The Magical Printing Press: A Catalyst for Knowledge and Enlightenment

The magical printing press is a fascinating invention that has revolutionized the world of printing. Unlike traditional printing presses, the magical printing press utilizes the power of magic to create remarkable printed materials. The magical printing press operates by harnessing the energies of the arcane and transforming them into physical ink on paper. This incredible technology allows for faster printing speeds, more accurate reproductions, and a wider range of printing options. One of the most remarkable features of the magical printing press is its ability to print with a wide spectrum of colors. Unlike traditional presses that use separate plates for each color, the magical printing press can seamlessly blend colors together, resulting in vibrant and lifelike printed materials.

One major effect of the printing press's emergence was the expanded printing of all manner of religious pamphlets - this catalyzed the Reformation.

While the Spellplague seems to have caused some harm, the printing business seems to have recovered quickly and the situation in 1490s is not much different in much of Faerun according to unofficial tweets by Ed Greenwood. As for scrolls, it d be safe to say that someone could produce a tablet for scrolls, but that would only provide the text required - a spellcaster would still have to manually write down the scroll to parchment and say it has something to do with the act of concentration in writing the scroll that embues the magic into it.

Unlike traditional presses that use separate plates for each color, the magical printing press can seamlessly blend colors together, resulting in vibrant and lifelike printed materials. Furthermore, the magical printing press can create intricate and detailed designs with ease. Its magical capabilities allow for precise and delicate printing, capturing the finest details and textures.

Power of the Press: Mass produced magic?

With the upcoming Eberron campaign setting, as well as earlier settings which meshed magic & technology, I was curious about how magic may mesh with 1 invention in particular, and to see if any of these settings have addressed this topic beforehand.

What impact, if any, would the good ol' printing press have on forms of written magic? Would it be possible to mass-produce spellbooks with a printing press? (i.e., "My First Little Spell Book," "Wizard Spells for Dummies," etc.) It could be advanced as our modern printing presses, or be as simple as the first one made by Guttenberg.

What about magical items that are written objects? Scrolls are an obvious example of such magical items, but what about things such as a manual of bodily health, or a tome of understanding?

I'm just thought I'd bring this issue up. I won't bring up other issues yet, like faxing/photocopying scrolls, keeping spellbooks as .doc files, etc., that come into question with more modern technology.

EricNoah

Adventurer

It would be interesting if there was a "scroll photocopier" -- instead of costing a nickel, it could cost the normal amount of GP and drain XP from the user just as if they'd made it themselves. So it would be like a magic item that duplicated the Scribe Scroll feat. I would make sure it was big/unweildy/anchored down if I were the owner though!

Crothian

First Post

I don't think it would have much of an effect. The cost of scribing spells is insane and it would bankrupt anyone who tried to mass produce them. Magical items are even worse.

MerakSpielman

First Post

The cost of regular books in RL was prohibitive before the printing press. Perhaps mass production would find a way to lower the price of the entire operation.

EBBERON IS UNBALANCED!

Kidding, just kidding.

francisca

I got dice older than you.

What impact, if any, would the good ol' printing press have on forms of written magic? Would it be possible to mass-produce spellbooks with a printing press? (i.e., "My First Little Spell Book," "Wizard Spells for Dummies," etc.) It could be advanced as our modern printing presses, or be as simple as the first one made by Guttenberg.

Contrabassoon

First Post

babomb

First Post

What impact, if any, would the good ol' printing press have on forms of written magic? Would it be possible to mass-produce spellbooks with a printing press? (i.e., "My First Little Spell Book," "Wizard Spells for Dummies," etc.) It could be advanced as our modern printing presses, or be as simple as the first one made by Guttenberg.

Hmm. Offhand, I'd say that writing magic requires a special notation, like music does. This would make it difficult to produce using a standard printing press, but possibly a specialized press could be used for spells. The press would be very expensive, however.

What about magical items that are written objects? Scrolls are an obvious example of such magical items, but what about things such as a manual of bodily health, or a tome of understanding?

