That said, hey Shidaku, if you were referring to one particular person who lived five thousand years ago, and the ethical merits of treating him as a savage - and that person is Sargon of Akkad - then let's discuss by direct message.
I actually had noone in particular in mind. Though some classical philosophers came to mind when I referenced "smartest people". But nothing in particular.
Meanwhile, I see in your previous post a connection between worldbuilding and simulationism, and I think you're on an interesting line of inquiry.
If the concern of the original article is indeed primarily focused on "over detailing", I would argue that is only an issue from a simulationist perspective. A more narrativist approach doesn't really care why the flowers bloom, from whence the animals came or whether the weather is based off of predictable mathematical principles or not. A narrativist would be more interested on if the flowers blooming is relevant to the story, if the weather makes a certain setting more fitting (such as how it always seems to be gloomy and raining in Lovecraftian settings); all with little concern on if it happens to be raining today because there's a storm front that just moved in.
A simulationist on the other hand may use random dice at every turn, or perhaps use random chance to get the ball rolling. The former is the
worst kind of simulationism because it doesn't actually
simulate anything. The latter leads to the DM having to figure out weather patterns and how they'll affect the snowpack and if that will wash out that one bridge the players need to cross a month from now.
Yes, and I would add - it allows the game to actually get going. And setting, backstory etc can then arise "organically" in play.
(I put "organically" in inverted commas because it's a bit of a cheating word in this context - but hopefully my meaning is clear enough.)
Right. In more lay terms I would say it gives the start of the game a "kick in the pants" to get moving. I certainly know from experience that the more lackadaisical approach 3E takes can lead to characters sort of "wandering" in search, not of quests, but of
purpose. Which is why I almost universally stick some purpose in their faces at the start of every game. We can railroad the first session or two to get everyone acclimated, and then open up the gates once we've developed a direction.
Which I think is already rationalistic/intellectualised in a way that is anachronistic, and (I'll controversially add) aesthetically self-defeating for (at least some) fantasy RPGing.
I'm very much of two minds about it. I like and appreciate rational fantasy worlds. I don't believe that fantasy implies a lack of rationality, but simply that it implies a different set of rules. If we were to divvy up the human population into various humanoid species like a fantasy world has, would that change
the world? Would that change how humanoids form societies? Build buildings? Fall in love? I don't really think so. Fantasy worlds that "don't make sense" or are "irrational" bother me.
But I think one of the best devices to achieve a fantasy setting is a heavy "fog of war". Things are forgotten quickly. Nature changes and reclaims faster than usual, perhaps
fantastically faster, but not in a manner that is without reason. Mountains are raised by great wizards and destroyed by mighty dragons not because of any sort of modern conceptions, but because of a natural ebb and flow of systems and structures, amped up with magic.
This is all a very long way of saying the players don't really need need to
know the whole wide world is out there, how it works, what its processes are, and so forth, even if the DM does. Players are jaded and it is difficult to instill a sense of wonder in them, but that's a player issue, not a world-building issue. Getting players to see the world, not through
their eyes, but through the eyes of their characters who are
not jaded, who are still awed by the great mysteries of what may lay beyond that mountain, THAT, I think is key to getting that fantasy setting feeling.
Can dice be used in a different way, though? Instead of as a poor simulation of impersonal forces, can dice be used to generate the setting as an enchanted one (in something like Weber's sense)?
To make my thoughts a little bit more concrete, one example I'm thinking of is Arthurian legend, where the knights wander through forests, and stumble upon castles inhabited by strange individuals, with there being no thought of the economy, social structure etc of these castles. Could we use the AD&D Appendix C wilderness encounter tables to help with this - they provide a chance of encountering a castle with a powerful (hence, presumably, interesing) lord, plus retainers, men-at-arms etc. Treated as a world simulation those tables give us a bizarrely densely-castled and high-levelled world; but maybe they could be used to generate content for a non-rationalised enchanted world.
I don't know, there's a fine line between an enchanted world and an absurd one. I have generally felt that random tables and random creation leads to an absurd world. I don't particularly enjoy absurd worlds. In fact I find it fantastically infuriating when a world lacks comprehensible processes.
IMO: I'm starting to think fantasy is less about the setting and more about the perspectives of the people viewing it. Some players may find a randomly generated world fantastical and wondrous, others may find it haphazard and frustratingly nonsensical.
