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<blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4228901" data-attributes="member: 710">Scale of play... I like that. It is a good ... well... simulationist approach maybe. (Pemerton will probably hesitate to agree, and possibly correctly so). The Legion Devil Legionaire and the &quot;normal&quot; Legion Devil, or the Angel of Valor and the Angel of Valor Legionaire are probably good examples of this. At the scale of heroic levels, these guys are &quot;regular&quot; monsters, pretty nasty and complex detailed. But at high levels, using their &quot;reguler monster&quot; description just is fiddly and not very satisfying. So, we use a different scale to describe them, and we get Minions. Similar rules stuff seems to be done in supplements for mass-combat in D&amp;D, but the scale is size, not level. Swarms and Mobs in 3.x also have some similarities to this. There is no way to &quot;simulate&quot; 1.000 insects crawling over a character that could lead to a satisfying play experience without a &quot;Swarm&quot; shortcut...In Physical Sciences, similar methods are sometimes used. For simple, &quot;human scale&quot; stuff, using the Newtonian Laws for describing movements works very well. We don't really notice the differences. But once we try to describe near-light speed movements, or satellites circling Earth, we need the laws of relativity, since they describe the world more accurate. But it would be a big hassle trying to use them to calculate how long a train needs from Bremen to Frankfurt/Main, or a ferry from Dover to Calais. Or how long a sprinter needs for 100 meters...Interesting side note: Some scientist actually entertain the thought that it's possible that we will be eventually forced to always use different &quot;scales&quot; of scientific laws. I think in the field of Solid State Physics, a lot of stuff can be easier described by ignoring the quantum mechanical rules of quarks &amp; electroncs and formulating &quot;higher level&quot; laws. They might be emergent properties of the &quot;real&quot; laws, but they can be formulated and used to predict observations without ever relying on the smaller details... </blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mustrum_Ridcully, post: 4228901, member: 710"] Scale of play... I like that. It is a good ... well... simulationist approach maybe. (Pemerton will probably hesitate to agree, and possibly correctly so). The Legion Devil Legionaire and the "normal" Legion Devil, or the Angel of Valor and the Angel of Valor Legionaire are probably good examples of this. At the scale of heroic levels, these guys are "regular" monsters, pretty nasty and complex detailed. But at high levels, using their "reguler monster" description just is fiddly and not very satisfying. So, we use a different scale to describe them, and we get Minions. Similar rules stuff seems to be done in supplements for mass-combat in D&D, but the scale is size, not level. Swarms and Mobs in 3.x also have some similarities to this. There is no way to "simulate" 1.000 insects crawling over a character that could lead to a satisfying play experience without a "Swarm" shortcut... In Physical Sciences, similar methods are sometimes used. For simple, "human scale" stuff, using the Newtonian Laws for describing movements works very well. We don't really notice the differences. But once we try to describe near-light speed movements, or satellites circling Earth, we need the laws of relativity, since they describe the world more accurate. But it would be a big hassle trying to use them to calculate how long a train needs from Bremen to Frankfurt/Main, or a ferry from Dover to Calais. Or how long a sprinter needs for 100 meters... [size=1] Interesting side note: Some scientist actually entertain the thought that it's possible that we will be eventually forced to always use different "scales" of scientific laws. I think in the field of Solid State Physics, a lot of stuff can be easier described by ignoring the quantum mechanical rules of quarks & electroncs and formulating "higher level" laws. They might be emergent properties of the "real" laws, but they can be formulated and used to predict observations without ever relying on the smaller details... [/size] [/QUOTE]

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