D&D General Science in D&D

Celebrim said:

Virtually all modern fantasy fiction is in one fashion or the other inspired by D&D.

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Just to pick you up on that last point, but a certain J. K. Rowling never played D&D or read fantasy fiction...

Nine times out of ten, the answer is Magic. It's the prime motivator of all existence in canonical D&D worlds. Trying to reconcile it with science is an impossible task.

Well it depends what you mean by science really

Now Science as understood by Aristotle had the Universe as a series of Celestial spheres nestled one within the other, the terrestial sphere at the center is our world of matter made up of the four elements while the celestial spheres each extend in their purity towards the divine quintessence from which all things are formed.

Magic is the science of manipulating quintessence, drawing its elemental natures into the mundane sphere that it might take form and effect according to its natural motions and essential forms and causes.

A serpent must exist according to its essential nature, the animus which is the primal form of all serpents. Monsters must also exist according to their natures though they be tainted and corrupted by an imbalance of essences that they might exhibit unnatural traits.

So too does it extend to other forms of gross matter, for is not Iron but a form of essential earth and thus surely adamantium is but essential earth tempered by the essences of fire and activated in both strength and lustre.

Celebrim said:

I'm not sure I understand the terms you've defined here. What do you mean by "pre-modern magic systems"?



I feel like that involves a lot of feelings and that feelings are highly subjective things. I don't understand how you go from something feeling interesting to logically requiring something, and I'm still not sure how you define "pre-modern magic". Is that different from "pre-modern magic systems"? What are the characteristics of "pre-modern magic"?



I have no idea what you mean here. What would a tongues spell that worked like standard language rules look like in your opinion and why is it logical that the tongues spell would work like standard language?

In it's background, "Tongues" is like most spells in D&D based off Biblical miracles which Gygax owing it his background was very familiar with. So in this case Tongues in some sense emulates the logic of receiving the ability to speak in and understand tongues which you do not know as a temporary divine revelation.



I don't understand. What do you mean by "symbolic or logical justifications"? And when you mention fairy tales and fantasy fiction, which ones in particular are you thinking of?



Yes, but Star Trek's universal translator is meant to be scientific and not a divine revelation. On the other hand, Star Trek's universal translator is from one perspective probably more fantastic than a divine revelation, something that Douglas Adams lampshades with his 'Babel Fish' jokes. Based on what we know of current science, the existence of what would essentially be an instantaneous universal decryption device is less probable than divine revelation. And for that matter, Star Trek isn't as clear cut science fiction as you might think, and might be a classic case of Science Fantasy - elven wizards (Spock and his mind probes) and space orcs (Klingons). All the technobabble merely provides a setting veneer behind which is often just magic and fantasy.



Based on my play experiences in systems that have both mundane healing skill and magical healing, this doesn't seem to be true. If players chose to totally forgo mundane healing in favor of magical healing, then you might have a point. But in every game system where both are available, players learn both mundane healing skill and magical healing ability. Further, since we can assume players probably have greater than normal access to magical healing, we can presume that for the rest of the community as a whole mundane healing ability is even more important. So I don't think this objection holds in a general case, although of course you could create a setting where magical healing was so pervasive that healing skill of a more mundane sort had withered.



I'm not familiar with the details of the arguments around the Tippyverse, but in general I tend to think the issue that the Tippyverse is addressing, namely, "If the postulates of the setting were true, then would the setting actually exist as described?" is not one remotely unique to D&D but is pretty much universal to all speculative fiction. "Star Trek" is a case in point of a setting that tends to introduce a stand alone "problem of the week" which is then resolved by some methodology but then the neither the problem nor the cure tends to ever be referenced again. The full implications of the postulated world and its technology, economics, politics and so forth are never really reconciled together. I don't think this is a problem that would go away if the D&D magic system was less "mechanistic" (though I don't really know what that means to you) and if anything a less mechanistic system would just make it harder to imagine how the setting ought to be were the implications of its parts brought to their logical conclusions.

IMO, D&D magic is in one way or the other the most influential magical thought in the entire history of fantasy. Virtually all modern fantasy fiction is in one fashion or the other inspired by D&D.

