[quote=@Expendable] Okay, magical alternate world scenario. What is the level of technology in this world? Keep in mind that most of the things in our lives were created out of need - ships, planes, cars, etc. Who needs electricity if you have magic? Want to preserve food? Make a preserving cabinet. You can put hot food in, then come back days or weeks later and the food is still hot on the plate. Why build cars or planes if you have a flying broomstick or carpet? Why build motors or engines if you can craft golems who do all the physical work - pumping water, winding gears to make ship's propellers turn, etc? Why build telephones or computers if you can use crystal balls? DO we have classes in the natural sciences? [/quote] [quote=@Fading Memory] my mindset on that stuff is 'because it's not easy to do' and 'there's potentially very bad drawbacks for doing it wrong or badly'. Part of a setting idea like this is to just accept the premise and suspend the disbelief and allow it to exist for its own sake, methinks. [/quote] [quote=@naomimyselfandi] I know this was a rhetorical question, but I don't think it should be. "Magic as technology" is one approach, and many well-respected stories use it, but it's not the only way, and I don't think it's the approach [@Gisk] wants to take. As long as magic requires a witch, it will never replace electricity - no one's going to contract a witch every time they want to put the kettle on. To be clear, I'm not trying to argue for the superiority of either approach; I'm just not sure we're collectively on the same page about what sort of story we're trying to tell here. Gisk, am I correct in understanding that you see the setting here as more or less like the real world? [/quote] Yes, 1994, and it's more or less the real world. Fading and Naomi(is that an appropriate thing to call you?) both raise good points for answering your question, [@Expendable], and I'm going to expound a little more. I said before that magic is prescriptive. What I mean by this is that, in a given spell, you have use magical principles to tell the spell [i]exactly[/i] what to do. Magic requires understanding, and our scientific knowledge of the world has been essential for increasing our magical capabilities. So magic and science developed together in this world. Remember that I've said magic used to have a reputation for being unpredictable? That's because before our understanding of science caught up, we would create magical effects by pure trial and error, and then just repeating the steps that produced what we wanted. Magic was powerful and mysterious, but unreliable. And our understanding and use of magic tracks with our understanding and use of science. So, yes, you have to take natural science classes. But I won't make you as the writer explain the full mathematical implications of every spell your character casts ;P Also, like my pal Fading said, don't forget to suspend your disbelief a little. I know magic is often the most interesting thing in a given setting, but I want to remind everyone that it's meant to be just background to an RP about a bunch of friends fucking around over the summer. It's fun to peek at it behind the curtain every once in a while, so I certainly won't put a stop to these discussions, but let's not get bogged down by details. And if you've seen me around, you know I'm the pot calling the kettle black with that one, but there you go. [quote=@naomimyselfandi] Busy few days, ahhhhh OT a bit, but if you want to use real-world scientific principles, this is the first law of thermodynamics ("The energy of a closed system remains constant"). [/Quote] Uh, fair point there. No fourth law but I stand by that Newton invented a lot of the math that magicians use to analyze their magic. He was also a major forerunner in kinetic magic. There are still apples in orbit from his experiments.