Do you design worlds according to fantastical physics?

VelvetViolet · Mar 6, 2019

Something I dislike about typical modern fantasy world building is that it basically tacks magic onto a world that otherwise operates according to real physics. I don’t think that is holistic, since the pre-modern societies that laid the foundation for the fantasy genre didn’t think that way. So I rejected this paradigm and world build according to my own invented magical physics. Of course that is really difficult on its own, so I like to read pre-modern philosophy and religion and obsolete scientific theories to get ideas for fantasy physics. This leads to a lot of interesting results, like spontaneous generation, four humors, flat world, hearts used for thinking, all diseases being caused by spirits, fighters developing superpowers by training really hard, and so forth.

There are a few roleplaying games which did something similar like Nephilim, Glorantha and Exalted. These served as inspiration for myself as well.

Do you world build according to magical physics? How so?

Immortal Sun · Mar 6, 2019

No. I do not. I build my worlds on the idea that "energy is energy" and that magic is fundamentally "energy" being exerted in an unusual way.

Typically, while creative, I have trouble getting players to suspend their disbelief the more the underlying physics deviates from reality. Maybe that's just me and the people I play with, but we tend to not like it when an important question physics gets answered with "magic". I know some people are cool with not understanding or simply answering important reality-related questions with "magic", I'm just not one of them.

John Out West · Mar 6, 2019

You hit the nail on the head Box, as that's exactly how I do it. The sun is a fire elemental that is thrown by a Giant every day, and it rotates around the earth. You can meet him, hes actually a cool guy, and one of the nicest elementals you'll ever meet.
The stars are angels who watch you and judge you.
A field of mathematics named "Arcanics" attempts to understand how, through magic, 1+1=3.
The heart contains the soul, and your brain controls your senses, so being stabbed in the brain will cause you to lose all your senses, but you will be otherwise fine.

I got lots of these little details in my world. Its fun to see some of my older players having mastered my particular world, and watching newer players realize that the world they're in, although appearing normal, is completely different past the surface.

The Crimson Binome · Mar 6, 2019

BoxCrayonTales said:
Something I dislike about typical modern fantasy world building is that it basically tacks magic onto a world that otherwise operates according to real physics.

I prefer world-building that is "like reality, except where noted". If you have something about the world which works differently, because the fundamental difference is important to what the players are dealing with (such as functional magic, or other planes of existence), then that's great. If you have something about the world which works differently, because you want the world to seem less like our own reality, then that's just gratuitous.

The further I need to suspend my disbelief in order to buy into the story, the less willing I am to do so. If you get so far out there that gravity and light begin to work differently, then you've lost me. It would be difficult for me to relate to anything that takes place in such a setting. There are plenty of other worlds for me to explore, which don't ask for such a significant buy-in.

ccs · Mar 6, 2019

BoxCrayonTales said:
Do you world build according to magical physics? How so?

Much like Saelorn I use "Like reality except as noted".
Mostly just because I'm a bit lazy & don't feel the need to reinvent the wheel.

But I'm not adverse to ad-libbing details throughout play. Some of it has stuck, some hasn't.

S'mon · Mar 6, 2019

It depends entirely on the world. Gygaxian Naturalism suits modernist Swords & Sorcery settings, and Cthulu-type horror. Magical physics suits more mythic settings, like Runequest or Pendragon.

D&D has used both; 1e AD&D is much more towards the real world + magic end; 4e D&D is much more towards the mythic physics end. Other editions tend to fall in-between.

Lanefan · Mar 6, 2019

Immortal Sun said:
No. I do not. I build my worlds on the idea that "energy is energy" and that magic is fundamentally "energy" being exerted in an unusual way.

Exactly.

I've gone one step further and come up with a means by which magic as a force of physics can be more or less seamlessly integrated into an otherwise-real universe, along with a physics-based explanation that accounts for non-magical worlds (such as the one we're currently on) to also exist in that same universe.

It doesn't answer everything, but it's a start.

Samloyal23 · Mar 6, 2019

I see no reason to create new rules of nature for day to day things. Just assume magic is the force of will overcoming physics in a specific way.

Sword of Spirit · Mar 6, 2019

My modern fantasy setting assumes the universe functions on basically magical principles. The natural world physics represent the way that the physical dimension (the one humans live in) functions. It’s more bendy than science would tell you, but physics is still real. Magic just encompasses the broader realms of reality, of which the physical world is only one.

Celebrim · Mar 6, 2019

My D&D setting assumes that the physics of the world correspond roughly to the physics ancient peoples believed the world had.

a) There are four material elements and basically everything material is composed of combinations of those four elements.
b) Things that move are animated by spirits, and are thus alive in some sense and move according to internal rules and will rather than external forces. For example, things don't fall because of gravity - they fall because Earth spirits pull things to the ground. Objects in a vacuum wouldn't necessarily fall at the same rates.
c) If you grind a cannon in a pool of water, it will eventually stop heating up because you'll have removed the heat from it.
d) The kinetic energy of an object is linear with its velocity.
e) This world is parallel to an unseen spirit world where ideas are reified.
f) If you burned something in a confined space, the total mass of the combusted substance would be less than you started.
g) Life can spontaneously generate from non-life.

In practice, the day to day affairs of a character will closely resemble reality. This is because trying to game in something that radically doesn't resemble reality is very difficult, as there is no shared framework of expectations. Most of the time these things come up when the player character is exercising arcane knowledge, or the player tries to exercise scientific knowledge. Since the world by no means actually functions according to known scientific principles, players have no way of leveraging their own knowledge to metagame the setting, but instead have to rely on character knowledge.