What If a High Fantasy Setting Developed Into a Modern Society?

You know all those high fantasy settings with magic and fantastic species like elves, dwarves, orcs, fairies, and trolls? What if it were to develop into a technologically advanced society akin to modern day Earth? How would the other races deal with science and technology advancing?

It seems to be something of a tradition that dwarves go steampunk. Probably due to their traditional associations with metal working.

A big issue is also the question of how common is magic in the setting. A setting where magic is common is likely to go full on Magitek. A big step on the way to the modern era is the study and harnessing of natural forces and if magic is present in the setting, it's not going to be immune to the same trends. If its rare enough there might not be enough evidence to generate a proper integration into a cohesive view of "this is how the world works" but the more common it is, the harder it is to justify this view.

The integration of various other races that populate a traditional high fantasy settings is a bit more at the author's discretion. As I said dwarven associations with craftmanship and metalworking tend to align them with technological progressive, but there are also a lot of depictions of them as strong traditionalists so you could have essentially the equivalent of Amish dwarves. Elves can be sterotyped as hippies, but you could also twist their tradition for wisdom and knowledge and make strong academics, especially in the more abstract fields. (Amish dwarves and elven hackers. Fun thought.)

On the darker side of progress, take ideas like Racialism (or scientific racism and think of how it might take shape when you have orcs in your setting.

Yeah, if mortal have magic on is own, then thing like mass sacrifice would be comon.

Actually I read somewhere in a setting come Vive militare est were it is reveal human have something call geistplam that is like a dark version of mana that allow to rechange reallity and can be harvest by sacrifice.

Now imagine that you are the nazis and imperial japanise and you are losing and you can see where this is going...

You could say the same thing about nuclear bombs. If magic exists it isn't magic any more, it's just science. The question is, how different is it from our science?

Blood sacrifice fueling magic implies a lot of things about cosmology that are interesting. Would the blood rituals work with just the correct quantities of the chemical components of blood? Blood is mostly water, after all. What about a small quantity of blood filled out with an expander? If not, that implies there's some tangible quantity to blood beyond its actual components, which is another effect to be studied.

edited 23rd Mar '18 1:11:21 PM by archonspeaks

Or magic is a spiritual force that doesnt follow strict cause and effect conventions. In which case the contrast between how magic vs science works creates some interesting tensions...

I would say that if magic is inherently unpredictable then it's likely to be sidelined and denigrated around the industrial revolution with mechanical and later electronic goods being viewed as inherently more reliable.

Not if its equally or more powerful.

Isn't this kinda like how Bright is?

In theory. In practise... not so much. Because it feels like our world and our history + orcs, elves etc. To the point where there's a theory that it is our world that's been magically altered so that the supernatural races have been brought into the open. Which would make a lot of sense truthfully. It sounds like the OP is trying to do what Bright neglected to do and ask how that would effect the history of the world.

It would depend largely on how the magic itself works. Wrote a story once where 'magic' is a building resource roughly equivalent to water (freezes in shape), and worked on another where it's a fuel in the vein of petroleum - and those comparisons are meant to be somewhat concerning.

Basically, if it's a common material to apply widely, there's no real need to dump resources into researching other forms of applied mathematics. We don't study 'magic' IRL because it didn't pan out centuries ago, but we built the LHC to prove a 40+ year old point. I'd also like to point out that, in real life, scientific progress is often forced to march towards increased efficiency of existing things ('existing' here not making a distinction between something that's been around for millennia, or something that was first discovered 5 minutes ago), and this is why smartphones are ubiquitous and slide rules no longer are^note though there apparently really are apps for that!. Magitek should really only exist where that's the most efficient application of magic - and if that's not the case, there needs to be a good explanation why, just like its source did. Likewise, if your mages and witches are still riding handmade brooms in your story's tech era equivalent of 1990, that too would require some thought as to why/whether the shape and materials matter. (I shouldn't have to explain here which two movies I have in mind.)

I'd also point out that tech level differences in a story are only as good as its justification, and that the tendency of organisms to either compete successfully with others or go extinct means that differences in tech levels are only sustained through the existence of some sorta Lensman Arms Race (scale, duration, and 'present' tech level may vary). Very few things happen just for their own sake, in biological evolution or technology or societies or what have you, and everything around you IRL likely exists because someone thought it was better than the previous version.

(Even people! I bet you know at least one person who exists because two humans looked at each other and thought, "well, at least this one's better than my parents/the last one...")

Of course, this is all based on the fact that, in a fictional story, things have to have an explanation and not be left up to logically improbably convenient chance like is the rule IRL. In a more idealistic fictional world, you don't have multiple races trying to outdo each other without diplomacy and/or an interconnected planet - imagine how short or different LOTR would be if all the races and kingdoms involved were part of a functioning United Nations and Poor Communication Kills or We ARE Struggling Together weren't a go-to plot device.

...but I digress.

What it all boils down to in fiction is: if someone else has a sharp stick and love in their heart and a water purifier, you had either get those yourself or find alternatives, because Chekhov's Gun means that those items got listed for a reason (even if that reason is "I learned from Ernest Cline"). The 'how' or the 'why' will be the story, even as we're talking about Modern high-fantasy.