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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 3892666" data-attributes="member: 467">... alternatively, Athiest Fantasy.I have been watching a lot of History/Discovery Channel and the processes by which our world came to be the way it is are both mystifying and inspiring.  The confluence of chance and physical laws have created a deeply complex, wonderous world teaming with life.  What's more, it has done so a number of times throughout the history of the world.  Applying this power and wonder to a fantasy world should be easy, no?So, here's the deal: no gods or divine intervention.  Magic is a fundamental aspect of nature, the fifth fundamental force, if you will.  Creatures can and will adapt to, and therefore evolve with respect to, magic just as they do to other environmental factors and pressures.  The point is to get a rough view of the evolutionary and geological history of a "typical" D&D world.The most visible and perhaps easiest issue to deal with is multiple sentient species.  In our own evolutionary history, there were multiple species sharing the planet at the same time (even if homo sapiens eventually won out).  Perhaps a single "progenitor" species spread acros the globe relatively early on but geological upheaval and/or climate change isolated individual groups in distinct environments for an extensive period of time.  humans and halflings might have developed side by side, while elves (and the various subspecies) developed under different conditions (perhaps in a region with a higher level of ambient magic), and so on for dwarves, goblinoids, orcs/ogres and giant-kin (and so on).  Eventually the conditions that isolated the groups would end or be overcome and the races would come into contact with one another, but well after any individual species was able to drive another to extinction.Another core lement that must be addressed but isn't as easy to explain are the iconic monsters of fantasy: dragons.  Their evolution can be assumed in much the same way as the various sentient species', but with a much greater influence by magic in their evolution.  Perhaps dragons were once the apex predators of a pre-mammalian world analagous to the age of dinosaurs, but managed to survive the great mass extinction -- enough to continue on without being so prevalent as to hinder the other species' development.  Too many dragons and the proto-demi-humans would never have a chance to flourish, and too few and they would die out long before they could ever be a threat in the game.That's enough for now.  Thoughts?</blockquote>

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