A discussion of metagame concepts in game design

[pemerton]

Or it follows real world physics except where it doesn’t.

cloud giants

In the AD&D MM, we are told (pp 44-5) that

cloud giants usually reside in crude castles built atop mountains or on magical cloud islands . . . 10% of cloud giants are very intelligent. These will be the ones found dwelling on cloud islands. . . .

The most powerful and respected true giant is the storm giant. . . . Their abodes are typically cloud islands (60%), mountain peaks (30%) or underwater (l0%), and there the storm giants build their spacious castles.​

What is a "magical cloud island"? What role does it play in the water cycle? If rain falls from a cloud island, does it get smaller? If rain can't fall from cloud islands, then why are they called cloud islands at all? And does this mean that, in the D&D world, the connection between clouds and precipitation is much more arbitrary than in the real world?

At a certain point, the instances of "except when it doesn't" become so numerous that the sense in which it does becomes hard for me to grasp.

Which is odd, because a constantly-recurring trope of travel-based adventuring is that your transportation needs repair or needs a whole new propulsion unit built out of whatever spare parts you have on hand.

Look at it this way: if the player of a character in a standard CoC game says "I go to the physics lecture at the university", the GM can pick up an old physics textbook and start reading from it and the player will get an immersive experience. Or I could use my copy of Einstein on relativity as a prop.

But what happens if the player in Traveller says (in character) "I go to the introductory lecture on jump drives"? The GM can spout some babble or other, but there are not actual coherent things that can be said, or equations exhibited, to generate an immersive experience, because it's all just made-up nonsense.

But whereas this sort of pressure-point can come up in a sci-fi game, I don't think it is even really an issue in a fantasy game, as there is no assumption in a fantasy game that the world is knowable by way of natural laws. The supernatural element is what makes a fantasy game fantasy.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

In the AD&D MM, we are told (pp 44-5) that

cloud giants usually reside in crude castles built atop mountains or on magical cloud islands . . . 10% of cloud giants are very intelligent. These will be the ones found dwelling on cloud islands. . . .

The most powerful and respected true giant is the storm giant. . . . Their abodes are typically cloud islands (60%), mountain peaks (30%) or underwater (l0%), and there the storm giants build their spacious castles.​

What is a "magical cloud island"? What role does it play in the water cycle? If rain falls from a cloud island, does it get smaller? If rain can't fall from cloud islands, then why are they called cloud islands at all? And does this mean that, in the D&D world, the connection between clouds and precipitation is much more arbitrary than in the real world?

At a certain point, the instances of "except when it doesn't" become so numerous that the sense in which it does becomes hard for me to grasp.

I thought you had a better imagination than that

For me it’s simple. Things that have a real world counterpart work the same way. Things that don’t have a real world counterpart might work similarly to one, or not. In most cases it’s really not important to know. During the course of the game it’s probably only necessary to know that the giant weighs 2,000 lbs. it doesn’t really matter if that meets the laws of physics.

On the other hand, when that giant throws a rock, the laws of physics can certainly help.

Unless there’s a reason for me to specifically know something about a cloud island, it doesn’t matter much to me. I’d say no, once the magic has trapped the cloud into an island form it doesn’t interact with the water cycle at all. It doesn’t rain, and doesn’t get smaller. It doesn’t even have the proper properties of a cloud because you can walk on it and build a castle on it. Otherwise, until such a cloud is trapped and transformed by magic, it works the same as here.

See, that wasn’t so tough! I do like things to “make sense” and the reality is, I love being asked questions like those, or asking them myself. I actually do like magic to have its own internal laws too. This is all along the lines of the old Ecology Of... articles in Dragon magazine. Great fun as far as Im concerned, and one of those things that doesn’t necessarily directly impact the game either way. Although you can certainly work it into it.

 

[Lanefan]

In the AD&D MM, we are told (pp 44-5) that

cloud giants usually reside in crude castles built atop mountains or on magical cloud islands . . . 10% of cloud giants are very intelligent. These will be the ones found dwelling on cloud islands. . . .

