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Secrets of the Ancients In this model, technology in your game is presumed to be old and ancient, forgotten lore strewn across forbidden tombs and lost cities. There are lots of different ways to approach this, but the overall trend is that some old civilization had climbed the heights of technological achievement, only to come tumbling down, all their knowledge unable to save them. Whether it was the deities casting them down for their hubris, or their reliance on their new-fangled tools over the old natural ways, the precise cause of the fall is up to you. Engineers, then, are also part archaeologist, and it gives a great incentive for them to be adventurers. While an individual engineer might be able to suss out a new theory along with a new schematic now and then, the real source of technology is out there, in the ruins and caves and other forgotten places. This also explains why the rest of the setting might not be keen on picking this new-but-old work: after all, the ancients had it, and look how they ended up. Who is going to put their trust in some rusted thousand-year-old piece of junk, when the blacksmith down the road can forge you a perfectly fine sword? This approach can also have a bit of a darker feel to it, if the world is caught in the throes of what is effectively a dark age after the fall of a technologically-advanced empire. It would not be entirely unreasonable to give this a bit of an edgier, almost post-apocalyptic feel - though if that's not what you're going for, taking the concept that far isn't necessary and can certainly be avoided.

The Bleeding Edge In this model, technology is just now coming to the fore, never having been seen or developed in the past. Recent advances in metallurgy, or maybe an apple falling on someone's head, has - for whatever reason - put technological development into overdrive, and cities and nations everywhere are suddenly in a race against each other, trying both to develop theories and put these new-fangled things into production so that they have a leg up on the competition. This sort of approach might work best with a world you've been in for awhile, or if your group has been playing the same sort of fantasy games for some time: the introduction of technology as a "new and shiny" thing, in the greater context of a world caught up in the change, might bring back a sense of wonder that - ironically - magic may have long since lost. You can play up the rush of people trying to latch on to the new craze, some dismissing it as the newest fad while some nobles might throw all their money at it with wild-eyed idealism. This could also work in a scenario where magic is fading from the world. While the "magic v. technology" conflict may be an old trope at this point, there's certainly nothing wrong with it, and putting the two at odds - one an ancient, venerated tradition; the other, untested and young but full of promise - can make for an entertaining dynamic.

Crazy Old Man on the Hill In this model, technology is the purview of a single individual, or at most a small enclave. Isolated from the world, performing their work in relative secrecy, technology has a single chokepoint. You might allow players to play engineers in this setup, with the understanding that they are effectively piggy-backing off of this one individual: once he's out of the picture, that might put a stop to their research and they may find themselves stuck at an ideological dead-end. This approach might work best if you want to slowly introduce technology, or try to get a feel for it without endangering the integrity of your setting. If you isolate the source of technology and make it clear that most folk in society think he's strange or eccentric and don't want much to do with what he's working on, then if it turns out to be disruptive, it's fairly easy and innocuous to remove. Alternatively, if you like the results and think that you'd like to play around with expanding on the idea, you can say that his apprentices have moved on to other cities to carry on his work, slowly spreading the word of the power of technology. The only difficulty with this approach might be determining the relationship between a player who wants to play an engineer, and the "crazy old man" in particular. How you implement the individual solely responsible for technology, who your player will presumably need to interact with a good deal over the course of a game, will most likely have a strong impact on how players perceive technology as a whole.

The Mana Wastes In this model, there is some part of your setting in which magic doesn't function, or is otherwise haywire. Maybe an ancient druidic curse has caused the magic to leech out of the land, or a curious celestial alignment has activated a magical monument that actively interferes with magic: for some reason, there is a part of the world in which clerics and wizards don't go, and so the population looks to other answers. In this case, that answer would be the disciplines of technology. Engineers in this model are individuals who come from a culture where magic just isn't available. That might lead to strange customs, strange garb, and all the other aspects associated with being a person from "elsewhere," which can make handling their interactions with the rest of the setting a bit easier: if someone talks and dresses funny, then the fact that they use funny toys that do weird things is probably not going to be all that surprising or noteworthy. One other element that this adds is that you can play around with how people from areas with weak or no magic respond to being in places with access to magic. In addition, this one can also limit the impact of technology on your setting: if you decide it's not for you, maybe the magic comes back eventually, or all the folk living in such an inhospitable place just die out over time, with the moral learned that technology just isn't enough to save you.