After manuals of bodily health, etc., are used once, they lose their magical ability. Items from a printing press would be similar to books that had already been used. In the case of scrolls, a wizard could use such a scroll to prepare the spell or copy it into his spellbook, but could not use the scroll to cast on the fly. The only way to make items from a printing press magical is to spend the full normal XP cost (though the GP cost may be reduced.)

Now, I suppose a magical printing press could produce magic items, but the cost to make a magical press would be very high. It would have to be enchanted for each spell that it can print scrolls of, with a cost at least equal to that of making a magical item that can cast those spells at will (but probably considerably higher). That said, any powerful wizards' guilds/schools would almost certainly want one. It could easily pay for itself in 2-3 years, depending on their activities. Plus the enchanting it with spells could be done a little at a time and be spread out among a large number of wizards.

shilsen

Adventurer

Check out Terry Pratchett's "The Truth" for a brilliant treatment of this subject and the question of the Fourth Estate in general.

Nifft

Penguin Herder

IMC, causality requires direct observation. Thus, unattended automation is impossible. Magic is inherently intelligent, and thus unintelligent automation is also impossible.

Nature works without human observation because of Spirits & Fey.

So, if someone wants to create something that works, unattended, without constant human intervention, he has to expend part of his soul -- measured in XP.

Thusly do I justify Standard D&D Tech Level.

s/LaSH

First Post

Urbis' creator might have something to say on the matter; if you're familiar with the setting, it might be possible.

In any case, there's something to be said for the march of technology (in terms of 'techniques commonly employed'). It's not a physical law that scrolls take XP to make, just as it isn't a physical law that you need a hammer and an anvil to make a sword. I don't know what the law regarding energy input into scrolls is, but I'm sure someone will find a way around it. After all, we can't make artifacts these days - why not?

Dogbrain

First Post

Hmm. Offhand, I'd say that writing magic requires a special notation, like music does. This would make it difficult to produce using a standard printing press

Not in Gutenburg's day. Early printing presses used hand-carved type.

nopantsyet

First Post

I've got printing presses in my game, and high levels of literacy as well. Printing presses are unable to print magical scrolls. Movable typefaces could be carved to replicate runes and symbols, but that would not imbue any magical power.

This is why reading a spell from a printed text is powerless. You must learn to harness and expend magical energy, which you bind to the page and text, at which time it becomes a scroll. That's where your precious XP go.

The idea of a magical printing press is interesting; I may have to develop one of those since there is a sophisticated order of wizards. I'm going to have to figure out how much it would cost, then determine a mechanism for fueling it. It would still have to be XP, but whose? (suspicious shifty eyes *activate*)

cybertalus

First Post

What impact, if any, would the good ol' printing press have on forms of written magic? Would it be possible to mass-produce spellbooks with a printing press? (i.e., "My First Little Spell Book," "Wizard Spells for Dummies," etc.) It could be advanced as our modern printing presses, or be as simple as the first one made by Guttenberg.

I would say yes to spellbooks. Despite the costs associated with creating them, spellbooks don't seem to have any innate magical properties of their own. They're just very expensive mundane books full of the instructions a trained caster needs in order to cast spells.

Though one problem initially might be that every wizard has their own spell notation, so if Bigby's spellbooks are churned off the printing press, Evard, Tenser, Khelben, and Raistlin aren't going to be able to prepare spells out of them until they've copied the spells into their own spellbooks using their own notations. If printing spellbooks on a printing press became common what you would probably see happen is that spellbook notation would become standardized over time and wizards would be able to then prepare spells from off the shelf spellbooks.

You might want to ask, however, if wizards would allow their spellbooks to be mass produced, and if there would be enough of a market to justify anyone wanting to mass produce them in any case.

What about magical items that are written objects? Scrolls are an obvious example of such magical items, but what about things such as a manual of bodily health, or a tome of understanding?

