Background: Society and Magic

The existence of magic in a campaign world means you're going to get a different history and a different end result. I'm setting my game in the Divided States of America in 1899 and it's going to be (hopefully) recognizable but distinct from the historical 1899. Here's a few examples of what's going on in the game world that would be different from our own.

First up, there are magic colleges in every major power on the continent other than the 500 Nations territory (who practice apprentice-mentor teaching relationships one on one for their Wizards; the written language Sequoyah came up with made it possible for Native American arcane spellcasters to standardize their spellbooks, but before that the use of pictograms and personal artwork on animal skin parchment meant that you could indeed have Indians with spellbooks). Not everyone's going to be Merlin, even with instruction from those magical schools, but people (or Persons) with the Spark are generally expected to go into a field that uses their ability if they've got it. Arcane magicians aren't necessarily all going to become adventurers (there's a place for Necromancers in any food storage / transport business because they can retard or completely stop the decay of meat or plants; more than one of that field works in the stockyards of Chicago just keeping the food in better condition than it would be otherwise). Diviners are employed by oil and mining companies to determine where the richest deposits of petroleum or precious metals can be found. Even the least talented Illusionists can find work on the vaudeville stage spraying colors and light over a fascinated audience that paid a couple pennies apiece for a ticket. Artificers and alchemists can make strength potions for the military or single-use explosive items for wizards or sorcerers in the armed forces.

But one thing all the magical applications listed above have in common is that they require individual effort and individual attention. The Necromancer working at the stockyards has to personally cast the magics to slow or stop decay on a few dozen sides of beef themselves. There has not been (as of 1899) a way to industrialize the magical effects that can be used to make life easier. This means that the wizards (and sorcerers) who perform magical feats as a job are more analogous to medieval craftsmen and guild members than corporate officers. In the example given of the stockyard worker, the employers want to keep that wizard happy and productive because the lack of maggots in their tinned meat is a selling point. Wizards that want more money or shorter working hours tend to be able to negotiate from a position of strength because there simply aren't enough of them around to make hiring a cheaper one a workable tactic for the bosses--there's also a sense of class solidarity among people who have the Spark, and nobody wants to be thought of as the guy who ruined everything for everyone. The existence of the printing press does mean that research results can be disseminated to arcane spellcasters more easily than it could in the past, but copying a spell into one's own spellbook means individual effort. There's no "Level 1 Spellcasting for Dummies" books in the game world and there never will be.

Divine magic and its healing properties works essentially the same way. Healing the victims of an industrial accident or train wreck one at a time and only until the miracles run out means that not everybody is going to get treated and that a single divine spellcaster will be overwhelmed every single day in  a major city. Clerics that accompanied the militaries of the USA and CSA found that the best they could do every day was a pittance compared to the healing that was needed by the thousands of injured and maimed soldiers. Incidentally, if someone in the game loses a limb and the wound is healed, they wind up with a sealed and infection-free stump if a Cure Wounds spell that was used on them; higher level healing magics with limb-restoring effects are necessary to regrow a severed arm. During the decade-plus Civil War, clerics from both militaries had faced courts martial for healing enlisted men before officers until the threat of a general strike led to the adoption of the Rules of Conscience in the clerical healing corps; under these newly adopted rules a cleric could not face charges for healing someone against the orders of their commanding officers. It's continuing to be a grey area of military law, with some cases rising where a cleric was accused of intentionally running out of spells before an officer came in for treatment. It's very hard to prove a negative, though, and public opinion turns sharply against a system that wants to punish a cleric for healing an "unimportant" person before an important one. Some of the most devastating wartime propaganda against the CSA stemmed from the depiction of their healing troops letting thousands of common soldiers die while attending exclusively to the plantation-owning class.

Black Sorcerers in the CSA were considered one of the gravest threats to the social order imaginable. Having wild magical talents crop up among the white serf class was thought to be regrettable but inevitable (and the ruling class did make sure to make use of the ones they found), but having a slave capable of performing arcane wonders on their own initiative was seen as a horrifying affront to the natural order even before the Bronze Brigade stopped a Confederate advance with only three casualties. Generally, the plantation owners and other Confederate aristocracy would have to find ways to manipulate and threaten sorcerers that didn't depend on hurting them because that could be the spark that sets them off to burn down everything they see. Instead, ironically, slaves that were sorcerers could count on their families being kept at the same location as them because threatening a spouse or child could keep an errant wild-talent mage in line.

In the Mormon theocracy of Deseret, every category of spellcaster is seen as having a measure of divine favor, with the Lord bestowing some gifts on His children for different uses. Even the arcane magic users are considered divinely powered. Clerics of other faiths are allowed to practice their healing arts and their religious practices are grudgingly tolerated but people tend to be truly desperate to call on someone from the Faith when they need help. Non-Mormon wizards and sorcerers are usually targets for conversion attempts, with social prestige being the carrot and the stick often nonexistent (irritating someone who knows how to cast Fireball is not a wise choice).

Tejanos, as a whole, appreciate everything a spellcaster can do for them (having someone who can call up a rainstorm in a desert is a useful thing for farmers during the growing season). Clerics and sorcerers generally find something they know how to do well and learn to use it to help the region they're in; the nation-state is large enough and sparsely populated enough that traveling healers won't get to where they're needed in time. Instead, staying in one place and doing everything one can for the people already there is the general "career path" for clerics (although there are always exceptions). Sorcerers have been renowned outlaws and lawmen, with names like Three-Finger Jake and Fancy Dan Wilson gaining reputations for their magically-fueled robbery careers and the bounty hunter Jack Monroe becoming a living legend for stopping and punishing criminals all over that country.

On Venus and Mars the frontier lifestyle means that the more academic arcane spellcasters aren't seen as particularly useful and the fussy and effeminate alchemist is a stock comedic archetype in vaudeville and theater on both planets. Materials for spellbooks are usually in short supply on both planets, as are some of the more esoteric research materials. But people with the Spark are usually given high social status in the more settled areas simply because they can do things that nobody else can (and a rifleman who can give himself faster reflexes and better eyesight is someone that most people want to stay on the right side of, if given the opportunity).