Explain to me again, how we know the Earth to be banana shaped.

[Maxperson]

You could go a little stranger - the world is ring shaped, with the sun and moon traveling around the outside of the ring at slightly different speeds. Now the world is both round (going east/west) and flat (going north/south) - with an edge you can fall off.

Why stop there?

I like a flat world carried on the backs of 4 giant elephants, which are in turn carried on the back of a giant turtle swimming through space.

 

[MarkB]

So, I have noticed that my players are predisposed to make real world assumptions about the setting. E.g. one keeps asking me about whether the speed of a falling druid changes when they turn into a bear. To which, although it was painfully transparant that they thought they were executing some clever trap, I said "no, the speed of the falling druid does not change". At which point a small victory dance was performed because they had found a way to cheat conservation of momentum. (So what? Magic supplies extra energy - it's magic). I think they have some weird idea that they will utilize this somehow.

I don't get it. That's the same as it works in the real world.

EDIT: Nevermind, I get it - I wasn't considering the "turns into" factor.

 

[Blue]

I like mythic explanations in my world, and considered if stars really are the souls of ancient heroes watching over us. For this I had a flat world where the inhabitable part is disk shape, because the realms of the dead is a hemispherical dome around it. Souls glow based on the magnitude of their deeds in life, and can be anywhere outside the Living World - including up in the sky. Though if you get near the border you see dim lights receding out to infinity of all of the souls that have gone before but have little luminescence or ability to float. The constellations really can change as the great souls of the dead send back messages (or perhaps are influenced by the portents of the living).

I was thinking the sun was something completely different then the stars. Perhaps go Greek with a chariot drawn across the sky that goes down a whole and drives back aross in the underworld at night. The chariot would likely represent the gift of fire, life or magic.

It would probably be a world without deities per-se, though great mortals could make and ascend to iconic posts like the chariot driver whom first discovered fire or magic.

Since the dead are around, the underworld would be a different place Maybe an Abyss-like place that great evils come from, jealous of the sky and the stars of the dead. Perhaps those from that place do not have souls that live on and go to the realm of the dead when they die.

 

[KRussellB]

I have always loved making campaign worlds in which the mythic is real.

Why not have the Sun be a ball of fire pulled by a god in a chariot? Or a hawk traveling across the sky?

I had one campaign world in which the King of the land sat upon a throne at the top of the mountain. Every day the sun literally set on the top of mountain, giving the King his divine power. If anyone else sat upon the throne, they would also be able to drain power from the sun itself.

I came up with another campaign world in which the entire planet was a disc of soil surrounding a giant tree. The tree was so large that its roots were mountains, and all the stars and the sun and the moon circled around its trunk within its branches. The rim of the world was all volcanoes (where the dwarves lived), and you could walk right off the edge and onto the other side of the world, which was a twisted realm of giant roots. The physics here definitely didn't make sense.

 

[Celebrim]

If physics is a thing, then magic isn't. Magic only exists if the rules of physics are either pliant or just don't exist. It makes more sense if they just don't exist. Something exists, and it superficially looks like things we are familiar with, but the more you dig the more it differs in the details.

 

[Jhaelen]

In a fantasy setting you don't have to worry about astrophysics, unless you want to. There's actually quite a few published settings that ignore 'realism', e.g. Runequest's Glorantha:
Glorantha's an infinite plane; if you're moving far enough in any direction you end up in the realm of the deities. The setting works by magic. Diseases, Poison? Don't exist. Their symptoms are caused by spirits, possessing the sick. Metals are the remains of dragons or gods, etc. Nothing needs to have a scientific explanation if you don't want it to have one.

 

[knasser]

In a fantasy setting you don't have to worry about astrophysics, unless you want to. There's actually quite a few published settings that ignore 'realism', e.g. Runequest's Glorantha:
Glorantha's an infinite plane; if you're moving far enough in any direction you end up in the realm of the deities. The setting works by magic. Diseases, Poison? Don't exist. Their symptoms are caused by spirits, possessing the sick. Metals are the remains of dragons or gods, etc. Nothing needs to have a scientific explanation if you don't want it to have one.