The most powerful and respected true giant is the storm giant. . . . Their abodes are typically cloud islands (60%), mountain peaks (30%) or underwater (l0%), and there the storm giants build their spacious castles.​

What is a "magical cloud island"?

In my own view, it's something that was a cloud that one or more cloud giants have magically made solid enough for them and others to stand on, visually indistinguishable from a normal cloud (and as a weather geek I even note the cloud type!). I also give cloud giants the ability to move these islands* in whatever direction they want, though they can't do much about the elevation; which can produce some odd visuals when one cloud is going a different direction from all the other clouds!

If a giant doesn't set a direction then the cloud island will drift on the wind like any other cloud.

Oh, and if taken to a place where a cloud would normally evaporate a cloud island will not, though it might get a bit smaller.

* - I got this from a published 2e module, I think, but I forget which one...might have been the very late 2e-era Return To... giants module.

What role does it play in the water cycle? If rain falls from a cloud island, does it get smaller? If rain can't fall from cloud islands, then why are they called cloud islands at all?

Rain can't fall from them (they're usually not big enough anyway), but they're called cloud islands because they look just like clouds...to the point that someone walking on one could easily step from a solid bit to a real-cloud bit and fall through if not extremely careful.

And does this mean that, in the D&D world, the connection between clouds and precipitation is much more arbitrary than in the real world?

Not really. As I say, the size of cloud a cloud giant can turn into an island is 99% of the time not going to have enough moisture and-or internal vertical movement to produce precip anyway, so it's not something I really have to worry about.

Look at it this way: if the player of a character in a standard CoC game says "I go to the physics lecture at the university", the GM can pick up an old physics textbook and start reading from it and the player will get an immersive experience. Or I could use my copy of Einstein on relativity as a prop.

But what happens if the player in Traveller says (in character) "I go to the introductory lecture on jump drives"? The GM can spout some babble or other, but there are not actual coherent things that can be said, or equations exhibited, to generate an immersive experience, because it's all just made-up nonsense.

Technobabble is a staple of the genre, isn't it?

But whereas this sort of pressure-point can come up in a sci-fi game, I don't think it is even really an issue in a fantasy game, as there is no assumption in a fantasy game that the world is knowable by way of natural laws. The supernatural element is what makes a fantasy game fantasy.

I assume that large parts of the prime-material are knowable by way of natural laws, with magic integrated into and part of them in a consisteny and internally-logical manner.

Lan-"thoguh internally logical to me might not, I admit, be logical at all to anyone else"-efan

 

[pemerton]

Unless there’s a reason for me to specifically know something about a cloud island, it doesn’t matter much to me. I’d say no, once the magic has trapped the cloud into an island form it doesn’t interact with the water cycle at all. It doesn’t rain, and doesn’t get smaller.

And are you confident that I can't find a D&D scenario somewhere in which the PCs fly up through rain, pass through the clouds into sunshine, only to see a giant's castle on top of it?

 

[Maxperson]

Gravity as we know it - or, at least, as I know it - is a univeral force that all masses exert upon all other masses. (Yes, my knowledge of gravity reflects Newtonian conceptions - my general relativity is weak to the point of non-existence. But I'll plough on.)

Aristotle, and Aristotle's toga-maker, both knew that dropped or otherwise unsupported objects fall to the ground, and that bats and birds need to flap their wings to take off. But they didn't think the world had gravity as I know it. The idea of universal gravitation was still about 2000 years ahead of them.

In other words, envisaging a world in which dragons need to flap their wings to fly is not the same thing as envisaging a world in which gravitation as I know it operates. And given that the only treatment of planetary motion in an official D&D sourcde that I'm aware of is Spelljammer, and it's account of planetary motion has nothing to do with gravity at all, there is good reason to think that there is no universal gravitation in the D&D world.

It doesn't matter if Aristotle and his toga maker knew about gravity or envisioned it. It existed for them the same as it does for you. The same applies to D&D. Feel free not to envision gravity when you play. Nothing is requiring you to, but the fact that you need wings to fly, things fall when you drop them, you have limited jumping ability due to the force pulling you back down, you have weight, etc., means that there is gravity in D&D, even if it is not precisely mirroring the real world.

