Do you design worlds according to fantastical physics?

[VelvetViolet]

The game world mostly follows the physical laws of the real world by default. It doesn't much matter HOW the world works for purposes of the game. If PC's decide to do exhaustive research to PROVE that everything in the universe is made up of the 4 physical elements of earth, air, fire, water, they will ultimately succeed rather than discover molecules, atoms, and sub-atomic particle physics. Things in the game will still work the same, so no, I don't build a game world based on fantastical physics. I simply color the real-world functions with fantastical explanations. Once in a great while MAYBE something in the game world will work very different from the real-world because I want to illustrate that this is still a fantasy world, or because it's just more fun that way (see Spelljammer), but for the most part the game world SHOULD work like the real world with the truly fantastical being UNUSUAL, not the norm.

Well, here's a point - having Santa Claus does not mean that the world uses fantastical physics. Santa is an oft-discussed entity, but there's no general Theory of Santa that tells you how the world works that includes the abilities Santa has. There is no law detailing how Santa literally flies to every home in one night without burning up due to air friction. It is just stated that he *does*, and it ends there.

You can have magic in the world - instances in which the universe behaves much differently from our own, without having a *physics* detailing *how* it happens. It just does. This is the old saw of "How does it work? MAGIC!!1!" D&D, by and large, works in this way - it behaves like the normal world we live in, except for some very specific times when it doesn't, each exception detailed on its own.

To have a fantastical physics is to have a set of general rules by which magic operates, and those are applied consistently across the world.

I feel I’ve been misunderstood. This is essentially what I have been trying to say. Characters would experience the world the same way that we do, even if the underlying physics aren’t those of our real world.

My reasoning for this is that I see, for lack of a better term, D&Disms as being nonsensical compared to adopting a genuinely classical cosmology. The “breaking out of scientific magic systems” article I linked articulates this better than I can.

EDIT: Let me try and quantify this with concrete specific examples of physical world building I dislike.

The series Avatar: The Last Airbender has an elemental magic system and animism as part of its premise. The series doesn’t really get into the nitty-gritty of how bending works, although fans have speculated. Problems only arise if as part of speculation you try to quantify bending in terms of periodic elements. Fire bending outright defies the laws of physics by manipulating fire in ways are simply impossible due to fire’s nature as a process and not an actual substance. In fact, fire bending is implied to manipulate life force in some way since fire benders produce their own fire (and electricity) and with proper training can read auras. With the other elements, you run into the problem that defining them in terms of periodic elements means that any bender should be trivially able to kill another human being by ripping out their water, carbon, or oxygen. (This even applies without periodic elements: what are all things made of if not a combination of the four classical elements? That’s what the classical elements were in classical thought: the substances that made up everything in the world.)


The anime No Game No Life includes a sequence whereby a character exploits a wizard’s ignorance of real physics, chemistry and geology to win a game of materialization word chain. It has to be seen to be believed, but it neatly illustrates my problem with trying to use both real physics and magic systems that don’t take real physics into account. Logically speaking, magic is a type of science/technology and therefore should independently confirm the same things that real science does if the world operates that way. Gods explicitly exist in this setting, and it doesn’t make sense that they would design two different sets of physics to govern nature and magic. It doesn’t make sense that whatever non-god responsible for creating reality would do that.

 

[John Out West]

Logically speaking, magic is a type of science/technology and therefore should independently confirm the same things that real science does if the world operates that way. Gods explicitly exist in this setting, and it doesn’t make sense that they would design two different sets of physics to govern nature and magic. It doesn’t make sense that whatever non-god responsible for creating reality would do that.

In my world, Azurath, the god of Magic, Knowledge, and Mystery, purposefully designed magic so that its rules are always changing and it can never be understood. As the god of mystery, he wanted magic to be a "Endless frontier."

That's not to disagree with your main point. I think the world should appear mundane until you explore too far (and find a Beholder), or look too close. (and find everything is made of the same four elements)

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

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.

Logically speaking, magic is a type of science/technology and therefore should independently confirm the same things that real science does if the world operates that way.

I guess this has me confused then. You dislike fantasy that simply tacks on magic to real physics, but say that magic needs to confirm the same things that real physics does?

Gods explicitly exist in this setting, and it doesn’t make sense that they would design two different sets of physics to govern nature and magic. It doesn’t make sense that whatever non-god responsible for creating reality would do that.

Your issue may be with the fact that you're trying to apply logic to that which is inherently NOT logical. Magic DEFIES logic and physical laws - it doesn't conform to them or support their existence.