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By “pre-modern” magic, I’m referring to the ideal proposed by the “Breaking out of scientific magic systems” article. I guess another way to put it is “holistic” magic, or “rational” magic, or magic based on pre-D&D sources and sources not influenced by D&D. (Like, I don’t know, every instance in which a character can just talk to animals. Jasmine in Deltora Quest, Eliza in The Wild Thornberries, to name examples from the last couple decades.)

D&D magic is a mishmash of concepts devoid of the theological underpinnings that informed conceptions of magic in pre-D&D time periods (or occultism, neo-paganism, etc). It doesn’t feel like magic, or science for that matter. It isn’t integrated into the world, but tacked on. I don’t like it and I’d prefer to explore other paradigms.

BoxCrayonTales said:

By “pre-modern” magic, I’m referring to the ideal proposed by the “Breaking out of scientific magic systems” article.

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Well, at the risk of offending the original author, what I'm suggesting is that the article neither proposes a useful idea nor is actually coherent. Or to put it another way, I do understand exactly what the author is going for, but he doesn't do a great job of explaining or exploring the problem.

Consider if we start systematically replacing the word "magic" in the article with "science". If these two things are really radically different concepts as he suggests, and if his description of magic is coherent then the mangled article where we replace a concept with a supposedly incompatible concept should be nonsense.

Section #1: "Science is a known system and thus non-mysterious" In the first section the author tries to explain that magic shouldn't be a known system and thus non-mysterious, because this makes it too scientific. But the problem is that the assertion that science is a known system and thus non-mysterious as an assertion about the nature of the real known universe and how it works is also false. There are a great many things we do with "science" based on manipulation of the universe where the more you know about how the thing works, the less confident you are in explaining why it works - quantum tunneling for example is something that is definitely science, definitely manipulated, and wholly mysterious. And that turns out to be true of a lot of things.

And, I've already gone into the problem that the sort of suggestions that the article writer goes into aren't particularly workable, nor is it clear even if implemented that it would create the feel that the author is going for, which if I would put a word on it is not merely mysterious but Numinous. The author is frustrated that magic in the game fails to be numinous.

Part #2: "Science is a force separate from Nature" - The author wants to assert that magic ought not be a force separate from the natural world. There are several problems with this assertion, the first of which is that it is not at all clear that his assumption - magic is never involved for things which science can explain - is true or enforced by D&D magic. While there is a very common presumption that if you can explain it, it isn't magic, this would lead us into a lengthy (though perhaps productive) discussion of what magic is or what the word means to the speaker, something Tolkien explicitly asked in his stories. But is asserting that magic is a force separate from nature really asserting anything different than science is a force separate from nature. Both utilize the natural world to act on the natural world, and even if people perceive science as artificial it's still grounded in natural law. So if you assert magic ought to be grounded in the natural law of the magical world, what are you asserting really but that it is an extension of the natural science of that world? I mean, I could see this argument going in exactly the opposite direction, that magic is too much a part of the magical world and doesn't therefore feel unearthly and numinous on that account.

And as with the prior section, there is actually a paucity of ideas in this one and it's not really clear what they would be or how they would work or if even if they could somehow be implemented they'd actually solve the problem. Consider the assertion, "In pre-scientific views, though, crafting of steel is itself a magical process. The hardness of the metal is part of the magical-ness of the sword...In general, RPG magic systems view magic as something ephemeral. Effects are rarely permanent or even long-lasting." But nothing really prevents the crafting of steel from being a magical process, and what would it really mean if it was? As a sort of nod toward this, in my campaign world the phrase "cold forged iron" sometimes used to refer to some magical crafting process simply refers to the 'ordinary' creation of 'ordinary' steel, a material which has magical properties in the world (such as being able to cleave fairies and a variety of other inherently magical beings). But what would it mean if the crafting of steel was a magical process, and if it was a magical process would that make the crafting of steel or steel swords more mysterious and numinous? And consider, he's at the same time he's referring to magic swords, making a claim about magic being something ephemeral. Yet magical swords are not particularly ephemeral in D&D.

