Do "they" exist in your world?

[Tinker Gnome]

When I say "they" I mean things such as Atoms, Protons, Electrons, Neutrons. Dna and cells and other stuff like that. Do those types of things exist in your world? If they do are they known about?

 

[Psion]

Hmmm... hard to say.

In my homebrew, I'd have to say yes, because I come at it from the same angle that Dragonstar does: it's the real world (slightly idealized), plus magic.

In Second World, probably not as we know them. The first world has these things, but the Second World, it simply has a same way of approximating the same ideal form "earth", using the classic four elements, warden powers, and so forth.

 

[Shemeska]

When I say "they" I mean things such as Atoms, Protons, Electrons, Neutrons. Dna and cells and other stuff like that. Do those types of things exist in your world? If they do are they known about?

Not unless I'm running a game with modern type technology in it, no. For those games and settings I am running, or could run easily:
Planescape = no not really
Shadowrun = good God yes
CoC = yep

 

[Nifft]

IMC, the universal physics is the same down to the String level. The big difference: Strings are sentient, albeit utterly alien. Thus, magic.

The Far Realms = the 10-dimensional "native" world of Strings. Thus, all the tentacles.

-- N

 

[Zappo]

On Planescape, definitely not. The outer planes are made of the beliefs of mortals, not of matter.

On other games, they may or may not exist. I'll think about it when a character poses the question and finds a mean to verify it. But I'm thinking no; matter is made of the four elements and their combinations.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

I haven't gone so far as to think about what's going on on a microscopic level in my campaign. By default, yeah, matter is probably composed of molecules -> atoms -> subatomic particles. I'm not sure where the 4 basic elements fit in, though. Of course, since it has no bearing on what the characters will experience, I don't think it's important (to me).

AR

 

[Thotas]

You know, in classical Greece, the four elements that the world was supposedly created from where differentiated in that each was made of non-divisible particles ("atoms") that resembled the four regular solids known at the time. One solid had four sides, one had six, one had eight, one had twenty. A fifth, twelve-sided, solid was later discovered, but apparently it wasn't as useful in the cosmic scheme of things. Hey wait, D&D is just like that!

 

[Wombat]

When I say "they" I mean things such as Atoms, Protons, Electrons, Neutrons. Dna and cells and other stuff like that. Do those types of things exist in your world? If they do are they known about?

Nope

No need for them

Might get down to Atoms, in the original sense, but probably not even that.

Too scientistic for my worlds

 

[El Ravager]

Oh, I suppose so. Science in my homebrewed world isn't that advanced so it doesn't come up.

 

[Ssyleia]

They definitely do - as do such things as pseudo-science like destructive time-paradoxes (casting a time stop within a time stop), dimensional paradoxes (placing a bag of holding inside a bag of holding), evolution (actually in my campaigns the yuan-ti are reknowned for trying to cheat evolution), etc...

Just doesn't make sense to an educated mind otherwise ?!?

For example, disintegrate-type spells effectively counter the molecular binding forces for an instant of time as a "scientific" explanation...