Since our topic is a technological revolution, even if it is a magical one, we need to get a grips on the effects that has on a society. Some of these are great. Most of them are kind of awful. We are not looking to make a utopia. Bad times bring conflict and thus they bring work to your average mercenary adventure, they bring something to oppose to your moral crusader, and they bring opportunity to your clever innovator. For a proactive PC of any inclination there is a chance to make a difference, but first we have to know the why and the how.
The end goal of these various posts will be to stich them together to produce both a guide for the design of settings going through a magically powered industrial rise, and create an example setting with some attached adventures, locations to explore, and a generation system for further adventures. Also, knowing where a PC comes from (background/lifepath system) can help you jumpstart where they are going (character build and development).
(I will not set out to moralize, though there are certainly parts of this situation that I find personally repugnant, nor to aggrandize, though I find some of the achievements of the time impressive. In this brief article we are just laying down the facts.)
As our model we are going to use the British Industrial Revolution of the later 1700s. There were greater achievements in industry coming down the line, especially in the late 19th century, but in this earlier model we see the jump I want to take in the game from post Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment theoretical forms, to the realities of an Industrial Age, which didn't really play out as the high idealist would have wanted it to.
The other reason to use the British first Industrial Age as model is that until that point, functionally speaking technologies were advancements on the forms that had existed for centuries. The role of the average person was peasant, merchant, or soldier, and the powerhouse of British economy were the nobility and the crown.
Ok, that lays down enough framework. I will only be covering each topic in broad strokes, so please excuse any missed details.
- There was a rise in urban population caused by the displacement of rural peasants by the landed nobility so that they could use communal lands to grow cash crops, after agricultural innovations allowed for the growing of more crops or raising more cattle (sheep usually for wool). Because these laborers were not looking first to their own villages and secondly to sell surplus there less need for a large laboring agricultural peasantry. As the use of hard currency was on the rise most lords stopped taking labor out put for rents causing yet more eviction and displacement.
- That surplus population came at the same time that an innovation, especially in steal production through the use of advanced steal making techniques and locally available fuel for the furnaces (in the form of coal) allowed for the construction of much safer steam powered engines, which freed factories from having to depend on the local restrictions of water power. A literal biproduct of this innovation was a general deterioration of environmental factors like clean air and water, but would take some time for this to become fully apparent.
- An additional bioproduct was the growth of cities from towns and great labors of city expansion to house the additional population. The call for timber an stone had additional determinator effects on the environment that would take decades to fully show themselves.
- Steam and water powered factories removed the need for cottage labor for the production of things like textiles and horse shoes. These essentials could be produced much more cheaply in factories, further impoverishing and driving urban-ward more of the population, which gave rise to an even cheaper labor force.
- Finally the local governments favored business over traditional communal land rights and went so far as to create colonial outpost that would provide captivated markets for the industrial products (usually through military intervention) who would in turn produce more raw materials for the factories in the mother country.
- Many of the early investors in new technology were forward looking bankers, who had primarily lent to the noble classes, but were at their whims when time came for repayments of loans. In the new factory driven landscape these early industrial investors, as well as the factory owners made gigantic strides in profit and thus social status and social influence. The service needed to provide for factories also saw a substantial improvement, leading to the rise of a wealthy stratum of the non aristocratic class, and the existence of a stable and fiscally healthy middle class (though after the initial successes of the factory system there were many nobles who followed the example of the bankers and became yet more rich and powerful.)
- The income in taxes, frequently heavily laid on colonies, allowed the government to build a stronger military force and the need for bureaucrats, which allowed for the control of colonies, the protection of trade routes, and frequently the dictation of the laws of trade.(Though forward thinking smugglers did assist in circumventing these prohibitions).
- Based on that improvements in steel and steam early in the next century we see the rise of the railway system, which revolutionized transportation in the island nation. This was used to carry everything from raw material and cattle, army regiments and economic refugees. It also changed the pace of life. There was a strict time based rail system which like time and tide waited for no man (though frequently was late itself).
There are things that are mentioned above in brief that have darker implications. Mostly in the form of a perceived cheapness of human life and all the horrors that go with it. I by no means want to disregard that side of the story and the inhumanity in individuals and even codified governmental systems that this produced, but I will leave it to the reader to player to pick and chose between the greater moral decays of the Age which ones they wish to include, exclude, and perhaps crusade against in their games.
From this point on we will delve into fantasy and focus on the way magic could rapidly expediate the pace of change and perhaps spare a few of the darkest shadows that accompany great an age of great change.
