A couple of recent threads have led to me thinking about the "causal logic" of fantasy gameworlds.
For me personally, the easiest way to see the issue is by thinking about Lothlorien in LotR. To me, this is JRRT's attempt to bring the idea of the "faerie queen" into a more-or-less naturalistic novel. Like the fairy tale queen of fairy land, Galadriel is powerful, and magical, and rules an enchanted forest where mortals fear to tread lest they become ensnared by her spells. (See eg Eomer's remarks to Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas when they meet.)
But, as we expect in a traditional novel, the character also has more-or-less human motivations, and we get descriptions of houses, food etc when the Fellowship statys with the elves.
But now the question - where does all that food come from? Where are the farmers? The bakers? Etc. They're never mentioned, and presumably there are not fields in a forest; but the elves don't seem to leave the forest either.
Because JRRT is a good fantasy writer, he manages to present Lothlorien in a way that doesn't immediately give rise to these questions. But if you were trying to design an elven kingdom for your D&D world, they might come up. But the more you give your elves fields and jobs and commerce, etc, the less that fairy-tale feel is preserved.
Another, similar example: Arhturian heroes have a tendency to wander the wilds or the forests until they come upon a house or a castle, often inhabited by an enchantress. The whole effect is very fairy-tale like. But how does that work in a RPG? The norm is to have maps of the campaign world, which means that the castle has to be plonked down in some particular hex. And how do we achieve the effect of the "ever-changing" faerie forest? It becomes tempting to make it a magical effect that increases the chance of getting lost, but that then leads to logistical and operational questions (eg does Dispel Magic work? how can I buff my save against it?) which tend to dilute its original fairy tale purpose.
And all that comes up before we get to questions like, How does the Enchantress get food? Or pay her men-at-arms?
Two other examples that came up recently in another thread relate to some of the early ways of playing D&D: dungeons in which monsters more-or-less hang out in their rooms until the adventurers open the doors; and dropping food or treasture to end pursuit and thereby to successfully evade encounters.
There is something inherently implausible about monsters hanging out in their rooms, more-or-less statically. But something a bit like this is important to make the game that Gygax describes on pp 107-109 of his PHB work. In that game, as he describes it, the PCs enter the dungeon, explore it while avoiding/defeating the GM's wandering monsters and (if they're skilled and a bit lucky) without getting lost, or distracted by traps and tricks. And once they've identified a "hit" - say, the room with 6 trolls guarding a magic sword - they leave the dungeon, prepare to assault the trolls (stocking up on oil, and offensive rather than diviniation spells), re-enter and stage their assault.
But this won't work if the trolls aren't in the same room next time they go back in. The more "dynamic" or "ecological" the dungeon is, the less the players can control the pacing and direction of the game in the way that Gygax describes. (Mearls notorious critical review of Keep on the Borderlands is a realism-type critique of this sort of static approach to dungeons.)
Evading pursuit raises similar issues: it seems a bit unreal for a monster to be distracted by a bit of food, or a few dropped gp (as the evasion rules say can happen) when it could get more gp or more food by catching up to and robbing/eating the PCs. Yet without this sort of rule, the players can't make an effective choice to escape wandering monsters - which, again, undermines player control of the pacing and direction of the game.
In the case of the fairy queen and the enchantress, the logic of "realism" and of game play undermines the fairy-tale story elements. In the case of dungeon exploration, the logic of "realism" and "living, breathing world" pushes against the fairy-tale feel (of monsters in their lairs, and trolls easily distracted by a glint of gold or a loaf of bread) and also, thereby, against the original dynamics of gameplay.
And think about the bigger picture: the more the gameworld becomes "living and breathing", the more its internal logic is not a fairy tale logic in which "anything is possible" and is, instead, a "realistic" or verisimilitudinous logic, the more everything depends on GM decision-making (about what the trolls do in the day while the PCs are out rememorising their spells and buying their oil; about whether or not their are oil supplies at all in the PCs' base town; about whether or not the Enchantress's mercenaries are sufficiently poorly payed that they might respond to bribes from the PCs; etc, etc). The dynamic can easily shift from one where the players control the pacing and direction of play, to one where everything is filtered through the GM's ideas about what makes sense for the gameworld and its (naturalistic, not fairy tale) inhabitants.
