Magitek / Tabletop Games

• Amazing Engine has a setting actually called Magitech, set in a version of The '90s with crystal ball TVs, elemental-powered cars, and so on.
• Anima: Beyond Fantasy has the Empire of Solomón, an Expy of Final Fantasy VI's Gestahlian Empire, whose relics -that include among other things BFGs as well as golems- are highly sought by the current powers.
• In Ars Magica, this doesn't canonically exist except in the dreams of some mad Verditii, but it did exist in the past in the form of the Mechanica of Heron, which can be rediscovered. More interestingly, though, Transforming Mythic Europe gives several examples of how magic can complement or replace technology, such as a circular stone that can be made to turn by magic. Perhaps the most terrifyingly-powerful item that a wizard could invent would be a magical printing press, allowing books of Hermetic knowledge to be copied and disseminated in minutes instead of seasons.
• Blue Rose: The setting looks like a standard, if light-hearted fantasy setting with little in the way of magitek and the printing press being the most modern technology. But a closer reading shows that most Aldis cities have the equivalent of 20th century infrastructure because of shas crystals, and the same crystals can be used to create effective guns. It is implied that the Old Kingdom that came before was far more futuristic before being destroyed by internal schisms, and whether to try and recover the glories of the past or learn from their mistakes and leave it alone is one of the more contentious political issues in the setting.
• Broken Gears, as "a game of animistic steampunk", runs on this. It's Post-Apocalyptic Gaslamp Fantasy where firearms must be oiled to feed salamanders (see quotes) and are tested with thermal ink, and a Devil-possessed Analytical Machine designed by Charles Babbage and Alan Turing "helped" to finish World War II and immediately started World War III.
• In CthulhuTech, the line between technology and magic is so thin as to be almost completely arbitrary. One wonders why there is any distinction at all, other than the fact that the Lovecraftian forces used by magic and magitek are, to say the least, rather dangerous. To expand, sorcery is taught as a science in universities, while there is mandatory registration for parapsychics. Almost all modern technology in the setting is powered by the D-Engine, which drives you crazy if you look too closely at it.
• Cryptomancer features a fantasy version of the internet, using realistic computer security concepts.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The Book of Wondrous Inventions is all about silly versions of this. Includes such things as a cola vending machine, a pinball machine, a boombox, and a Humongous Transforming Mecha.
  • The Forgotten Realms has magitek, mostly in magocracies and elven cities:
    • Netheril was an extensively magical setting. Invention of mythallars (magical secondary power sources) made creation of magic items cheap as long as you don't mind they work only in its range, which aside of flying islands meant permanent items were mostly biased toward backyard applications and wizards had a lot of experience in this area. Aside of typical AD&D trinkets there were things like Water Pipe (permanent fissure into the Elemental Plane of Water), Ice Box (conduit to the Paraelemental Plane of Ice), Stoker’s pit (fissure to the Elemental Plane of Fire), Music box, roomlights, skimmers (boats propelled by air elementals), netherpelters (telekinesis-powered small arms with magical ammo), and so on.
    • Halruaa, the longest-lived of Netheril's successor states, had less advanced but still very useful showcase, mostly revolving around providing comfort for its citizens (air conditioning, heating, freezing, building, and so on). And a skyship fleet.
    • Imaskar was another extensively magical human empire in the Realms. The Imaskari focused on dimensional magic. If you were a rich citizen of the empire, all the above fissures to other planes could be acquired, as well as other portal-trickery (fresh air from the Elemental Plane of Air, storage rooms in dimensional pockets, portals designed to show nice views of other places...).
    • And another one was the Illefarn nation, inhabited by elves and dwarves. It became doomed shortly after Netheril when their magitek national defense project ran amok (-339 DR) from being shunted to the Shadow Weave (an alternate source of magic controlled by an evil Goddess). It continued to be a problem for residents living near the ruins of the Illefarn nation sporadically throughout the centuries all the way up to 1374 DR.
    • Living City attracts bright folk who didn't fit elsewhere, including Thay and Halruaa, and adventurers. Thus magically it's only a notch below major magocracies and collected as much useful inventions, like 'wand of portraiture' (photography), 'safety net' and 'ring of helmed horrors' or 'Shayn’s Infallible Identification' spell (it demonstrably associates an object with a creature, the name says its main use). Ambassador Carrague likes such toys, and Elminster likes to feed him some exclusive lore, so once he heard about steam trains, he built prototypes powered by his own invention, 'decanter of endless steam'. Of course, no one except dwarves would invest in rails, even wooden, just to see how much good these loud things may do in the long run.