I've already dealt with the speaking with animals bit, but we could equally deal with the claims about 'mundane skill'. For every single skill in D&D, there are a number of ranks in that skill where what the character possessing of that skill can do is superhuman and cannot be explained by our ordinary understanding. If you have enough ranks of healing in D&D, you are capable of superhuman feats of healing. If you have enough ranks of climb or jump, you are capable of superhuman physics defying feats of athleticism. What is this if not mundane skill shading off into the magical and nonmundane.

If you could summarize my take on the article, it would be to ask the question, "What does the author really want?" And my answer is, "He doesn't really know, and can't put his finger on it."

Part #3: Science happens as spells from deliberate users - No more true of science in the sense of "what is happening in the physical world" than it is true of magic. While it is true that magic in D&D most often takes the forms of PC or NPC initiated events, the broader category whose absence he bemoans "magical events such as omens, visions, destinies, lucky objects, and miracles. There are also magical places and magical times. Lastly, there is magic of circumstance. For example, if someone dies in certain circumstances he may return as a ghost to haunt his killer. This isn't because the character had the "ghost" magical ability, it just happened because of the circumstances of his death." is very much a part of a D&D fiction and D&D settings. Pick up any number of D&D novels, stories, and adventures and you'll find omens, visions, destinies, miracles, magical places, magical times, and undead arising purely as a result of the circumstances of their death as part of both the backstory of the adventure and the components of the module. All of that magic as plot device stuff hasn't gone away just because characters can cast spells, it's just part of the DM's tool kit of moving stories along.

So again, what does the author want? Does he want a systematic explanation for omens, visions, destinies, miracle, magical places, magical times and so on and so forth? I rather get the impression that that is exactly what he doesn't want and that he thinks systematic explanations are part of the problem.

Further, he makes assertions like: "Many RPGs tend to assume that magic is a professional skill, which is learned in a mage's guild or other organization. However, in myths, the wizard is often a solitary figure whose magic is an inborn talent -- which can be a curse as well as a blessing. The archetype of the wizard is often a mysterious hermit, who shuns and is shunned by society at large." But not only are these two things he contrasts are not incompatible, as it could be true that both only people of inborn talent can become wizards and that magic is a professional skill which can be taught in institutions, but specifically D&D have has never tried to enforce a view of how many people can be wizards. D&D has never really asserted whether only people born with magic can learn magic or whether anyone with sufficient intelligence can be taught it. And as far as that goes, it certainly implies only people born with it can ever be sorcerers. The access that PC's are given to magic in no way determines details of the setting like are complained about.

And I could keep going and going, but the point is if you read the article critically as an attempt to fix a perhaps real problem, my take is that while there may be a real problem the author hasn't really gotten very far in exploring it and doesn't have a real plan to solve it. In fact, often the direction the author seems to be pushing in - such as weaker but more ubiquitous magic in the section on 'mana' is cited by people who switch to such systems as one of the reasons magic no longer feels special and mysterious to them.

I guess another way to put it is “holistic” magic, or “rational” magic, or magic based on pre-D&D sources and sources not influenced by D&D.

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So occult magic?

With my tongue only partly in my cheek, I've often suggested that one potential fix would be simply to remove the 'wizard' from the game as an unreasonable D&Dism and force anyone who wants to play a wizard to take the cleric class.

Magic was, traditionally, tied to religion almost exclusively. Just about the only exception I can think of would be "Faeries", and their magic, and even then there are some tales/variations that give even that a religious source.

To me, though, "Science" is really just a skin you put over the game mechanics. In super-hero games they use the term "special effect" to distinguish the appearance of a power, as distinct from its actual function.

For example, in Champions you gain an Energy Blast power. You get to decide if it's fire or cold or lasers or lightning or plasma or... or...or...

Those variations have little or no impact on what the power does, just how it looks.

By the same token, if you want to say that your Lightning Bolt spell invokes the power of the storm (i.e. purely magical), or is powered by a Heisenberg guided quantum irregularity, it makes no difference in the end. It's still x number of dice of damage in a "Line Effect".

So ultimately you can call it science, you can call it mysticism or you can call it anything else, it's just a game and in the end that's the only part that really matters.

