Anachronisms in Fantasy

[Starman]

Well, everyone has an their own line at which their suspension of disbelief is turned off. Eberron, nor any other D&D/d20 setting that I have seen, aims to be so realistic to me that I am not able to suspend disbelief and say, "It's just a game. I'm going to have fun playing it without worrying whether or not any of this is plausible." Now, if I came across a setting that strived to be uber-realistic, then I might have trouble swallowing some strange stuff.

Starman

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Heh, I have alwyas wanted to run a game with some modern inventions in them. I am not sure which ones I would use though.

 

[rounser]

Well, everyone has an their own line at which their suspension of disbelief is turned off.

You don't even have to go that far before thinking "yuck, I don't like this theme", like with the Illumians being a turn off for some folks in another recent thread.

 

[Starman]

You don't even have to go that far before thinking "yuck, I don't like this theme", like with the Illumians being a turn off for some folks in another recent thread.

Well, yes, but I was responding to:

You may have no trouble going down this path a bit, might even think it logical to do so. I say that doing so destroys suspension of disbelief, because if X (magical trains), why not Y (magical jet aircraft) and Z (magical burrowing machines).

Starman

 

[CRGreathouse]

The major anachronisms in my homebrew are: blown glass, the blast furnace*, and (near-)universal currency acceptance/cheap conversion.

* It's known to only one dwarven country, which treats it as a state secret.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

An alien ship crashing in a "medieval" tech-level world is not an anachronism, it's sci-fi. It is essentially what happened half-a dozen times on "Star Trek" and other series when a high tech spacefaring alien species encounters low-tech planetbound race. In "Barrier Peaks" the only difference is that magic is involved.

In real life, similar culture clashes occur when explorers into the Amazon jungles encounter the indegenes.

An anachronism would be a caveman on Earth, 50kBC with a wristwatch and eyeglasses reading Shakespearean plays...

In the first case, there is an outside source of the technology- aliens, in the second, the caveman possesses things clearly from Earth's future.

As for "X-Crawl" as a source for this genre, take a good look at one of ITS sources-Larry Niven and Steven Barnes' "Dream Park" trilogy (1981). In it, LARP-ing is an internationally televised spectator sport. Excellent stuff. You might also examine CJ Cherry's "Foreigner" books for examples of what happens when spacefaring humans encounter aliens with a quasi-feudal society.

 

[rounser]

An alien ship crashing in a "medieval" tech-level world is not an anachronism, it's sci-fi.

Maybe "meeting primitives" is not an anachronism for sci-fi, but "meeting primitives with magic" may well be. Again, depends on how much you like the meeting-of-the-themes involved in mixing genres.

 

[The Shaman]

Out of curiousity, have you read through the setting book.

Not the entire book, no - I read most of the preview material on the WotC site, and I've thumbed through the setting a couple of times in the store.

The lightning-rail reference is simply a quick snapshot of why the fantasy world of Eberron doesn't appeal to me. (To be completely clear, I don't think that makes it bad - it just makes it something that I don't care for.) Artificers, airships, the warforged - none of it is a style of fantasy that strikes a chord with me.

I have to admit I'm a bit bemused by all the people who insist that this is a "pulp" fantasy setting. I'm really not quite sure what to make of that, because when I think of "pulp" fantasy, I think of Robert E. Howard or Fritz Leiber, and I can't remember anything about the stories of either that are representative of Eberron. Care to clue me in on what I'm missing here?

 

[Gez]

Technical anachronisms doesn't bother me as much as societal anachronisms. Eberron's "industrial magic" allows it to feature fantasy version of commodities the real world had around the 1920's -- trains, zeppelins, ocean liners, etc. -- and to me, that's not too much of a problem.

But societal anachronisms (like those featured prominantly in Bruno the Bandit, which is a fine comic but wouldn't be a good setting for a serious RPG campaign), like couch potatoes watching TVs (even if said TVs are crystal balls), malls (and morons), pizza delivery boys, cheerleaders, and all that -- no. Just no.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Sudden vision of elves picketing near a human village, shouting "Save the Ents!" ....

[SHUDDER]