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Wandering Monsters: You Got Science in My Fantasy!
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<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 6198046" data-attributes="member: 58197"><p>The very first D&D setting ever featured a crashed spaceship with laser guns and robots! I agree with those who feel there's a lot of "one true way-ism" going on here, and the One True Way seems to be "as much like Middle-Earth as possible." Come on, Wyatt. You know perfectly well why elves, dwarves, and halflings are popular, and it doesn't have a damn thing to do with "mythic resonance," it's because <em>those are the protagonist races of "The Lord of the Rings."</em> Middle-Earth is one of very few big-name fantasy settings to feature nonhuman protagonists, so it's no surprise that when people go to play nonhumans, LotR is what they turn to.</p><p></p><p>But just because Tolkien did it doesn't mean that's how it's gotta be. Contra Wyatt, D&D owes at least as much to Robert E. Howard as it does to Tolkien, and a setting modeled on Howard's Hyboria would incorporate evolution as a matter of course. There were many references to evolution in the Conan stories, and while beings called gods showed up from time to time, there was nothing to suggest they had created the world. A "god" was just a very powerful entity, often implied or outright stated to be an alien intruder in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft. I would not be at all surprised to find dragons that had evolved from dinosaurs in such a setting. Science is not anti-fantasy, nor incompatible with fantasy. You just have to decide which parts of science you're keeping and which you're not, and that will vary from one setting to another.</p><p></p><p>(And I couldn't vote on the dragon question, because I disagree with all of the options given. Personally, I'm not a big fan of dragons evolving from dinosaurs, but I'm also not a fan of Io. If Wyatt wants us to get science out of his fantasy, he can get his stupid dragon patron deity out of mine.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 6198046, member: 58197"] The very first D&D setting ever featured a crashed spaceship with laser guns and robots! I agree with those who feel there's a lot of "one true way-ism" going on here, and the One True Way seems to be "as much like Middle-Earth as possible." Come on, Wyatt. You know perfectly well why elves, dwarves, and halflings are popular, and it doesn't have a damn thing to do with "mythic resonance," it's because [I]those are the protagonist races of "The Lord of the Rings."[/I] Middle-Earth is one of very few big-name fantasy settings to feature nonhuman protagonists, so it's no surprise that when people go to play nonhumans, LotR is what they turn to. But just because Tolkien did it doesn't mean that's how it's gotta be. Contra Wyatt, D&D owes at least as much to Robert E. Howard as it does to Tolkien, and a setting modeled on Howard's Hyboria would incorporate evolution as a matter of course. There were many references to evolution in the Conan stories, and while beings called gods showed up from time to time, there was nothing to suggest they had created the world. A "god" was just a very powerful entity, often implied or outright stated to be an alien intruder in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft. I would not be at all surprised to find dragons that had evolved from dinosaurs in such a setting. Science is not anti-fantasy, nor incompatible with fantasy. You just have to decide which parts of science you're keeping and which you're not, and that will vary from one setting to another. (And I couldn't vote on the dragon question, because I disagree with all of the options given. Personally, I'm not a big fan of dragons evolving from dinosaurs, but I'm also not a fan of Io. If Wyatt wants us to get science out of his fantasy, he can get his stupid dragon patron deity out of mine.) [/QUOTE]
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