captured a lot of interest. Cant go wrong with that.

Steam Punk is one of my favorites, I wish more films/movies investigated it more.
We see some in video games now and then (though nothing crazy)
Anime I can't really think of too many besides the movie Steam Boy (no, not what it sounds like, lol)

 

[Prince of Spires]

The thing about magic and technology is that they always mix. The question is more, where does technology stand, and what can magic do.

When people think of a setting, doesn't really matter which, with magic in it, then they simply assume that all technology is there that got them up to that setting, and that the rest is magic. They easily forget that there's still technology there.

As an example of what I mean, let's take the default fake medieval England with lots of magic in it setting. We have wizards casting fireballs and witches on broomsticks and what have you. However, there are also people running around waving swords. And people build houses and castles. And work the fields with hand tools, and bake bread, and do all the daily stuff that keeps society going.

All of those things require technology. It may be technology you take for granted (apparently anything that was common before you were 11 years old counts as has always been there...). But it's still technology. But just making a simple shovel takes a lot of technology. If you want to get an idea of just how much, check out the Youtube channel How To Make Everything (or HTME), where a guy basically tries that, inventing everything, starting from 0.

So the question isn't about technology and magic. It's simply about what setting do you like.

And Star Wars does it right. They don't actually go around calling stuff magic. It's just there. There's a bunch of people who can do weird mind tricks and all that. But it's simply part of the world, not something stapled on top of it.

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

The thing about magic and technology is that they always mix. The question is more, where does technology stand, and what can magic do.

When people think of a setting, doesn't really matter which, with magic in it, then they simply assume that all technology is there that got them up to that setting, and that the rest is magic. They easily forget that there's still technology there.

As an example of what I mean, let's take the default fake medieval England with lots of magic in it setting. We have wizards casting fireballs and witches on broomsticks and what have you. However, there are also people running around waving swords. And people build houses and castles. And work the fields with hand tools, and bake bread, and do all the daily stuff that keeps society going.

All of those things require technology. It may be technology you take for granted (apparently anything that was common before you were 11 years old counts as has always been there...). But it's still technology. But just making a simple shovel takes a lot of technology. If you want to get an idea of just how much, check out the Youtube channel How To Make Everything (or HTME), where a guy basically tries that, inventing everything, starting from 0.

So the question isn't about technology and magic. It's simply about what setting do you like.

And Star Wars does it right. They don't actually go around calling stuff magic. It's just there. There's a bunch of people who can do weird mind tricks and all that. But it's simply part of the world, not something stapled on top of it.

Star wars doesn't call it magic, directly, not in universe and neither does George Lucas.

But if someone told me that a 'jedi mind trick' was 'magic' that Jedi can use, and I didn't know star wars as well as I did, my brain would accept that. (And likely work out that similar Jedi Powers was just 'magic' too) The 'magic' is called 'The Force' and what makes Star Wars so good, is that 'the force' is literally a natural element, that most in that universe are familiar with, depending on the time period you're viewing. Post Empire there are less people who know/care about 'the force' and fewer still who truly believe in it. We see as much in the first star wars movie when one of the Empire Generals questions Vader's judgement. The Force works because it's so well explained and it's just accepted as a thing that exists.

The force may not be 'magic' per say, but it does have a common theme with how it works. Even going so far as having 'good' and 'evil' powers.

The Kind of Magical Technology I like is when the Magic part doesn't require a whole ton of technobabble to make it sound cool. Does it need a energy/whatever crystal to power it? Cool, just call it that and don't give me ten paragraphs of exposition on how it works. I might want an explanation for how the machine as a whole works, but I don't need to get down n dirty with the 'lore' behind it.

Storm Hawks was really good about that too, it was mostly steam punk with a tiny bit of magic (they used a magical natural resource as a power source) they didn't waste time explaining it, they told us exactly what it was and that was all we needed to know.

RWBY Is a much more modern setting, but they have 'magic' too, sometimes in a literal sense depending on the character's powers. They also have Crystals that are basically magic. It's explained what it is and how it's used as a resource in (I think) the first or second episode, and that's all we need to know about it. We also see how valuable dust is because the first episode features one of the main antagonists and his gang robbing stores of it (more than likely to sell on the black market)

 

[D. Gray Warrior]

I'm generally skeptical of technology + magic fusions.

I don't hate the concept itself, but I think it's often either poorly executed or the functional difference between magic and technology is too fuzzy.

The person above me mentioned RWBY, which is an exception in that it's actuallty done well.

Then again, science fantasy is a thing, and I tend to like that, so maybe I just don't know what to think about the concept.

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

I'm generally skeptical of technology + magic fusions.

I don't hate the concept itself, but I think it's often either poorly executed or the functional difference between magic and technology is too fuzzy.

The person above me mentioned RWBY, which is an exception in that it's actuallty done well.

Then again, science fantasy is a thing, and I tend to like that, so maybe I just don't know what to think about the concept.

I tend to like Magic + Technology when it's well balanced. (Between magic side and fantasy side I mean)
Like the Sheikah technology in BOTW is about 50/50 so it makes sense.
Metroid plays with it a little bit in Prime 4 but they don't do anything too crazy with it.
The Iron Golems from Castle in The Sky are also clearly magical, but also clearly technology.