Lurking under the hood of magic is the physics of Schroedingers Cat. You don't know until you look exactly what makes magic work - and simply by the ACT of looking and saying "I need to know HOW this works, not just THAT it works," you unavoidably change what it is, or what it needs to be.

I guess my example would be diseases, infections and similar medical maladies. If I introduce something like that into the game then I think about it in real-world terms. Some kind of bacteria maybe that affects the liver and causes related symptoms. But there are no D&D scientists who understand liver functions much less most bodily organ functions. I may have the bacteria function like a real-world bacteria for purposes of what it does to victims, but for clerics in the game their assessment might be that it's a curse inflicted by contact with the wrong faerie toadstools - and they are probably right! It might be fixed by a cure disease spell, an herbal remedy rubbed on the fingers and hands where you may have touched the toadstool, or a ritual dance in a meadow by moonlight. So which system of physical laws is that all based on? Real world biology or completely fantastical myth? Ultimately it doesn't matter if the underlying origins ARE based on real-world rules. It's the game world rules that win out EVERY time and a lot of time they only work as they do for convenience of play. But when you say that fantasy wins, it changes the basis FROM reality to fantasy. But then you can say the opposite as well. Lycanthropy can be interpreted as a strictly supernatural infliction since some people say that paladin immunity to disease shouldn't affect it - but it can be cured by eating belladonna within 1 hour of contracting it. Now is that fantasy or real homeopathic medicinal science? It can be either, or both, or perhaps even NEITHER.

I have never found that what makes it tick under the hood matters because the players never look there. They only look at the surface. What matters is only what the PC's experience firsthand and can affect - and that can be governed by science, myth, both or neither, and it's why I just assume real physics and science until the rules say different (and Shroedingers Cat turns over in its box). But if it makes your game better to open the box and rebuild reality with LOGICAL but entirely fantasy foundations of physics and science and seeing where all the tubes and wires REALLY go, don't let ME stop you.

 

[Legatus Legionis]

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[Umbran]

Characters would experience the world the same way that we do, even if the underlying physics aren’t those of our real world.

Or not, as their world has magic, and ours doesn't. Their experiences of their world could be very different than ours. In most works, they are not, but every once in a while, a writer goes deep, and brings up some truly weird stuff.

My reasoning for this is that I see, for lack of a better term, D&Disms as being nonsensical compared to adopting a genuinely classical cosmology.

D&Disms work fine, if you include parts of old D&D cosmology - the elemental planes, and the positive and negative energy planes, and say, "Arcane magic is simply drawing upon the energies of these other planes."

Any of Earths' classical cosmologies fall apart if you try to use them to predict how something will work, because those classical cosmologies are all *wrong*. Classical magic systems are after-the-fact rationalizations, not actual systems that tell you what will happen if you put elements of them together in a way not already detailed by the cosmology. And, if they did actually work, if you extrapolate from teh stated rules of magic, the world would look a lot different than it does.

The “breaking out of scientific magic systems” article I linked articulates this better than I can.

I haven't had a chance to peruse the article, but... a note will come up in a moment....

The series Avatar: The Last Airbender has an elemental magic system and animism as part of its premise.

I don't recall anything in it that I'd call animism.

Problems only arise if as part of speculation you try to quantify bending in terms of periodic elements.

Problems arise if you think in terms of chemical elements, yes. But that's not the *only* way you get problems.

With the other elements, you run into the problem that defining them in terms of periodic elements means that any bender should be trivially able to kill another human being by ripping out their water, carbon, or oxygen.

They do get into "bloodbending" at one point in the TV series. And control of plants via the water in them. But, broadly, I agree.

Logically speaking, magic is a type of science/technology and therefore should independently confirm the same things that real science does if the world operates that way.

Well, no. Not in general, anyway. Specifically, magic does not have to follow *logic*. Some of the best magic out there doesn't follow logic. I wold generaly say that any magic system that does stick to logic is "scientific", in the sense of science as a logical, repeatable process. In these systems, magic really is just anoher form of science... and that's kind of boring, really.

Gods explicitly exist in this setting, and it doesn’t make sense that they would design two different sets of physics to govern nature and magic.

Stop. Right. There. Why do you figure what the gods do has to "make sense" in human terms? I mean, look at the Greek or Norse gods. First off, in neither case did the gods outright create the world in the sense of their designing it. They may have taken actions that brought the world into being, but they do not actually control its nature or operation - these gods didn't *DESIGN* their universe.

