D&D General Introducing a Scientific Mindset to Dungeons and Dragons

[Lakesidefantasy]

All comments and conversations in response to this comment from the "Terms that Replaced Race" thread can be posted here.

 

[BookTenTiger]

I definitely prefer a mythic mindset over a scientific one. The moment we get into discussing genetics or DNA, I feel pulled out of the fantasy setting.

 

[Yaarel]

When extraplanar beings materialize into a human form, they thereby take on the human DNA.

This is why humans and elves can produce children together. At the same time, the offspring also retain the extraplanar characteristics.

 

[Corinnguard]

A scientific mindset would work better in RPGs like Paizo's Starfinder and Level Up's The Voidrunner Codex. Both of which are science fantasy RPGs.

 

[Micah Sweet]

All comments and conversations in response to this comment from the "Terms that Replaced Race" thread can be posted here.

I'm fine with the scientific mindset. There are modern and sci-fi rules for D&D, even 5e. I use them often. Feel free to use different terms if you happen to be playing a fantasy campaign, but I don't really see the need.

 

[Stalker0]

I think the difference is a "scientific mindset" vs "our real world science".

The idea of doing experiments and testing hypothesis, sure I can see it. Thinking of magic as an "energy" that is placed into forms to do spells, and trying to codify that into a consistent understanding as a form of science, again sure.

But going "well in the real world humans have dna so in dnd they do too".....I think that's too much. While the methodology of science is still valid in dnd, the results that we got in the real world will be very different from what you would get in dnd land.

 

[jmartkdr2]

When you assume real-world science, you often create arguments about what real-world science says about things.

For example, most of us have some science education, but very few of us have the same science education - so we all have different understandings of the science around speciation. Unless you're an evolutionary biologist, that's probably just the last time you took a science class, or possibly the last time you looked at some science journalism on a lark. And in those cases, the rather complicated truth is simplified to match the audience. So you probably don't have a complete understanding - I sure don't, which is why I don't want to be arguing it.

That and most dnd worlds have ancestries explicitly created by gods, so evolutionary biology isn't likely to apply in any familiar way.

You can play your wizard or artificer as a that settings equivalent of Sir Francis Bacon, but you shouldn't assume they'll find the same facts.

 

[Marandahir]

When you assume real-world science, you often create arguments about what real-world science says about things.

For example, most of us have some science education, but very few of us have the same science education - so we all have different understandings of the science around speciation. Unless you're an evolutionary biologist, that's probably just the last time you took a science class, or possibly the last time you looked at some science journalism on a lark. And in those cases, the rather complicated truth is simplified to match the audience. So you probably don't have a complete understanding - I sure don't, which is why I don't want to be arguing it.

That and most dnd worlds have ancestries explicitly created by gods, so evolutionary biology isn't likely to apply in any familiar way.

You can play your wizard or artificer as a that settings equivalent of Sir Francis Bacon, but you shouldn't assume they'll find the same facts.

This. Combine that with that Science is not about one person knowing "facts" but rather the difficult and time-consuming process of peer review and debate in the search of truth, throwing out knowledge that doesn't hold up under water, and recognising false dichotomies we've set up due to our cultural preconcieved notions. And that's just the physical sciences; the social sciences are even more challenging because they're fundamentally trying to make sense of topics that are inherently subjective, and we have a long history of thinking our "scientific" perspective is instead objective without challenging our own biases and our own affect on the system.

And then there's the point that to even UNDERSTAND complex scientific systems, we need to be experts in the field that have spent years of study on foundational knowledge, but people who think they understand it based on their 101 classes in college understand enough to recognise where thye're right but not enough to recognise where they're wrong. The experts often know enough to be able to say they don't know something or to recognise their mistakes, but not necessarily enough to rectify those mistakes, and the amateurs come in and think they have the answers but they don't actually because of complicated knowledge they haven't learned yet.

Science is not something carried out in solitary study by a polymath but something debated in cafés between experts until a collective understanding of a system arises from that conflict.

Because of all this, I would be very cautious with trying to sciencize fantasy settings, because of the nature of the fictional and fantastical. That temptation towards objectivising is the call of Asmodeus.

 

[Scribe]

When extraplanar beings materialize into a human form, they thereby take on the human DNA.

This is why humans and elves can produce children together. At the same time, the offspring also retain the extraplanar characteristics.

That's certainly some head canon.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

Another scientific idea I see come up is planets. Round, spherical planets governed by gravity.

It's a fantasy, so the world can actually be flat. I can't say that i see this much in official products, but I do see it come up within the community.

I always liked the planes as a metaphor for real world planets. Each one different and strange, and traveling to them required substantial effort.

I can't say I like the astral plane as metaphor for space travel.