Making a Fantasy Game

[ckafrica]

Can you tell me what PL is "right" about? I mean seriously, what is his fucking point?

I can't even tell. It all seems to be centaur jizz and fist shaking.

-Username17

His spiel is that you're okay with floating islands and not okay with hollow world on a largely preferential basis. While I agree that floating islands pose less of a (physics) problem than hollow worlds, I don't think the majority of players are going to throw a shitstorm over Earth being hollow. You would have to explain how physics work inside a hollow world, but I believe that most people are going to have the attitude of, "Okay, that works" and not "THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE FUCKING SENSE THIS IS THE WORST GAME EVER."

Seriously, if you wanted to have one giant planet that had a bunch of floaty islands within its atmosphere, and those floaty islands each had gravity that acted independently of the giant planet's, I'm not sure that people would care. They'd be like, "Oh, okay," and go about killing dragons.

That's certainly what I got out of what PL said nor was it particularly cryptic.

[Draco_Argentum]

In fantasy, the laws of nature work differently, that's just a facet of something being fantasy.

I mean basically it just amounts to doing whatever you want.

As long as they for a consistent set of physics that actually describes the world you want its fine. If its contradictory someone will notice and if its a big enough contradiction the game will collapse.

[RandomCasualty2]

As long as they for a consistent set of physics that actually describes the world you want its fine. If its contradictory someone will notice and if its a big enough contradiction the game will collapse.

Most of the time people don't even think about that stuff.

I mean, we know that Star Trek transporters are impossible scientifically, but we don't question it and just say "That's cool" and get on with life.

[violence in the media]

As long as they for a consistent set of physics that actually describes the world you want its fine. If its contradictory someone will notice and if its a big enough contradiction the game will collapse.

Most of the time people don't even think about that stuff.

I mean, we know that Star Trek transporters are impossible scientifically, but we don't question it and just say "That's cool" and get on with life.

I think people take issue with it when the phlebtonium in question won't let them do something they think they should be able to, based on past useages, and the source material doesn't provide sufficient assistance to the GM to resolve those issues.

Sure, you can fall back on the science doesn't work that way or it's magic! and move on. However, abusing that runs the risk of divesting your players from the game because they can't come up with any innovative or nonstandard uses for things.

[RandomCasualty2]

I think people take issue with it when the phlebtonium in question won't let them do something they think they should be able to, based on past useages, and the source material doesn't provide sufficient assistance to the GM to resolve those issues.

Most of the time, I think it has to do with trying to apply conventional physics to phlebtonium or even conventional physics to fantasy.

I mean for instance, people have stated about the hollow world how they think that gravity would be increasing as you neared the transition point between worlds and decreasing as you left it. This is a modern science idea, not a fantasy idea. In fantasy stories, gravity is constant. It's not relative to distance from mass or anything like that.

The biggest problem I think is that some players just have trouble abandoning those ideas. You shouldn't be asking about the atomic composition of adamantine. You just need to accept it. It's possible that indeed fantasy substances aren't composed of protons, electrons and neutrons.

Generally people need to just leave science at the door, because otherwise you're going to find flaws.

As Frank has said on many occasions, a swiss cheese underworld like the udnerdark would end up collapsing on itself, but people think the underdark is cool, so we don't ask those geological questions.

[Username17]

I mean, we know that Star Trek transporters are impossible scientifically, but we don't question it and just say "That's cool" and get on with life.

Except that this is a cooperative storytelling game. The capabilities of transporters have to be well established for the players to make plans around their presence.

It's fine in single author fiction for a transport beam to bounce a phaser one week and not do that the next. But in a cooperative storytelling game it has to be knowable whether you can bounce a phaser off a transport beam or not - because one of the characters is a frickin engineer and all his plans have to rely on shit like that.

-Username17

[violence in the media]

It's fine in single author fiction for a transport beam to bounce a phaser one week and not do that the next. But in a cooperative storytelling game it has to be knowable whether you can bounce a phaser off a transport beam or not - because one of the characters is a frickin engineer and all his plans have to rely on shit like that.

-Username17

My point, only made better.

[PhoneLobster]

But in a cooperative storytelling game it has to be knowable whether you can bounce a phaser off a transport beam or not

Only the thing is that isn't actually science it isn't based in or justified by science. It is an entirely arbitrary measure justified by game play goals.

