Keep your Science out of my Fantasy!

[Psion]

Oh yeah, and my setting features a vaguely (ie. not) scientific reality, such that sterile offspring result from unions between humans, orcs and ogres (ouch), as well as between humans and elves, though elves produce no offspring when mated with orcs or ogres.

I'd like to point out that some crossbreeing IRL does not result in sterile offspring. Not that there's anything wrong with your approach, but it's not necessary to mimic reality.

That said, I loathe the all too common "anything can breed with anything else" philosophy that has taken hold in 3e. It was okay for a bit when we were talking primarily about highly magical beings, but later propagation of the half-template scourge began to earn my dismay.

 

[Snoweel]

Though reality works slightly different, I expert certain things (like cause and effect and human behavior) to still hold.

Further to this, if magic follows rules in your setting (as it clearly does in the core rules), then if Wizard/God/Entity A is capable of doing X, then clearly somebody else should also be capable of doing the same without a very good reason.

That said, it's ultimately up to you as the DM as to whether or not your players' characters are ever able to learn the truth behind your handwaving.


Though like others have said, if you do it too blatantly you'll ruin the enjoyment of your players and that can only be a bad thing.

 

[Snoweel]

That said, I loathe the all too common "anything can breed with anything else" philosophy that has taken hold in 3e. It was okay for a bit when we were talking primarily about highly magical beings, but later propagation of the half-template scourge began to earn my dismay.

Are you saying half-dwarf/half-troll PCs ruin the mood for you?

 

[Kalanyr]

It depends on to what extent you mean, if someone tells me my geography is wrong, yeah it annoys me, I'm not a geography major, nor are most of my players so it doesn't hinder our suspension of disbelief. On the other hand if my geography is completely illogical in a way obvious even to a non-geographer then I should have a good explanation and such things should occur only rarely.
I feel pretty much the same about other aspects of my game.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

Nice rant!

I'd kinda agree, I think trying to make a world that has fantasy elements and trying to make it all scientifically accurate is a futile exercise. Lots of it is going to be completely arbitary - i.e. How does magic interact with the conservation of energy?

I think having some science is good. I like it if gravity works, wood burns, water freezes, etc. If they don't I like that to be made really clear so I don't do anything really stupid! More detailed stuff I don't mind about BUT...

I think the problem is that people have 'pet subjects'. For example, one of my players is a former military guy, with a strong interest in firearms. Any game with a firearms system that clashes with his knowledge is somewhat 'spoilt' for him. He can still have fun with it, just can't quite get it out of his head.

In wingsandsword mountain range example I could understand it if the player doing the questioning spends a lot of their time studying geology (a PhD for example) - geology is so ingrained into them that they can't help looking at a setting from a geological point of view. Personally I'd prefer it if they found some way to justify my 'freak mountain range' rather than dismissing it as 'impossible'... From a DMs point of view, it's probably easiest stopped if you ask them for their input while designing the map?

I think that you really have to tailor what you're going to detail down to the group... It's nice if you can guess what they're going to 'pick at' and have a more interesting answer than 'it's magic - don't think about it or your head will explode' At least detailing the type of magic I'd say!

One method I did like was Ars Magica - a lot of 'science' in that game works as people thought it did at the time. For example, diseases are caused by 'demonic infestation' - the spells to cure them are very similar to the ones you use to banish demons. Which I find quite appealing and use in most of my settings now!

 

[Peskara]

Fantasy vs. Science

I see where you're coming from, and I agree that I don't really care for fantasy where everything has to have a scientific explanation, but I do like a certain degree of verisimilitude to aid my suspension of disbelief. But in fantasy there are plenty of things I'm willing to accept on faith as acts of the gods or the result of strange magic. Personally, I totally hate psionics not because they're not plausible, but I like magic to be, well, magical, with all the cool trappings associated with witches and wizards and such rather than crystals and mental powers. I think the mix of fantasy and science that we all prefer comes down to personal taste.

Our homebrew campaign has a creationist cosmology and we do have things like races created whole cloth by the gods rather than evolution, creatures cursed by the gods to become monsters, etc. I don't much care for races of creatures created by mad wizards myself, since most of those creations would be sterile, but I'm sure there are a few of those around too as well as monsters that just spawn as the result of weird magic. Also, there are plenty of geographical features that are the result of things other than natural processes, like a mountain peak cleft in two by an arrow of the sun god or whatnot.

