I've been worldbuilding a (fantasy) setting, and one of

>>50027218
Magitek. A lot of the complaints I see around /tg/ is how magic dislodges technological progress yet normal civilization seems to be stuck in the Medieval Age.

One way I would do is that Magic is used as an unlimited energy source. Mages were scientists as well as walking batteries. The ancients figured out a way to store the energy from mana into batteries and powered their society from golems to flying airships.

10/10 movie. I wish I could watch it for the first time again.

Numenara does this sort of thing. Earth has gone through the rise and fall of so many great civilizations that no one remembers the technological golden ages. All of the magic and abilities of the setting are just crazy advanced technology, but no one around remembers how or why it works.

>>50027218
Mine is sort of like what >>50027300 referenced.

Very few people even know there were precursor civilizations and the ones who do usually imagine them to be big magical empires. In reality, they were just civilizations with highly developed technology. One of the greater nations built a system of doomsday bunkers which survived the fall. When new civilizations cropped up thousands of years later and found them it was like opening a vault to a bunch of magic artifacts that even their wisest engineers and scholars couldn't understand the workings of.

>>50027218
Well something more mundane would be architecture.
For some real world inspiration, a great example would be the collapse of Rome.
How many aqueducts got built after the collapse of Rome?
Roman infrastructure is pretty hard to keep up with when your cement is so good it doesn't need upkeep, thus creating a period of time long enough for people to lose the knowledge to make the cement.

>>50027300
the manga is better

File: Dust-rain.jpg (80KB, 446x199px) Image search: [Google]

80KB, 446x199px

>>50027218
Maybe something like the Endless universe?

An extinct ancient species had god like powers with their nano bots called dust.
And after they're gone it is basicly magic for pre space civ species

File: Endless-Legend-Vaulters-Rush.jpg (783KB, 1920x1080px) Image search: [Google]

783KB, 1920x1080px

>>50027729
Seconding something like Dust. People don't understand what it is, but they do understand how powerful it can be. Plus, you could use it as a currency also, which causes the players to think about how much money they are willing to pay for a spell

>>50027976
Isn't the man on the left's hand in the way of his crossbow string?

File: 1447756421494.jpg (3MB, 3300x4050px) Image search: [Google]

3MB, 3300x4050px

I think plastic is going to be one of those materials people would find again in far future, but probably cant replicate it with low technology. People can liquify them, and mold them into new containers and stuffs, but there could only be a limited amount of already made plastic material available, and only the wealthy can keep a pyre long enough to transform plastics into another shape

Arcanum did this semi-right, I think. During gameplay, the world is at a fairly advanced level, but lost, ancient civilizations still had it better (i.e. current civs has trains and sophisticated guns, older civilization had submarines and ultra-powerful magiteck guns.)

So like, take a sector/area/layer of development, and give the ancient civilization a better understanding of that specific area. For example, the current civilization could do something raw, like ride horses with primitive riding equipment, while an older civilization had horseshoes (mundane example, but it's just for illustration).

Or like, steam engines versus combustion engines.

>>50027218
Why not steal from the dozens of settings that already do this for your cliche as fuck idea?

Let the older civilization have functional AI:s. Or functional artificial spirits if it was a magic society.

These AI/spirits were the stewards of a lost civilization and as such they are able to perform amazing tasks...as long as it is within their programming.

For instance there could be a surviving AI housed in a nanofactory that is capable of creating any patterns of simple shapes, allowing you to create amazing pieces of armor made out of plasteel or whatever (even though your own setting is like at the chainmail stage of armor evolution).

Magical spirits are even simpler to explain since they don't need any equipment. Maybe a djinn capable of conjuring fourth a special pattern of armor but nothing else?

The nice things about these guys are they can also be pretty handy for alluding to the "old times".

>>50028179
Now I can't un-see that.

>>50028213
I love putting plastic in fantasy settings. Probably because of Dungeons of Dredmor, but the weird idea of plastic shit flooding the markets and dwarves slowly facing a decline in everything but plastic products but greater economic success is fun. Allows for a Fallen Empires situation in which the orcs/hobgoblins can slowly (or quickly) start successfully wrecking them.
And it allows for really cheap things for players and odd anachronisms. It's not for every setting though.