arguments over physics

[MarkB]

I've found it rather challenging to run a "hard" science fiction campaign with players who aren't used to dealing with any level of realism. My current group is good, but the last bunch didn't have a physics background....

It gets worse when playing a hard-SF setting with a GM who isn't so hot on the science. I remember a Traveller game in which our ship, almost out of fuel and in a decaying orbit around an unknown planet, detected an old battleship which was in an orbit so rock-solid stable that it had remained there for several hundred years. The GM said that, with our remaining fuel, we'd just have time to pull up next to the old space hulk, dock with it, and transfer across before our own ship continued its plunge groundwards.

I pointed out the obvious flaw in the premise, which was probably not wise in retrospect, and what struck me was not the GM's annoyance at me having found a hole in his plot - it was that, even after three players confirmed it, he still could not grasp the concept that, if one spacecraft draws up and parks next to another, unpowered, spacecraft, those craft are perforce sharing exactly the same orbit, and that orbit cannot be both stable and decaying at the same time.

 

[PnPgamer]

If anyone has played Call of Cthulhu, you know you've dug up plenty of history books and wiki pages telling about the 20's fashion and how well everything worked back then. Most prominent though was what was invented and what was legal to possess.

MarkB: So did it turn out well or bad for you guys?

 

[gamerprinter]

I've learned to let physics go most of time. Most game mechanics at least loosely works within the realm of physics, but often it is impossible to perfectly replicate, so I don't even try. When I hear arguments between game mechanics and physics, I say that physics more or less doesn't belong, as long as the mechanics are viable its good enough. Basically keep physics discussions in college and not at my table.

 

[MarkB]

MarkB: So did it turn out well or bad for you guys?

It was a convention game and I knew the GM, and that - whatever his grasp of orbital dynamics - he delivered good story in his games, so after a brief discussion I made a gentle suggestion that a reactor meltdown or hull breach might better serve him in providing the time pressure, and we got on with a good, fun, Alienesque adventure on board the abandoned battleship.

 

[Celebrim]

This question occurred to me when i was scouring the internet and looking rpg stuff and there was this blog post or something asking advice because of a electricity related physics debate occured between a dm and a player.

It got me thinking that what are the most occurred topics when it goes to arguing about physics that should happen when you do magic, technology or whatever other cause. Electricity functions? Gravity effects? What have you experienced? Please share and tell.

Do note that we are here to share stories, not start arguments of our own.

I subvert all this by having the in game physics of the world be very much not the physics of the real world. So, if we get into an argument about physics, I can pull things like the following:

a) Well, really, mass has nothing to do with gravity. It's just that the earth spirits hate to see things soaring unnaturally above the ground, so they pull things back down.
b) No, kinetic energy is linear with velocity. You can drop balls into clay to prove this.
c) Actually, heat is a substance. This was proved when a famous dwarf named Rumford carried out an experiment to determine the exact caloric content of iron by grinding it in a bath until it ceased to heat the water.
d) Well, energy and mass are not conserved in the universe. You see there are all these little wormholes, if you will, between the prime and the elemental planes and they are always exchanging small amounts of material.
e) No really, there are only 4 elements. Sodium and sulfur and nitrogen are compounds. Hense, the chemistry behind making explosives is a bit more complex than just looking up the formula for gunpowder in this world.
f) Flies really do spontaneously generate from rotten meat.

Or really anything else. Saves me no end of argument.

Back when I remember rules arguments they always seemed to be about how infravision worked, how much aerobic exercise you could engage in before becoming tired, whether you could reasonably tunnel through things with a magic sword and enough willpower, and so forth.

 

[PnPgamer]

I subvert all this by having the in game physics of the world be very much not the physics of the real world. So, if we get into an argument about physics, I can pull things like the following:

a) Well, really, mass has nothing to do with gravity. It's just that the earth spirits hate to see things soaring unnaturally above the ground, so they pull things back down.
b) No, kinetic energy is linear with velocity. You can drop balls into clay to prove this.
c) Actually, heat is a substance. This was proved when a famous dwarf named Rumford carried out an experiment to determine the exact caloric content of iron by grinding it in a bath until it ceased to heat the water.
d) Well, energy and mass are not conserved in the universe. You see there are all these little wormholes, if you will, between the prime and the elemental planes and they are always exchanging small amounts of material.
e) No really, there are only 4 elements. Sodium and sulfur and nitrogen are compounds. Hense, the chemistry behind making explosives is a bit more complex than just looking up the formula for gunpowder in this world.
f) Flies really do spontaneously generate from rotten meat.