But we also have pseudo-scientific explanations for some things, which suit me just fine. Elves and humans can breed because elves are fae who've become mortal and as a race they are very adaptable to their environment because of the magic in their blood(which is how we get so many wacky breeds of elf and the world does have little pockets of rare elf breeds here and there). Orcs and humans can interbreed because orcs were originally bred by the elves from human stock (mixed with goblins and ogres, which are two more mortal races of fae) as warrior/slaves (they look more like Peter Jackson's fighting Uruk-hai rather than the D&D orcs that don't *look* like they *could* breed with humans).

I happen to not like the two-year pregnancy/century of childhood thing about the elves (or any long-lived race for that matter) because it never made sense to me. And I've since found out that a race like that (especially elves with their low Con scores) would have trouble surviving. However, that's just a personal preference and I can see how others might like the length of time between generations as a plausible reason why elves haven't overrun the world. (For us it's because they aren't terribly fertile with each other; a byproduct of their fae/magic-tainted blood).

For us, there is an alchemical substance that's like gunpowder that's used for fireworks, but can't be used for weapons because it becomes inert on contact with metal. (So the colors of fireworks actually have to come from some alchemical process rather than adding metals to the powder). So here's another mix of fantasy and pseudo-science.

So, for me I guess I like a decent mix of magic and pseudo-scientific explanations for things. It doesn't have to be real science, it just has to be sound plausible to me and if there's a fantastical explanation that sounds plausible, that's just as good.

 

[Malk]

For us, there is an alchemical substance that's like gunpowder that's used for fireworks, but can't be used for weapons because it becomes inert on contact with metal. (So the colors of fireworks actually have to come from some alchemical process rather than adding metals to the powder). So here's another mix of fantasy and pseudo-science.
.

Have you ever seen that show on the discovery channel, Myth Busters? On it they fairly easily constructed a cannon from the trunk of a tree, and carved a cannon ball from a chunck of granite. Your flashpowder could be used in that without ever having to touch metal, and the thing was sturdy enough to be fired many many times. Easier to make than a forged cannon too....

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Nice rant. I would say that the most imporant way to manage the concerns that you raise are to design (frontload) your world with these key issues thought out in advance. And explain this to your players. Then you are in command of the destiny.

The hard work starts after that. You have to be consistent. All else is secondary to being consistent, whatever you wind up doing.

People get upset at the idea of half-orcs and half-elves, because humans and orcs and elves are different species, and thus shouldn't be able to produce a fertile offspring. That's modern biology, modern definition of species. Yes, farmers have known for millenia that you can't crossbreed a goat and a horse, but you can't crossbreed a Human and a Bugbear either. You can crossbreed wolves and dogs, yes dogs are just domesticated wolves. Maybe a secret elves have is that humans are just "domesticated" elves, with shorter ears, shorter lives, and generally "inferior" to their original "wild" cousins. Not that they would ever let humans know they are so close to Elves, but it's one reason Elves are so interested in (and feel superior to) Humans.

Just a few factual points here. There was an article a few years back about a fertile mule born in Spain. There's an example of someone crossing a donkey and horse and getting a half-breed. The domestication of wolves may have been started as long as 100,000 years ago, according to some mitochondrial DNA research. Which lends some interesting credence to your idea, which is great. It's a nice rethink of the whole elf/human interfertility issue.

 

[jeffers]

In Caleon...

... My home-brew game with versions in d20, GURPS, HERO and its own diceless version (we're working on one compatible with Call of Cthulhu) I've worked up a very plausible thingie involving the four fundamental forces of nature (Gravity, Electromagnetism, Nuclear and Weak forces) and magic.

The first four work just fine, except that the fifth force can tell them to get stuffed and is workable by intelligent minds. This explanation only comes into play with the Sci-Fi verson of Caleon (Exodus). In the fantasy and steam punk eras, folks just shake their heads and go on.

"That's just how it is..." they say.

 

[Zappo]

Like in everything, you have to find a middle-ground here. Both extremes, totalling disregarding verisimilitude and striving for scientific accuracy at all costs, detract from the game IMO.

I think that the more outlandish a setting feature is, the more effort should be made to explain it in a plausible way. On the other hand, the more mundane something look, the less explanation it needs. If a peak is blasted by thunderstorms every other day, I wouldn't care at all about hearing what air currents and weather patterns cause this. In fact, starting a talk about that would detract from my fun; it's not something my character would wonder or even know about, and it's boring anyway. If a peak is surrounded by a perpetual thunderstorm and you actually have a 10% chance per hour of being struck by lightning, I'd bloody well expect a good explanation, even if it is something about the anger of the gods or a vortex to the plane of lightning.