Things that break verismilitude for you in a fantasy setting

[Mr.Moron]

It is a fallacy to believe that just because something that happens to be false in one context (such as, say, dragons existing in our world) happens to be true in another, people would suddenly create no myths or rumors or falsehoods. It will simply be a different set of false claims.

People will tell stories of fantastic creatures that don't exist even when there are fantastic creatures that do exist, just as amazing creatures to tell stories about exist in the real world.

For the exact same people tell fictional ghost stories when there are true horror stories to tell in the real world.

or the same reason they tell tall tales about historical figures, major news events, "Chemicals"(TM), animals and any number of other things.

Just because our lizards don’t fly and breathe fire, doesn’t stop of us from thinking about dragons. Just because they have dragons doesn't meant they won't have totally fictional accounts of dragons that can see the future, or dragon the size of a mountain in a setting where neither of those things exist or ever have existed.

Imagine a world that perhaps has fantastical creatures but no large carnivorous mammals, might in that case something like a Tiger or Bear appear in their most fanciful and outlandish tales? Human imagination will always extend beyond what exists no matter if what exists is Gorillas or Super-Intelligent Double-Headed Gorillas with psychic powers. To use another example: despite all our fantastic advances in technology we've hardly run out of ways to imagine advances beyond what we have already. As our horizons expand beyond what we could comprehend before, our imaginations continue to expand even further.

EDIT:
To address gods specifically. To whatever extent gods do or don't exist humans will fill the void of whatever is left unaccounted for with their own explanations. Even if you have a living breathing god who lives in that flying castle you can point to on the horizon every morning unless he's handing down dogma, or giving tours people will mythologise the inside of that castle. For however much the god(s) reveal themselves in explicit tangible ways, people will find things to develop mythology around what they cannot directly observe and know about them. This space is basically infinite no matter how transparent the god is because for whatever they reveal you can always be curious about yet more things. The questions "Why" and "How" go on forever both in depth of detail and breadth of scope. Short of the god(s) being literally of one mind with the people they're bound to create their own accounts of many things.

[Mechalich]

There's a difference between stories people will tell and things people will actually literally believe to be true. People will always tell stories, but the existence of verifiable facts about some supernatural force will mean that what people believe will shift to be in line with those facts - because those facts will produce results.

Take ghost hunting. We have all sorts of 'ghost hunters' running around America today, claiming to research into all sorts of supernatural events using all kinds of different methodologies. Except ghosts aren't real, so there's no way to verify whether any of these methods are true or not and as a result people continue to believe that ghosts literally exist - because their existence cannot be disproven. However, if Ghostbusters happens and we suddenly discover a studied, verifiable basis between how ghosts work (and how to blast them with nuclear energy) then immediate all those other beliefs are going to be swept away because how ghosts work has been codified.

This is a thing that happened in human history - such as through exploration. As the map was filled in, a whole bunch of unverifiable garbage that people believed about unknown parts of the world was replaced with actual knowledge and people stopped believing that supernatural claims in accounts such as Marco Polo's Description of the World were literally truth.

So, in your average fantasy setting, certain aspects of things like religious belief are verifiable, and that constrains the kind of belief people will have. No one would believe in a 'god' in D&D that couldn't grant spells, and that has vastly significant effects on the kind of religions that will emerge as a result.

[raygun goth]

There's a difference between stories people will tell and things people will actually literally believe to be true. People will always tell stories, but the existence of verifiable facts about some supernatural force will mean that what people believe will shift to be in line with those facts - because those facts will produce results.

This is absolutely not true. The existence of facts does not require belief in those facts.

My neighbor believes in a literal, physical devil. I am friends with a man who believes that aliens have visited him and told him the secrets to entering astral space in order to allow him the ability to do battle with the shadow people. About 6% of the United States doesn't believe we landed on the moon - despite the ability of anyone with a telescope, a lunar lens, and a laser pointer to prove it. More Americans believe in the presence of physical angels that appear to them and speak to them than Americans who believe in evolution.

