"Progress" in your setting

[RFisher]

RFisher has grokked Hong's first law of fantasy. RFisher is wise. I love RFisher with all of...

blush

Though, I thought we were talking more about the 2nd law, unless you went & renumbered them on me. (~_^)

Yeah, I know. I should've stopped at "wise" again. Stupid, seductive "reply" button!

I was never satisfied with the lack of progress endemic to most settings and never bought the theory that magic retarded or prevented the development of technology or society. That artificial stasis and its facile justification always felt like cheep tricks to me.

Does it help if I admit that any justification is simply handwaving & the real reason is that I don't want to deal with the complexity of progress because there are so many aspects of the game I'd rather focus on?

Now, about the games like Poker or w/e, that is simply a lack in the DM's creative pool

Or call it simulation. The DM uses "poker" as a simulation of "wotsit" because poker:players::wotsit:characters.

Or call it, pragmatic. A fantasy world in which everything was meticulously divorced from our world wouldn't be much fun. Sure, you could come up with your own languages for your world that don't have the deep influence of our world's history that our own languages do, but some of your players will surely balk to having to learn a language (especially one that foreign) before being allowed to roleplay. (By the way, this last paragraph was brought to you by Hyperbole(tm).)

Or just call it handwaving. I don't limit the differences between my game worlds & the real world because I lack creativity. (Though I'm not saying I don't lack creativity! ^_^) I do it to make the game world more accessible to the players. (Including me!) I do it because there are other aspects of the game that I & my group would rather focus our creativity on.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

Does it help if I admit that any justification is simply handwaving & the real reason is that I don't want to deal with the complexity of progress because there are so many aspects of the game I'd rather focus on?

No, not really. I've played games with DMs like you before and your the type to smack the players when ever they don't happy go down the railroad you've laid out. It doesn't have to be gunpower, it can be anything the players are doing in or out of game and you punish them, punish them at whim. no, it doesn't help.

 

[DreadArchon]

No, not really. I've played games with DMs like you before and your the type to smack the players when ever they don't happy go down the railroad you've laid out. It doesn't have to be gunpower, it can be anything the players are doing in or out of game and you punish them, punish them at whim. no, it doesn't help.

That a bit harsh. If the DM doesn't feel like introducing innovations to the world, that's fine with me. If he stops the players from doing so, on the other hand, that's when it gets to me.

As for handling this issue in my game: In my campaign, it's only 786 years after the initial creation of time and space (Golden Age of Magic, gods walk the earth with mortals, etc.), so it's not much of an issue. (Though even so, there has been progress.)

 

[William drake]

blush

Though, I thought we were talking more about the 2nd law, unless you went & renumbered them on me. (~_^)

Yeah, I know. I should've stopped at "wise" again. Stupid, seductive "reply" button!



Does it help if I admit that any justification is simply handwaving & the real reason is that I don't want to deal with the complexity of progress because there are so many aspects of the game I'd rather focus on?



Or call it simulation. The DM uses "poker" as a simulation of "wotsit" because poker:players::wotsit:characters.

Or call it, pragmatic. A fantasy world in which everything was meticulously divorced from our world wouldn't be much fun. Sure, you could come up with your own languages for your world that don't have the deep influence of our world's history that our own languages do, but some of your players will surely balk to having to learn a language (especially one that foreign) before being allowed to roleplay. (By the way, this last paragraph was brought to you by Hyperbole(tm).)

Or just call it handwaving. I don't limit the differences between my game worlds & the real world because I lack creativity. (Though I'm not saying I don't lack creativity! ^_^) I do it to make the game world more accessible to the players. (Including me!) I do it because there are other aspects of the game that I & my group would rather focus our creativity on.

Sorry, should have mentioned those reasons as well, my bad.

 

[jdrakeh]

In the setting that I'm currently working on, "progess" comes primarily in the form of metallurgy and basic mechanics applied to warfare (e.g., crossbows are a technologically advanced item). The setting itself is largely inspired by Peer Gynt and Beowulf.

 

[RFisher]

No, not really. I've played games with DMs like you before and your the type to smack the players when ever they don't happy go down the railroad you've laid out. It doesn't have to be gunpower, it can be anything the players are doing in or out of game and you punish them, punish them at whim. no, it doesn't help.

()?

 

[mmadsen]

I'd like to reiterate S'mon's point that progress only seems inevitable if you live in a time like the present in a place like the industrialized world, where we have widespread law and order, commerce on a global scale, massive resources allocated to research and capital investments, etc.

Progress is not inevitable if you live in 20th-century Africa or 8th-century Europe.

 

[WayneLigon]

Usually I don't have the 'this series of kingdoms has existed like this for five thousand years with no appreciable change' in most campaigns I've done. Usually it's a product of boom and bust; civilizations rise and fall. Since we're looking at a comparatively tiny slice of time over the period of even a years long campaign, I usually use fairly normal time scales.

I also have in there the idea of humans not nessesarily being the top dogs all the time; when you have a massive elven empire that makes humans live in huts and ruthlessly kills anyone who displays any talent with magic.. it does something to your race. A thousand years afterwards in that one campaign, humans stoned their sorcerers without ever knowing the reason behind it.

One thing I always loved about Tunnels and Trolls: they had a pefect justification for the 'perpetual middle ages': the Wizard's Guild. Every wizard belonged to the Guild in some capacity. The dirty secret of the inner circle was that, using divinatory magic, they would root out people that could become a threat to the status quo and thus their power. If they saw that Bobby was going to grow up and invent the steam engine, then Bobby - along with the rest of his village - quietly died of the Plague in his cradle.

 

[GSHamster]

Science depends on the principle of repeatability. The idea that two different people can do the same experiment and get the same result.

This principle does not need to hold if there is magic. Can you imagine trying to come up with a theory of gravity if objects can fall at different rates in different places?

If you can't replicate experiments all the time, you can't really have scientific progress.

 

[RFisher]

This principle does not need to hold if there is magic.

You don't even need magic. All you need is a GM. (^_^)