Specifically robots and horse-drawn carriages, or are you just talking about a side-by-side of medieval and modern/slightly futuristic technology?
Either way, gunpowder and advanced metallurgy are never discovered (steam engines are used, but can never be built light enough to be mobile), and while magic can make stuff go for a while, stuff wears out, or the magic runs out or something of that nature. Oh, and magic of that type will have to be expensive and complicated, to prevent mass magitek being employed.
edited 9th May '11 3:42:29 AM by MattII
@breadloaf
We're thinking computers and modern day entertainments such as game systems and MP 3 players, but also Steampunk, robots, Magiteck, and because the world is like a Schizo Tech Halloweentown, magic.
So certainly we could go along with a lot of things here:
Steampunk
- Robotic war machines are always useful, like clockwork bipedal war machines, they need to be more mobile and fit in more places than a tank but pack the same punch
- Crazy automated factories would be quite useful, you pour in resources, it grinds it up, spits out the product in a very cartoon like process, obviously has to be superior to robotic factories of today, maybe you got zepplins coming in from clockwork mines carrying payload of resources and just dumping it down
- The lesser people own cars, the upper class own automated wasteful carriages with clockwork horses
Magic
- The rich and upper class can live in their floating mansions above the rabble with protective fields to guard against polluted air
- Actually magic would be useful in all sorts of purification systems, such as water, air and soil from all the filth coming from your clockwork machinery (instead of having developed efficient less polluting machinery, magic may have been a cheaper alternative), like giant incantation circles just constantly glowing and doing their thing, every so often you have to replace the crystals
- Magical internet, far more reliable than crappy fibre optic!

[[Evil:The current story (I'm riddled with indecision about a story to work on), is set in an alternate realm, with a Schizo Tech setting. I am aware that things like Magitek and Steampunk exist, but the problem is making it at least a little more believable, then it would seem. I'm trying to get a believable environment, but still be fantasy. I mean robots and horse-drawn carriages is great, I'm looking for a reason for them to exist in the same place and time. If you have viable good advice, I ask that you leave some]]