How real is your fantasy?

[BiggusGeekus]

Does the population in your fantasy world reflect Real World populations of a comparable era?

Yes. My single complaint about the very excellent book "Magical Mideval Society: Western Europe" is that it didn't come out before I spent about six months making sure my populations were right. Buy this book ASAP.

Does the technology (magical or scientific) match Real World methods and discovery?

It attempts to, however magic is factored in. For example, muskets are seen as a fool's weapon. There are enough fire-based monsters and wizards who can touch off gunpowder from a distance that having a gunpowder-based wepon is my homebrew equvalent of "bringing a knife to a gunfight".

Do road systems, trade routes, shipping lanes, etc. match Real World logistics?

Yes. It's the reason why two of the nations exist (one should have been conquered but is too remote, the other is strategically placed and acts as a "middleman" for a lot of commerce).

Do political systems and political borders match Real World equivalents?

They're a little on the large side. This was meta-gaming. I knew my players weren't up for chugging through dozens of small nations and baronies, trying to figure out why they were different. So I fudged on this one.

Does the geographic features of your world match Real World geographic features?

The geology was designed by a guy with a PhD in geophyics. I assume he got it right.

Has your game ever stumbled during play because some social/economic/political/geographic aspect of the campaign world didn't properly match a Player's Real World understanding of it?

Never. An advantage of going through all the detail work is that it makes the suspension of disbelief very easy for the players and therefore minor slip-ups go unnoticed.

 

[the Jester]

I endeavor to keep the world internally consistent, and to have 'rules' that lead to different logical conclusions for the universe at large.

The physics is different, for instance; you have magic; the world is on the inside surface of a titanic air bubble in an infinite ocean. Etc.

 

[pensiv]

Does the population in your fantasy world reflect Real World populations of a comparable era?

Well, the various regions of my fantasy world have some analogies in our world and I'm trying to match them up with populations. However, since I'm mixing up certain things, one can't really point to my fantasy world and say, this accurately represents a specific earth era.

Does the technology (magical or scientific) match Real World methods and discovery?

Yes.

Do road systems, trade routes, shipping lanes, etc. match Real World logistics?

Yes, at least as close as I am able to approximate.

Do political systems and political borders match Real World equivalents?

Well the cultures and political entities are not the same as those in the Real World, so I can't see how their borders would match, but the political systems are logical ones.

Does the geographic features of your world match Real World geographic features?

It is a fantasy world, with an imaginary map. I've done my best to make the map "make sense" in that the climate regions, terrain features, etc. are approximate to earth systems. I've even imagined the effects of dynamic plate tectonics in relation to mountain ranges, land elevations, islands, and coastlines.

Has your game ever stumbled during play because some social/economic/political/geographic aspect of the campaign world didn't properly match a Player's Real World understanding of it?

Unfortunately I haven't yet started a game in it, but hopefully this won't be an issue. However, my development of the world has stumbled and been revised as my own knowledge of those aspects of our own world has changed.

 

[Dogbrain]

"Match the real world" in the boneheaded sense of "an exact copy of our history"? No. In the sense of "Don't let braindead game conventions dictate over something that makes more internal sense to the setting"? Yes.

 

[Orius]

Who knows?

I don't have the most realistic world. I've got a flat world with three moons, so right off the bat it's not the same as the real world.

Really, on smaller scales it seems more realistic, it's only when you start looking at the world from a large scale perspective that you really notice the difference. For example, none of my players have ever learned the world is flat, as it never came up in a game.

I don't really pay much attention to population, as I stated over in Gez's thread about the same subject. My players don't seem to care much either.

Technology follows about the typical D&D late medieval level of tech. I'm playing a fairly standard game, after all. But I generally try to keep technology advancing at a steady pace, I find worlds where nothing happens and nothing is discovered over the course of a thousand years or so to be quite unrealistic and unbelievable. So in my world, the earliest firearms are in the process of being developed, but not quite available to the PCs yet.

Many major settlements exist on the water, lakes, rivers, etc, since major waterways are typically used for commerce. I connect the major cities together with roads where they aren't connected by river, and often, there are roads along the rivers as well. Along the roads I tend to plant towns and villages, since it makes sense for communities to spring up along roads if they're not on a major body of water somewhere. The only other place where communities tend to spring up is near valuable resources such as a mine.

I keep politics fairly simplified. I have a more or less simplified feudal system for some kindgoms, at the top is the king, followed buy dukes, counts, and barons at the bottom. Yeah, I know there were more layers to medieval society, but I don't feel the need to go that much in depth.

Borders tend to follow terrain like rivers and mountains, which is pretty much the same in the real world.

Geography isn't overly real. I don't cares if it makes a lot of geological sense, I tend to plop down mountain ranges wherever I want them. Hell, the world's overgod lives at the center of the map, atop the tallest mountain in the world. That mountain is at the center of a deep, stormy sea, and that sea is surrounded by a huge mountain range that forms a complete loop. Yeah, not much realism there.

However, I don't stuick jungles next to tundras and such. I have a seemingly realistic climate, it's just that the climate bands are set and maintained by the overgod. I have a gereral idea of where to stick arctic, tropical and temperate stuff, and which are are humid or arid.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Does the population in your fantasy world reflect Real World populations of a comparable era?