The existence of verifiable facts does not prevent people from believing mutually exclusive things in regards to those facts. This isn't even getting into how the supernatural is basically taken for granted on reservations, in the Pacific, across Africa, even Russia - basically anywhere that isn't England or the United States, and even then there are places like Cassadaga, where the devil still sits on chairs in the graveyard or ghosts take the form of animals and stalk humans.

Take ghost hunting. We have all sorts of 'ghost hunters' running around America today, claiming to research into all sorts of supernatural events using all kinds of different methodologies. Except ghosts aren't real, so there's no way to verify whether any of these methods are true or not and as a result people continue to believe that ghosts literally exist - because their existence cannot be disproven. However, if Ghostbusters happens and we suddenly discover a studied, verifiable basis between how ghosts work (and how to blast them with nuclear energy) then immediate all those other beliefs are going to be swept away because how ghosts work has been codified.

But the methodologies that ghost hunters use can be tested, and can be verified to not work, require outright chicanery, and demonstrated to require either lying or ignorance of the devices they claim to be using, and yet people still believe. In spite of evidence that is widely, easily accessible.

This is a thing that happened in human history - such as through exploration. As the map was filled in, a whole bunch of unverifiable garbage that people believed about unknown parts of the world was replaced with actual knowledge and people stopped believing that supernatural claims in accounts such as Marco Polo's Description of the World were literally truth.

When I was young, I was straight up told not to go into the swamp behind our house by my uncle because there was, in his words, "a giant poison snake" a hundred feet long that could breath swamp muck from its nose and had deer antlers and osprey talons living back there, and he told me this not to scare me, but because he believed it. He used to hunt hogs and leave their bodies in the swamp for the snake. This was only about four acres of land with no canopy.

The lack of terra incognita does not stop people from believing crazy things about their surroundings.

So, in your average fantasy setting, certain aspects of things like religious belief are verifiable, and that constrains the kind of belief people will have. No one would believe in a 'god' in D&D that couldn't grant spells, and that has vastly significant effects on the kind of religions that will emerge as a result.

The gods aren't verifiable, though. Clerics of philosophies can get spells just fine in almost every setting. Any of the spells that allow you to contact a power for answers to your problems are all personal. Everything else can potentially be done by either Aziraxis the Grand Servant of Pelor or Pythoros of the Unbroken Angle who believes that math is the language of creation, but refuses to believe in gods.

[Mr.Moron]

So, in your average fantasy setting, certain aspects of things like religious belief are verifiable, and that constrains the kind of belief people will have. No one would believe in a 'god' in D&D that couldn't grant spells, and that has vastly significant effects on the kind of religions that will emerge as a result.

"....And so Un'Dah, great one, our lord, true god does bid his us children make way on their own devices. Those lesser gods that do walk in his shadow, rashly interfere to grant their puppets low magic to the very peril of our world. Ever does this meddling risk to undue his grand works as all magics that do not stem from workings of the grand numbers. To begrudge their followers, nor the lesser gods themselves for each toils in their own ignorance untouched by his wisdom. In the same do not be blind to the peril...."

-From the great Alamuis, Book 3. Words of the sage prophet Melhone to the pilgrims on the bridge.

(one of many holy texts of the high god Un'Dah, above all others. His teachings state the meddling of petty gods will undo the world as their spells consumes the stuff of reality. The teachings of his religion of course point that only good magic flows from the wizardly ways, the gleaning the truth the world from mathematics. In his words while it may be fair to call those beings that interfere in the material realm "Gods", the fact they feel compelled to be so involved in such petty mortal affairs is clear enough evidence of their lack of true divinity. Those that deny them will be rewarded next life truly, and the faithful should not be tricked by the fevered illusions impressed upon imitation souls by magic that claims to return the dead to life)

It should be noted that for whatever we dismiss as mere myth now, was imminent and plain reality to those that held those beliefs at the time. To the same extent that D&D characters see their spells cast, so too did some ancients see the sun rise each day as a direct result of their rituals and the power of their gods. This was truth as apparent and verified as any natural law we hold up in our textbooks today.