And, if they did, most of these gods are like giant, powerful adolescents in terms of their level of emotional maturity. They don't do things because they make sense, they do them because they *WANT* a thing.

And, that's setting aside the options available to omniscient gods, who have perspective mortals don't. Asking our world to "make sense" is like asking your pancreas to make sense, if you don't know there's a whole rest of a body that pancreas works with.

 

[Celebrim]

Your issue may be with the fact that you're trying to apply logic to that which is inherently NOT logical. Magic DEFIES logic and physical laws - it doesn't conform to them or support their existence.

The problem with that is that D&D largely eschewed that viewpoint right from the beginning, and continually evolved away from it until by the time you get to 3e there is definitely the impression that magic is merely the physics of the D&D universe, and wizards are analogous to scientists. The D&D wizard has almost no counterpart in real world magical traditions - which in real world magic tend to be a sort of occult priest that binds or parlays with spirits, invokes theurgic magic, and so forth.

One big difference between real world magical traditions and D&D wizards is that the magic of D&D wizards reliably works and is under their command. D&D magic doesn't have a will of its own that the D&D wizard is contending with. PC D&D wizards do not ever have the sense that they'll utilize their powers and have no control over the outcome. D&D magic doesn't need an explanation for why it frequently goes awry because it just doesn't.

Now, of course, you could alter this color in your own campaign and maybe you have, but by default the D&D wizard is more akin to a scientist or magical engineer. Even if he doesn't understand the deep theory of magic, he has a toolset that gives him predictable results.

I guess my example would be diseases, infections and similar medical maladies. If I introduce something like that into the game then I think about it in real-world terms. Some kind of bacteria maybe that affects the liver and causes related symptoms. But there are no D&D scientists who understand liver functions much less most bodily organ functions.

That's a campaign level choice and not something forced on you by the system. In my game there are certainly sages and wizards that would specialize in the function of bodily organs and who know a great deal about how livers function, certainly more than would have been known by real world scientists until quite recently.

It's important that at a superficial level the world works in an intuitive manner, otherwise the learning curve for a player in the setting is too steep. Players need to have some idea what the stakes of a proposition are likely to be, and if you are playing a world where that is not intuitive you might want to run a 'fortune at the end' type system so that the stakes are given or negotiated out in front.

But under the surface, things can be as bizarre as you are willing to make them. Personally, I feel we actually live in such a universe. We think we know how things work, but the more you look at the universe at scales that don't normally come into play in our day to day experience, the weirder and more baffling the universe gets. I mean that whole double slit experiment thing... that's weird. Have you ever seen Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle demonstrated by focusing a laser? The first time I saw that and I understood the math involved, it blew my mind - precisely because I understood what was happening. General Relativity is some weird stuff. There is no reason to think that a fantasy universe can't be equally weird.

 

[Umbran]

It's important that at a superficial level the world works in an intuitive manner, otherwise the learning curve for a player in the setting is too steep. Players need to have some idea what the stakes of a proposition are likely to be, and if you are playing a world where that is not intuitive you might want to run a 'fortune at the end' type system so that the stakes are given or negotiated out in front.

Agreed. The reason most fantasy world is basically, "real-world, with individuals who can produce special effects," is to allow the player's life-experience-trained intuition to hold sway most of the time.

But under the surface, things can be as bizarre as you are willing to make them. Personally, I feel we actually live in such a universe. We think we know how things work, but the more you look at the universe at scales that don't normally come into play in our day to day experience, the weirder and more baffling the universe gets. I mean that whole double slit experiment thing... that's weird. Have you ever seen Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle demonstrated by focusing a laser? The first time I saw that and I understood the math involved, it blew my mind - precisely because I understood what was happening. General Relativity is some weird stuff. There is no reason to think that a fantasy universe can't be equally weird.

Well, we should note a couple of things.

Quantum mechanics and relativity came by when they did because our basic technology started being able to measure things *outside* the levels detectable by the normal human sensorium. Which is to say - quantum and relativistic effects happen in the universe, but they don't normally happen where humans can see them. These things aren't just under the hood, they're deep down in the carburetor of the universe - if you aren't picking it apart and laying all the pieces out, you won't notice the details of them, just as we didn't notice these things over 10,000 years of civilization.

Then, remember the limits of your ability to vet your logic and foresee consequences. If you specify a thing, and the players discover that specification... are you *absolutely sure* you are ready for the scrutiny the players will put it to?