Celebrim said:

Well, at the risk of offending the original author, what I'm suggesting is that the article neither proposes a useful idea nor is actually coherent. Or to put it another way, I do understand exactly what the author is going for, but he doesn't do a great job of explaining or exploring the problem.

Consider if we start systematically replacing the word "magic" in the article with "science". If these two things are really radically different concepts as he suggests, and if his description of magic is coherent then the mangled article where we replace a concept with a supposedly incompatible concept should be nonsense.

Section #1: "Science is a known system and thus non-mysterious" In the first section the author tries to explain that magic shouldn't be a known system and thus non-mysterious, because this makes it too scientific. But the problem is that the assertion that science is a known system and thus non-mysterious as an assertion about the nature of the real known universe and how it works is also false. There are a great many things we do with "science" based on manipulation of the universe where the more you know about how the thing works, the less confident you are in explaining why it works - quantum tunneling for example is something that is definitely science, definitely manipulated, and wholly mysterious. And that turns out to be true of a lot of things.

And, I've already gone into the problem that the sort of suggestions that the article writer goes into aren't particularly workable, nor is it clear even if implemented that it would create the feel that the author is going for, which if I would put a word on it is not merely mysterious but Numinous. The author is frustrated that magic in the game fails to be numinous.

Part #2: "Science is a force separate from Nature" - The author wants to assert that magic ought not be a force separate from the natural world. There are several problems with this assertion, the first of which is that it is not at all clear that his assumption - magic is never involved for things which science can explain - is true or enforced by D&D magic. While there is a very common presumption that if you can explain it, it isn't magic, this would lead us into a lengthy (though perhaps productive) discussion of what magic is or what the word means to the speaker, something Tolkien explicitly asked in his stories. But is asserting that magic is a force separate from nature really asserting anything different than science is a force separate from nature. Both utilize the natural world to act on the natural world, and even if people perceive science as artificial it's still grounded in natural law. So if you assert magic ought to be grounded in the natural law of the magical world, what are you asserting really but that it is an extension of the natural science of that world? I mean, I could see this argument going in exactly the opposite direction, that magic is too much a part of the magical world and doesn't therefore feel unearthly and numinous on that account.

And as with the prior section, there is actually a paucity of ideas in this one and it's not really clear what they would be or how they would work or if even if they could somehow be implemented they'd actually solve the problem. Consider the assertion, "In pre-scientific views, though, crafting of steel is itself a magical process. The hardness of the metal is part of the magical-ness of the sword...In general, RPG magic systems view magic as something ephemeral. Effects are rarely permanent or even long-lasting." But nothing really prevents the crafting of steel from being a magical process, and what would it really mean if it was? As a sort of nod toward this, in my campaign world the phrase "cold forged iron" sometimes used to refer to some magical crafting process simply refers to the 'ordinary' creation of 'ordinary' steel, a material which has magical properties in the world (such as being able to cleave fairies and a variety of other inherently magical beings). But what would it mean if the crafting of steel was a magical process, and if it was a magical process would that make the crafting of steel or steel swords more mysterious and numinous? And consider, he's at the same time he's referring to magic swords, making a claim about magic being something ephemeral. Yet magical swords are not particularly ephemeral in D&D.

I've already dealt with the speaking with animals bit, but we could equally deal with the claims about 'mundane skill'. For every single skill in D&D, there are a number of ranks in that skill where what the character possessing of that skill can do is superhuman and cannot be explained by our ordinary understanding. If you have enough ranks of healing in D&D, you are capable of superhuman feats of healing. If you have enough ranks of climb or jump, you are capable of superhuman physics defying feats of athleticism. What is this if not mundane skill shading off into the magical and nonmundane.

If you could summarize my take on the article, it would be to ask the question, "What does the author really want?" And my answer is, "He doesn't really know, and can't put his finger on it."