You don't have to stick to real-world laws, that is true. But you do have to preserve internal consistency. If illness is the result of malevolent spirits or bad humours, that's fine. If you say the world is flat but then still have things sink below the horizon, then that's not. My goal isn't to adhere to what we know are the rules of our world, but to avoid creating internal inconsistency. What I want to avoid is situations where (for example) the world is static and the sun settles on a mountain top at the end of the day and extinguishes itself (as in KRussellB's delightful idea above) and then a player says: "so how come there are seasons?"

 

[Maxperson]

If physics is a thing, then magic isn't. Magic only exists if the rules of physics are either pliant or just don't exist. It makes more sense if they just don't exist. Something exists, and it superficially looks like things we are familiar with, but the more you dig the more it differs in the details.

Physics exists in D&D, but it's a bit different, and magic > physics. If physics didn't exist at all in D&D, then a PC falling into a pit trap would be magic. Since it's not magic, there has to be some sort of D&D physics present.

 

[Celebrim]

Physics exists in D&D, but it's a bit different, and magic > physics. If physics didn't exist at all in D&D, then a PC falling into a pit trap would be magic. Since it's not magic, there has to be some sort of D&D physics present.

I don't think we actually know why things fall in a D&D world. Possible explanations:

1) There is some sort of Earth spirit or spirit of the ground which abhors things that fly and desires to draw them toward it. Everything is dragged violently toward the world unless it can oppose the force this spirit asserts on them.
2) It is in the inherent nature of things containing the element Earth to desire to be drawn toward the center of the world, and at all times this nature causes them to hurl themselves toward the world.

Note that each explanation I gave potentially depends on animus (everything is alive), and thus on metaphysics rather than what we would call physics. The explanations we gave above might superficially resemble gravity, but on close expectation we might find differences. For example, in explanation #1, 'gravity' might suddenly cease a certain distance away from the Earth, resulting in a cinematic experience of gravity (most people who don't have college level physics have the expectation that gravity works this way, and don't understand the mechanics of free fall). In either case, we now have an explanation for how magic (as it pertains to gravity) might work, and how things might be caused to fly or levitate or what not. Since 'gravity' here depends on animus, it's not necessary for the worker of magic to oppose the forces involved by brute force, as if the mind's will could lift things into the air, but simply to trick or coven the forces involved into doing his bidding for a short time.

We might also for example discover that kinetic energy depends linearly with velocity rather than the square of velocity, or that if you grind a cannon in water eventually the water will cease to heat up. None of this would necessarily depend on 'magic' as D&D uses the term, but it wouldn't necessarily be 'physics' either.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't think we actually know why things fall in a D&D world. Possible explanations:

1) There is some sort of Earth spirit or spirit of the ground which abhors things that fly and desires to draw them toward it. Everything is dragged violently toward the world unless it can oppose the force this spirit asserts on them.
2) It is in the inherent nature of things containing the element Earth to desire to be drawn toward the center of the world, and at all times this nature causes them to hurl themselves toward the world.

Note that each explanation I gave potentially depends on animus (everything is alive), and thus on metaphysics rather than what we would call physics. The explanations we gave above might superficially resemble gravity, but on close expectation we might find differences. For example, in explanation #1, 'gravity' might suddenly cease a certain distance away from the Earth, resulting in a cinematic experience of gravity (most people who don't have college level physics have the expectation that gravity works this way, and don't understand the mechanics of free fall). In either case, we now have an explanation for how magic (as it pertains to gravity) might work, and how things might be caused to fly or levitate or what not. Since 'gravity' here depends on animus, it's not necessary for the worker of magic to oppose the forces involved by brute force, as if the mind's will could lift things into the air, but simply to trick or coven the forces involved into doing his bidding for a short time.

We might also for example discover that kinetic energy depends linearly with velocity rather than the square of velocity, or that if you grind a cannon in water eventually the water will cease to heat up. None of this would necessarily depend on 'magic' as D&D uses the term, but it wouldn't necessarily be 'physics' either.

While those are potential explanations, D&D typically offers up any such differences in the fluff for the settings. I still think that there is some sort of physics approximation going on in the D&D world unless magic works to override it.