Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
First Footage of D&D Honor Among Thieves: Dungeons, Dragons, Teamwork, With Superhero Vibe
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8624896" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>There'll always be a bit of that, but I think a lot of it is just thinking logically about stuff and applying basic principles.</p><p></p><p>You see this is SF/fantasy books as well, where it's clear they've thought through some stuff but not other bits. There's one popular, almost beloved contemporary SF writer who I just cannot read because they make occasional but severe science errors, usually whilst totally unnecessarily describing the scientific basis of something - like, if they'd just said nothing, it could just be fancy tech, but they explain it, and it's like "NO". The most frustrating example with their work was needlessly explaining a device which supposedly worked as a long-term power supply under certain circumstances, and it was just a straight-up perpetual motion machine. You could see why they might not get that because they seemed to be thinking it was analogous to a motion-powered watch, but they clearly didn't understand the frame of reference, and more importantly, had forgotten about basic thermodynamics. There was also an alien race who were supposed to be super-stealthy but had no sense of hearing (so no ability to accurately gauge how much noise they were making, vibration sense alone won't cut it) and literally had bright flashing lights on their heads. Sigh.</p><p></p><p>That was, I admit, nowhere near as egregious as another book I read the same year, which was all about an engine which allowed a craft to reach a significant fraction of the speed of light (like 0.2c), and how this could be used as a weapon, and the whole book seemed to illustrate at least a basic understanding of relativity, the speed of light, etc. then suddenly at the end, the author seems to forget all that, and the engine powers up and<em> instantly</em> destroys a bunch of stuff like half a solar-system away from it. And the description is really clear. The same author literally had messages being time-delayed by distance and so on earlier in the book, yet this drive (which doesn't emit tachyons or anything, it's just a powerful engine) blows up all this stuff halfway across the solar system, and the person in the ship witnesses it in real time (i.e. drive fires, they immediately see stuff being blown up). It's like the author thought the drive exhaust was superluminal - despite it clearly not being from earlier descriptions - but even that doesn't explain how the person on the ship would witness it. Almost feels like they had a science advisor who gave up at the end of the book or something. Bizarre.</p><p></p><p>That's just basic physics stuff from school though.</p><p></p><p>Training-wise there is one thing that regularly gets me in SF, and sometimes even in non-SF, and that's carbon dating. If anyone reading this is ever going to write about carbon dating, please know two things:</p><p></p><p>1) IT ONLY WORKS ON EARTH. Not on any other planets. Yeah not even ones in the solar system.</p><p></p><p>2) It only goes back accurately-ish for about 50,000 years.</p><p></p><p>You could develop a carbon-dating system for another planet, <em>maybe</em>, but only if it had a carbon-based biosphere, and you put in a huge amount of effort working out the profile of carbon-14 in that biosphere (we have to basically calibrate by tree rings and stuff).</p><p></p><p>Most other dating methods also won't work. In general it is severely non-trivial to date things. And you see some fairly respected SF authors casually having people carbon-date stuff on like, Mars, or an alien world they've just arrived on an it's like "argh no". Why not just make up something, like a "The age-analysis systems suggest X is 500,000 years old!". We don't know how your age-analysis systems work, maybe that's viable (I mean probably not but I can't prove it!).</p><p></p><p>Back on RPGs there's nothing worse than a trap which either:</p><p></p><p>A) Obviously wouldn't work because of basic physics or other principles (we saw one discussed at some length a while back here).</p><p></p><p>or</p><p></p><p>B) Wouldn't be viable in the context of the rest of the dungeon (i.e. hobgoblins patrol through here every two hours, but the trap has no arm/disarm mechanism and a massive trigger - usually this is just the result of someone thinking a trap was "cool" and failing to consider how it would actually work).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8624896, member: 18"] There'll always be a bit of that, but I think a lot of it is just thinking logically about stuff and applying basic principles. You see this is SF/fantasy books as well, where it's clear they've thought through some stuff but not other bits. There's one popular, almost beloved contemporary SF writer who I just cannot read because they make occasional but severe science errors, usually whilst totally unnecessarily describing the scientific basis of something - like, if they'd just said nothing, it could just be fancy tech, but they explain it, and it's like "NO". The most frustrating example with their work was needlessly explaining a device which supposedly worked as a long-term power supply under certain circumstances, and it was just a straight-up perpetual motion machine. You could see why they might not get that because they seemed to be thinking it was analogous to a motion-powered watch, but they clearly didn't understand the frame of reference, and more importantly, had forgotten about basic thermodynamics. There was also an alien race who were supposed to be super-stealthy but had no sense of hearing (so no ability to accurately gauge how much noise they were making, vibration sense alone won't cut it) and literally had bright flashing lights on their heads. Sigh. That was, I admit, nowhere near as egregious as another book I read the same year, which was all about an engine which allowed a craft to reach a significant fraction of the speed of light (like 0.2c), and how this could be used as a weapon, and the whole book seemed to illustrate at least a basic understanding of relativity, the speed of light, etc. then suddenly at the end, the author seems to forget all that, and the engine powers up and[I] instantly[/I] destroys a bunch of stuff like half a solar-system away from it. And the description is really clear. The same author literally had messages being time-delayed by distance and so on earlier in the book, yet this drive (which doesn't emit tachyons or anything, it's just a powerful engine) blows up all this stuff halfway across the solar system, and the person in the ship witnesses it in real time (i.e. drive fires, they immediately see stuff being blown up). It's like the author thought the drive exhaust was superluminal - despite it clearly not being from earlier descriptions - but even that doesn't explain how the person on the ship would witness it. Almost feels like they had a science advisor who gave up at the end of the book or something. Bizarre. That's just basic physics stuff from school though. Training-wise there is one thing that regularly gets me in SF, and sometimes even in non-SF, and that's carbon dating. If anyone reading this is ever going to write about carbon dating, please know two things: 1) IT ONLY WORKS ON EARTH. Not on any other planets. Yeah not even ones in the solar system. 2) It only goes back accurately-ish for about 50,000 years. You could develop a carbon-dating system for another planet, [I]maybe[/I], but only if it had a carbon-based biosphere, and you put in a huge amount of effort working out the profile of carbon-14 in that biosphere (we have to basically calibrate by tree rings and stuff). Most other dating methods also won't work. In general it is severely non-trivial to date things. And you see some fairly respected SF authors casually having people carbon-date stuff on like, Mars, or an alien world they've just arrived on an it's like "argh no". Why not just make up something, like a "The age-analysis systems suggest X is 500,000 years old!". We don't know how your age-analysis systems work, maybe that's viable (I mean probably not but I can't prove it!). Back on RPGs there's nothing worse than a trap which either: A) Obviously wouldn't work because of basic physics or other principles (we saw one discussed at some length a while back here). or B) Wouldn't be viable in the context of the rest of the dungeon (i.e. hobgoblins patrol through here every two hours, but the trap has no arm/disarm mechanism and a massive trigger - usually this is just the result of someone thinking a trap was "cool" and failing to consider how it would actually work). [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
First Footage of D&D Honor Among Thieves: Dungeons, Dragons, Teamwork, With Superhero Vibe
Top