It's of the nature of scientific categories that they describe natural phenomena or natural processes that are not arbitrarily "superseded". That's what makes it science.

That only applies to the real world, not D&D where magic can supersede it. The real world doesn't have magic that can do that. If it did, then science would add it to the definition and define physics in terms of "except when magic counters things."

Consider this, from p 58 of Gygax's DMG, under the heading "Travel in the Known Planes of Existence":

uppose that you decide that there is a breathable atmosphere which extends from the earth to the moon, and that any winged steed capable of flying fast and far can carry its rider to that orb. Furthermore, once beyond the normal limits of earth's atmosphere, gravity and resistance are such that speed increases dramatically, and the whole journey will take but a few days. You must then decide what will be encountered during the course of the trip - perhaps a few new creatures in addition to the standard ones which you deem likely to be between earth and moon.​

Yes, magic can alter things and physics doesn't have to exactly mirror the real world. He was big on not trying to simulate reality. That doesn't mean that an approximation of physics wasn't in his game.​

 

[Maxperson]

In the AD&D MM, we are told (pp 44-5) that

cloud giants usually reside in crude castles built atop mountains or on magical cloud islands . . . 10% of cloud giants are very intelligent. These will be the ones found dwelling on cloud islands. . . .

The most powerful and respected true giant is the storm giant. . . . Their abodes are typically cloud islands (60%), mountain peaks (30%) or underwater (l0%), and there the storm giants build their spacious castles.​

What is a "magical cloud island"? What role does it play in the water cycle? If rain falls from a cloud island, does it get smaller? If rain can't fall from cloud islands, then why are they called cloud islands at all? And does this mean that, in the D&D world, the connection between clouds and precipitation is much more arbitrary than in the real world?

At a certain point, the instances of "except when it doesn't" become so numerous that the sense in which it does becomes hard for me to grasp.

That applies to everything in the game. A game by nature can't come close to encompassing all the things that might happen out there or might need to be answered. The answer to your questions is that the DM decides. But we do know that weather happens, regardless of whether or not cloud giant clouds can rain on things. We do know that things fall and so on due to an approximation of gravity. We do know that sans magic, swords don't swing themselves and need an approximation of physics to act on them somehow if they are to move.

 

[Kobold Boots]

The deception is that they specifically said that they were making a game for everyone, which could be played by fans of 3E or 4E. Setting aside how the 4E fans feel about that, for now, they clearly failed to make it functional for serious fans of 3E; there are all these glaring issues, which could have been easily patched around, but which were nevertheless implemented directly into the core material. It's like they didn't even have a 3E-fan on staff, to give the material a once-over.

I hear you. I think though that there's some room to wiggle when the designers say that 4e could be enjoyed by people who play 3e. I don't think it was deceptive marketing as much as it was an underestimation of what the most vocal 20% of the fan base could do to influence another 20-30 percent. Combine that with allowing a legal situation where Paizo could create Pathfinder and it borders on incompetence as far as business is concerned.

 

[Guest 6801328]

And as it took 15-odd years to get things to this sad point, it'll probably take another 15 to get 'em back. 5e is merely a worthy start in that direction.

It's funny how "will appeal to fans of all editions" got interpreted to mean "will meet the strict requirements of the most extreme zealots."

Actually, because I'm curious, can you (or @Saelorn or anybody else) provide me with a specific quote from WotC that you think is evidence of a broken promise?

(With full acknowledgement that the above quote is not evidence that you are in the camp; all it actually implies is that you are disappointed with 5e, not that you think they broke promises to get there. So apologies if I made incorrect assumptions.)

 

[Sadras]

nevermind

 

[The Crimson Binome]

It's funny how "will appeal to fans of all editions" got interpreted to mean "will meet the strict requirements of the most extreme zealots."

It's not an extreme position to suggest that players not meta-game. Not meta-gaming is literally the fundamental premise of role-playing - that you approach everything in-character, rather than treating it like a board game. It was a very, very low bar which they failed to clear.