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Message: <blockquote data-quote="knasser" data-source="post: 6995650" data-attributes="member: 65151">Sorry to be this blunt, but that is flat out wrong. People have been seeking explanations for all of recorded history and they haven't been content with mythic explanations either. The ancient Greeks invented geometry and discovered parallax. Not just observed it but formulated rules for it that allowed them to calculate how far away the stars might be. If you read Thucydides, he begins saying that maybe there are gods, maybe there aren't, but that there may be natural explanations for plagues and storms. The Ancient Egyptians practiced astronomy (I don't mean astrology). And people were questioning things long before "the last few hundred years". Yes, you could get in trouble for challenging the religious dogma of the day in the 1500's, but even then things were looking shakier and it's not as if there wasn't scientific enquiry before that. The Chinese were experimenting with gun powder in the 1200's and figuring out how to make arrows explode whilst in England people were trying out different systems of crop-rotation. Crop rotation may not be quantum physics but experimenting with different sequences of plants in different fields each year to see what sequence produces the greatest yields IS scientific method and it's most definitely not just shrugging and saying "God makes things grow" and not seeking further explanation.People have always sought explanations. I bet the first time Statius told his story about Achilles being invulnerable due to the waters of the Styx some smart arse yelled out "so how come he got wounded at Troy" and thus the storyteller had to come up with an explanation about his mother holding him by the heel when she dipped him in.I think it's very flawed to take the idea that people did not know how things worked. They sought and found explanations to many things from the mechanical to the astronomical to the chemical. Read up on the tanning of leather as one example, and you'll see how involved and experimental our ancestors could be in figuring things out as much as the limits of their technology allowed them to.I  strongly disagree. In our own world, people faced with an unknown have  sought out answers. Why would they not seek out answers in some fantasy  world?And to a large extent it's not relevant what a character  may or may not ask. It is the players whose belief in the setting I have  to court, not fictional heros. If something doesn't make sense to a  player, then that's when I have a problem.</blockquote>

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