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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Peskara" data-source="post: 1531957" data-attributes="member: 5241">Fantasy vs. ScienceI 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.</blockquote>

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