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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 2421999" data-attributes="member: 7240">I would accept this argument about magic in a different game system. But D&D is a fundamentally modernist system that does not accept paradox. The whole premise of D20 is to rub out paradox and grey areas. If we were designing a MMS:WE game, I could buy into this argument. But 3.x D&D is about paradox-proofing. To wit, casting Fireball always produces a Fireball except under clearly articulated conditions. Also, I think you are missing my point. You are confusing the inability to explain why things cause to eachother with the inability to observe the causation. The fact that you can't explain how casting Fireball causes a Fireball doesn't mean that you can't know that casting Fireball causes a Fireball. There is no option C. Either the perceived pattern is predictive or it's not. The rules tell us unambiguously what causes something to happen. The fact that they don't cover how the thing happens does not alter the fact that they unambiguously delineate causation. But most theories of physics, that were highly predictive, weren't just premised on unknown or unknowable things, they were often premised on false things. The fact is that the Ptolmaic model of the solar system was largely predictive, as was Newton's idea of gravitation through action at a distance. Physical models can store predictive physical laws, even if the models, themselves, are un- or incompletely true.First of all, no, I'm absolutely not stating that all magic in D&D must operate like the magic rules described by WOTC so far. I don't know where you are getting this from what I have written. I think that you have become hung up on how the word "magic" was used during the 18th through 20th centuries to come up with an ahistorical view of the term. In your MMS:WE research, I'm sure you got the sense that this is inconsistent with how medieval and early modern people thought about magic. The only place you are going to find anything like this "black box" theory is in 16th century discussions of the "supernatural."Furthermore, we're talking about D20 here. We're not talking about a mystical, metaphysical, paradox-ridden game. Your ideas about magic, while possibly appropriate for some other game system, are completely at odds with everything the rules tell us about D&D magic. One transhistorical truth I am going to stick with, though, is the idea that human beings like to order the universe around them. We like to assume events around us are predictable even when they are not. Theology, galenic medicine, the list is near-infinite. People build theories of causation to explain events around them. The need to do this is so powerful that people will insist models are predictive despite scanty evidence and repeated failures. That's because it is in our nature to intellectually order the phenomena around us. So, in any fantasy world worth its salt, the inhabitants will have at least one (and probably more) theories of physics. Now, I have faith in the inhabitants of these worlds that however profoundly their particular models differ structurally and rhetorically from one another, all of these models will include physical laws that reflect easily replicable empirical data. The spells in the PHB are practically the very definition of this kind of data. I don't know what you mean here.Alright, we now know the first property of this force: it is actively hostile to observation. Now, we know two things about gravity in this hypothetical game world. My point is that you can still have physical laws without the ability to investigate precisely how they operate. Most physicists today would tell you that in this respect, despite our great gains in knowledge, we are still in that situation. The scientific question remains, thought: why does A always cause B? There are only two available classes of answers: pattern or coincidence. The fact that A seems to cause B in a different way every time does not nullify the existence of a pattern -- it just poses new and interesting questions about the pattern's nature. Sorry but we are moderns. Koans don't count as answers. Noam Chomsky will tell you that just because you made that sentence does not mean that it conveys appreciable meaning. Magic is reality. The real is things that really happen. Magic really happens in the D&D world. It can't be separate from reality because it's affecting and being affected by reality all the time.What you are doing is talking like a 16th century Italian theologian about the supernatural. And you are hitting the same problem they did. Once you acknowledge that the supernatural is directly or indirectly affecting everything all the time, physics/natural philosophy has no place. Everything is contaminated by that which is not subject to investigation.A society cannot sustain thinking about its environment in this way. Other systems of thought inevtiably supplant one like this because people wish to comprehend and order their world. I'm fine with that. That's still causation.But if fireballs always go off when someone casts the spell and never go off when no one casts the spell, one of two things must be true: casting the spell has a causal relationship to the fireball OR it's just random chance. Come at me with more examples. Every single one of them will fall into one category or the other. Nothing will fall outside them. And the physicist will simply ask: why does this keep happening? He will contruct an explanation to the best of his ability and this explanation will become part of a model of physics. The model will be incomplete but it will be predictive and physics will be born.Psychologists, anthropologists, art historians and various others do study people's tastes in art and do develop weak predictive models from these studies that allow them to deduce things about cultures that turn out to have predictive value. To be human is to think systematically, to order and predict. People will develop systems of physics that explain empirical data because they are members of the human race.Well, if things cannot be empirically studied, then they have to be studied Platonically, through the construction of thought experiments and dialectical reasoning. Empiricism is not even a requirement for physics at the investigatory stage as long as the outcome of the investigation helps to create predictive models. Many systems of physics have been developed in just this way.Nope. People doing quantum physics today would argue that the operation of consistent, predictable physical laws is in no way inconsistent with an anarchic, unpredictable universe.I really think you are getting hung up on a definitions of magic and science reflect neither historical understandings of the terms nor modern academic understandings of the terms. You should read Frances Yates on the scientific revolution. The magic-science dichotemy is torn to shreds in her works. She makes the compelling argument that the Scientific Revolution was caused by an increased elite belief in magic. And as our understanding of chemistry, physics and metallurgy becomes more complete, we will learn to produce metallic products we cannot today produce. But that won't mean that we didn't have a functional set of physics with which to practice metallurgy today any more than the fact that we know about atoms and molecules now erases the fact that people in the past made metal products with a less complete idea of physics than we have today.No. That power comes from being DM, not because of the special power of the word "magic" -- he has exactly the same power over parts of the rules that refer to magic as he does over the parts that don't. As a GM, I find it useful to know what the general physical principles of my world are. It helps me make coherent places and stories. It also gives my players an incentive to investigate things because they can rely on me to be producing a coherent product. It doesn't take that much work to figure out the general physics of your world and, once you know them, it allows you to improvise more easily and consistently.And this takes me right back to the point I was making at the start of the argument. Your style leads to the risk that the players will begin to observe that the things near them are governed by one set of physical laws and the things further away are governed by a different set. Unless you want to make subjectivity and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle the themes you are foregrounding in your campaign, this is something to be avoided.</blockquote>

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