D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Lanefan]

Thank you for doing exactly what I feared people would do, and which I thought, "Ah, no, I can trust that people will understand what I mean." It's incredibly tedious to be met with things that are obvious technicalities as though those things are somehow clear proven facts that my argument is just entirely wrong.

So, yes: ABSENT AERODYNAMIC DRAG, meaning, when things are JUST falling and not doing anything that isn't JUST FALLING, heavy objects fall at exactly the same speed as light objects. A one-inch cube of rubber falls at exactly the same speed as a one-inch cube of lead.

I know that, and have since fairly early grade school.

My point is that for the purposes of simulating and narrating in-setting physics as observed by the characters, the bolded fact is - except in the very rarest of in-game situations - so completely irrelevant that I'm not even sure why you brought it up.

What matters is what the characters actually see and interact with that we-as-GMs have to narrate, and for that "Aristotleian physics" are more than good enough. A feather will fall slower than a brick even if the fall distance is only five feet. A 1-inch rubber cube will fall slower than a 1-inch cube of lead if the fall is long enough that the rubber can achieve terminal velocity. That's what the characters see, and thus that's what we'd narrate.

 

[Lanefan]

For universe-building, sure.

But I'm not talking about universe-building. I'm talking about the process of actually playing.

The way I see it, the former is a fairly direct prerequisite for the latter.

But are you actually willing to use that argument? Are you willing to commit to it?

Because that opens you up to a number of rebuttals I'm not sure you want to face. Like the idea that, because it's a game, it should be designed to be entertaining as a game, in addition to and separately from its realism, historicity, etc.

In some cases - mostly to do with things like faux-historical cultures, pantheons, etc. - I'm more than happy to let the "faux" piece do most of the work as it serves to more put those faux-cultures on the same footing as the non-Human cultures, pantheons, etc. that we invent from nothing. It also allows me to have faux-cultures from different historical eras present in the same setting (very Xena-like, in that way) and not have to worry so much about being accurate to period. Thus, my setting has faux-war-of-the-roses England at the north end of the sea, faux-Caesar-era Rome to the west, faux-ancient Greece to the east, and faux-even-ancienter Sumeria to the south.

That said,, if some historical factoid wanders by that I think is really cool I might include it

But in other cases - mostly to do with physics and physical things - the closer the underlying base gets to Earth-reality, the better. From there, it's a relatively simple matter (at least, I've found it so) to tack the physics of magic on to that to make a consistent foundation such that evrything works consistently. Mundane animals are another place where Earth-like works just fine: a robin here is a robin in the setting, ditto for things like cows and elephants and salmon; mostly for ease of DM-side description and player-side relatability.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is certainly true in a traditional D&D campaign.

I think if you believe that at least the more blatant version of "I declare a real world animal doing something they can't do" would pass without comment in a "traditional D&D campaign" that certainly differs radically from the ones I saw back in the day. It might pass if it was declared as some setting-specific special offshoot, but even then someone who knew would mention how weird it was.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Folks can argue whatever they like. But...

...

...is not convincing. I don't care how "accurate" you feel your simulation steps are, the output still has to match what you are trying to simulate, or the thing is not a good simulation.

Oh I 100% agree with you. This doesn't mean I haven't seen it argued. Normally with my pet hate of an RPG theory word "immersion" waiting in the wings. (Immersion in my view is a matter of player and group skill with the system and some systems are easier than others)

With respect, you asserting that narrative games would give good simulation results does not make it true.

Fair. But neither does it make them worse than supposedly simulationist systems. And honestly we run into Sturgeon's Law when we look at examples.

 

[clearstream]

I think if you believe that at least the more blatant version of "I declare a real world animal doing something they can't do" would pass without comment in a "traditional D&D campaign" that certainly differs radically from the ones I saw back in the day. It might pass if it was declared as some setting-specific special offshoot, but even then someone who knew would mention how weird it was.

The climbing snake example is interesting because apparently many readers, lacking much knowledge of snakes, just accepted Doyle's "mistake" as right. And in the story, Holmes was right to solve the mystery as he did because in Holmes' world the snake really could climb.

But generally I agree that fictional truths prevail only to the extent they're established (that seems rather obvious, right?)

One catch in fictional worlds (seen in RPG sometimes) is that if I see a real world animal doing something it can't do (in the real world) I don't know at once whether that is because something is influencing it to act unnaturally, or it's just that the fictional version behaves differently in just that way. An aspect of the ongoing conversation is of course the exchange of confirming information between participants - "Hey, do mice normally wield rapiers here in Narnia?" "Yes, they're different in that way from real mice" shouldn't be objected to.

 

[pemerton]

My opinion was about what I see as wrong with the runes example, from the perspective of games I play.

How can an episode of play of Marvel Heroic RP be wrong from the perspective of D&D? That doesn't make any sense to me!

That would be like me telling you you're GMing D&D wrong because you're not calling for Burning Wheel-style blind declarations in combat.

 

[The Firebird]

How can an episode of play of Marvel Heroic RP be wrong from the perspective of D&D? That doesn't make any sense to me!

That would be like me telling you you're GMing D&D wrong because you're not calling for Burning Wheel-style blind declarations in combat.

But Micah explicitly told you that you were not GMing wrong. See, here:

You obviously know your games better than I do, so I would assume that for you and your table, how the runes were handled was perfectly fine.