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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7471170" data-attributes="member: 42582">GMing would be no harder for a 17th century GM than a 20th century one.For all I know Gygax had never heard of the strong and weak nuclear forces, yet was able to GM pretty well by all accounts.JRRT certainly had never heard of nuclear forces when he started working on his fantasy stories (given the relevant dates), but seemed to do OK also on the world-building front.Common sense and a familiarity with a variety of historical and fantasy tropes will get you a long way!Appendix IV of the PHB includes the following:The Positive Material Plane is a place of energy and light, the place which is the source of much that is vital and active, the power supply for good. The Negative Material Plane is the place of anti-matter and negative force, the source of power for undead, the energy area from which evil grows.This is in an appendix, so optional, but the source of stuff that's gone on to be treated as rather canonical. The description of the positive material plane seems rather vitalistic (still a going theory in the latter part of the nineteenth century) rather than biochemical. And the notion of anti-matter and "negative force" that is put forward doesn't seem to overlap in substance (as opposed to terminology) with modern physics.Between this and the elemental planes - which are the inner planes, the building blocks of all creation - I find it hard to take seriously that this is a world which is aptly described by a modern physics or biology textbook!</blockquote>

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