Explain to me again, how we know the Earth to be banana shaped.

[Delazar]

Why stop there?

I like a flat world carried on the backs of 4 giant elephants, which are in turn carried on the back of a giant turtle swimming through space.

Nah, that's just silly, no one would ever go with that...

 

[Celebrim]

I still think that there is some sort of physics approximation going on in the D&D world unless magic works to override it.

I guess that depends on what you mean by a 'physics approximation' or how you imagine magic overrides it. If by 'physics approximation', you mean that the world has all the physical laws that this world has, then those physical laws preclude magic (no action at a distance, physical quantities like mass, energy, and momentum have to be conserved, etc.).

It's worth noting that even in the real world, when 'magic' was believed to be a thing, the believers in magic were not so stupid as to believe in or theorize world that D&D superficially supports, namely - one were things happen just because a mortal wills them to happen. The sort of magic D&D takes for granted, isn't even a prominent feature of the superstitions of this world. The 'sorcerer' with his supernatural background - see for example Merlin's supposed parentage - makes sense in real world magical tradition. Nothing is more obvious than that mortals lack the power to command the world to behave as they wish, but if you aren't truly human, well then maybe anything is possible. But the 'wizard' of D&D just doesn't really have precedence outside of D&D. D&D's wizard is really much more of a scientist, but a scientist of a world were such 'physics' as they have allows for magic.

As such, we know that the reality of the setting precludes physics as we know it. However the physics of the D&D setting work, they allow a person with a disciplined mind and arcane knowledge to simply think or will into being changes in their external reality - changes which violate physics as we know it in multiple ways. Real world physics are difficult or impossible to entangle. One aspect of them tends to imply other aspects of them. All the disparate 'laws' we observe are actually specific manifestations of deeper underlying truths about the composition of matter and energy and the structure of space and time. To fundamentally alter one portion if it would force us to fundamentally alter the whole thing. The more you think about the D&D universe, the more you realize that the ultimate truths about how the world is arranged, what the world is made of, and how things behave have been fundamentally changed. We should not expect physics as we know them to survive. All we can definitely say is that at a very broad level, the world superficially appears to be the same.

This offers a very good explanation for why the game's rules as physics sometimes produce different results than what we'd expect if those physics were actually the physics of this world. If falling is generally less dangerous in the D&D world than this world, it could be that it isn't that the falling rules are bad, but that is precisely how gravity differs in the D&D world compared to our expectations set in this one.

 

[tomBitonti]

While those are potential explanations, D&D typically offers up any such differences in the fluff for the settings. I still think that there is some sort of physics approximation going on in the D&D world unless magic works to override it.

Yeah, things have to stay close to every day physics, or people wouldn't be able to operate in the game world. In simple simple circumstances players rely on basic physics working.

The discussion seems to be away from local linear approximations. There are a lot of shapes that are locally flat! A fall hurts; how much is a detail. Most Blinks are between the same frames of reference. A Wall of Stone creates matter, but a Sphere of Annhilation destroys it, and neither really upsets the balance too terribly much.

Thx!
TomB

 

[Jhaelen]

What I want to avoid is situations where (for example) the world is static and the sun settles on a mountain top at the end of the day and extinguishes itself (as in KRussellB's delightful idea above) and then a player says: "so how come there are seasons?"

While I see why a player might ask that, it's not a question that any _character_ born in the setting would ever come up with.

Why should there be any link between the path of the sun (whatever the sun is) and the existence of seasons?

There's plenty of potential explanations in a mythical setting. One of the simplest is that there's a sun god and deities for each of the seasons. Another fairly common idea is the concept of different faerie courts aligned to seasons that are at constant war with each other: if the winter court currently has the upper hand, it gets colder, if the summer court is (temporarily) victorious, it gets warmer. Regular seasons may be the result of a truce between the courts, having arrived at a contract that gives each court an equal share of time to rule.

In one of my D&D 1e campaigns, the sun god was put to sleep by a rival god resulting in eternal darkness. That didn't cause the world to fall into eternal winter, because seasons were not part of the sun gods domains. I did rule that it negatively affected plants, but even that isn't a given: There's no reason why a Nature/plant godess couldn't keep plants alive and let them thrive without sunlight.

I do agree, that you need to be consistent to a certain degree, though. It's fine to make up all kinds of rules how or why your setting works the way it does, but generally these rules shouldn't change at your whim, _unless_ that's part of your idea (i.e. it's a system ruled by chaos).