So I'm not seeing where that is supposedly refuting or even vaguely addressing RC or myself at all.

Whether it bounces or not is not more or less "realistic" or scientific or believable. Picking one option is OK but picking one option and declaring the other to be ridiculous star trek technobabble is only strengthening anyone who wants to argue against your position with the same baseless accusation.

You are feeding into Engineer Elensars short sighted self serving game disrupting argument of the week that phasers should bounce off transport beams (when it was previously established that they didn't) because your claim that they don't is arbitrary silly technobabble and you have declared silly technobabble to be wrong.

[Username17]

Only the thing is that isn't actually science it isn't based in or justified by science.

So?

Yes, it's all technobabble. But in a cooperative storytelling game, you have to lay the foundation for all the technobabble ahead of time. Because the players are going to riff off it.

If you're making a television show, it's perfectly fine to have the interactions of in-world technobabble be revealed only when the characters use them together in order to achieve plot goals. But in a role playing game, you have to establish those interactions before the characters use them so that the players can know how they might go about combining them to achieve plot goals. Otherwise you have story paralyzation where the players don't know how the technobabble interacts and then the characters don't act rationally and the plot doesn't move forward.

So the more fantastic elements you put in, the more technobabble you have to write. Because people are going to want to use it. They are going to need to use it in order to achieve plot goals.

So if you put in more fantastic elements than are needed by the characters to achieve plot goals, you're making a fuck tonne of work for yourself in writing technobabble that isn't going to be used.

-Username17

[Orion]

In other words, the amount technobabble required to make a hollow world work is much greater than required to make a floating island work.

It's not about what's *believable*, it's about what's *comprehensible* -- what you are willing to put in the time to thnk through, write down, and explain to your players

[PhoneLobster]

In other words, the amount technobabble required to make a hollow world work is much greater than required to make a floating island work.

No, actually by the looks of things in the ballooning of fail on the other version of this thread the amount of technobabble, and much more importantly (because technobabble is not actually wrong by its mere existence or volume) the amount of arbitrary rules that are being defined to implement Frank's particular vision of flying islands is far greater than the arbitrary rules to implement a basic hollow world.

The business about the remarkable complexities of what is allowed to be a floating rock, precisely who when and how you can go about setting rock coordinates (with a wide variety of VERY arbitrary totally non intuitive limitations) and all is significantly more complex in game play implications than to simply make the ultimately purely cosmetic change a minimum hollow world setup would entail.

The argument against complexity is itself a questionable one in this case, the fact that Frank is on the wrong side of it while attempting to make it is merely puzzlingly atrocious.

[Orion]

PhoneLobster -- of course they're arbitrary.

That's what Game Design *is*

[PhoneLobster]

PhoneLobster -- of course they're arbitrary.

That's what Game Design *is*

If you were paying attention the argument presented by Frank and co is that they aren't being arbitrary, they are being scientific, realistic, and most of all somehow "less" arbitrary.

When in actual practice they are doing the only thing that you can do to be more arbitrary, increasing the number and complexity of arbitrary rules. All by means of choice of subject matter (the direct opposite of a claimed design principle used to rule out and criticise other subject matter).

[Orion]

Increasing the number of arbitrary rules makes the *gameplay* mroe scientific, in that the players can do repeatable experiemtns and exploit the observable properties of the universe.

Having *fewer* rules makes the gameplay more arbitrary, in the sense that it literally comes down to DM arbitration.

[MartinHarper]

Having *fewer* rules makes the gameplay more arbitrary, in the sense that it literally comes down to DM arbitration.

D&D has vastly more rules than, say, chess, and also has vastly more DM arbitration. The amount of DM arbitration comes down to the number of situations that the rules don't cover, plus the number of situations where the rules contradict themselves. This would only include situations that come up in play, of course. You don't need rules on nuclear fission in a medieval world.

[Orion]

Sorry, let me expand my argument.

Consider a Phlebotinum object X. There exist Y possible actions the players could take in attempting to interact with it. Because the object doesn't really exist, the results of that action will be *arbitrarily* determined.

The more of these interactions are arbitrarily written up by the designer,s the less arbitration the DM has to make.

