I came across this video & had a visceral reaction to the suggestion that, if fantasy realms had magic, they would naturally be completely dominated by mass-produced magic. I’ve seen others with similar ideas, and it’s maddening (and maybe deliberately so).

Now, you can run a high-magic campaign if you want, and certainly there would likely be pockets of fantastical magic here and there in a low-magic world, but there are a few fatal assumptions in the premise that D&D magic would naturally lead to ubiquitous, society-shaping changes.

First, the whole video is basically “what if modern tech bros had access to magic?” It sort of assumes a very modern culture of ruthlessly exploiting resources for capitalism. Middle Ages Europeans didn’t have that mindset; it was illegal to even lend money at interest. Guilds were highly secretive, siloed, & anti-competitive, and a sorcery guild would be even more so.

The Church Wouldn’t Allow It

Worse, the church dominated the culture as it was. Imagine if priests could actually work miracles. They’d likely never tolerate arcane magic at all, especially with necromancers and warlocks and liches to point at. Even just a general mistrust of wizards would be enough. Look at the Roman Empire. They loved engineering but didn’t care about real science, so all that Greek science and mathematics went nowhere. They didn’t even adopt Arab numerals to make math easy.

He suggests that magic would wreak havoc on the legal system, since it could be used to alter documents or memories. But historically, people had to swear to God they were telling the truth and–especially in a trial by combat–that they weren’t using magic. In a D&D world, that oath would be upheld by the gods themselves. That fact alone would keep just about everybody just about as honest as the day is long.

So we’re left with virtually clerics alone using magic, and they proved how they would use power in the actual Middle Ages: to terrorize, torture, convert, and control the masses. They sold indulgences to the wealthy and isolated themselves to spend their time copying books that met with their moral approval. And their hospitals were basically just places where the poor could suffer; it’s not like they invented modern medicine.

The Nobility Wouldn’t Allow It

Worse still, Middle Ages Europe was run by knights who owned farms and constantly fought wars (and in a fantasy world would also be fighting dragons and liches). They wouldn’t care about creating portals for trade. They’d want enchanted armor and swords. Middle Ages Europe couldn’t even get their act together to teach everyone to read. There’s no way they would have educated an army of weird nerds to learn magical powers to reshape their world. That magical power could unseat them.

Endless Cantrips… & everything Else

Other videos go on and on about how—cantrips being unlimited in 5e— you could power a modern society with them. This ignores a basic aspect of RPGs: the rules don’t define the physics of the world; they just describe the physics that are relevant for most game purposes and leave the rest to the GM. If you tried to spam a cantrip for hours, the GM should tell you your character gets tired after a few castings: The End.

Fantasy Forge dude explicitly posits tech-co-style subscriptions and whatnot and treats all magic as equal, endless, and effortless—even Resurrection, which has very strict material component limits.

One guy in a different video literally suggests that fire cantrips could eliminate—of all things—candle lighters walking around lighting candles at night, because a wizard could do it. Oh gosh, I can replace a child servant with a 1st-level mage who’s finished seven-year apprenticeships? Sign me up!

This is actually my problem with Continual Light/Continual Flame, which really would obviously lead to cities full of street lights and castles full of perpetual candelabras. While it would be cool to have part of an ancient dungeon still lighted, it would need to be difficult and expensive, or it would be used in all kinds of places.