"Oddities" in fantasy settings - the case against "consistency"

[Maxperson]

I think you're substantially misremembering on the issue of things PCs couldn't get. As Pedantic points out, there are tons of monster abilities a PC can't get. What a lot of people complained about were NPCs with abilities a PC couldn't get.
As far as complaining about monster stats, there were complaints about monster abilities varying based on meta game concerns (minion status being probably the biggest complaint) rather than some in-world explanation. That's the "what can't be explained" argument I remember.

And it wasn't the consistency of monsters. It was the consistency of PC progression via AEDU and uniform character advancement.

 

[Umbran]

I think the premise of the thread is flawed. Oddities in some fantasy settings is not a case against consistency. It's just another way to do things. Choose which you like!

Some of the OPs listed oddities were not inconsistent with the Middle Earth setting.

I find interesting the number of slightly different takes on what the OP actually means!

For me... if I were to restate the OP, it would be more along the line that we should question whether "consistency" should mean "general rules" or "incontrovertible rules". Many of the points about Tolkien are of this form, where in Middle Earth some things are generally true, but there are several exceptions to those general rules. Those exceptions are, not surprisingly, mostly focused on our main characters / PCs, and those exceptions don't break the overall feel of the setting.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Who sets the goal of the campaign?

The GM and players in collaboration.

Regarding Burning Wheel, I'm familiar. I have the book. And it's precious few GMs that bring nothing to a planning session with a plan so vague as a non-magical campaign. There must be a reason for that as well, and as a player I would want to hear it so that I could riff off of it.

 

[TwoSix]

I’m curious… how would people view it if the GM proposed the setting where magic was gone from the world, and the players were all on board with the premise, and then after play begins, the GM introduces an NPC who has magic?

Would this be rejecting the premise or otherwise problematic?

I'd find it pretty problematic, personally. That feels way too much like the DM running their fantasy novel with the other PCs as onlookers, which brings to mind the worst excesses of '90s era setting design.

 

[Pedantic]

I'd find it pretty problematic, personally. That feels way too much like the DM running their fantasy novel with the other PCs as onlookers, which brings to mind the worst excesses of '90s era setting design.

Context would be everything. Perhaps on a recurring villain that's representing some dark take in magic the players are trying to counter? Or they might be doing research and exploration on behalf of or in collaboration with an NPC to discover the lost secrets, and it's that character that ultimately first uses the abilities?

I can think of reasonable ways that could work, but they're all more involved then "and then you meet a surprise wizard!"

 

[TwoSix]

Context would be everything. Perhaps on a recurring villain that's representing some dark take in magic the players are trying to counter? Or they might be doing research and exploration on behalf of our in collaboration with an NPC to discover the lost secrets, and it's that character that ultimately first uses the abilities?

I can think of reasonable ways that could work, but they're all more involved then "and then you meet a surprise wizard!"

For sure. A lot of would depend on how the premise had been originally sold to the players, and whether or not adding the magic back in would appear as a violation. I'm leery of campaign introduced abilities that are "for me and not for thee".

 

[Bedrockgames]

I’m curious… how would people view it if the GM proposed the setting where magic was gone from the world, and the players were all on board with the premise, and then after play begins, the GM introduces an NPC who has magic?

Would this be rejecting the premise or otherwise problematic?

It would depend for me. But the player doing this would also depend.

With GMs my concern would be around arbitrary decisions that take away from player agency or something wildly inconsistent with the setting. But if the GM had planned to have a magic free campaign where either 1) the players being spell casters simply wasn't an option, and/or 2) where there were in fact rare spell casters in the setting but these just aren't known to the PCs I think it is fine. And GMs do add things into a campaign, so even if it occurred to the GM three sessions in, there ought to be a few remaining spell casters, I don't think I would have any objection. Stuff that bothers me more than that is the GM using GM authority to force a situation on the PCs that feel like it could have been anticipated. For example if we are traveling through the woods, and the spell caster suddenly shows up without warning and starts aging everyone decades with a touch, I would at least expect us to have some chance to be alert to the ambush, I'd expect the ambush to have happened for a reason that makes sense, etc. If it just happened because the GM thought it would be cool, that sort of thing can feel a little like it is not fair play to me. Cool things can happen. But if that ambush isn't something like a random encounter, I would like there to be a solid reason for it (i.e. we stole the Penthos Prism, and it is an artifact he covets), and I think the GM should play fair mechanically (not make it a foregone conclusion he finds the party, not make it a foregone conclusion the party is surprised, etc.

Also if the GM did stuff like this and it had the effect of making the world seem less real, it could be a potential problem. Just introducing the last spell caster probably wouldn't be an issue for that. But if it feels like reality is constantly bending around us that can be annoying

 

[Baron Opal II]

I’m curious… how would people view it if the GM proposed the setting where magic was gone from the world, and the players were all on board with the premise, and then after play begins, the GM introduces an NPC who has magic?

Would this be rejecting the premise or otherwise problematic?

Depends on the context. This might be the guy we're supposed to protect. Or, maybe they are the one preventing the flow of magic and we have to stop them from doing that.

If it is contrary or conflicting with the collaboration that the people around the table agreed to, it's a bit of a bait and switch, isn't it? If it flows from the discussion, then it's fine.

There's a whole lot of missing context in the entire discussion. We're given a quote of one aspect of a nascent campaign and the first player comment. It is then described as collaborative rather than conflicting, although it seems the opposite. The difference between this being an intriguing example rather than intransient depends on the rest of the discussion we aren't privy to. So, your question is unanswerable.

 

[Faolyn]

If that's the case, all is good.

IME it very likely wouldn't be the case, however, as at least one player - be it the one who just lost the first "last mage" or another seeking to switch characters to fill the gap - would try to bring in another mage.

Y'know, in all of my decades of gaming and the dozens of people I've gamed with, I'm pretty sure I've only had to deal with two players who deliberately went against the premise like that--they didn't bring in the second last mage to a game where magic was dead, of course, but they did deliberately screw around and go against the agreed-upon premise of the setting and genre. One was a person who didn't like me in particular and was passive-aggressive about it, and the other person had been raised on 1e by parents who'd been playing since the 70s or very early 80s.

In other words, if you have a player who's refusing the play with the game's agreed-upon premise, the problem is quite likely with the player (or GM), not with the concept itself.

 

[Lanefan]

I mean that for a setting to feel like a real lived place there needs to be some elements that come from novel creativity rather than just extrapolation. That's regardless of top down or bottom-up design. That exceptions to the norms should exist, especially when comes to the behavior of individual characters.

Sure, no problem there.

For this to happen, however, there first have to be (consistent) norms from which to deviate; and I get a sense that these consistent norms aren't universally desired.