Obviously another way to minimize GM arbitration is to minimize Y, such as by keeping the world world-shaped.

[PhoneLobster]

Having *fewer* rules makes the gameplay more arbitrary, in the sense that it literally comes down to DM arbitration.

Er no.

If for instance there were NOT floating items or antigravity powers in the game at all then it would both have less arbitrary rules AND less DM arbitration of antigravity.

Get with the times boy, the argument here is over which arbitrary antigravity rules are "stupider" or "less realistic. Or more accurately whether that is a healthy argument to make about any addition to a role playing game.

Heck remember that Frank's argument is that floating islands allows us to use more real world science as a substitute for actual rules and arbitrary rulings (which it doesn't, but whatever). IF that even were true he is effectively in favour of a larger body of on the spot DM arbitration through happy science time amateur hour.

But really you can't win the fewer rules argument. My point was the position you are taking is simultaneously in favour of fewer rules while producing more, that's a contradiction you have to deal with, I can only point it out.

[Orion]

Phone Lobster

I've read your post several times, and found NO evidence that you actually read my last post.

Once you introduce a phlebotinum element, you have the choice to write more rules, or have more DM arbitration. *of course* you can also leave out the phlebotinum completely, but you don't seem too happy with that.

[Grek]

It does not matter if something in a game does not work in a way described by nongame physics. Having breaks from what is normally possible is an important part of many stories and it would be silly to say that having such breaks is a bad idea.

What you should not do, however, is have breaks from the physics of your game world. If you have a world where planets are hollow, you should write down some rules about how they work that describe how you want them to work in your game world. Stuff like which way things fall when dropped, which way they go if you throw them and what happens if you try to dig a really deep hole in something. And then you stick with what you decided.

Likewise, if you have floating islands, you should have a good idea of what the made-up physics of your floating islands are. You should know what happens if you chop a floating rock in half, try to walk on the underside of it or put something very, very heavy on top of it. Frank has written some physics down, which is good. I'm just not sure if those physics describe a world where people do not use non-ballistic ballistae.

[PhoneLobster]

I've read your post several times, and found NO evidence that you actually read my last post..

That is because you are failing to interact with the discussion in any meaningful way.

The argument Frank presented, in a single post, was "I have decided to introduce antigravity through Phlebotinum! In other news, antigravity through phlebotinum is stupid bad wrong fun and should not be introduced".

Your argument that if you introduce phlebotinum rules you can deal with it falls on deaf ears. No one cares. We know we can write rules, and by the way, rules aren't the same as using bullshit science to justify bad rules (which is the position you are defending, I think, you seem to be pretty vague).

The only position that your "we can write rules for phlebotinum" contradicts is Frank's, and then only during the half of the time he doesn't just ignore it to favour his preferences.

[Josh_Kablack]

" In other news, antigravity through phlebotinum is stupid bad wrong fun and should not be introduced".

Well Duh.

Good writers use Cavorite, Upsidaisium, Claudia, Aetherium or Volucite. Only hacks would use something as stupid as Element 152.

[RandomCasualty2]

Except that this is a cooperative storytelling game. The capabilities of transporters have to be well established for the players to make plans around their presence.

And they can be. The mechanic is likely going to be at odds with conventional science, but what the hell I mean so what.

It's fine in single author fiction for a transport beam to bounce a phaser one week and not do that the next. But in a cooperative storytelling game it has to be knowable whether you can bounce a phaser off a transport beam or not - because one of the characters is a frickin engineer and all his plans have to rely on shit like that.

Not necessarily. I mean, there are going to be certain edge cases like that. Always and most of the time you probably don't care about them. We really don't know what happens when you anchor a wall of force to a moving object like a ship. Does the wall stay stationary or does it move with the ship? What happens if the ship rams something, of it the ship itself starts to come apart and its floor is no longer a flat plane? Does the wall just vanish or what?

There are always going to be weird edge cases, and basically it may be easiest just to go with the "The outcome is unpredictable" stance, and not even care. Sometimes you can shoot a phaser at a transporter beam and it bounces. Sometimes it just goes through and other times the beam absorbs the energy somehow.

Not all results have to be repeatable and predictable, and the PCs don't need to know how everything in the world works.

Basically all you as the DM need to come up with is the basics. In a Hollow world, you're probably just concerned with two things.