  • TheSpelljammer setting runs on the idea.. Wildspace was intended to be more magic-rich than most groundling settings, so there's much more to it than engines.
  • Mystara had skyships before Halruaa. With such devices as Dynamo of Flying (conversion of spell levels into large-scale preset effect) and Internal Conjuration Engine (pour potions of flying in, and it makes a whole ship fly). Both allow other effects if built this way — so you can have a stealth ship, but its engine will little by little slurp whole casks of invisibility potion too.
  • There was a twist of the Vancian Magic in AD&D 2 College of Wizardry ^note  reappeared in D&D 3 Tome and Blood, used for "Mage of the Arcane Order" class, which in turn was reused in D&D 3.5 Complete Arcane and customized as "Guild Wizard" in Magic of Faerûn the spellcrux, or spellpool. It's a bank/server that stores spell-patterns, so that wizards with remote access can save memorized spells and later get and cast stored ones. They're still limited to normal total capacity, but gives more choice (if different wizards contribute different spells) and flexibility (instead of a fixed Utility Belt they get what they need right now). Has checking "credit balance", admin account and all that.
  • Eberron features a Pulp Adventure setting influenced by Indiana Jones movies, mixed with Dungeon Punk, in a faux-19th century world making use of arcane technology and magic for infrastructure, travel and everyday life. This includes magic streetlights, magic trains and planes, magic grenade launchers, and magic robots. Magic is such an everyday thing that many of the working class are Magewrights with just enough talent to power minor wands (or create them, with the right training). There's even an industry in magic items which reduce the training required to craft other magic items. Player Characters can become Artificers, who are better at creating and using magic items than wizards despite not being able to cast spells.
• Exalted has First Age technology, from a time when the Solar Exalted could study the interplay of Essence and science and create true wonders (before the insanity, of course — but then again, they probably produced some fun stuff after the insanity took hold). It is explicitly called magitech in the books and setting. Examples range from power armor to airships to artificial limbs to dinosaurs that eat poppies and pee heroin. This reached its height in 2nd Edition, including essence powered fighter jets and clockwork robo-soldiers, but has been almost entirely dialed back to more traditional concepts of magic and enchantment in 3rd edition.
  • Even then, Third Edition still has some of the residual magical technology of the First Age sticking around. Mahalanka, the City of a Thousand Golden Delights, may be an autocratic police state ruled by a mad Lunar self-styled goddess, but at least they have air conditioning.
  • The Alchemical Exalted are creations of Autochthon, a machine god, and their background and powers revolve around magitech.
• Feng Shui's 2056 juncture uses a creepy fusion of magic and science known as arcanotech. Most of it is used by the Buro military and elite agents, offering a power boost in exchange for bent magic getting sent into your system like a virus whenever you use it. Use it too much, and you start mutating into something horrific and run the risk of becoming an abomination, one of the altered demons that the Buro uses to fight its wars.
• GURPS plays with this idea, usually for cool effects in some of its fantastical settings:
  • The game's basic magic system is very magitek-friendly, with many options for item enchantments basically allowing one to create items which can replace advanced technology, such as Wands of Extinguish Fire. One of the core Colleges is the Technology College, which handles the shaping and control of machinery, with sub-Colleges for Energy, Radiation, and Metal and Plastic. One spell of the Energy sub-College, Draw Power, allows a Mage to draw energy from an external source, such as a battery or a generator, and use it to fuel a different spell.
  • Spaceships gets a whole book devoted to this and Schizo Tech.
  • GURPS Technomancer is what you get when you turn the Trinity Event into a necromantic ritual of immense proportions, completed by the Famous Oppenheimer Quote. Nikita Khrushchev claiming Soviet Union has entire armies of wizards? The U.S. Army winning The Vietnam War using dragons, weaponized flying carpets and zombies made from Vietcong corpses? Space travel by teleportation spells? Gene-engineered Stealth Dragons (with vampire genes, no less)? And it includes a Shout-Out to the Ur-Example — the term "Technomancer" was apparently coined in the 1970s bestseller Technomancy by Bob Anson.