[Tiktakkat]

This is a thing that happened in human history - such as through exploration. As the map was filled in, a whole bunch of unverifiable garbage that people believed about unknown parts of the world was replaced with actual knowledge and people stopped believing that supernatural claims in accounts such as Marco Polo's Description of the World were literally truth.

You mean "unverified garbage", not "unverifiable".
"Unverifiable" means "cannot be verified".
"Unverified" means "has not been verified"
The two are quite different.

So, in your average fantasy setting, certain aspects of things like religious belief are verifiable, and that constrains the kind of belief people will have. No one would believe in a 'god' in D&D that couldn't grant spells, and that has vastly significant effects on the kind of religions that will emerge as a result.

Not at all.
How do those people know that powers can grant spells?
How do they know the difference between divine and arcane spells and psionics?
With enough social control, it is quite possible to create a false cult.

The gods aren't verifiable, though.

Yes they are.
Not easily mind you, but they are.

Clerics of philosophies can get spells just fine in almost every setting.

"Almost every" is not "every", and thus you have just disproven your own point.

Any of the spells that allow you to contact a power for answers to your problems are all personal.

Which doesn't preclude placing them in use activated items, permitting anyone to gain the direct communications they provide.

Everything else can potentially be done by either Aziraxis the Grand Servant of Pelor or Pythoros of the Unbroken Angle who believes that math is the language of creation, but refuses to believe in gods.

Which neither proves Pythoros correct or disproves the existence of Pelor.


You are both engaging in logical fallacies relating to proof or lack thereof.
Failure of proof of one theory is not proof of an opposing theory.
Something that is unverifiable, or unfalsifiable, is inherently beyond the realm of fact.
Something may be unproven but still true.

[raygun goth]

Yes they are.
Not easily mind you, but they are.

No. You can't prove that's Pelor. We can't test Pelor because we get the same results when...

"Almost every" is not "every", and thus you have just disproven your own point.

I say "almost every" because nothing is a sure thing. That is my point, that there is no such thing as a sure thing. We can't debate a broad spectrum of "every setting" here, but we can go by game rules for D&D, if you want, and in those rules, two clerics can hold mutually exclusive beliefs and still get spells.

In one of my settings there's no such thing as "arcane magic" because every form of magic is impinging on the divine - even the wizard types, who are trying to decipher the laws by which the creators of the world made it so that they can complete the jobs that were left unfinished.

In Eberron, it's not clear that the gods even exist - commune spells sure do work, but everyone's commune spells work, and they're all contacting mutually exclusive philosophies.

In Forgotten Realms there's no such thing as divine magic that doesn't come from gods. Even if you think you're worshipping a philosophy, some god is behind it. In fact, gods have such control over who gets divine magic in that setting they can trick worshippers into thinking they're worshipping another god entirely.

We can't cover every setting. To say anything else would be disingenuous.

Which doesn't preclude placing them in use activated items, permitting anyone to gain the direct communications they provide.

Which can also be faked, by your own admission. Also, if two clerics from two mutually exclusive faiths put a direct communication spell in two magic items, and they both work, what then?

Like, okay, assume D&D standard rules.

U!buatu the Above-All is part of a pantheon of gods and rules over the sun and the mountains. He accepts that other gods exist, but that divine power can never stem from a mortal source.

Let's say Zarus, god of the sun and humanity, says that no other gods exist besides him, although humans can become, oh, I don't know, planetars.

The Patriates of Order say that no gods exist, and the truth of divinity can be found within.

A cleric of each of these faiths makes a scroll of commune or whatever. Then a bard or rogue happens into all three of them, casts the spell, and... what happens?

What happens when that bard or rogue uses the commune spells to ask which of these faiths is correct?

You see what I mean when I say it's muddy water even in a setting where the gods "exist?"

Which neither proves Pythoros correct or disproves the existence of Pelor.

It doesn't prove either of them correct, nor does it prove the existence of Pelor nor disproves Pythoros.

That's the point.

You are both engaging in logical fallacies relating to proof or lack thereof.
Failure of proof of one theory is not proof of an opposing theory.
Something that is unverifiable, or unfalsifiable, is inherently beyond the realm of fact.
Something may be unproven but still true.

