Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brimshack" data-source="post: 4231949" data-attributes="member: 34694">Where convenient and plausible sure, make up explanations. But I think sometimes, attempting a rational explanation just stretches things too thin. A good scifi or fantasy story doesn't belabor the premise. It establishes it and moves on. Spend too long trying to convince people that this or that element in a fantasy story is plausible and you just give them enough time to get tired of thinking about it.There is a point where you are better off just saying "that's how it works" and leaving it a mystery. How did Gandolf and the Balrog both survive the fall at the outset of their battle? Because that's the way the story is told. And there is a real power to just sticking with the narrative. How did Paul Bunyon's axe make teh grand canyon? It freakin did. That's how. Why does passing an arrow through the cicade of Diné origin narratives change the morphology of that entire species? Because that's the way the medicine man sings the story every fall. Sure, you could think up explanations for any of those, but that just weakens the whole idea. The power of those ideas lies in the way the events fit into the story, not in some ad hoc apologetic.Try to hard to explain how some things work and you only underscore the erros of the system. By keeping the effort to rationalize things a bit light, you keep people's attention where you want it, and away from the logical problems that cannot always be solved. The trick is to realize that solving those problems is not the crux of the game to begin with.But of course this is a minor disagreement. In essence, I agree with you. Players focusing on how things would work in real life are asking a question that can play havoc with the game. I am for example always amazed at the way people will debate whether or not the wings on a dragon miniature appear to flimsy, saying this one wouldn't fly or that pair of wings couldn't lift that much weight, as if such a creature were real to begin with. Focusing on that too much misses the point. Granted, one can stretch the laws of physics to the point a player has trouble suspending disbelief, but that should be the exception. Measuring rules consistently against what would actually happen, so to speak. There lies madness. ...or worse yet, sanity. Boring, non fantasy-type real world-as-it-is, yawnage...</blockquote>

Verification