For me personally, the easiest way to see the issue is by thinking about Lothlorien in LotR. To me, this is JRRT's attempt to bring the idea of the "faerie queen" into a more-or-less naturalistic novel. Like the fairy tale queen of fairy land, Galadriel is powerful, and magical, and rules an enchanted forest where mortals fear to tread lest they become ensnared by her spells. (See eg Eomer's remarks to Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas when they meet.)
But, as we expect in a traditional novel, the character also has more-or-less human motivations, and we get descriptions of houses, food etc when the Fellowship statys with the elves.
But now the question - where does all that food come from? Where are the farmers? The bakers? Etc. They're never mentioned, and presumably there are not fields in a forest; but the elves don't seem to leave the forest either.
Because JRRT is a good fantasy writer, he manages to present Lothlorien in a way that doesn't immediately give rise to these questions. But if you were trying to design an elven kingdom for your D&D world, they might come up. But the more you give your elves fields and jobs and commerce, etc, the less that fairy-tale feel is preserved.
Another, similar example: Arhturian heroes have a tendency to wander the wilds or the forests until they come upon a house or a castle, often inhabited by an enchantress. The whole effect is very fairy-tale like. But how does that work in a RPG? The norm is to have maps of the campaign world, which means that the castle has to be plonked down in some particular hex. And how do we achieve the effect of the "ever-changing" faerie forest? It becomes tempting to make it a magical effect that increases the chance of getting lost, but that then leads to logistical and operational questions (eg does Dispel Magic work? how can I buff my save against it?) which tend to dilute its original fairy tale purpose.
And all that comes up before we get to questions like, How does the Enchantress get food? Or pay her men-at-arms?
Two other examples that came up recently in another thread relate to some of the early ways of playing D&D: dungeons in which monsters more-or-less hang out in their rooms until the adventurers open the doors; and dropping food or treasture to end pursuit and thereby to successfully evade encounters.
There is something inherently implausible about monsters hanging out in their rooms, more-or-less statically. But something a bit like this is important to make the game that Gygax describes on pp 107-109 of his PHB work. In that game, as he describes it, the PCs enter the dungeon, explore it while avoiding/defeating the GM's wandering monsters and (if they're skilled and a bit lucky) without getting lost, or distracted by traps and tricks. And once they've identified a "hit" - say, the room with 6 trolls guarding a magic sword - they leave the dungeon, prepare to assault the trolls (stocking up on oil, and offensive rather than diviniation spells), re-enter and stage their assault.
But this won't work if the trolls aren't in the same room next time they go back in. The more "dynamic" or "ecological" the dungeon is, the less the players can control the pacing and direction of the game in the way that Gygax describes. (Mearls notorious critical review of Keep on the Borderlands is a realism-type critique of this sort of static approach to dungeons.)
Evading pursuit raises similar issues: it seems a bit unreal for a monster to be distracted by a bit of food, or a few dropped gp (as the evasion rules say can happen) when it could get more gp or more food by catching up to and robbing/eating the PCs. Yet without this sort of rule, the players can't make an effective choice to escape wandering monsters - which, again, undermines player control of the pacing and direction of the game.
In the case of the fairy queen and the enchantress, the logic of "realism" and of game play undermines the fairy-tale story elements. In the case of dungeon exploration, the logic of "realism" and "living, breathing world" pushes against the fairy-tale feel (of monsters in their lairs, and trolls easily distracted by a glint of gold or a loaf of bread) and also, thereby, against the original dynamics of gameplay.
And think about the bigger picture: the more the gameworld becomes "living and breathing", the more its internal logic is not a fairy tale logic in which "anything is possible" and is, instead, a "realistic" or verisimilitudinous logic, the more everything depends on GM decision-making (about what the trolls do in the day while the PCs are out rememorising their spells and buying their oil; about whether or not their are oil supplies at all in the PCs' base town; about whether or not the Enchantress's mercenaries are sufficiently poorly payed that they might respond to bribes from the PCs; etc, etc). The dynamic can easily shift from one where the players control the pacing and direction of play, to one where everything is filtered through the GM's ideas about what makes sense for the gameworld and its (naturalistic, not fairy tale) inhabitants.