-How you get from the outer world to the inner one.
-What happens if you try to fly through the center of the holllow world.

And that's it.

And overall, that's pretty doable.

In fact, it's probably a little easier than floating islands, because floating islands have all sorts of movement questions associated with them, where as the Hollow World is just... a world. The hollow world is harder to explain with science, but it's a fantasy game, so that shouldn't even be a concern.

[MartinHarper]

Consider an object X. There exist Y possible interactions. The results of those interactions will be either defined by the rules, or they will be left to DM interpretation. This applies regardless of whether X resembles something in the real world.

For example, consider the planet Earth. Everyone knows that if you jump off a tower, you fall to the ground and hurt yourself. Most people don't know the exact risk of death or injury for falls of a given height. Nobody knows how those risks should be mapped into hit points for fantasy characters. So you want rules for falling damage.

If the campaign setting is a world tree, or a hollow world, or the back of a giant turtle, you also want rules for falling damage. The rules are useful for the exact same reasons, and they can be the exact same rules. Such a campaign setting doesn't need more rules. Instead, it needs more description.

[Starmaker]

On weird-shaped worlds.

There is a literary example of a mishmash setting with all sorts of crazy world shapes, The Death Gate Cycle by the much-maligned Weiss and Hickman. They have an all-floating-islands world, a hollow world with like four suns inside AND giant trees, an underdark and a water world which is bullshit incarnate because the authors themselves failed to describe how it's supposed to work.

The flying islands world is something I understand. (There's also a French cartoon about flying islands and dragons and stuff.) Maybe they have built-in superconductive coils and float on magnetic fields, maybe it's etherium or solium or just magic. The story is (predictably) about islands and airships (and dragons), as any story set in such a world should be - what's the point of making floating islands if you sit on a single one all your life?

The hollow world, on the other hand, does not work, like, at all. The problem is not because of the lack of gravity (which, by the way, is not a matter of physics, that's motherfvcking MATH at work) and not because of eternal daylight or the undefined plant sizes ("you know, really big" is not a description), but because the whole book was about the characters discovering they live in a hollow world. Seriously.

A floating islands world is made for flying around, probably on an airship (because you cannot have meaningful encounters while on a dragon except aerial combat). Air is the inert medium, much like water in nonmagical stories (in fantasy, water is not inert: there are sahuagin and sea elves and stuff), sort of Earthsea 3D.

A hollow world does not lend itself to any kind of story, it's pure strangeness for the sake of strangeness. There's really nothing to do except wear a blindfold to bed - if we posit that hero-level physics works conventionally. And if it doesn't, you're playing Mass & Momentum, not Dungeons & Dragons.

Flying islands in a setting not consisting of them exclusively are even better. Such an island is essentially a magical adventure location, one of the many that should exist in a fantasy world. Hop on a dragon, fly through the storm, land, beat up the inhabitants, take their stuff, steal an airship, fly away, ???, PROFIT. Compare: If we limit the "hollowness" to one location, we get the land of eternal sunshine, which is in fact mentioned in fairytales occasionally, but there's nothing else to it except the aforementioned blindfold (a towel is fine too).

That's my 2 kopeikas on the advantages of flying islands. Note that I didn't use either "Frank is my hero" or "PL makes my head hurt" as an argument, but I totally wanted to.

More (already mentioned) weird shapes:

1. The World Tree. Note that shape only matters when the characters get to interact with it in a meaningful way. Either the characters are physically climbing the branches a la Jack and the Beanstalk (which is funny, but not conducive to a good game) or the tree is just a fancy name for a planar arrangement.

2. The Flat World. Again, the inherently funny giant turtle (that's why Pratchett went this way) and the elemental system of Exalted.

3. Random Weird Shit. Consider the original Might and Magic series: the worlds are flat, artificial and have everything from dragons to ninja to homicidal robots. It's basically Wonderland: the Tripping, and it can be fun, but I'm mentioning it to back up the point: Bizarre worlds lead to bizarre settings, and the intention to create such a setting is the only case when weird shit is actually justified.

[Roog]

The hollow world, on the other hand, does not work, like, at all. The problem is not because of the lack of gravity (which, by the way, is not a matter of physics, that's motherfvcking MATH at work)

Do you mind explaining that?