A discussion of metagame concepts in game design

Manbearcat said:

So a couple of things on this:

a) The giant theropods and sauropods don't have hips that resemble bipedal humans. This allows their load-bearing machinery to function in proportion to their insane loads while also interfacing with their spinal column/necks/tails to distribute those insane load such that they can move just fine...however, they could NOT walk/load-bear in an upright fashion. The premise of "dinosaurs/T-Rex could do it, therefore massive upright bipeds should be able to do it" is not a line of evidence. Its actually the exact opposite. If Giants' endoskeletons possessed similar architecture to distribute their massive load, they would look and behave nothing like D&D giants. They would look like alligators...and have massive tails...and long necks or massive heads.

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The beauty with Evolution is that it really does not care what either Manbearcat or Shasarak has to say on the matter. You could certainly argue for Alligator Giants if you prefer and on the other hand simple biology is able to meet every structural requirement that you mention. It turns out that bone can handle a giant weight without breaking, respiratory systems can handle the air requirements of giant breaths, ankles can be reinforced to bend correctly, temperature to be regulated correctly so that really the only thing missing is another creature big enough to meet the caloric requirements that a Giant would need.

b) There is no indication that the overwhelming number of medium+ sized creatures with exoskeletons in D&D (the arthropods) have magical respiration or kinesiology or load-distribution. We apply so many earth-based physics and biological (specifically how their form and systems relate to gravity and atmosphere) bounds on martial heroes yet the exact same limitations that should disallow spiders, scorpions, ettercaps, umber-hulks (et al) from being larger than a chicken are hand-waved away...because "reasons?"

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Personally I would like to see the Umberhulk that is the size of a chicken but in truth it would most likely turn into another Gopher type creature forever digging holes in the lawn.

c) Evolution is not a thing in D&D land. All creatures are basically magically spawned via primordial forces or brought into existence via divine myth (eg a God bled or cried them into existence, etc). So why are we inconsistently applying selection pressure-based evolution to adventurers/martial heroes or applying earth-based physics/biology, yet ignoring one or both of these things for the many fantastical creatures they face in battle (and must move dynamically to do so!)?

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I think that if you look at the Kobold for example you would see that Evolution is alive and well within the DnD Universe.

Lanefan said:

Why can't evolution be a thing in D&D land, though?

Sure, some of the fantastic creatures may have been originally spawned from a wizard's lab somewhere or from the tears of a god; but as soon as said creatures become able to reproduce on their own then you'll get some evolution happening...or extinction, if the creature isn't viable.

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Evolution, in the real world, depends (among other things) upon facts of biochemistry.

But why would anyone suppose that living things in D&D have the sorts of cellular, genetic and biochemical properties they have in the real world?

It is possible for people to have very rich common-sense understandings of how living things behave and reproduce without knowing any of those scientific facts: I give you most of human history as proof of that.

It's possible for people to tell stories about imaginary and fantastic living things, and their behaviour and reproduction, (i) without asuming any of those scientific facts, and (ii) which would be physically impossible in light of those scientific facts: I give you most myth, legend and fairy story as proof of that.

In the case of the people who originated most myth, legend and fairy story, the reason for (i) is because they can't assume what they don't know. In the case of modern fantasy writers, (i) becomes a literary device.

Once (i) is in play, evolution is out of play as far as the story in question is concerned.

Is D&D intended to be played under fundamentally different assumptions from those that govern most myth, legend and fairy story? Nothing in the rulebooks gives me that impression.

Premise: we can't learn scientific truth simply by imagining things, or examining things that we imagine.

Premise: if something is conditioned by, or exemplifies the workings of, scientific laws, then by examining it we can learn scientific truth from it.

Conclusion: the things that we imagine are not, or at least need not be, conditioned by or exmemplifications of the workings of scientific laws.

Thus we can imagine giant humans, giant arthropods, flying dragons, etc which are neither conditioned by nor exemplifications of the workings of scientific laws. Throughout history, many people have done this on the basis of ignorance of scientific laws. Fantasy stories do this not on the basis of ignorance, but as a literary device.

D&D is a form of fantasy story. It uses the same literary devices as other fantasy stories. One of those devices is to imagine things that are neither conditioned by nor examplifications of the workings of scientific laws.

