@The Author Guy:
“It’s a very mixed up universe for the simple fact that if you introduce magic to a “real” medieval world, weird shit suddenly starts happening.”
But in Astlan magic has existed for like… forever. It was not introduced like a few months or so. For something that has existed for such a long long time but still doesn’t integrate well into the world is more than strange.
“Traditional fantasy is extremely unrealistic, unless the magic is extremely scarce, civilization will not follow anything close to the path it did on Earth and you won’t have a “classic fantasy world” after a very short while.
A Song of Ice and Fire is a place where magic makes about the most sense for a medieval world. Because it’s very rare/very hard to do.”
And since magic has existed in Astlan since forever; Astlan should have been very, very different from medieval earth. In Astlan however, similarities is more prevalent that differences. In Song of Ice and Fire, magic isn’t as common like in Astlan. People there don’t steal technologies from other worlds. Teleportation isn’t a very common mode of transportation there either. Magic there is mysterious, strange, trully ‘magical’ in traditional sense; not ‘scientific’ like magic in Astlan is described to be.
“When you have a magic rich world in a fantasy book, it will literally turn the economy of the medieval world upside down, and all bets are off, things won’t follow the path that they did on Earth. There will be all sorts of incongruities and discrepancies.”
True it will not follow the same development as ‘earth’ medieval world thus the discrepancies from ‘earth’ medieval period. But that is not the problem. The problem is the technological discrepancies in Astlan itself not Astlan from medieval earth. It is like people are watching news with a 42 inch flat screen 3d tv but still uses electrical telegraph to send message to each other. That is really an extreme example but still, the point the technological level in Astlan is not homogeneous.
“As Tizzy argues, it’s not that different than suddenly introducing all the “magic” of 21st century technology and capitalism on Africa, the middle East and eastern Europe/Russia.”
As I just stated before, magic is not suddenly introduced in Astlan at the present, it has been there for a long time, even longer than writed history of ‘our’ earth.
@Tizzy:
LOL
@The Author Guy and Tizzy:
Sorry for making such a mess here with my nitpicking and so. Never have dreamed the discussion would go this way. Should have keep my (digital) mouth shut.