I would say no to this for a couple of different reasons. For one thing this ability is somewhere between the power of 9th level spells and an uber-artifact. Wish is the only spell I can find in the core rules which can create permanent magic items. Even a Wish spell can't create a single scroll of Wish, something a printing press capable of mass producing scrolls could presumably churn out by the hundreds or thousands.

Additionally the "flavor" just seems wrong. Magic is powerful, but mysterious. It isn't just science with different rules. Magic can do very powerful things, but each magical effect is a unique expression of a single living (or occasionally undead) creature's ability to use magic. Magic should never be able to be mass produced.

I'm just thought I'd bring this issue up. I won't bring up other issues yet, like faxing/photocopying scrolls, keeping spellbooks as .doc files, etc., that come into question with more modern technology.

d20 Modern allows for spellbooks on PDAs, although it doesn't deal with faxing scrolls (a neat idea though, especially for attack spells-- read the fax, get hit with a Magic Missile), it does have a few spells that deal specifically with modern technology, such as a spell to power electronics when the batteries are dead.

While I don't know what the d20 Future will hold, I just want to state right now that I am vehemently opposed to any form of spellcasting robots, computers, or artificial intelligences.

evileeyore

Mrrrph

Hmmm, why do I have images of rows of presses (or any other machinery for that matter making magic items) attended by chained slaves. They are tired, wasted drained. As workers fall. more are brought in to replace them. The death toll among the workers is high as the machines drain the life essence from the mage slaves.

Hah. I could see a nation like Thay, forcing captured mages to work the soulforges night and day.

Damn that is a very fine and tasty notion for a campiagn.

Moe Ronalds

First Post

Hmmm, why do I have images of rows of presses (or any other machinery for that matter making magic items) attended by chained slaves. They are tired, wasted drained. As workers fall. more are brought in to replace them. The death toll among the workers is high as the machines drain the life essence from the mage slaves.

Hah. I could see a nation like Thay, forcing captured mages to work the soulforges night and day.

Damn that is a very fine and tasty notion for a campiagn.

An overly ambitious business man once tried this in a (thankfully dead) campaign of mine, though he had only a single machine and it created a variety of magical items. It was a fun fight when they tracked him down, with them pulling random objects off the rack and seeing what they did. "What do you MEAN those were golden prayer beads!?"

AFGNCAAP

First Post

Thanks for the replies! Keep `em coming!

Y'know, I completely forgot about the spellbook-PDA mentioned in d20 Modern--it's a good example about 1 of the issues I was trying to address regarding magic & technology.

OTOH, it does bring up another issue: does it matter what sort of media/material a spellbook is made with? Would there need to be some sort of special magical process needed to "enchant" a PDA to work as a spellbook? Does a mage need a special sort of paper & ink for a spellbook, or could he/she have a "spellbook" consisting of a yellow legal pad with the spells written in permanent marker (Or for that matter, spells written in crayon on sheets of newsprint)? Would a mage need to hunt down rare & expensive materials for a spellbook, or would he/she merely need to go to Hobby Lobby or Staples for materials?

But, back to the issue of a printing press. There are 2 reasons why I ask this question:

1. Is a spellbook an inherently (though slightly) magical object itself since it contains spells, or is it just like any book, merely consisting of a cover, paper, & ink?
2. If a spellbook is essentially no different than any other mundane book, then could the knowledge & power contained within it be readily distributed by a means of mass production such as the printing press?

For me, I always thought that a spellbook is a highly personal object, linked to its writer to some degree. The expense of an item is due to the masterwork quality of the materials needed (the high-grade paper, the sturdy cover, and the pure, fine quality ink). In addition to this, I always thought that a mage expended a tiny amount of magical energy during the process of writing/binding a spell into a spellbook.

Now, I don't think that it's to the extreme of being able to rip out pages of a spellbook & use them as scrolls (although wizards do start off with that feat for free at 1st level)--I don't think they're that intensely imbued with magical energy. However, I would think that it's just enough to prevent the process from simply being mass-produced.