Well, I try - Urbis is strongly inspired by the Industrial Age, and as a result the more advanced regions are getting crowded. Still, there had to be quite a few remaining wilderness areas where all those D&D monsters could live that don't fit into an urban environment...

Does the technology (magical or scientific) match Real World methods and discovery?

Well, something like Scientific Thought is slowly emerging, and many academics are trying to understand the world rationally. Still, rationality is mixed with at least as much silliness as in our own 19th century...

In general, magic has displaced technology, since it can do most things better and cheaper (especially with some novel procedures I came up with that allow for industrial-scale spellcasting...) - and quite a few things that technology can't (like turning invisible or teleporting to other planets, for example).

Do road systems, trade routes, shipping lanes, etc. match Real World logistics?

I plan to, though I still have to do some developing on this. While teleportation can move small valuable things better, most bulk trade still goes by ship or rail...

Do political systems and political borders match Real World equivalents?

There are rather more city-states than in our world. This is intentional - after all, there's a reason the tagline for the setting is "A World of Cities"...

Most cities have rather large protectorates from which they can harvest resources. Each protectorate is rather centralized, with most business going on in the city itself.

Does the geographic features of your world match Real World geographic features?

I try to, though there are a few magically created oddities, and I have taken considerable liberty with the other planets in the same solar system...

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I'd go with likely no. I don't like the headache of creating a game world most of the time. When I do create a world, it only has whatever I need to move the plot and adventure forward.

One of the first worlds I designed, all I knew about it was that it was a country split into baronies. I needed this because my plot revolved around a baron who wanted to take over the country. I also knew the adventure started in a small town near his manor house, and there was a forest nearby where orcs lived. Oh, and that the town ate meat and raised cows. Turns out that game didn't last long enough for me to care or know anything else about the world other than "it conforms to all the rules and standards in the core rule books."

I don't go for intense, hugely political games. My games are normally simple, straight to the point, and work on metagame thinking(i.e. The PCs just asked whether or not there is a wizard in town...let's consult the population chart in the DMG).

Has your game ever stumbled during play because some social/economic/political/geographic aspect of the campaign world didn't properly match a Player's Real World understanding of it?

No, not really. My players are more concerned about whether or not there are monsters that will kill them behind the rock rather than what type of rock it was and how it go to be in this section of the world.

The only time anything like this has become an issue is normally when the reverse happens. I put something in based on real life and I get questions from a game standpoint, i.e. "You are telling me all the guards in this town are 1st level warriors? How do they defend the town against the dragons who live in the mountains nearby and apparently attack every couple of years? Don't they have a wizard? What happens when the first 10th level fighter shows up and conquers the town?" all because I think of towns as medievil towns in England, where the "town guard" would just be people just barely trained in weapons who kept the piece because most other people didn't have weapons.

But in a D&D game, where a volcano might just be a portal to the elemental plane of fire, real world physics and demographics just don't fit. My players notice way more often when I use real world concepts in a game world when they just don't make sense rather than using game world physics. I HAVE had some players complain about realism in the game rules, but I just point out to them that it is written in the rules, so we should accept it and move on.

Majoru Oakheart

 

[frankthedm]

I use aworld heavily influenced by WarHammer's world and the Basic D&D Mystara setting.

Does the population in your fantasy world reflect Real World populations of a comparable era?
Orc and Dwarf societal features are influenced by pre-modern Japan.

Does the technology (magical or scientific) match Real World methods and discovery?
Magic is not necessarily reliable or static. The changes to magic through the D&D editions happened ‘in game’ and as such many changes are considered symtoms of waxing and waning magical power. Many real world chemical reactions do not work. Some can be replicated with proper materials which have their own latent magic. The dwarves are working hard on the few reactions they can create developing potent, though unreliable weapons; Dwarvin boomer rifles, Dwarvin fire throwers. Rockhome Research & Development are working around the clock to make better weapons, automatons and golems to compete with the horrors the Kingdom of magic casts, enchants and calls up. And their clerics are healing them around the clock because in my game natural “1”s are bad news for the roller [and those in the blast radius when applicable.]

 

[Helspar]

Making a realistic world to role play in I find makes the story more believable. Suspending the players disbelief is key to immersion within the game and, I find, a better roleplaying experience. I mean my world don't typically have purple trees, random gravity, or a green sky, but if they did then there has to be a reason for it.

In the case of having say three moons, how do they affect the world? One could work in various socio-religious-political factors, not to mention enviornmental factors - in this case how does the tide work? Or does it ever get really dark at night? While such things might seem extraneous to gameplay for the most part if you're the DM and it does become an issue you better have something for it, otherwise the players once again find it hard to "suspend their disbelief". Just like any good fantasy novel, the world has to be realistic in its own context. (Hauls out the Tolkien card) The realm of Middle Earth is a good example - while it is high fantasy, its easy to believe that the wold could work that way - in fact Tolkien creates a world with its own creation theory - a little much work for most aspiring DMs, but you get the point.

Lastly having a world that sticks to reality closely makes your job as a DM that much easier because certain assumptions can be made on both sides as to how things work so you can concentrate on painting the fantasy picture where its required.

 

[shilsen]

My fantasy is completely realistic. But not in the sense you're asking. I prefer to use the brand of realism you find in Terry Pratchett books (most realistic fiction ever, IMO). Sure, the world may consist of people living on a disc balanced on 4 elephants standing on a giant turtle swimming through space, but the world works just like one in that context should.