D&D General Do genes exist in D&D?

[Jfdlsjfd]

D&D doesn't have genes. They are replaced by midichlorians.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

That's not really good enough. Because there's no reason to have them, either. When the exact same argument fits both possibilities, that argument doesn't really give you anything.



But, really, there is a reason to not have genes and such in your fantasy world. That reason is that words mean things. The terms "gene" and "DNA" bring with them a significant number of assumptions about how the world works. That sets expectations of how the world works in the player's minds.

Are you bothering in the least to actually follow those expectations? No? Then don't set them. There is no reason to do so.

I love this point about how bringing certain terms into a roleplaying game sets expectations. We see plenty of the assumptions about what science can and cannot do in the real world, especially when you look at trial cases and juries not understanding that DNA analysis does not work in the real world the way that it does on CSI.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

If you really want to get scientific about it, the existence of domesticated crops and animals in the game implies there is some component that you can "breed" for in plants and animals. Similarly, as mentioned above, an offspring of two different races is generally treated as having a combination of the looks (if not rules crunch) of its two parents.

There is also the Clone spell which uses a scientific term derived from the study of genetics.

And at the same time you have living thinking creatures that are elemental or incorporeal in nature, which most certainly would NOT have any genes as we know them simply based on their physical make-up.

So the answer might be "sometimes it seems to point to yes, but other times the opposite".

 

[Blue Orange]

My general impression is that D&D exists as the real world unless specified otherwise (so a fireball or Otiluke's Freezing Sphere can violate the First Law of Thermodynamics and we don't have to worry about conservation of mass with Flesh to Stone spells and basilisk gazes), but really Wizards hasn't weighed in and we wouldn't expect them to. It's fantasy, not scifi.

It's whatever you decide in your game, I think.

 

[see]

Two distinct concepts here.

Genes, per se, absolutely and positively do exist, because there are definitely little discrete units of inherited traits that come from ancestors, rather than a perfect average mixing of parental traits in the next generation. That's what the word "gene" meant when it was coined, prior to the discovery that DNA had anything to do with them or that "base pairs" were a thing. If they didn't exist, the game world would look massively different than what people expect, rather than "normal plus magic/the gods messing with inheritance sometimes".

What those genes are made of and how they are transmitted may or may not involve chromosomes made of DNA, and it doesn't particularly matter since there's so much "magic" around anyway.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Genes? Most people won't think about it.

Now that I am, I would say yes. However, magic also exist and could modify genes in many ways.

 

[Hriston]

The only things that “exist” in the game are the things talked about at the table. I seriously doubt many games of D&D involve roleplaying Gregor Mendel.

 

[MGibster]

That's hard to say. After all cotton came from the new world but while a lot of fantasy fiction is set in pseudo-medieval Europe they also have poh-tae-toes which were also from the new world. Add in the fact that the color blue was actually quite rare in dies, I'm not sure.

I don't know if anyone's mentioned it yet, but cotton (wiki link) was grown in the old world long before modern Europeans discovered the Americas. It was domesticated in the Sudan as early as 5,000 BCE.

 

[MGibster]

Personally, my stance is that it doesn’t really matter if genes exist. Heritability is a thing, and the characters in the world don’t have the tools to identify the mechanism behind it. Maybe it is a result of bio-chemical markers that instruct a creature’s DNA how to express itself, or maybe it’s the will of the gods. Either way, the outcomes are the same for the people who live in the fictional world. There being a right answer doesn’t really serve the gameplay in any meaningful way.

I'm on team Doesn't Matter as well. Aside from some weird monk doing experiments with pea plants, how would DNA have an impact on my game? Granted, I tend to assume that most things in a fantasy world work like they do in real life....until they don't. So, yeah, I guess my games have genes in them for the same reason salt on an open wound stings like the dickens. I'm going to assume that what's true in real life is true in my fantasy game...until it isn't.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I assume that they do, but I don't think anyone knows about them. Possibly not even the gods. I suppose one could argue that that means that they don't exist, in that no one has ever named the phenomenon "genes" and therefore they are not a thing. But I think, in principle, what we think of genes are still there. They're just part of how it all works even if no one understands it in those terms.