Or really anything else. Saves me no end of argument.

Back when I remember rules arguments they always seemed to be about how infravision worked, how much aerobic exercise you could engage in before becoming tired, whether you could reasonably tunnel through things with a magic sword and enough willpower, and so forth.

Ive always though it to be a bit ridiculous that adamantium daggers can be used to dig through anything, per third ed and pathfinder rules.

 

[Celebrim]

Ive always though it to be a bit ridiculous that adamantium daggers can be used to dig through anything, per third ed and pathfinder rules.

This is easily avoided by just not having adamantium in your campaign or have it vanishingly rare, and in any event its pretty easy to infer that - if the above is true - the economic value of an adamantium pick axe would be so much higher than that of an adamantium dagger that almost no adamantium daggers would actually exist.

Or you could just change the rules. Adamantium in the 3.X rules is largely a product of the fact that the DR's frequently assigned to creatures are too high, and so adamantium and it's special ability was largely added into the rules as a kludge fix. If the DR used in the design of monsters was better thought out, you wouldn't need such an absolute counter to DR with its unintended consequences of turning all walls into tissue paper.

Then again, in a more 'Fantasy Supers' approach, you might have this as an intended consequence.

My point being in its essence, "Have whatever physics serves the needs of the campaign." Fundamentally, a debate between a GM and a player over the physics of electricity misses the point of most games and a GM doesn't need to dignify the argument unless it is actually useful (the player has a Ph.D. in physics and your playing a hard sci-fi game and do want to get it right, in which case, good luck).

Small aside on that note, at one time I was keen on running a GURPS game in David Gerrald's 'War Against the Chtorr' setting. My wife, who likely would have been one of the players, has a Ph.D. in biology. At some point it occurred to me that many of the fundamental tropes of the setting depended on mystical biology that would never work in real life, and that the 'biological and ecological exploration' that is a central feature of the setting and a major part of any campaign in the setting would likely frustrate her very quickly with its inconsistencies and failure to understand the underlying scientific principles.

 

[PnPgamer]

This is easily avoided by just not having adamantium in your campaign or have it vanishingly rare, and in any event its pretty easy to infer that - if the above is true - the economic value of an adamantium pick axe would be so much higher than that of an adamantium dagger that almost no adamantium daggers would actually exist.

Or you could just change the rules. Adamantium in the 3.X rules is largely a product of the fact that the DR's frequently assigned to creatures are too high, and so adamantium and it's special ability was largely added into the rules as a kludge fix. If the DR used in the design of monsters was better thought out, you wouldn't need such an absolute counter to DR with its unintended consequences of turning all walls into tissue paper.

Then again, in a more 'Fantasy Supers' approach, you might have this as an intended consequence.

My point being in its essence, "Have whatever physics serves the needs of the campaign." Fundamentally, a debate between a GM and a player over the physics of electricity misses the point of most games and a GM doesn't need to dignify the argument unless it is actually useful (the player has a Ph.D. in physics and your playing a hard sci-fi game and do want to get it right, in which case, good luck).

Small aside on that note, at one time I was keen on running a GURPS game in David Gerrald's 'War Against the Chtorr' setting. My wife, who likely would have been one of the players, has a Ph.D. in biology. At some point it occurred to me that many of the fundamental tropes of the setting depended on mystical biology that would never work in real life, and that the 'biological and ecological exploration' that is a central feature of the setting and a major part of any campaign in the setting would likely frustrate her very quickly with its inconsistencies and failure to understand the underlying scientific principles.

of course arguments over table should be avoided at all costs. If one has Ph.D. in any relevant subject, it should be made clear to him/her that it is just a game, a fantasy, in which physics might go differently. Or at least let it go.