I think I'd like to see what people would do in their leisure time or domestic work . You see so many stories about travel and war, but you rarely see people interact outside of that. And if you do, it's usually not made unique for a setting that isn't Earth.

What cutlery do they use? What does a morning routine look like? In a world where fire magic is commonplace, how do they cook? How would those things evolve over centuries?

Fantasy especially feels stagnant for this, but I think sci-fi is guilty of this too. Are there things in specific works where an innocuous detail made you wonder more about how a setting worked?

  • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
    ·
    10 months ago

    Just general urban infrastructure is a big one.

    • Being able to shrink things or set things on fire would have massive ramifications on waste disposal.

    • Being able to manipulate water would have huge consequences on water transportation, indoor plumbing, and so on.

    • Flesh-to-stone/stone-to-flesh means meat can be indefinitely preserved.

    • Society's relationship towards death would be completely different with resurrection spells. One consequence is that graves probably won't be a thing because permanent death would most likely come from the complete destruction of the body with nothing left to bury.

    • Transformation spells more or less mean society is post-scarcity. Imagine being able to transform air into anything other than air (food, water, clothes, metal, wood, weapons, building material, fuel).