Part #3: Science happens as spells from deliberate users - No more true of science in the sense of "what is happening in the physical world" than it is true of magic. While it is true that magic in D&D most often takes the forms of PC or NPC initiated events, the broader category whose absence he bemoans "magical events such as omens, visions, destinies, lucky objects, and miracles. There are also magical places and magical times. Lastly, there is magic of circumstance. For example, if someone dies in certain circumstances he may return as a ghost to haunt his killer. This isn't because the character had the "ghost" magical ability, it just happened because of the circumstances of his death." is very much a part of a D&D fiction and D&D settings. Pick up any number of D&D novels, stories, and adventures and you'll find omens, visions, destinies, miracles, magical places, magical times, and undead arising purely as a result of the circumstances of their death as part of both the backstory of the adventure and the components of the module. All of that magic as plot device stuff hasn't gone away just because characters can cast spells, it's just part of the DM's tool kit of moving stories along.

So again, what does the author want? Does he want a systematic explanation for omens, visions, destinies, miracle, magical places, magical times and so on and so forth? I rather get the impression that that is exactly what he doesn't want and that he thinks systematic explanations are part of the problem.

Further, he makes assertions like: "Many RPGs tend to assume that magic is a professional skill, which is learned in a mage's guild or other organization. However, in myths, the wizard is often a solitary figure whose magic is an inborn talent -- which can be a curse as well as a blessing. The archetype of the wizard is often a mysterious hermit, who shuns and is shunned by society at large." But not only are these two things he contrasts are not incompatible, as it could be true that both only people of inborn talent can become wizards and that magic is a professional skill which can be taught in institutions, but specifically D&D have has never tried to enforce a view of how many people can be wizards. D&D has never really asserted whether only people born with magic can learn magic or whether anyone with sufficient intelligence can be taught it. And as far as that goes, it certainly implies only people born with it can ever be sorcerers. The access that PC's are given to magic in no way determines details of the setting like are complained about.

And I could keep going and going, but the point is if you read the article critically as an attempt to fix a perhaps real problem, my take is that while there may be a real problem the author hasn't really gotten very far in exploring it and doesn't have a real plan to solve it. In fact, often the direction the author seems to be pushing in - such as weaker but more ubiquitous magic in the section on 'mana' is cited by people who switch to such systems as one of the reasons magic no longer feels special and mysterious to them.



So occult magic?

With my tongue only partly in my cheek, I've often suggested that one potential fix would be simply to remove the 'wizard' from the game as an unreasonable D&Dism and force anyone who wants to play a wizard to take the cleric class.

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Here’s another way I can think to put it: if you were holistically building a universe from first principles, how would you allow things that would be considered “magic” and “supernatural” in the real world? That is, a magic system that is not crudely tacked on.

BoxCrayonTales said:

Here’s another way I can think to put it: if you were holistically building a universe from first principles, how would you allow things that would be considered “magic” and “supernatural” in the real world? That is, a magic system that is not crudely tacked on.

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To try another explanation... compare East Asian fantasy. Fighters can channel their own life force to accomplish impossible feats through sheer training. Animals and household objects turn into yokai when they live long enough. That’s examples of breaking out.

To me the difference is simple: Science is reproducible. It's an essential component in the Scientific Method, after all. Reproduce the conditions and you will reproduce the results. Doesn't matter if I do it or you do it, if we do it in my lab or on a park bench a thousand miles from here. Push button A and effect B comes out, every time.

Magic, on the other hand, isn't hard-reproducible. As mentioned earlier, just because one person can produce colored lights in the air with a few words and gestures doesn't mean that just anyone can make colored lights dance in the air. It doesn't imply, in fact, that the same person could reproduce it on demand. Whether using a spell-point type of approach or a Vancian model, at some point the person runs out of juice and the words and gestures stop working.

My own image of magic in D&D is that it's sort of personalized: To produce a magical effect you have/create a "tool" in your mind, an imaginary construct that may or may not be possible in the real world. Once you have this, you apply will power and the tool works. For prepared casters the tool is consumed in the use. For spontaneous casters it isn't but you'd still need to "pull it from your toolbox" (i.e. bring it to mind) before you can use it again.)

Now I see that tool as having many properties: Size and shape, color, taste, smell, motion or change, and probably some emotional component; some particular feeling it involves or evokes. Hence, it isn't something you could build in any solid sense.

