Suspension of Disbelief

[Barak]

Sorry to break away from the archeological commentary..

Weirdly, something that would do me in as a player as far as breaking the believability of the Campaign World is something I do a lot of as a DM. It's something I'm aware of, and trying to change, but it's hard.

It's when virtually every NPC the players interact with (other than combat) are "infected" by a character trait of the DM. Let me explain.

See, I'm quite the smart-ass irl. I'm -great- at comebacks. And when doing off-the-cuff conversations between the players and NPCs.. It tends to seep in. And a campaign world populated solely by people who are great at comebacks, very sarcastic, etc.. Is hard to believe in. My players don't mind overly, 'cause it's usually pretty darn funny, and we play for fun, not really for deep character immersion, but still, it's something I'm working on. And once in a while, I'll indulge myself, such as when the PCs (at 3rd level) were dealing with a green Ancient Dragon. He -was- the ultimate smart-ass.

 

[S'mon]

The archaeological record has pretty conclusively disproven the 15000 figure for the Americas. The Australian situation is more complex and one I don't have much data on. I'm just going by an article I read a couple of years ago about mitocondrial DNA and the terra nulius doctrine. The Americas figure, on the other hand, now hovers between 100,000 and 30,000 with 50,000 emerging as the next best thing to a consensus. A big problem we have dating settlement in the Americas is that the ice-free areas of the coast that people from Asian would likely have reached first are now under water. My understanding is that it is underwater archaeological finds that have been pushing the date back.

Thanks fusangite (sorry to be OT) - it was reported as big news here a couple of weeks ago that 40,000 year old footprints had been discovered in central/north America AIR. And last I heard re Oz consensus scientists were happy because some aboriginal remains could be fitted into 40-50,000 years old which kept them within the consensus, which requires that modern humans only left Africa 60,000 years ago & that everyone today is descended from that migration. The earliest Indonesian "hobbit" remains go back at least 80,000 years but they seem to be homo erectus. Of course this means homo erectus could traverse open water by rafts or boats. I get the impression that the scientific consensus is changing but it doesn't seem to have reached most popular science sources yet.

 

[fusangite]

S'mon, thanks for the Australian data. This was a fun off-topic exchange.

 

[mythusmage]

Fox, Chicken, and Grain

Feed grain to chicken. Feed chicken to fox. Take fox across river.

Suspension of Disbelief

I agree with Fusangite, having to deal with things that really don't fit the setting ruins the feel. Puzzles or riddles that rely on real world knowledge for example.

Mundane names on the other hand I have no problem with. What bugs me are first level characters with names like, Grondborg Deathaxe. People who call themselves Grondborg Deathaxe at the age of 16 are asking to be sacrificed at the full moon by the lizardmen of the Foetid Glen. (And if they need help, I might have some stout hempen cord they can use to truss him up.)

Technological Advances

I recall a lecture series on local educational tv. In one episode the instructor pointed out an essential difference between Roman and American society. Americans emphasize the new, Romans emphasized the old. But even in American society it is possible for the new to fail if nobody sees a need for it.

China failed to develop the gun because the Chinese saw no need for it. what they had in military technology sufficed for their needs. The Chinese did not develop movable type on the other hand because their system of writing made it faster and easier to use block printing. For them movable type was not an improvement.

For the Europeans movable type was an improvement over block printing, and developing better guns gave one an, albeit temporary, advantage over the neighbors.

What if the Roman dictator Sulla had solved the problem of succession? No Marius, Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, or the Year of the Three Emperors. A stable empire that could employ its resources in expansion and pacifying new conquests. Could have made for a very different Europe.

What if the Roman Catholic Church had put an emphasis on bodily cleanliness and sanitation?

"As the Blood of the Lamb washes clean our souls, so let us wash clean our bodies that we may enter the Kingdom of Heaven clean in body and soul."

May not have stopped the epidemics of the 14th and 15th centuries, but it may have ameliorated the effects and so lessened the psychological and sociological shock.

Nothing had to happen as it did.

BTW, I can see a world at a medieval level of technology and sociology for 30,000 years, if there was no pressure to advance in all that time. But it would not be a world tolerant of adventurers.