Just add ninjas - nobody questions it when you add ninjas.
This seems to work for fantasy and modern settings.
D&D General Playstyle vs Mechanics
- Thread starter Emerikol
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Just add ninjas - nobody questions it when you add ninjas.
This seems to work for fantasy and modern settings.
Too true. Nobody ever questions why the guy with the guns don't just shoot the ninja and instead run in and try to club the ninja with the butt of their pistol. Must be ninja mind tricks.
On the plus side, nobody questions it when the Mob of Ninjas hang back and make funky hand motions while the mob members attack one at a time. Goes both ways!
clearstream
(He, Him)
I'm not sure that I can agree with "mostly" because so much that matches our expectations from the real world simply goes unremarked. Above it was mentioned that things fall: were we working from a tabula rasa then why would we have even that minimal assumption? In many games it's assumed creatures breathe... again why? And so on for innumerable details.
It seems like one principle of fiction is something like least difference from the real world.
If right, then dragons might not fly, simpliciter. I can be drawn to describing a flying dragon being buffeted by the powerful winds of a hurricane and players will accept that as the sort of thing that can happen to flying dragons. It matches pre-existing ideas about flying things and high winds. A principle of least difference can also apply to other references, such as genre (if it is true in genre, it is true here, unless specified otherwise.)
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clearstream
(He, Him)
Reflecting on this, that characterisation would likely mean something like "there will be things in this world that differ from our real world" and "such things aren't necessarily subject to further explanation."
But I think that wouldn't prevent players from (and in fact it would remain necessary for them to continue) forming expectations based on the real world that will normally proved reliable.
In that case the "magic" designator could continue to act as I outlined: demarking exceptions which will be presumably numerous (possibly even systematic.)
I'm not sure saying a world is magical could mean "assume exceptions unless denoted otherwise" (allowing for a "mundane" descriptor) as that would impose a considerable burden on even the most basic actions. Frex, I want to make a cup of tea. Does water boil? Do leaves steep? Am I able to drink? Will liquid stay in cups? And so on... it seems impossible when thought through.
When I "make a cup of tea" in a fantasy world, that action grounds its meaning in the real world. Someone adds "it's a magical tea pot and makes it for you!" Very well, they've asserted an exception from the real world. Seeing as it's a "magical" world, I accept it... with everything else continuing as it would in the real world. On this analysis, this thread contains inter alia examples of differences between folk as to when they count "magical" to be implied.
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Sure. This is why I find the social life and structures of many fantasy worlds pretty absurd: they make no sense from a historical, political and sociological perspective.
We might be disagreeing a bit - which is fine, that's called talking about stuff!
I agree about reasonable decisions. But I don't think many RPGers even made a decision relying on the truth of universal gravitation - I don't think it's ever come up even in my Traveller play, and never in my FRPGing as best I can recall. The expectations are much simpler - that pushing things will knock them over, that walking is possible, that there are stars in the night sky, etc.
Diseases are an interesting case: in FRPGing they are often closely associated with curses or other malicious afflictions. And I can't think of a FRPG experience I've had where the difference between germ-theory transmission and evil spirt/divine punishment transmission would matter. Issues around, say, washing hands and sterilising utensils just don't come up, at least in my experience.
If I were running a game for my friends with advanced degrees in things like particle astrophysics or developmental neurobiology or computational theoretical physical chemistry, we might have to work out what I needed to do, worldwise, to support their suspension of disbelief. (In the Fantasy TRPGs I've played in with them, it hasn't been a problem.) I expect that the more the world was supposed to look like the real world, the more I'd have to work.
I had a magically-created disease show up in one of my 5e games, and while it had been created by magic, it was basically a cold (with a weird rider) and spread more or less the way colds do. As far as I was concerned, it was literally an enspelled virus. I don't know how much it mattered in play: The solution was very much magical.
I have a player with PHD in my game. We just all agree that player knowledge doesn't impact character knowledge. Same way that the locksmith didn't automatically know how to open locks, although I did ask them to describe the process.
As far as diseases go, as long as it generally transmits in the same way as a real world disease I don't care if it's a virus, bacteria or tiny invisible demons. If it doesn't transmit like a normal disease it may likely be magical in nature.
Bae'zel
Hero
I have a close friend who, in every non-modern or non-futuristic campaign setting, will try to invent / make Greek Fire. He explained it as a bit of a test of the DM, to see what he can get away with.
You'd be surprised how often it worked. However, he was of the type who likes to "surprise" the DM. "Check mate DM! I just eliminated your monsters in one round!".
As annoying as that sounds, it taught me to assume that the players will always:
- attempt to murder any NPC, no matter how friendly or important
- set the haunted house on fire
- will find a way to fly, dispel or circumvent any obstacle with minimal effort, a spell or a loophole in the rules
- will kill any important boss monster in one round (or at least utterly neutralize them)
My DMing skills have improved since. So I owe him one.
I had a player who wanted to try to push edge-case things. Eventually we came to the understanding that rulings were more likely to go his way if he wasn't trying to extract them in the moment, that he didn't need to surprise me to surprise his opponents.
I've also come to a conclusion that's more or less the opposite of yours: The better I've gotten at GMing the way I want to GM, the less the players have done any of the things in your list--and in my 5e campaigns, they never really did them much.