I'm sure it is possible to play D&D as a sci-fi game, adopting the conceit that things like giant humans, giant arthropods, flying dragons etc are conditioned by and exemplifications of the workings of real world scientific laws - and hence (eg) have biological properties very different from the earthy creatures they resemble, or live on worlds whose atmospheres have radically different fluid compositions from the earth that they resemble.

But nothing in the rulebooks that I'm familiar with suggests that the default approach to D&D is as a sci-fi game rather than a fantasy one.

pemerton said:

Huh? A version of my that was triple my height (and hence 27 times my mass) but otherwise physically/biologically identical would not be able to stand or walk. This is a basic fact about real world biomechanical processes.

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Normal human bone can support up to 30x its normal weight. So just looking at mass support alone tripling your height and 27xing your mass would be no problem for normal bone to support.

Is it really that hard to understand. I am just not sure which part you are having trouble with.

However, such beings in the world of D&D are able to stand and walk. Hence, either (i) they are not physically/biologically like humans, or (ii) the world of D&D is not constrained by real world biomechanical processes.

You appear to assert (i). I assert (ii), on the grounds that it fits with a sensible theory of storytelling.

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Of course they are physically/biologically not like humans. If they were they would not be Giants, they would be Giant Humans. Even Aristotle could figure that out.

Again, huh?

I don't understand your point. People tell stories all the time that are inconsistent with physical possibility - look at Gygax's story of a hero flying to the moon on a flying steed, which piles impossibility on impossibility!

Aristotle did imagined things that were inconsistent with what is physically possible - eg he not only imagined, but in fact believed, that the real world was one in which planets and the sun moved about the earth in "spheres". And that belief, it turns out, is inconsistent with many, many ovservations about the real world, the planets and the sun.

But Aristotle was able to maintain his false beliefs because he didn't know about those observations (most of them not having been made yet).

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There is a difference between believing stuff that is incorrect and not being logically consistent. Just the fact that Aristotle's whole inductive-deductive system (which is a very rudimentary version of the Scientific method) would mean that any observations that were inconsistent with his deductions would require him to reassess and come up with another theory. So there is no reason to suspect that given a telescope and a year to study the stars that Aristotle would not have updated his Earth centric model of the universe.

The idea that tellers of fairy stories are, in fact, imagining that the world is governed by the scientific rules taught in science faculties, and are therefore positing that their pixies and giants and pegasi and giant scorpions and the like all have bizarre unearthly biology that makes their existence physically possible, is one that I've not encountered until you and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] advocated it in this thread.

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So what did you imagine that these creatures were made out of? I am guessing pure handwavium at this point because I have never come across someone who sincerely believed that a Giant was just like a normal human enlarged to 3x the size.

pemerton said:

Evolution, in the real world, depends (among other things) upon facts of biochemistry.

But why would anyone suppose that living things in D&D have the sorts of cellular, genetic and biochemical properties they have in the real world?

It is possible for people to have very rich common-sense understandings of how living things behave and reproduce without knowing any of those scientific facts: I give you most of human history as proof of that.

It's possible for people to tell stories about imaginary and fantastic living things, and their behaviour and reproduction, (i) without asuming any of those scientific facts, and (ii) which would be physically impossible in light of those scientific facts: I give you most myth, legend and fairy story as proof of that.

In the case of the people who originated most myth, legend and fairy story, the reason for (i) is because they can't assume what they don't know. In the case of modern fantasy writers, (i) becomes a literary device.

Once (i) is in play, evolution is out of play as far as the story in question is concerned.

Is D&D intended to be played under fundamentally different assumptions from those that govern most myth, legend and fairy story? Nothing in the rulebooks gives me that impression.

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If you had any real knowledge of science then you would find that real life is much more fantastical then the myths and legends that your common sensical ancestors ever imagined in their myths and legends.

There really is, for example, a fungus that can infect an Ant, mind control it and turn it into a fungal Ant Zombie. I mean what exactly is common sense about that? Do we need to invoke magic to explain that?

There really is, for example, a worm that lives around hydrothermal vents from undersea volcanoes at temperatures exceeding 100oC that gets its energy from chemical reactions. Do we need to invoke magic to explain that?