No, I'm not.

In fact, this:

Something that is unverifiable, or unfalsifiable, is inherently beyond the realm of fact.

Is the entire point I am making.

Pelor is unfalsifiable by the very nature of how divine magic, by the book, works in D&D. But this discussion isn't directly about D&D, even though it keeps getting steered back that way.

[LudicSavant]

Failure of proof of one theory is not proof of an opposing theory.

Good thing that that's not what the text you quoted from Raygun Goth claims, then.

Instead, it looks like he's saying that since cleric with god and cleric without god produces the same result with regards to the test, the "can cast divine spells" test cannot be used to distinguish whether or not gods actually exist.

Edit: Ninja'd

[Bohandas]

Yeah, but you can go and meet him if you can afford to hire a wizard that knows Plane Shift

[Bohandas]

About 6% of the United States doesn't believe we landed on the moon - despite the ability of anyone with a telescope, a lunar lens, and a laser pointer to prove it.

To be fair, a retroreflector is the kind of thing that could easily be placed by an unmanned craft.

[Yora]

You also need a very big laser pointer and sophisticated photon detectors,

[raygun goth]

To be fair, a retroreflector is the kind of thing that could easily be placed by an unmanned craft.

This is true, but we have multiple 3rd parties who confirm that they can, indeed, see our stuff on the moon. Even China and Russia.

Should have added instead "the stuff I can buy from a hobby store."

[jqavins]

Why tell phony ghost stories when there are real ones to tell?

For the exact same reason people tell fictional ghost stories when there are true horror stories to tell in the real world.

OK, for the third time, that was in the spirit of devil's advocate, and was not about gods.

It is a fallacy to believe that just because something that happens to be false in one context (such as, say, dragons existing in our world) happens to be true in another, people would suddenly create no myths or rumors or falsehoods. It will simply be a different set of false claims.

Sure, when dragons exist, people will still tell of multi-headed dragons even if those don't. I never denied that. And yes, people today tell fantastical, even mythical stories about real historical figures. But George Washington does not show up on their doorsteps to say "No, I never cut down that cherry tree and I've told plenty of lies." When actual gods do that sort of thing, it may be that people continue making up their own stories about gods, but it is wildly fallacious to state with any certainty that they will. Because such a proposition has never been tested and never can be.

[Tiktakkat]

No. You can't prove that's Pelor. We can't test Pelor because we get the same results when...

No, we don't.
"Pelor" refers to a specific individual entity.
By your claim, by testing you we get the same results as when testing me, and individual identity becomes non-existent.

I say "almost every" because nothing is a sure thing. That is my point, that there is no such thing as a sure thing. We can't debate a broad spectrum of "every setting" here, but we can go by game rules for D&D, if you want, and in those rules, two clerics can hold mutually exclusive beliefs and still get spells.

Irrelevant conflation.
Just because two entities produce similar results does not make them identical. Once again, that is immediately disproven by the existence of distinct human beings.

On a game rules simulation you are simply wrong. Nothing requires a DM to allow clerics of philosophies or what not, and thus it is quite possible for people who "believe" in such things to be completely incapable of producing the same spells as a cleric.
Which . . . you immediately proceed to demonstrate.

We can't cover every setting. To say anything else would be disingenuous.

Then why are you trying to?

Which can also be faked, by your own admission. Also, if two clerics from two mutually exclusive faiths put a direct communication spell in two magic items, and they both work, what then?

Then it demonstrates the existence of multiple entities.
Now you are indulging in the excluded middle fallacy.

A cleric of each of these faiths makes a scroll of commune or whatever. Then a bard or rogue happens into all three of them, casts the spell, and... what happens?

What happens when that bard or rogue uses the commune spells to ask which of these faiths is correct?

That depends on who is contacted, combined with core facts of the setting.

You see what I mean when I say it's muddy water even in a setting where the gods "exist?"

Except it isn't muddy.
There are specific entities that exist and may be contacted.
Whether or not one or more them lies when contacted in no way alters the core facts of the setting.

It doesn't prove either of them correct, nor does it prove the existence of Pelor nor disproves Pythoros.