As a final thought, it's even possible to have a perfectly correct scientific explanation for an (apparently) completely chaotic system. E.g. I recently read the 'The Three-Body problem' by Liu Cixin which features a world in a system with three suns. The completely unpredictable movement of these suns results in equally unpredictable seasons, periods of stability, ice ages, etc. without any discernible patterns.
It also describes a few phenomena caused by objects from higher dimensions that seem like magic, although they can be explained scientifically, if you get the right idea.
Or remember Arthur C. Clarke's famous quote: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

 

[ArchfiendBobbie]

One of the ways we know the Earth is round is because all measurements attempting to approximate the Earth's shape, going back far enough they may even predate writing in some cultures, show it to be round. I think it was by the era of the Ancient Greeks that we had enough of an idea of Pi to approximate the Earth's size. Many early estimates were not that far off from modern knowledge.

Now, I'm leaving out the physics I've seen bantered around saying the Earth is flat and that it's only round as far as we can tell because of the curvature of space. I don't understand the terms they use and the math leaves me seeking the nearest exit. But you might have fun implementing a similar concept just to mess with players.

Unless you're going for that mindscrew concept I just brought up, one thing you'll have to keep in mind is that by the typical medieval-like era, anyone educated is probably going to not only know the shape of the world, but have a pretty accurate idea of how big it is. Magic just means their accuracy might be even higher and they also might have pretty accurate world maps.

 

[Lylandra]

Yeah, things have to stay close to every day physics, or people wouldn't be able to operate in the game world. In simple simple circumstances players rely on basic physics working.

The discussion seems to be away from local linear approximations. There are a lot of shapes that are locally flat! A fall hurts; how much is a detail. Most Blinks are between the same frames of reference. A Wall of Stone creates matter, but a Sphere of Annhilation destroys it, and neither really upsets the balance too terribly much.

Thx!
TomB

I'd go for that as well. You can easily explain everything seemingly "unphysical" with magic being pure energy (from another plane or via ley lines etc.) brought into shape. Creating mass requires energy. Changing a being on a molecular level (i.e. polymorph or size change) requires energy. As you can manipulate almost everything with energy it might work just fine.
You don't need a "stellar sun" to have light, though. Having a divine sphere orbiting a sole planet would work just fine. I just wouldn't change basic assumptions of mechanics or you could easily run into different problems

And yes, I know that "pure energy" is unphysical as well, but most people won't go that far to question it

 

[tomBitonti]

I do think one has to be careful about changes to seasons: The calendar and major holidays are built around them. And, seasons have two very definite observable features: The day is shorter, and the sun is lower in the sky. These would be common knowledge (unless the world is always overcast, or you live underground!) I'm thinking, most games hew to our current calendar and seasons to avoid complications.

Also, we should be clear about when we are talking about an outcome (days are shorter) and the reasons for that outcome (inclination of the axis of rotation vs the sun god is jealous and is rushing to get home to hubby).

But, a lot of this doesn't matter for many games. Some track time-of-year, but a lot don't. A lot don't put in weather as a significant detail. A lot of players are fine to live within the game rules, even though those game rules stomp up and down on physics. I'm a frequent quibbler, but have realized that quibbling is disruptive. One needs to play the game and have fun with friends, and leave out detailed physics except when other players are receptive.

Thx!
TomB

 

[tomBitonti]

Also, this sense of explaining how things works is a very modern outlook. Historically, at least until the last few hundred years, folks did not understand how things worked, and would probably be severely chastised for asking questions. That's not to say they didn't have good practical skills; its the understanding part which was absent.

Thx!
TomB

 

[MarkB]

You don't have to stick to real-world laws, that is true. But you do have to preserve internal consistency. If illness is the result of malevolent spirits or bad humours, that's fine. If you say the world is flat but then still have things sink below the horizon, then that's not. My goal isn't to adhere to what we know are the rules of our world, but to avoid creating internal inconsistency. What I want to avoid is situations where (for example) the world is static and the sun settles on a mountain top at the end of the day and extinguishes itself (as in KRussellB's delightful idea above) and then a player says: "so how come there are seasons?"

"Because the battle between the Summer and Winter courts of the Fae is a never-ending cycle. Pray that it remains so."

 

[tomBitonti]

"Because the battle between the Summer and Winter courts of the Fae is a never-ending cycle. Pray that it remains so."

Haha, then you could do a story where an emissary of the court of Fae (take your pick: Summer or Winter) is captured and causes an extended season ala Frozen and characters are called in to rescue the emissary.

Thx!
TomB