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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Virginia Wilde" data-source="post: 591619" data-attributes="member: 3317">Originally posted on WotC boards (please note that the posters I speak of are a minority):Hello and welcome to Mr. Author's class on fantasy and the speculative fiction genre. I have gone up and down these boards, as well as many others, and have come to the conclusion that many posters on this and other boards are under the impression that in fantasy, "anything can happen." I believe this fallacy stems from the idea that "there aren't any spells in real life," or, "dragons couldn't fly in real life!"I understand that this is a misrepresentation and that the vast majority of posters understand that there are still rules that must be obeyed, even in fantasy. As a writer of speculative fiction, the genre that contains both science fiction and fantasy, I feel I must point out a few inaccuracies about the current ideas that seem to be vocalized perhaps a bit too often. I know these ramblings will fall upon deaf ears and that these mistakes will still occur, but it is my hope that at least one person will understand what I am trying to say.Thus, this post. I will save a copy of it to place on my website for future readings so that others can benefit from it at a later date. I will also post this on a few other boards for readers to look at there as well. I may expand and add to this later as posters respond (if they do) with questions, comments, and the severed body parts of my family members as warnings. I will begin with a few simple definitions.Speculative Fiction: a genre of fiction that contains both science fiction and fantasy.Science Fiction: a genre of speculative fiction which works within known existing physcial laws and theorems and does not alter them or add new ones.Fantasy: a genre of speculative fiction which alters one or more known existing physical laws and theorems or adds a new one, but does not arbitraily create them. Note that in most fantasy worlds, most physical laws of nature are unchanged, but there are new physcial laws pertaining to the existence of magic and/or other unknowns.For example, in most D&D campaigns, magic works the same way. It has laws and boundaries which must be followed to achieve a desired result. Magic items have rules in their creation and usage. Even games like Mage: The Ascension work this way. If anything is possible, then your subjects, be they players, readers, or viewers, lose their willing suspension of disbelief. Anything could be possible, of course, I'm not saying it can't, but it must be able to occur within the pretext of the physcial laws established for your world. If something is a known fact, even if it is magical fact, then changing that fact arbitrarily to fit the context of a situation destroys any belief your subjects could have held. If, however, you present an explanation in the terms of physical laws present in your world, then you can maintain that suspension of disbelief.</blockquote>

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