That's the point.

Maybe it does.
Maybe it doesn't.

No, I'm not.

Well yes, you are.
When you make a valid point, you proceed to completely destroy it by indulging in fallacies about that point.

Pelor is unfalsifiable by the very nature of how divine magic, by the book, works in D&D. But this discussion isn't directly about D&D, even though it keeps getting steered back that way.

Which is completely false.
You can contact Pelor, even meet Pelor directly, with the appropriate magic, and in a campaign that allows such direct interaction.
As such, the ability to meet Pelor is quite falsifiable via divine magic, by the book, in D&D.


And while the discussion isn't directly about D&D, it is very much about things within a game context.
That requires elements of the suspension of disbelief established by the setting in contrast to real world situations.

While ghosts are (at least at present) completely non-falsifiable in the real world, they are absolutely falsifiable in fantasy settings that include them as part of their bestiary.
Either the creature you are a fighting is a ghost or it isn't, period. It may look like a ghost, scare like a ghost, waft about like a ghost, but it could be a wraith or shadow or other bodiless monster, or just some illusions, or even "real world" tricks. Or . . . it is a ghost, as defined by the system. But that is a fact that is falsifiable within the rules system and the setting.
Declaring that because ghosts are not "real" in the real world, the inclusion of any such creatures in a fantasy setting breaks verisimilitude is breaking the fundamental principle of willing suspension of disbelief required for a fantasy setting to exist in the first place.

And that willing suspension of disbelief requires a core set of facts that are adhered to within the setting for the suspension of belief to be functional. Constant retcons and revisions, or casual inconsistencies destroys the suspension of disbelief, invalidating the effect of the setting. That does not however mandate a perfect omniscient reliable narrator. The facts can be obscured both to the characters within the setting as well as to the observers of the setting without destroying the willing suspension of disbelief required for function.

[Roxxy]

This solution actually triggers another verisimilitude issue for me... races capable of interbreeding living in close proximity for extended periods, yet somehow continuing to be distinct races. In the real world, groups of humans tend to mix with their neighbors. The resulting offspring are often raised as a member of only one parent's culture (or caste, or whatever), but the genetic mixing still happens. If humans, elves, and orcs all lived in a mixed society and were physically capable of interbreeding without any non-social obstacles, then over the generations, pure-blooded members of any given race would become increasingly scarce, and mutts with extremely mixed heritage would eventually become the norm.

There are ways around this, of course. Maybe inter-racial fertility is extremely low, or there are sharply increased risks for the mother and/or baby involved, reinforcing social stigma and providing a negative pressure on the mixed-race population. Maybe half-whatevers are outright infertile, like Dark Sun half-dwarves. I'm sure there are other options, as well; I wouldn't be surprised if someone more knowledgeable than me about the Elder Scrolls games could tell me how that setting manages its incredibly cosmopolitan empire without everyone being mutts a few thousand years in.

I went with having my divine empire take a hard line stance against interracial relationships. Fits right in with their proscriptivism. It's only in the few centuries since the fall of the empire that interracial relationships have been tolerable, and even that has to overcome a lot of social inertia, which is why, while it's getting more and more common, the majority of people still marry a member of their own race.

[nrg89]

I went with having my divine empire take a hard line stance against interracial relationships. Fits right in with their proscriptivism. It's only in the few centuries since the fall of the empire that interracial relationships have been tolerable, and even that has to overcome a lot of social inertia, which is why, while it's getting more and more common, the majority of people still marry a member of their own race.

A few centuries is a lot however. In South Africa, mixed race unions was illegal until 20 years ago but mixed race people are still around 10% of the population. In America, even though White Americans are two thirds of the population the average Americans genome is only 25% European and legal, inter-racial marriage is also very young in a lot of the states. Laws are not that effective when it comes to love and just a few decades can do a lot.

Now, in a fantasy world genomes might not work in the messy and complicated way it does in real life, but if our own history is a rough estimate there is a lot of inter-racial relationships (even though the descendants might not know about it).

