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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 3570898" data-attributes="member: 7240">But given that this thread was posted in the General RPG Discussion forum rather than the Fantasy and Sci-Fi forum, I have interpreted it as asking questions about game worlds.All I disagree with in this paragraph is your terminology. “Physically reasonable,” and “default physical reality” imply that resemblance to our world is the normative standard for deciding if a fantasy world is realistic. All I’m suggesting is that internal consistency is an equally valid standard. But yes, generally, we agree in practice if not terminology that worlds should make sense on their own terms.My problem with this statement, again, is that you define “realism” as resemblance to our world; I think that this is a possible standard for assessing if a setting is realistic. But I think that an equally reasonable standard is internal consistency. I care deeply about realism in my games and I have players who also care about being in a setting where they can kick all the walls and not have the facades fall down. My players and I feel that internal consistency is the way to give a world a realistic feel and enable us to suspend disbelief more effectively. All I am asking for in this thread is an acknowledgment that this is a legitimate way of giving players a feeling of realism. When I am a player in a world that resembles ours but is not self-consistent, I lose my suspension of disbelief. So, I find it kind of absurd for people to define worlds that give me a feeling of realism as “unrealistic” and worlds that don’t as “realistic.” Why is it important for people who freely admit that there is a radical disjuncture between their world’s physics and the RAW to label their world building principles as “realistic” and others’ world building principles as “unrealistic?” Why can’t we use language generous enough to admit that there is more than one approach to seeking and delivering realism?You can’t create a map that uses real world physics and magic because real world physics are incompatible with magic. But what you can do, however, is create a map that makes sense in our world’s physics and also makes sense in D&D physics. And, like you, I prefer such maps, to a point. While I like local maps that could work well in either our physics or D&D’s, I do not like world maps that do. I prefer world maps that depict flat worlds with strange things at their edges like encircling mountains, burning jungles and infinite cliffs. But that’s just a matter of taste.</blockquote>

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