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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9041885" data-attributes="member: 82106">Frankly, here's my position: Some chart that randomly allocates 'flood' or 'low water' etc. isn't in any sense realistic. 1) the outcome of the toss of a die is simply random, so it lacks any causal connection to anything deeper, there's no chain of cause and effect.2) any statistical distribution represented by this chart is simply arbitrary, because we lack any rigorous understanding of the interlinked factors of geography, hydrodynamics, global weather and climate patterns, and even astronomical factors which would need to be assembled and considered in order to construct such a distribution.Given the 2 points above, coupled with the fact that the author of this 'stream level chart' must have SOME motivations for one possible configuration of that chart over the others, and we have ruled out simulation as such, we are left with what? I can only think of a very small list of reasons:A) plausibility - each entry on the chart represents some sort of outcome which could plausibly be colored as a result of a natural processB) gamism - each entry, and the overall configuration of entries, is in some way aligned with constructing a challenging scenario in a gamist sense.C) trope - each entry conforms to some kind of genre convention or idea about the setting.D) drama - the entries posit conditions which are likely to be useful in terms of producing a fictional challenge to the characters (but not necessarily a gamist one in that it has measurable win/loss cons etc.).My guess is that any likely instantiation of such a stream flow chart will be implemented as a mix of several of these. I don't see any other major ones either, and given that there must be SOME motivation it will fall under one of these, or something very similar. The only other option is that the design of the chart is essentially mindless, its just an exercise in 'cargo cult RPG/adventure development' where the material is merely authored in imitation of past efforts without any thought (and again this might be partially in the mix).Honestly, I wouldn't object to terming a weather/climate/hydrology model being built on top of Tolkien's rather contrived geography based on underlying realism, assuming it is realistic enough to construct such a model. I'm even willing to concede that it probably is, the mountains form ranges, etc. I'd assume if you had a team of scientists they could invent such a model and defend it as more realistic than not.But no such team exists, nor is likely to ever exist, to do so. Your or my construction of a stream level chart for the Deeping Stream would thus necessarily be, at most, plausible, as in it would depict the possibilities of a stream, being dry, low, normal, high, flooded, or maybe even rampaging. I guess even more fantastical possibilities might exist in a fantasy world, turned to blood, frozen, steaming, necrotic, etc. None of these is connected to any larger understanding of the climate except the decree that it is generally temperate (though we have no evidence to suggest that such would likely be the case).So, finally we come to that final nut, if 'sim' lacks anything beyond a very basic plausibility in terms of the possible range of outcomes, then it is no more plausible than the sort of narrativist fictional tying that is proposed in games like Dungeon World, where the moves of the GM (what he describes) must 'follow from the fiction', which presumably implies an obligation to pay at least lip service to plausibility. I say 'lip service' in that portraying a fantastical world is part of the agenda, which implies that there is also a thrust towards a degree of implausibility.I tend to believe that there's a best mix which depends on the sort of thing and its scale. Smaller details of life, like food, air, water, gravity, general human behavior and biology, etc. are generally going to be assumed to work in a mundane fashion in general. Thus the players can navigate situations with the confidence that they can walk around, gain sustenance, interact with other people, etc. in a predictable fashion. Very few RPGs violate this sort of plausibility, and typically do so only in ways which display themselves as remarkable divergences. Elf bread weighs half as much as normal bread and is twice as sustaining. In the Magic Mountains is a peak from which you can leap and fly. Fey creatures are literally bound to verbal agreements, but act in perverse and unfathomable ways. Larger scale things are less subject to realistic constraints. So we see that both of the cosmologies of D&D are highly fantastical, and even the nature and construction of the Earth itself is not really constrained by any natural laws or even logic. Likewise large scale social and historical features may be highly fantastical, and things like ecology and biology are generally given no more than lip service at an overall level, if that. This works fine, and allows for the introduction of the totally fantastic!So, I have far less against plausibility than some people seem to think. As [USER=6671663]@Autumnal[/USER] noted the other day it is rather necessary for most RPG play to function, regardless of agenda. I just don't think it relates to any sort of causality. In fact I think genre conventions are probably vastly more important in most RPGs in terms of player's navigating the world.</blockquote>

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