[Frozen_Feet]

However, if Ghostbusters happens and we suddenly discover a studied, verifiable basis between how ghosts work (and how to blast them with nuclear energy) then immediate all those other beliefs are going to be swept away because how ghosts work has been codified.

Immediately?

Sure. Like discovery of Earth being round immediately swept away beliefs of Earth being flat - wait, no it didn't.

Codified belief systems, especially ones rooted in pitfalls of human intuition, can resist being disproven even in the face of concrete evidence. This becomes more and more true as the evidence grows in complexity, as a lot of people can't recognize what a thing proves or disproves despite seeing it with their own eyes - simply because they are not that smart.

[Corneel]

No, we don't.
Which is completely false.
You can contact Pelor, even meet Pelor directly, with the appropriate magic, and in a campaign that allows such direct interaction.
As such, the ability to meet Pelor is quite falsifiable via divine magic, by the book, in D&D.

There is no spell that definitely can exclude the hypothesis that what Pelor's followers believe to be Pelor is not another entity playing the role of Pelor, or at least to the satisfaction to those in whose interest it is to believe that Pelor is not what he seems.

Say a priest of Pelor uses "Commune" to ask whether Pelor exists. Apart from the affront that this might cause to a god ("How can my servant even doubt I exist?") and the fact that "The spell, at best, provides information to aid character decisions." rather than definite answers to philosophical questions (so any DM would be in his right to rule that questions that go beyond the remit of providing information to aid character decisions would not get an answer), the effect is personal and can be denied as lies.

Also the same entity might present as Pelor, with a Pelorite doctrine, to one culture, but as the Unconquered Sun with a slightly different doctrine to another culture. Or even as Pelor with a slightly different Pelorite doctrine (more palatable to that culture). And then who is to say what is the right doctrine?


After which one is the true Fanta Orange, this one with its more "natural" color close to the color of orange juice as it is sold in Europe:

or this one in bright orange as it is sold in Africa:


And there's Royal Tru - the Unconquered Sun to Pelor Fanta:


And they are all owned by the Coca Cola corporation.

So who's to say that the gods as seen by simple mortals can't be like soft drinks, while the true divine entities behind them are like the soft drink corporations. And the reason might be quite similar: adapt to local taste and custom to capture as large a share of the belief market as possible.

[Tiktakkat]

There is no spell that definitely can exclude the hypothesis that what Pelor's followers believe to be Pelor is not another entity playing the role of Pelor, or at least to the satisfaction to those in whose interest it is to believe that Pelor is not what he seems.

And you know what . . .

That is completely irrelevant.
Because there IS a totally mundane way to prove that Pelor exists.
It is called "walking over to the bookshelf, opening a book, and reading it printed in the text."

"Pelor" is a literary construct in a fantasy RPG.
"Pelor" exists because the rule book says he does.
Period.
Whether or not any individual literary construct within the fantasy setting believes he exists is completely and utterly irrelevant to the fact that "Pelor" does exist as part of that fantasy setting.
All the variant hypotheses will not change that simple fact.
All the fiddling around with philosophical gobbledygook and semi-scientific name dropping will not change that.
Only playing in a different setting, with different rules, can change it.
And doing that merely establishes a different set of default facts.

Even playing around in Planescape, where the concept of "belief makes reality" does not change that there are certain core facts that are. The Athar can run around all they like denying that powers exist, and yet there are clerics who cast spell. The Believers of the Source and Sign of One can run around all they like expecting to think a power into existence or ascend themselves, and yet there are still other powers granting spells.
Why?
Because that is what the sourcebooks say.

We are not talking about the real world.
We are talking about a fantasy RPG setting.
It has rules.
It has a canon of background material.
Those sources can be checked.

If you are completely unwilling to agree to suspend disbelief to accept the rules of a fantasy setting in an RPG, then the problem is not that "verisimilitude" is being broken, but that you don't have the imagination required to play an RPG in the first place, particularly not one with a fantasy setting. If you have issues with a game that features mythological deities or ghosts because "they aren't real", then you have too many issues to play a game featuring magic, dragons, and such-like.
Seriously.
You are in the wrong hobby. Save yourself the angst and find a different one, as you will never be satisfied with this one.