No, I am deeply suspicious of anyone presenting common sense as the reason why they live on a flat earth being orbited by a sun pushed by a giant dung beetle like my ancestors did for the majority of human history.

pemerton said:

Premise: we can't learn scientific truth simply by imagining things, or examining things that we imagine.

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Before I go too much into depth on this subject, is this an actual "Premise" or are you just joking for comedic effect?

Shasarak said:

Normal human bone can support up to 30x its normal weight. So just looking at mass support alone tripling your height and 27xing your mass would be no problem for normal bone to support.

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Not all human bones are thigh bones, as [MENTION=60326]heretic888[/MENTION] alreayd pointed out. And being able to stand and walk depends upon musculature as well as bones. A further constraint for humans is that the pelvis has to be large and strong enough to permit standing and walking, but small enough to permit birth.

Here is what seems likes a sensible discussion - are you saying that it is wrong?

Shasarak said:

If you had any real knowledge of science then you would find that real life is much more fantastical then the myths and legends that your common sensical ancestors ever imagined in their myths and legends.

There really is, for example, a fungus that can infect an Ant, mind control it and turn it into a fungal Ant Zombie. I mean what exactly is common sense about that? Do we need to invoke magic to explain that?

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As best I can tell my knowledge of science is as good as most posters on this thread - I certainly know that science isn't just a list of facts with a does of "otherwise it's magic!".

Pointing out that there are strange things in the world doesn't prove that anything a person can imagine is possible. I can imagine faster than light travel, and do so every time I play Traveller - that doesn't show that FTL travel is possible.

Shasarak said:

There is a difference between believing stuff that is incorrect and not being logically consistent. Just the fact that Aristotle's whole inductive-deductive system (which is a very rudimentary version of the Scientific method) would mean that any observations that were inconsistent with his deductions would require him to reassess and come up with another theory. So there is no reason to suspect that given a telescope and a year to study the stars that Aristotle would not have updated his Earth centric model of the universe.

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What's your point? Yes, Aristtotle was clever. He was also ignorant, and there were some false things that he believed (eg about human biology; about planetary motion) and some true things he did not believe (eg universal gravitation).

So when Aristotle makes up a fairy story, he is not imagining a world in which (eg) universal gravitation exists.

Shasarak said:

I am deeply suspicious of anyone presenting common sense as the reason why they live on a flat earth being orbited by a sun pushed by a giant dung beetle like my ancestors did for the majority of human history.

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WTF? Maybe you think you llive on a flat earth; I don't.

But what does that have to do with whether or not the D&D world is one in which the earth and its motion is governed by universal gravigtation?

Shasarak said:

Before I go too much into depth on this subject, is this an actual "Premise" or are you just joking for comedic effect?

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It's a premise: to learn scientific truth you actually need to investigate stuff in the real world, not just imagine stuff. That's why Galileo's opinions about the nature of the planets are connected to truth, whereas the stuff CS Lewise wrote in his Out of the Silent Planet stories is not.

heretic888 said:

The fictional basis for martial powers are described on page 106 of 4E's Martial Power 2 and also touched upon in Wizards Presents: Races & Classes in the chapter on fighters. From the text, we can infer that martial heroes aren't "magical" but they also clearly aren't "mundane" either.

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They are magical from what the 4e rules say. It refers to martial powers as "Not magic in the traditional sense." That phrase means that martial powers are magic in a non-traditional sense.

pemerton said:

The idea that tellers of fairy stories are, in fact, imagining that the world is governed by the scientific rules taught in science faculties, and are therefore positing that their pixies and giants and pegasi and giant scorpions and the like all have bizarre unearthly biology that makes their existence physically possible, is one that I've not encountered until you and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] advocated it in this thread.

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Most people don't really think about it, because it really doesn't matter. However, when debating this sort of thing, people do think about it and it makes sense for there to be physical laws and magical laws in a fantasy world. Gygax thought so, which is why he explicitly added in the sciences to D&D. He didn't do it in any sort of simulationist manner, though, so all your arguments about how physics in D&D doesn't mirror reality are just a bunch of red herrings. He added them in as an approximation of real world sciences.