  • GURPS Vehicles: Transports of Fantasy, a book of stats and descriptions of vehicles suited to fantasy settings, includes some vehicles with a mechanical look but magical features, such as ships which sail through the air, or through space.
  • There are also two supplements of “GURPS Fantasy-Tech”, which describe several imaginary technologies that can only really work in fantasy worlds.
• The Iron Kingdoms has Mechanika, which is mostly technology fueled by Magic. In the WARMACHINE games, this normally comes in the form of various weapons. There is plenty of regular technology as well, and many factions are pushing research in that direction hard. Technology may be less impressive than mechanika, but is far more reliable and not dependent on fickle mages.
• Magic: The Gathering:
  • Many artifacts qualify, especially artifact creatures. Colossi, Golems, Clockwork creatures, and many Phyrexian creatures are common examples. They are essentially inanimate objects given life through magic. They typically have higher mana costs than non-artifact creatures of relative power, but that is offset by them very rarely requiring specific types of mana, so they are playable in any deck.
  • A number of settings (planes) really play up this trope. To note:
    • The Brothers' War and the Ravnica block.
    • Mirrodin is a plane created by a golem planeswalker where sentient life is almost entirely comprised of animated artifacts.
    • The plane of Esper in Shards of Alara is a techno-magical blue-aligned plane where all forms of life are infused with the mystic metal Etherium.
    • Phyrexia, old and new, combines this with Body Horror and Assimilation Plot. Think Magitek Borg. As horrifying as it was, Yawgmoth's magitek was so impressive that Urza, the artificer planeswalker who had dedicated his life to fighting Phyrexia, fell to his knees and pledged himself to Yawgmoth because he saw Phyrexia as everything he ever wanted.
    • Inventors on Kaladesh turn out all kinds of devices and automatons fueled by magical aether distilled from the plane's atmosphere. It's the only way most of its residents use magic, since more traditional magic is a rare inborn gift and considered dangerous by the ruling consulate.
    • Kamigawa started off as a more feudal Japan-type of setting. Flash forward to 1,200 years of in-game lore (and over a decade in real time), technology has rapidly progressed to Cyberpunk levels. This technology is powered by the spirit world, so it is magical no matter how futuristic it looks. In essence, it's Magitek Shinto.
    • New Capenna is a flying megacity on an otherwise functionally uninhabitable world kept operational by various Dieselpunk amenities powered by the essence of imprisoned angels.
• Pathfinder has the Guns and Gears supplemental book which introduces guns, automatons, Clock Punk and Steampunk technologies to Golarion as well as spin-off fantasy technology such as the continent of Arcadia being the first to develop firearms with the Beast Guns (magical guns using body parts of ritually-hunted monsters to create supernatural effects) and Star Guns (the first firearms - made by taking falling pieces of star-metal and then being enchanted so they fire bolts of magic rather bullets) or the magical automatons coming from the fallen Jistkan Empire.
• Princess: The Hopeful: Normally, Bequests (Items with a Charm bound to them, allowing the bearer to use the Charm even if she doesn't know it or isn't a Princess) have to be transformed to use, which only Princesses, Sworn, and Beacons can do. However, the capstone power of the Embassy to Machines is the ability to craft Bequests which anyone can use.
• Palladium Games's Rifts RPG features Techno-Wizards, spellcaster-mechanics whose focus is on building machines and weapons powered by Magic. They can make a jeep that can ride in midair and turn invisible, then make and mount on it a cannons that shoots ice blasts or rains meteorites on the enemy.
• Also in Rifts and Palladium's Heroes Unlimited is Telemechanics, a psionic ability that lets the user either intuitively understand how a piece of machinery works and operate it, or in the case of AIs communicate with them directly.
• Shadowrun is what you get when you merge cyberpunk and D&D together. As such, it's usually in the case of defense systems of corporations or weaponry. Except that mundanes can't use "magictech" (no magic wands, etc), though the Dunkelzahn did leave a reward in his Will if someone could create things like that.
• The Realm of The Splinter runs on this.
• Starfinder transports the Pathfinder setting several thousand years into a future built on equal parts technology and magic. Technomancers combine tech and magic to hack reality itself. "Hybrid" items combine magic items with technological gadgets. And nearly every form of Faster-Than-Light Travel was given to mortals by one of the gods, one of whom is partially an ascended AI.