[Roxxy]

A few centuries is a lot however. In South Africa, mixed race unions was illegal until 20 years ago but mixed race people are still around 10% of the population. In America, even though White Americans are two thirds of the population the average Americans genome is only 25% European and legal, inter-racial marriage is also very young in a lot of the states. Laws are not that effective when it comes to love and just a few decades can do a lot.

Now, in a fantasy world genomes might not work in the messy and complicated way it does in real life, but if our own history is a rough estimate there is a lot of inter-racial relationships (even though the descendants might not know about it).

Here's the thing, though. Nobody in America, or even Europe, is purebred anything. Everybody has interbred with another race somewhere in their lineage. That does not, however, negate that we percieve most of those people as either white or black. One or two other ancestors doesn't overrule most of your bloodline. I have a Sioux ancestor back in the 19th century. I would never call myself Sioux. California has had interracial marriage since 1948, and most of us wouldn't call ourselves mixed race. Less than 10%. Same in my setting. Yea, your average elf probably has some paciens or orc or something in their ancestry, but not near enough to make them a half-elf.

[VoxRationis]

I'm sure there are other options, as well; I wouldn't be surprised if someone more knowledgeable than me about the Elder Scrolls games could tell me how that setting manages its incredibly cosmopolitan empire without everyone being mutts a few thousand years in.

It's incredibly cosmopolitan in Cyrodiil and in pro-Imperial cities in the rest of the provinces, but from what I've seen, there's a pretty strong strain of xenophobia, in one form or another (from "Skyrim belongs to the Nords" to Altmer ideals of "Mer over Man" to the dark elves calling you "Outlander" constantly to the fact that Bosmeri ideas regarding cannibalism horrify visitors), in most of the provinces. The less xenophobic types travel to the cosmopolitan areas, refreshing their stocks of purebred individuals, but contribute to mixed-heritage bloodlines in those areas. But in the provinces themselves, there's probably very little interbreeding going on.

[Sam113097]

Can Mer interbreed with Men in Elder Scrolls? I always just assumed that they were separate species. There aren't any half elves, right? Within Mer and Men, appearances are varied enough that interracial relationships are believable.

[Milo v3]

Can Mer interbreed with Men in Elder Scrolls? I always just assumed that they were separate species. There aren't any half elves, right? Within Mer and Men, appearances are varied enough that interracial relationships are believable.

Breton are half-elves in Elder Scrolls. There is even a book in Oblivion that talks about the topic of cross-breeding which starts with saying that elves and men can breed.

[TripleD]

Can Mer interbreed with Men in Elder Scrolls? I always just assumed that they were separate species. There aren't any half elves, right? Within Mer and Men, appearances are varied enough that interracial relationships are believable.

Elder Scrolls nut here.

Men and mer can definitely 100% have children. It's a bit unclear whether "beast races" can also produce kids, but there are some hints that it may be possible.

Every living thing in the Arubis (the universe of The Elder Scrolls) is decended from the Et'Ada, the original ancestor spirits. Of the greatest of the Et'Ada, some were tricked into creating the world (the Aedra) and ended up "dying" in order to form the physical laws of the Mundus (mortal plane), others (the Daedra) decided they didn't want any part of it and instead became the rulers of Oblivion. Some lesser Et'Ada (called the Ehlnofey) who followed the Aedra became the sentient races of Nirn. So men and mer are really just different manifestations of the same spirits. Their immediate common ancestor makes them much more like modern races than separate species.

As for half elves, as "Notes on Racial Phylogeny" (an in game book that should be taken with a grain of salt due to bias) puts it:

"After much analysis of living specimens, the council long ago determined that all "races" of men and elves may mate with each other and produce fertile offspring"

One nation, High Rock, is decended from mixed human-Elven populations, hence the rarely used but still existent title "Man-Mer" to describe Bretons.

Heck, human-elf pairings are so common there are even stereotypes about them. When Tiber Septim (allegedly) gets Barenziah pregnant, he freaks a bit because he didn't think Dunmer could get pregnant at 18.

