Core d&d is lord of the rings and the hobbit, with much more powerful magic. Really the essence of the game is right in the name: dungeon crawl, fantasy creatu

Core d&d is lord of the rings and the hobbit, with much more powerful magic. Really the essence of the game is right in the name: dungeon crawl, fantasy creatures. Everything else is a bolt on. Personally I apply a rule that there is no way to "mass produce" magic effects. Each spell invocation is unique based on local conditions/environment, and enchantment of magical items is unique to the item, even if quantities, materials, shapes, etc is precisely identical. Otherwise magic is essentially more powerful than modern technology and medicine: infinite power generation, cure anything, raise dead, invulnerability, produce almost anything from thin air, know anything, teleport anywhere, and it would be inevitable that machines would be made to do so It is kind of like the navigators in dune, although that has a prohibition on computers, I believe that computers pre jihad couldn't compete with spice enabled navigator prescience. What was always funny to me as a teenager was the price tables for castles like barbicans, crenellations, etc: I had no idea what these were before the Internet. I knew towers, walls keeps. Castles themselves seem much useless in the age of dragons, flying carpets, disintegrate spells, and flying mounts. There's a reason the US military doesn't have castles for defense.