Consider, for example, the fact that D&D has not traditionally dealt well with something as basic as the socioeconomics that result from magic spells, as written - the old, "Why aren't the streets of every city lit by Continual Light spells?" You're considering putting out a set of magical rules, in a game. That means the rules are meant to be played with. The players *will* test the logic to find the loopholes. And, I'm sorry, your players outnumber you, and each of them is probably roughly as smart as you - which means that they *will* find loopholes you missed. And then you'll probably end up with them producing perpetual motion machines and asking why nobody had done it before, because they were pretty obvious....

Do not specify that which you don't need to make the setting work.

 

[Aldarc]

Well, here's the thing - those pre-modern societies didn't think that way... but they were also *very wrong* about what was actually happening in the world. And, since they were wrong, you quickly find that if you follow their lines of reasoning for any distance, they become self-inconsistent.

I'm a physicist by training. Putting together a world that runs on fundamentally different physics, but has the characteristics you see in the real world (like gravity, and light, and such) is very, very, very hard. I don't recommend it.

Half a decade ago, one of my old GMs just had finished running us through Pathfinder's Rise of the Runelords. Feeling confident in his GMing, he began crafting his first homebrew world for 5e. He put so much of his time and energy into creating a coherent physics of the world, particularly its gravity, solar cycle, moons, magic system, etc. I advised him to just stay small, and that his initial effort would probably be better spent on the starting location. The campaign only lasted about 2-3 sessions. He burned out fairly early, and I suspect that this was a contributing factor.

 

[Blue]

I build my worlds as "Internally Consistent". They often differ strongly from the "real world", in that I want them to give a specific feel much like an author will design their setting with the plot in mind. I find settings like FR are often just "put fantasy tropes into a faux-Earth setting" as opposed to creating a setting that fundamentally differs from the real world.

My last setting had a lot of focus on animism, and the idea that everything (everything!) had a kami. Combine this with a persistent soul-taint in the underworld as a result of the dark-elf / dwarf war that poisoned the kami coming from that area, and we had a unique setting. Orcs were literally malevolence that bubbled up through the ground. Mountains walked, and their tainted versions were - not pleasant.

The setting (used for 12 years split across 2 campaigns) before that each prime material bubble floated (independantly) in each of the four elemental planes. As material bubbles came close to each other gates became possible, and then naturally occuring as they got closer. Elves literally had multiple courts of their own small material planes that would wander in and out of conjunction with the material planes. Heck, there were even two different races of "orc", from different planes, that colonized different parts of the world and were quite different in viewpoint even if they came from the same rootstock eventually. (Actually, the only native inhabitants to the world were effectively underdark halflings.) There was no ethereal or astral planes, but there was a dream reflection created as a byproduct of the sentients living there that served some of the smae purposes for spells and such.

Same setting also played heavily with the idea of ascension to godhood, genius loci (gods of a place) and Fisher king / king-is-the-land and the land-is-the-king. A bit influenced by Tim Powers with Last Call. I buried the seven attributes for ascension in the names of the days of the week in a handout the players got before session zero - it didn't come up for over four years of play except as day names but then was like "WHAT!!?!!" when they realized it. Much fun. Had one player in the second campaign get the blessing of the old king from the material plane that the humans originally colonized from (thinking it was a 3 year sea trip, which also played with 13 ships / 13 tribes symbolism) and try to become the King of a area and gain divine abilities within it.

 

[VelvetViolet]

There isn’t anything inherently wrong with the great wheel cosmology, but I find it needlessly byzantine as a result of being haphazardly slapped together by a bazillion writers over forty years. I decided to go back to basics for the sake of my own sanity. Western fantasy games generally take their inspiration from Indo-European cultural mythologies, so I decided to world build a setting based on reconstructed Proto-Indo-European mythology.

The Earth is flat, the sky is a dome, the otherworld is the abode of gods and the dead. There’s probably a world tree holding it all together. Outside is the void.

The cosmology is animistic, with gods for all aspects of nature and civilization that may be interacted with or even killed (or at least dismembered and scattered). These range in power from the supreme Sky Father and celestial bodies to the mountain and river gods to the rustic satyrs and dwarf trolls.

There were two successive wars between the gods and the... other gods. These others being the titans/jotun/fomori and firbolg/gigantes/vanir. These wars didn’t necessarily end in annihilation, as some of the other gods joined or even married the orthodox gods.

It’s all very recognizable. Even so, I’m happy to steal from other cultural mythologies like Arabic genies in lamps and Japanese ogres in the mountains.