Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9534115" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is nonsense.For instance, can you even tell me - without looking up wikipedia or similar - why it is impossible, on earth, to have giant terrestrial arthropods; why it is impossible, on earth, for a dragon to fly; why it is impossible, on earth, for there to be a humanoid with the strength and stature of a storm giant? All those things are part of the default of D&D, even though they are impossible in reality. D&D does not assume all the elements of reality that make them impossible.There is no assumption in D&D that perpetual motion machines are impossible. Quite the opposite - the game is rife with them!Likewise when it comes to social phenomena. The game assumes heroic mortals, divine beings who influence mortals, etc - so there is no assumption that principles of social life, social psychology, economics, knowledge creation, etc operate as they do in the real world (and, just as one well known example, most D&D worlds completely ignore the effects of inflation).This idea that D&D by default incorporates scientific reality has no foundation in any D&D text I've ever read - and I've read quite a few.People have known that water is buoyant for as long as they have had the cognitive capacity to know things, and have tried swimming and observed floating timber. This has nothing to do with physics being true.People knew that suffocation was a risk before they knew about oxygen, which is knowledge humans have had for only centuries. D&D PCs know they need to breathe. They know nothing of oxygen - given that air is an element! - and there is no reason to think that oxygen, as opposed to air, is even a thing in the game world.</blockquote>

Verification