This, in turn, has an impact on the world. Magical academies (esp. for wizards) could commision the printing of "basic" spellbooks for beginning students--perhaps spellbooks printed with all 0-level spells, then with a bunch of blank pages for the student to record spells that he/she learns later.

Opinions? Ideas? Comments?

Ace

Adventurer

IMC Scrolls are magic items -- essentially the spell is imbued into the paper -- You couldn't (without some infernal machine anyway) mass produce them

Spellbooks OTOH are just textbooks with fantaststically complex instructions-- Every time you want to prepare a spell you need the formula to find the and absoarb the spell energy

Since the printing press does exist Mass Produced spellbooks do also -- I don't mess with the special ink rubbish

OTOH since spellcasting is roughly as complex as Nuclear Physics combined with Mysticism and Computer Programming it requires specialized training and a good deal of intellect (aka Wizard levels) to use them

s/LaSH

First Post

Cybertalus mentioned the un-interchangability of magical notation between wizards. That's a big thing. If spellbooks are indeed nonmagical, the only thing stopping anyone from printing 'em off is the fact that nobody could use them. They'd have to do some serious research to understand each page, presumably the result of days, weeks, years of research and experimentation on the part of the original wizard. And that research would, as Ace puts it, be on a par with university-level specialist science.

"Oh, I say these words and. um, the guy forgot to title the spell. I guess he recognises the words. Well, if I'm lucky I can point at a distant site and hope the spell doesn't rip my finger off, it could be too powerful. But if it's not ranged. or if some of these symbols are interchangable with other symbols and the guy just remembers his range variables by heart. this is too dangerous, dude."

So what really needs to happen is for someone to start printing magical textbooks, each one detailing exactly how a spell was researched and what each part of the process does, resulting in a unified language of magic (I know draconic is supposed to fill this niche, but it's a language spoken by thousand-year-old snakes, it's not going to be perfectly understood by humans). It means you have far less spell content per book, but each spellbook teaches just about anyone how to cast that spell. (They still have to be literate and capable of handling the energies, but this way they know what the spell does, they know how it does it, and they know if they're up to scratch.)

It's a revolution, baby.

cybertalus

First Post

I don't see the notation issue as an insurmountable one, more of something which would slow things down. Afterall I recall reading somewhere that there was a time when musical notation wasn't standardized, but eventually it became so due to the convenience offered by the printing press.

Instead I see standardization as a gradual development. Some overworked wizard with five apprentices decides to try to speed things up by having an identical spellbook of cantrips printed up for each of them. He then teaches all five of them the exact same notation system he used for those cantrips so that it's easier for him when he's checking over their practice scribings. This works out so well that he does the same thing when he begins to teach them first level spells. So now the wizard and his five apprentices all use the same notation system for cantrips and first level spells, but unless they come back to him for further instruction when it comes time to learn higher level spells, their notations will begin to diverge starting with second level spells.

As news of this practice spreads among the wizardly community there would probably develop a number of competing "standards" which eventually shake out to one or two major ones, perhaps with some slight variances. Though depending on the nature of the world and the wizards in it the standards might very well never develop for high level spells. Sharing knowledge of low level spells is one thing, but a cautious wizard isn't going to be too keen to make it easier for his rivals to learn more powerful spells which they might use against him.

Also once notations shake out into a few standards, I would say that it would make it more difficult to decipher the older handwritten spellbooks (who here could read an old illuminated manuscript with the same ease they can read a modern paperback?) and spellbooks based on notations not related to the standard one (sure all the humanoid races of the surface may share a notation, but even if the drow have the printing press I somehow doubt that they'll want to use the notations of the hated surface dwellers).

does it matter what sort of media/material a spellbook is made with? Would there need to be some sort of special magical process needed to "enchant" a PDA to work as a spellbook? Does a mage need a special sort of paper & ink for a spellbook, or could he/she have a "spellbook" consisting of a yellow legal pad with the spells written in permanent marker (Or for that matter, spells written in crayon on sheets of newsprint)? Would a mage need to hunt down rare & expensive materials for a spellbook, or would he/she merely need to go to Hobby Lobby or Staples for materials?

