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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8829960" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think this is missing my point and [USER=205]@TwoSix[/USER]'s point.Gygax treats jumping as normal. But he also suggests, as a credible element of a D&amp;D campaign, that a high level fighter can mount a pegasus and fly to the moon: &quot;suppose that you decide that there is a breathable atmosphere which extends from the earth to the moon, and that&nbsp; . . . one beyond the normal limits of earth's atmosphere, gravity and resistance are such that speed increases dramatically, and the whole journey will take but a few days&quot; (AD&amp;D DMG p 58).There's no way I know of in which that can be presented as genuinely coherent: no flying creature can travel 100,000 km per day, no matter how little the gravity; but if the moon is much closer than - given its size in the sky is as normal - it must be much smaller - but then it would have no significant gravitational pull of its own - and that's before we even consider what holds the atmosphere in place - etc.There's no &quot;world as physics&quot; account of this to be given, any more than that can be done for REH or HPL-ish creatures who travel through space on magical wings (as in The Tower of the Elephant). These aren't quasi-scientific explanations; they are all just tropes. Yet Gygax was able to run very successful RPG campaigns; and so have many more of us who have relied on tropes and genre as the underpinnings of our settings.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8829960, member: 42582"] I think this is missing my point and [USER=205]@TwoSix[/USER]'s point. Gygax treats jumping as normal. But he also suggests, as a credible element of a D&D campaign, that a high level fighter can mount a pegasus and fly to the moon: "suppose that you decide that there is a breathable atmosphere which extends from the earth to the moon, and that . . . one beyond the normal limits of earth's atmosphere, gravity and resistance are such that speed increases dramatically, and the whole journey will take but a few days" (AD&D DMG p 58). There's no way I know of in which that can be presented as genuinely coherent: no flying creature can travel 100,000 km per day, no matter how little the gravity; but if the moon is much closer than - given its size in the sky is as normal - it must be much smaller - but then it would have no significant gravitational pull of its own - and that's before we even consider what holds the atmosphere in place - etc. There's no "world as physics" account of this to be given, any more than that can be done for REH or HPL-ish creatures who travel through space on magical wings (as in The Tower of the Elephant). These aren't quasi-scientific explanations; they are all just tropes. Yet Gygax was able to run very successful RPG campaigns; and so have many more of us who have relied on tropes and genre as the underpinnings of our settings. [/QUOTE]

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