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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zander" data-source="post: 3014769" data-attributes="member: 1364">When one ends and the next begins (if indeed there is such a point) or what function each played isn't terribly important. What is, is that WotC chooses to disregard fantasy's past. The reason that fantasy/mythology have "similar trappings" is that mythological (and later folkloric) tales over the centuries and millennia have had to satisfy each new generation. Through that screening process, current fantasy has incorporated the best of what the past has to offer. That's not to say that modern contributions can't be made to it, only that what is extant should not be discarded lightly.   Magic (divine or spiritual) probably came about as an explanation of natural phenomena by primitive man to 'explain' the previously unexplained. In fact, it offers no explanation at all. Therefore, in your example, a fatal blow has indeed been dealt to one of the laws of thermodynamics. In a fantasy setting that tried to include science, the creator (DM in the case of D&D) would have to rewrite scientific principles to make them fit the magic and fabulous creatures of the fictional realm. That may not be a problem while the number of scientific principles that need to be rewritten remains small. But in a fantasy world with as much diverse magic and and many fabulous beasts as found in most D&D settings, it's probable that it will become impossible to keep the revised scientific principles consistent. They will very soon be logically impossible to reconcile.  That's good. It will save me from making unnecessary oversimplifications. Nonetheless, you could have all the mathematics you liked in a fantasy setting for the reason that by itself, i.e. in the absence of science, mathematics doesn't falsify anything whether fantastic or not. Knights on bicycles? Twain is more than a little mocking Le Morte D'Arture and the Faerie Queene. There are indeed overlaps between the genres. I've never doubted that. The trouble is that fantasy, though old, is also fragile. What defines fantasy is in large part visual. If you cross it with other genres, you tend to get a hybrid that more closely resembles that other genre. Mix science fiction and fantasy as in Star Wars and you get what most people would describe as science fiction.In a free market, that's de facto not true. If large numbers of people are unhappy about something, say D&D gamers about gnomes, that thing will have to be corrected, not the people.</blockquote>

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