Reality in fantasy... how much is too much?

[RPG_Tweaker]

I was just watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. In it, Harry and Hermione break Sirius from captivity and fly off with him on the back of a Hippogriff.

My analytical mind got to thinking, with such a small wingspan even a strong hippogriff would have a difficult time staying aloft with something like 300 lbs on its back...

...at which point I had to remind myself that hippogriffs don't really suffer the reality of gravity... or do they?


According to the MM, a hippogriff can carry up to 900 pounds.

I know this is fantasy but that seems plain ludicrous.

Am I being too anal or should there be some kind of nod to reality.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

<waves hand>

"This is not the science you are looking for..."

 

[A'koss]

According to the MM, a hippogriff can carry up to 900 pounds.

I know this is fantasy but that seems plain ludicrous.

Well, a bald eagle can carry up to 1/2 it's own body weight in flight so it's probably not as "out there" as you might think.

I like a certain level of believability in my games, just don't look too hard at it... that way lies madness.

 

[Talic]

Yeah, many reality sacrifices must be made for the sake of maintaining simple rules, or simply the flow of a game.

Just the fact that D&D is turn based means much of the reality in combat goes right out the window. Other things, well...it's magic from a long lost spell.

 

[Runesong42]

I don't entirey recall the movie, but I would believe that wee Harry would weigh much less than 300 lbs. at his tender young age. Is it just me?

 

[RPG_Tweaker]

...I would believe that wee Harry would weigh much less than 300 lbs. at his tender young age.

It was carrying Harry, Hermione, and Sirius... two 13-year olds and a full adult male. That's easily 300 lbs.

 

[IronWolf]

I like a certain level of believability in my games, just don't look too hard at it... that way lies madness.

I agree with this. If one tries to explain everything scientifically one is bound to run into issues. As long as something does not disrupt my suspension of reality too much I am okay with it. I try not to over analyze the game's physics. (of course I don't think it is within my personality type to do so.)

 

[Storyteller01]

Funny thing about science; there's always an exception to the rules. Ball lightning is always a good example. Man flying is another.

On top of that, what we arm-chair theorists believe to be reality may not be the case (no insult intended) . Can't tell you how often I've been proven wrong on this site, or just learned something new.

If it seems plausible, just nod and grin. You'll be happier for it .

 

[Wombat]

I rarely worry too much about physics in my fantasy games; somehow I am much, much more forgiving there.

Where I have the harder time giving up on "reality" is in social structures -- legal codes, sociology/anthropology, logistics, governmental structures, and the like.

I can handwave a hippogriff no problem; I have a much harder time with game worlds where heavily armed adventurers waltz into towns and people greet them, even if they are unknown in the district, as if they are heroes and saviours. Equally I have a harder time with modern notions of equality, social mobility, and democracy being "givens" in most fantasy worlds, even those that have a nominal feudal-nobility structure.

What I think happens here is that what we care about, what we study, what we know about ourselves, in our "waking world life", is the hardest part to put away when we play our games. I've studied a lot of history (especially medieval), so I have a harder time with those elements, while a friend of mine who works in a nuclear lab has a harder time with the bent laws of physics.

Just a notion there.

 

[Hawkshadow]

Even fantasy should have rules.

Science, as practiced by scientists, is not a collection of rules. It's a collection of techniques used to figure out what the rules of reality might be. These techniques are called scientific method.

You can still keep your fantasy founded in science even if the nature of the fantasy reality is wildly different than our own reality. For instance, suppose the fundamental elements of the fantasy world are indeed earth, air, fire, and water, not the periodic table of elements that we know today. If that's true, then a large flying creature like a hippogriff or a dragon might be slightly buoyant because their substance contains more air than a humans, or the large flying creature might have more fire substance within them and thus be able to flap their wings with more force than flying creatures that we know about in our own reality.

With this kind of reality the molecular structure of most substances contains all four elements. For instance one can see that wood contains fire because it produced fire when it's heated sufficiently. Wood also contains earth because after it burns ash is left over. Also, wood contains air because you can see the smoke when it burns, and wood contains water because you can see the sap seeping from the tree in spring, and from wood when it burns.

I think that building an alternate reality like this makes it much easier for players to suspend disbelief, and ultimately makes the game more fun for everyone. Just remember, you only want to start discussing stuff like this if one or more of the players start asking. If they're not asking, they're not interested.