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<blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 9071704" data-attributes="member: 85555"><p>You can do both. It has been a long time since i have read Tolkien so I am sure there is probably a lot of other stuff at work here. But I think you have a much more rigid sense of what world laws mean to me than I do. For me thinking of a world and its laws (and the laws of a setting or story, or just he thought experiment) doesn't mean it can' the literary, can't have themes, etc (those issues are issues that come up in RPGs and are debated not because this kind of world building demands no themes, not literary structure, etc but because RPGs are a different medium and people have different ideas about what works best inside that medium). To me this is stuff like CS Lewis and how he tried to apply Christian ideas to Narnia (and I would say that is both thematic and a thought experiment----i.e. he is clearly working inside parameters shaped by the Christian concepts he wishes to explore). It is also present in something like Ringworld (where there is literally a whole world physically shaped by the dyson sphere concept as well as the thought experiment of a world with no germs). When running a game, I think thinking through the thought experiment of that world and taking it seriously can be helpful. I think taking your NPCs personalities seriously and playing them sincerely (rather than say deciding X is going to happen for plot reasons) is also interesting and fun. I like shaping cultures in the game as a logical think through all the base elements. That is just what I find exciting. But I don't expect everyone to share this view. And importantly this isn't how I only approach things.</p></blockquote><p></p>

[QUOTE="Bedrockgames, post: 9071704, member: 85555"] You can do both. It has been a long time since i have read Tolkien so I am sure there is probably a lot of other stuff at work here. But I think you have a much more rigid sense of what world laws mean to me than I do. For me thinking of a world and its laws (and the laws of a setting or story, or just he thought experiment) doesn't mean it can' the literary, can't have themes, etc (those issues are issues that come up in RPGs and are debated not because this kind of world building demands no themes, not literary structure, etc but because RPGs are a different medium and people have different ideas about what works best inside that medium). To me this is stuff like CS Lewis and how he tried to apply Christian ideas to Narnia (and I would say that is both thematic and a thought experiment----i.e. he is clearly working inside parameters shaped by the Christian concepts he wishes to explore). It is also present in something like Ringworld (where there is literally a whole world physically shaped by the dyson sphere concept as well as the thought experiment of a world with no germs). When running a game, I think thinking through the thought experiment of that world and taking it seriously can be helpful. I think taking your NPCs personalities seriously and playing them sincerely (rather than say deciding X is going to happen for plot reasons) is also interesting and fun. I like shaping cultures in the game as a logical think through all the base elements. That is just what I find exciting. But I don't expect everyone to share this view. And importantly this isn't how I only approach things. [/QUOTE]

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