Gaming books as science texts
HalWhitewyrm said:
I will be very honest with you right now: No, beyond some basic science background info, I had not considered getting that technical. My aim is to write a gaming book, not an Ecology-lite textbook. However, I am fond of basing my material on hard fact, so I will be looking at some of these sources in order to get solid information I can then build on. As time and space permit, I may include some of that more technical info as well, given it can be toned down to fit the game system.
Most major game systems include products which fall into one of the following broad groups: core rules; adventures; optional rules expansions (these include the various race and class books for D&D, as well as the rules covering psionics, deities and the planes); setting sourcebooks and Big Lists O' Stuff (creature compendiums, books of spells, etc.)
There is a class of gaming books, almost non-existent from my experience, into which I would like to be able to place the Explorer's Guides. Whatever you choose to call this category, its main function is (or should be) to collect "real world/real science" information that might be of use to DMs who want to include more detail in some area of the game, or of their campaign setting, which relates to physics, chemistry, biology, economics, ecology or myriad other subjects. Note that's the function of the
category of books, not of every book in the category; individual books much be much more narrowly defined.
GDW's "World Tamer's Handbook" for Traveller:The New Era devotes several pages to covering the effects of entering areas of increased or decreased atmospheric pressure, specific physiological difficulties (including insufficient oxygen, oxygen poisoning, inert gas narcosis and decompression sickness), a 5-stage acclimatization process for characters, aerodynamic performance of aircraft in thin and dense atmospheres...
True, it would make no sense to cover that particular list of elements for a D&D book, where characters rarely expect to visit different planets and may safely be assumed to be fully acclimatized to their own environment, whatever it may be. But the 'World Tamer' book is a good example of the kind of book I like to see in this category: it anticipates some "real world/real science" considerations of moving through a potentially alien environment, and provides the DM with the tools he needs to easily deal with those things within the framework of the game mechanics.
If all the 'World Tamer' book did was to tell the DM 'Characters may experience various types of physiological difficulty in unfamiliar atmospheres; see the recommended reading list to find the factual data you need to make up your own rules to cover this' then the book would not be very useful. For me, the whole reason to buy such a book is to take advantage of the fact that someone has already done that work for me.
As has already been discussed in the thread from which diverged for this message, it is possible (and quite undesirable) to take this fact-based nitpicking too far. No one wants the game reduced to a science project. But there is no reason for books of this sort to exist if they don't at least stretch in that direction.
Not every DM will care to deal with equiment deterioration, so that sort of thing can be briefly mentioned without providing detail. But every DM [who buys this book] is going to want to know what the longterm effects of temperature and humidity are on characters, so heat stress, wind chill and likely day/night temperature varition for the environment should be covered in more depth. A DM who doesn't care about these things, and is only interested in, say, 64 pages of new jungle monsters, and tropics-based feats and prestige classes, should be buying a different book.