As for the earlier post asking why the populations aren't more mixed. The short answer is game mechanics; too much effort to make so many new models. The longer answer is that Tamriel in lore is much bigger and more complicated than in game. For example: the "Imperials" in game are the natives of Cyrodil. In lore, they are a mix of two different peoples: the Colovians and the Nibenay, with the Colovians being divided into different "estates" and the Nibenay being previously hundreds of different tribes.

[jqavins]

I went with having my divine empire take a hard line stance against interracial relationships. Fits right in with their proscriptivism. It's only in the few centuries since the fall of the empire that interracial relationships have been tolerable, and even that has to overcome a lot of social inertia, which is why, while it's getting more and more common, the majority of people still marry a member of their own race.

This has got me thinking, and I've come up with a solution for the world percolating in my head.

I'd already decided that elves and dwarves, and others yet to be decided, are "fey-touched." They had hominid pre-historic ancestors and were modified by magic that is associated with an element or a natural force. And that orcs, goblins, and maybe ogres (I keep going back and forth on ogres) are hominids, closer to homo sapiens than chimps, gorillas, and orangutans, almost but not quite as close as neanderthal.

The fey-touched can't interbreed with with any other race without magical intervention, and the offspring are basically infertile. (They might have offspring with even more esoteric magical intervention.) Also, social mixing of these races is rare due to geography; each is dominant in a different area but separated by difficult mountains. So half breeds are rare but possible, and virtually never propagate.

The hominids (including humans) are totally inter-fertile, but their offspring have less than a 50:50 chance of being fertile (without magical intervention.) And they are largely though not overwhelmingly separated by a variety of social factors; basically, they mostly don't get along and don't like to mix, though there are a decent number of exceptions. So, while half-breeds are not too uncommon, mutt lineage tends to die out.

I think that works. Comments? No, wait, that would be thread hijacking. Please leave comments here.

[Bohandas]

And you know what . . .

That is completely irrelevant.
Because there IS a totally mundane way to prove that Pelor exists.
It is called "walking over to the bookshelf, opening a book, and reading it printed in the text."

"Pelor" is a literary construct in a fantasy RPG.
"Pelor" exists because the rule book says he does.
Period.
Whether or not any individual literary construct within the fantasy setting believes he exists is completely and utterly irrelevant to the fact that "Pelor" does exist as part of that fantasy setting.
All the variant hypotheses will not change that simple fact.
All the fiddling around with philosophical gobbledygook and semi-scientific name dropping will not change that.
Only playing in a different setting, with different rules, can change it.
And doing that merely establishes a different set of default facts.

Even playing around in Planescape, where the concept of "belief makes reality" does not change that there are certain core facts that are. The Athar can run around all they like denying that powers exist, and yet there are clerics who cast spell. The Believers of the Source and Sign of One can run around all they like expecting to think a power into existence or ascend themselves, and yet there are still other powers granting spells.
Why?
Because that is what the sourcebooks say.

We are not talking about the real world.
We are talking about a fantasy RPG setting.
It has rules.
It has a canon of background material.
Those sources can be checked.

If you are completely unwilling to agree to suspend disbelief to accept the rules of a fantasy setting in an RPG, then the problem is not that "verisimilitude" is being broken, but that you don't have the imagination required to play an RPG in the first place, particularly not one with a fantasy setting. If you have issues with a game that features mythological deities or ghosts because "they aren't real", then you have too many issues to play a game featuring magic, dragons, and such-like.
Seriously.
You are in the wrong hobby. Save yourself the angst and find a different one, as you will never be satisfied with this one.

It's perhaps then worth noting that the official stats in Deities & Demigods differ significantly from the powers stated and implied by official fluff text

[Tiktakkat]

It's perhaps then worth noting that the official stats in Deities & Demigods differ significantly from the powers stated and implied by official fluff text

Orthodox faith versus Reformed faith

[kardillamo]

Not sure if this has been said yet, but my biggest issue is when there is a blatant disregard for physics. Even with magic and all that, Newtons laws at the very least have to be followed for me to take any magic setting seriously.