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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6160837" data-attributes="member: 42582">The only RPG I'm familiar with that even comes close to pretending to have a physics engine is Traveller. Most RPGs rely, either expressly or implicitly, on shared genre conventions: that is why we know that in the D&D world a dragon or a giant wasp can fly but Icarus can't (without magic).But I commonly see people on these boards speculating about monster biology in evoutionary terms. For me, that is just bizarre: evolutionary biology is no-wise part of the fantasy genre, and every D&D world I'm familiar with (i) posits that lifeforms were created, not evoloved, and (ii) that lifeforms, particularly intelligent ones, can interbreed in a way that bears no relationship to real-world biology. For me this is a clear case where notions of, or presumptions about the applicability of, scienctific explanation have no work to do, and it is very obviously genre logic all the way.Because (as far as I can tell) more RPGers are educated in the natural than the social sciences, genre departures from sociological possibility seem to be remarked up on less often. But needless to say the political, economic and social set up of a typical D&D setting (whether Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms or Middle Earth) makes next-to-know sense in real-world terms. They are, literally speaking, impossible. We accept and work within them not because we have an alternative "physics enginge" (Traveller excepted, with its odd sociology and economics built into its world-generation and trading mechancis) but because we understand the logic of them as genre elements.I think your use of the word "generic" is telling - settings bring with them genre conventions, which we can then rely on for adjudication and resolution.</blockquote>

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