Do "they" exist in your world?

[Thanee]

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?

Yes, they exist.

No, they are not known (fantasy, i.e. D&D).
Yes, they are known and the knowledge very actively used (modern, i.e. shadowrun).

Bye
Thanee

 

[diaglo]

Yes, but they're MAGIC atoms, DNA, and cells.

ditto.

 

[Raven Crowking]

In my homebrew, I guess the answer would be "probably, but who is going to know that anyway?"

I mean, gluball and pentaquarks are fun, but whether you make it through magic or through technology (or both together), a particle accelerator is needed to detect them. So you first need to have people get the idea of accelerating particles.

In a world where you can cast a spell and ask the gods? Well, assuming that the gods know, their clerics are likely to know.

If you accept as a general principle that no information can be transmitted faster than the speed of light, then there are a whole host of divination spells that you suddenly can't cast. The minute you say that "these are physical laws, but with these exceptions" you have re-written physics on a fundamental basis. To put the fact simply, you can either choose to have a world in which science is "realistic" according to our modern standard models -- which implies philosophical materialism -- or a world in which magic works. If you think you have both, you're kidding yourself.

Sentient rocks? Sentient fire? I don't think so. In our scientifically plausible world, all elementals are out.

Constructs? Better have working parts in there, my friend.

Undead? Nope. Of course, you could have something alter the behavior of living things to make them seem like undead....

"Ah," you say, "my campaign world uses real world physics. I've just added a few things, such as magic."

"Ah," I say, "how can you add magic without perforce taking away an equal (or, more likely, greater) measure of real world physics?"

Fantasy worlds (as opposed to science fiction worlds), by necessity use another model. That model may include analogs of modern concepts (including particles and forces, theories, etc.), but it does not have to so long as it is consistent with observable "reality" within the confines of the game itself.

Claiming that your elementals are somehow "scientific" in the modern sense is just so much handwaving, in my opinion. And handwaving is good in terms of speculative fiction -- so long as the handwaving is internally consistent it isn't so blunt or obvious as to interfere with enjoyment of the story.

But it's still handwaving. And it's still not really science...just another form of fluff.

Daniel

 

[Silveras]

I run a world with heavy mythic elements. The Sun really is a great chariot driven through the skies by the sun god. The world really is composed of the four classical elements.

My rule of thumb: If it is an easily-observable effect (gravity, for example), it works pretty much the same way. If it took much research and/or special tools to figure out, no.

 

[jerichothebard]

IMC, we have a rule:

Physics need not apply.




Which means that, basically, things will work as you expect, unless they don't.

If you drop a baked potato, it will fall, and it will go splut. If you have sex, you might have a baby (one of our characters is about to learn this one the hard way... ). Arrows fly in predictable parabolas. Flint and iron smashed together cause a spark. Steam is hot. Plants grow towards sunlight. Water runs downhill.

However, reading words off a bit of parchment can cause a nearby tree to burst into flame, doing damage to everything within 20'. Waving that shiny new stick you found in the old temple at someone may just turn them into a toad. Members of some apparently unrelated species are interfertile. And charcoal, saltpeter, and sulpher combined together in just the right proportion make a dirty smelly mess with no redeeming usefulness whatsoever.

 

[Ferret]

Kinda, A and B do not make AB but an A and a might make an Aa. Thaats the genetics

the atomey stuff: loosley I doubt it'd ever come into play.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

"Ah," you say, "my campaign world uses real world physics. I've just added a few things, such as magic."

"Ah," I say, "how can you add magic without perforce taking away an equal (or, more likely, greater) measure of real world physics?"

Physics are the rules; Magic breaks the rules. The first doesn't have to be changed to fit the second. Consider all of the books and movies that have magical things occuring in our modern day real world (Shadowrun comes to mind). The physics of the world don't change at all in these tales; rather magic is presented either as the exception or as a part of physical law that we have not yet come to discover/understand.

As such, why can't a "fantasy world" be presented in the same manner, where everything is how we understand it scientifically, yet all the while allowing for more to exist beyond that?

 

[Ibram]

My campaign is based off the real world, the players are on a planet orbiting a star ect...

Does it come up? Not very often, though there have been hints of more advanced races.

The players once heard a legend about a weapon called the "Lesser Thunder" used by one of the biggest bads in my world to destroy a dwarven city (it was a fission bomb). There ia a race on my world that has fairly advanced tech (steam power) and has been experimenting with even more advanced tech (flying ships, primitive computers, ect).

The way I've always viewed it is Magic is just another facet of the laws of physics, though far more advanced physics then anything known.

 

[Vaxalon]

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!

LOL!

I wonder if Chinese roleplayers use their D12's?

 

[Planesdragon]

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?

No. My world is macroscopic, and aside from the world of chemistry and microscopic physics, atoms and subatomic particles simply are beneath the barriers of perception.

Of course, science can and does find them all, but that's not my world.


Oh, wait--you meant the world my characters live in? No, not really. Cells, DNA, and the law of consevation of matter/energy don't work in a world where a woman can turn herself into a griffon, or a man can throw fire from his hands.

Hmm... I wonder how much fun a spell that split a character into four elemental selves would be?