this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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(page 2) 50 comments
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

You are going after two different nerd groups, so if you are able to keep them both happy... sure

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Why wouldn't it work? Stories usually fail because the plot is bad or because they're badly told, and it's not that hard to maintain verisimilitude just because seemingly opposite ideas like magic and advanced technology are combined - just communicate what your magic and technology can and cannot do in broad strokes and stick to it, and avoid asspulls that make no sense and/or undermine the character beats you're showing. But you get exactly the same issues in a story with only magic or only advanced technology.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

In Attack on Titan, magic (titan powers) had historically an edge over humanity, but the story is in part about how Humanity's technology has advanced to almost surpass those magical powers and shift the power balance.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago

Artemis Fowl is a classic example of this. The fantasy world of fairies relies on super advanced technology in their world.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

-Arthur C. Clarke

[–] leftzero 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.

— Pratchett, maybe..?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago

There's a ton of examples, so yeah.

My home brew ttrpg setting is exactly that

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The black ocean series does a good job if blending the two together. But it sort of sets them in opposition to each other. Interstellar travel is made possible on futuristic spaceships by using magic to plunge the ship partially into another dimension, shortening the relative distance between stars. But unless the it is specially shielded against it, magic ruins and destroys technology.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

A sequel to Arcanum that moves the timeline forward into the information age?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

God I wish we had gotten more than one Arcanum game...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

With out Tim it would never be the same even if the rights were not in limbo

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

Sure, there are books like that and Shadowrun.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

Yes.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35420518

The Starship’s Mage books do this.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Definitely not. I give no reason.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

Definitely, although I think it's most interesting if the advanced technology is based on the magic.

Like, let's say there is a world where there are magic plants that can heal you, people who can magically scry nearby locations if they meditate deeply, and stones that levitate in the moonlight.

And there's an evil empire that exploits the fuck out of this by industrially farming the plants to create a highly concentrated serum, removing people's brains and hooking them up to computers for magical sensing abilities, and attaching fragments of moon rocks to the levitating stones to create antigravity. Creating invulnerable flying supersoldiers with impossibly good radar powered by brain backpacks.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

Yes and it sounds cool as hell

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

Like most things by Philip K. Dick, the man who has more movies based on his writing than any other author?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

Starship mage also did it well.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Absolutely. Read the nightlord series, just skip through the first half of book one, it's the first thing the author ever wrote and could have used better editing for sure. High tech kicks in at book 3

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Yes. Do a time travel story and new tech will be seen as miraculous magic by those pesky Elizabethans.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Iron man and other Marvel movies started being very science. Oriented, but quickly combined magic or turned to magic

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

We have high technology because we don’t have anything else to leverage.

I suspect a world with strong magic is liable to leverage that to the exclusion of technology.

A now-ended iseki story on Reddit’s HFY subreddit called “Wait, is this just GATE?” Asks the question of what would happen if a universe of only technology and no magic (ours) made contact with a universe of pretty much only magic and almost no technology beyond that found in the Middle Ages. It contains some tropes (used mainly as comedic relief or irony) and plenty of references to current magical-universe plot elements from games and novels, but is a surprisingly fresh and compelling examination of the cross-universe idea.

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