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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jasin" data-source="post: 2918691" data-attributes="member: 7531">This is something I posted to rec.games.frp.dnd.The context: I posted a suggestion for a setting that was only one isolated city surrounded by hostile wilderness (Viriconium, The City and the Stars, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind...) and surprisingly (to me) many people brought up the question of food supply.Keith Davis wrote:> >> What do they eat?> >> > What is it with this question? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Between here and Circvs Maximvs,> > something like five different people asked that.> > Because suspension of disbelief is often easier if most of the setting> is believable.  It's usually easier to cope with a few unlikely things> than a lot of them, at once.> > That said, I read today something that made me think about this.  It> seems most fiction now follows that rule.  Things have to mostly make> sense.  The author posited that this takes a lot of the wonder and> imagination out of the stories.> > For speculative fiction, I think it's appropriate -- the purpose there> is *usually* to explore how things might be if a few changes are made.> > For fantasy though, it is quite appropriate to handwave things that> doesn't particularly impact the story.  Weird <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> just *is*.  Go with> it.> > I'm trying to revise my campaign notes to do this.  Don't worry too> much about how things would *really* work, just make them fit for the> purpose of the story.I find this a very interesting topic.Eberron seems to me a prime example of what the person you mention mentions (awkward construction... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />). Unlike, for example, our own Earth of ages past that is Middle-earth, or the vague neverlands of fairy tales, Eberron is set on a specific planet, with specific continents, with moons, with a ring around it. The elves that live there aren't the personifications of the capriciousness of nature or of the higher (or lower) principles in man or anything like that, they're a species of intelligent creatures. The magic isn't mysterious and scary "because it's... <whisper>magic!</whisper>", it's commonly used for practical purposes "because if you do this, this happens". And so on.Now, IMO, Eberron pulls all of this remarkably well, and I love it as a setting... but for me it is mostly in spite of these tropes, rather than because of them.I would contrast Eberron with Perdido Street Station, which despite being non-at-all-Tolkienian magic-punk fantasy as different from generic "old skool" fantasy as I ever got, it prioritizes mood over what makes "in-game" sense. New Crobuzon is a dirty, slimy Plane of Shadow reflection of industrial London not because Mieville posits a situation where such a city could and would naturally arise, but because he wanted to immerse us in the dirt and slime of a Plane of Shadow reflection of industrial London. (Eugh.)For fantasy, I prefer the latter approach, and I think that much is jeopardized by, as Hong would put it, thinking too hard about fantasy.Ultimately, fantasy, especially D&D fantasy, doesn't make sense; that's why it's fantasy. By working too hard to make it so that it does, it drifts away from the reason it works to the extent that it does, from the emotional kicks and archetypal imagery in it... and it doesn't make up for that with intellectual kicks (like good SF does), since it still doesn't really make sense.BTW, this whole rant shouldn't be taken as at all disparaging of people who asked what the people in the City eat, or in general people who want their fantasy to make sense. This is a matter of taste, and even if one agrees that thinking too hard about fantasy is bad, no one single question indicates thinking too hard, and the question of what they eat sparked some interesting ideas (Soylent Green, soil-purification earthworms, ritual cannibalizm...). But this is something I've been trying to articulate for some time, and now Keith's post reminded me, so that this seemed like a good place to rant.So, thoughts, anyone?</blockquote>

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