One reason for this being my model is the rules for copying the spells from some other source: You need to make a Spellcraft check each time. Why? Because the written spell in that book is a personal reference, a collection of thoughts and descriptors to help remind the writer of what's needed. Thus for one caster it might be a series of mathematical formula, for another it might be geometric diagrams or astrological references. The words, frequently poetic, are to help remind them of the emotional component. But the words don't all have to be in the same language, or even mattch each other if spoken in the same language. Gestures inspire the motion/change element, materials remind us of the smell/texture factor, etc.

But the words that remind one caster of that hollow, drained feeling needed for a spell might remind someone else of the afterglow of a lovely evening. So Spellcraft is needed to understand the other guy's mind set.

In this vision of magic, the words, gestures and materials are simply mneumonic triggers, crutches that make it easier for the caster to bring the spell/tool into focus. (Hence, doing without takes more effort and energy, so the spell is harder to cast.) Some may wriggle their fingers while others casting may resemble interpretive dance and so forth.

To relate all of this to the OP, I'll suggest that in this scenario magic isn't reliably reproducible even for the same spell being cast by different spell casters: Their words or gestures may be completely different, and their books or other source materials may not have any apparent similarities. That's why the average layman can't always recognize a spell that's being cast, even if they've seen it a hundred times. They need to decipher it and relate what they're seeing/hearing to the known forces used in spell casting.

Greenfield said:

To me the difference is simple: Science is reproducible. It's an essential component in the Scientific Method, after all. Reproduce the conditions and you will reproduce the results. Doesn't matter if I do it or you do it, if we do it in my lab or on a park bench a thousand miles from here. Push button A and effect B comes out, every time.

Magic, on the other hand, isn't hard-reproducible. As mentioned earlier, just because one person can produce colored lights in the air with a few words and gestures doesn't mean that just anyone can make colored lights dance in the air. It doesn't imply, in fact, that the same person could reproduce it on demand. Whether using a spell-point type of approach or a Vancian model, at some point the person runs out of juice and the words and gestures stop working.

My own image of magic in D&D is that it's sort of personalized: To produce a magical effect you have/create a "tool" in your mind, an imaginary construct that may or may not be possible in the real world. Once you have this, you apply will power and the tool works. For prepared casters the tool is consumed in the use. For spontaneous casters it isn't but you'd still need to "pull it from your toolbox" (i.e. bring it to mind) before you can use it again.)

Now I see that tool as having many properties: Size and shape, color, taste, smell, motion or change, and probably some emotional component; some particular feeling it involves or evokes. Hence, it isn't something you could build in any solid sense.

One reason for this being my model is the rules for copying the spells from some other source: You need to make a Spellcraft check each time. Why? Because the written spell in that book is a personal reference, a collection of thoughts and descriptors to help remind the writer of what's needed. Thus for one caster it might be a series of mathematical formula, for another it might be geometric diagrams or astrological references. The words, frequently poetic, are to help remind them of the emotional component. But the words don't all have to be in the same language, or even mattch each other if spoken in the same language. Gestures inspire the motion/change element, materials remind us of the smell/texture factor, etc.

But the words that remind one caster of that hollow, drained feeling needed for a spell might remind someone else of the afterglow of a lovely evening. So Spellcraft is needed to understand the other guy's mind set.

In this vision of magic, the words, gestures and materials are simply mneumonic triggers, crutches that make it easier for the caster to bring the spell/tool into focus. (Hence, doing without takes more effort and energy, so the spell is harder to cast.) Some may wriggle their fingers while others casting may resemble interpretive dance and so forth.

To relate all of this to the OP, I'll suggest that in this scenario magic isn't reliably reproducible even for the same spell being cast by different spell casters: Their words or gestures may be completely different, and their books or other source materials may not have any apparent similarities. That's why the average layman can't always recognize a spell that's being cast, even if they've seen it a hundred times. They need to decipher it and relate what they're seeing/hearing to the known forces used in spell casting.

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The Net Wizard's Handbook mentions something like this when it categorizes the design of magic systems along axes. The model you're discussing is called "magic is an art," which is distinct from "magic is chaos" and "magic is a science." I've attached it here since there doesn't seem to be an easily available copy online.