• The Skaven of Warhammer are perhaps the most technologically-advanced race thanks to their embrace of Warpstone. They use it as a powerful mutagen, ammunition, Death Ray energy source, component of giant hamster wheels that shoot lightning, or as part of the setting equivalent of a nuclear bomb. Their Clan Skryre is a blend of dark wizards and mad scientists known as Warlock-Engineers.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Eldar gear is a unique blend of highly-advanced technology and psychic "sorcery" — their robots, for example, are well-crafted frames animated by the spirit of a fallen warrior held in a crystal. Their core construction material is Wraithbone, which is basically concentrated, solidified psychic energy. It can apparently assume a lot of properties, from being hard as metal to as flexible as soft plastic, with conductivity being easily manipulated.
  • Chaos forces use black Magitek to create their most powerful works, such as daemonically-possessed tanks or Humongous Mecha. The Dark Mechanicus and their Hereteks are often the sources of most of the Daemon Engines. Meanwhile the Iron Warriors (who have close ties to the Dark Mechanicus) are the biggest employers of Daemon Engines and possessed wargear.
  • Obliterators are Chaos Space Marines who are infected by a Warp-born virus, fusing them with their weapons into a horrifying mound of daemon, flesh and screeching metal. The end result is a humongous Chaos Space Marine that can morph any weapon he wants out of his flesh to deal with any enemy in sight, as well as having all the benefits of being a Daemon without actually ascending. Unsurprisingly they have a connection to the Iron Warriors, who are noted to have an abnormally high number of them.
  • Imperial technology does not use this, but everyone thinks it does. Tech-priest rituals involve a lot of chanting and sacred oils before they finally flip the "On" switch. On the gripping hand, it's hinted that sometimes a Tech Priest's devotion does cause a machine which shouldn't be working to do so when he finally gets to that last part. The 40K universe tends to bend to belief...
  • Some of the more advanced and esoteric Imperial technology is this, combining technology with power of The Warp. This allows interstellar travel for humanity, along with teleportation technology and more esoteric weapons and shieldings. Of course, considering this is the Warp we are talking about, the Magitek is perhaps something that's better not used, but humanity had no better option.^note The Tau does not use The Warp as they lack sensitivity to it, resulting in their FTL to be much more limited in range, and the lore hints that humanity tried another different FTL method in the past but decides to go back to the Warp Drive as it is more reliable.
  • Orkish technology shouldn't work, but does anyway because the orks expect it to work. The exact extent to which this is true varies from codex to codex to book. The codexes tend to ascribe their abilities to technology, the fluff to psychic power.
  • The latest consensus is that Ork technology is quite functional if crude, thanks to the engineering knowledge hardwired into the Mekboyz genes by the Orks' creators the Old Ones. Humans are able to make use of scavenged Ork vehicles and weapons that aren't too big for them. The Ork gestalt field just makes their equipment perform even better. Magic isn't strictly necessary for the Ork's tech to work, it just helps it perform at peak (and even beyond) efficiency.
  • Tau Commander Farsight's battlesuit is modified to be able to wield the Dawn Blade in close combat, but unknown to him the Dawn Blade drains the life of those killed by it and give it to the bearer, and might possibly be a Daemon Weapon that he simply cannot hear the temptations of.
• Wolsung: Steam Pulp Fantasy combines this with Steampunk. Anything more advanced than a steam engine probably runs on magic. This includes alchemy, golems, ray guns, radios, difference engines and general mad science.
• World of Darkness:
  • In the Old World of Darkness Gothic Punk game setting (especially Mage: The Ascension), the rules of reality were created largely by the force of belief, so all technology was in effect magitek, built off of the work of a group of reality-warpers (the Technocracy).
  • In the New World of Darkness, this relationship was flipped, with magic instead drawing from "natural" forces. As a result, some groups of magi (especially the forward-thinking Free Council) can and do draw magic from modern technology in the same way that older mages draw it from older technology, coming at Magitek form the other direction.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Magical Scientist's name, Type and effect imply that he used a mixture of science and magic in his researches. Kozaky is a fiend, but seems to be Magical Scientist's partner on many experiments and have done a few of his own. There's also Cyborg Doctor, another Spellcaster who appears to be the type.

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