Crayon on newsprint would be doable I think, but not durable. Spellbooks are a wizard's only means of preparing their spells, and since that is such a vital part of a wizard's life, it makes sense for them to go for the quality craftmanship. A wizard doesn't want to be camped out in a dungeon only to find that the ink has bled through from sleep onto magic missile and now it's impossible to read, and thus impossible to prepare.

And even if a wizard starts out with a spellbook from a printing press, the printing press is a long way from the typewriter or a word processor, so any spells the wizard learns from scrolls, other wizards, or as a result of ongoing research will need to be written down in an old-fashioned sturdy, high quality spellbook.

So what really needs to happen is for someone to start printing magical textbooks, each one detailing exactly how a spell was researched and what each part of the process does, resulting in a unified language of magic (I know draconic is supposed to fill this niche, but it's a language spoken by thousand-year-old snakes, it's not going to be perfectly understood by humans). It means you have far less spell content per book, but each spellbook teaches just about anyone how to cast that spell. (They still have to be literate and capable of handling the energies, but this way they know what the spell does, they know how it does it, and they know if they're up to scratch.)

Whether it is a complex illustration or a detailed photograph, the magical printing press can reproduce it with remarkable accuracy. In addition to its exceptional printing capabilities, the magical printing press also offers a range of enchanting features. For instance, it can print materials that are resistant to wear and tear, ensuring that printed documents and images last for years without fading or deteriorating. This makes it an ideal choice for archival printing and preservation of important documents. Moreover, the magical printing press can create unique and captivating effects, such as embossing and foiling, to enhance the appearance of printed materials. These features add depth and texture to the printed items, making them visually striking and appealing. The magical printing press has transformed the printing industry, providing businesses, individuals, and organizations with endless possibilities for creativity and innovation. Its ability to produce high-quality, vibrant, and durable prints has made it an invaluable tool in various fields, including advertising, publishing, and arts. In conclusion, the magical printing press is a remarkable invention that has revolutionized printing. Its ability to harness the power of magic not only improves the speed and accuracy of printing but also allows for a wide range of vibrant colors, intricate designs, and captivating effects. With its enchanting capabilities, the magical printing press opens up a world of possibilities for the creation of beautiful and impactful printed materials..

Reviews for "Print Your Own Magic: Creating Spells with the Magical Printing Press"

1. Emily - 2/5 stars - I found "Magical Printing Press" to be quite disappointing. The storyline was lacking depth, and I couldn't connect with any of the characters. The magical element felt forced and didn't add anything substantial to the plot. Overall, it was a forgettable read.

2. Ethan - 3/5 stars - I had high expectations for "Magical Printing Press," but unfortunately, it fell short. The writing style was average, and the pacing was inconsistent. The concept had potential, but it wasn't executed well. I was hoping for more magic and excitement, but it all felt predictable and underwhelming.

3. Sarah - 2/5 stars - "Magical Printing Press" didn't live up to the hype for me. The protagonist was uninteresting, and the supporting characters lacked development. The magical aspect was poorly explained, and I found myself questioning its purpose throughout the book. The plot felt disjointed and confusing at times. Overall, it was a forgettable and lackluster read.

4. Benjamin - 2/5 stars - I was excited to read "Magical Printing Press," but it didn't captivate my attention. The writing style was bland, and the dialogue felt unnatural. The world-building was underdeveloped, leaving me with many unanswered questions. The plot didn't offer anything original or engaging. I was left disappointed and wishing for more substance.

5. Olivia - 3/5 stars - I found "Magical Printing Press" to be just an average read. The characters lacked depth, and their motivations weren't well explored. The pacing was slow, and it took a while for the story to pick up. The magical elements felt underutilized and didn't add much excitement. While it wasn't terrible, it didn't leave a lasting impression.

How the Magical Printing Press Sparked a Cultural Revolution