Rant: Why do people always want real world equivalence in their fantasy?

[Mechalich]

One of the reasons that shifts from an Earth baseline are rare is that the 'shorts and shirtsleeves' zone of human habitability is actually rather narrow. You can't tweak things like gravity or temperature or axial tilt very far before you render your world functionally uninhabitable to humans without significant technology or magic.

Changes can be made at the margins, of course. A world can have a larger proportion of certain biomes, or lack certain classes of lifeforms, or have a slightly longer or shorter year, but unless your story digs down deep into the worldbuilding this probably doesn't matter too much. Especially as most fantasy campaigns or novels are generally set within a single climatic zone regardless. So even if you have a world where you have temperate forests at the equator, its still going to produce cultures that are more like temperate forest cultures than otherwise. And those things will only matter at all if your world is sufficiently low-magic or low tech such that the environment has a massive effect on life. D&D is sufficiently high magic that it laughs at 'desert worlds' or 'tundra worlds,' never mind minor tweaks to Earth-like scenarios.

[Quertus]

If a 5-year-old can beat your trap, you might not want to set the disable device DC at 35. Just saying.

Oh yeah! This will get stolen "quoted"!

That one deserves to be put on a plaque and installed where everyone can see it.

I'm glad you enjoyed it.

If my players can figure something out with knowledge reasonably and conceivably available to their characters, I'm not going to begrudge them the solution.

This one is tricky (and a bit off topic).

My signature character, Quertus, for whom this account is named, has spent more time in the underdark than most humans have been alive. But I don't know anything about subterranean lichens (for example), in the underdark or IRL.

So I rely on the DM to tell me when there is something that should be obvious to my character, but is outside my experience.

On topic, when you make a change to the world, you have to be prepared for the fact that the players aren't going to be as familiar with that difference as their characters are.

For the characters, this is just the way reality works. Its been this way all their lives. This lack of novelty gives them familiarity, and the ability to utilize and navigate this difference proficiently, yet, at the same time, this familiarity probably should make them less interested in and less likely to investigate the area where their world differs from our own.

It can be difficult to successfully roleplay your character's familiarity and comfort with the laws of reality when you are yourself only just becoming acquainted with them. Similarly, it can be difficult to correctly judge in a vacuum just what a character should and shouldn't know, should and shouldn't be able to think. Thus, I try to sidestep the issue by using game mechanics when applicable.

But I don't begrudge others for playing the game differently unless the person thinking their way through the game is preventing the person who actually spent ranks on the appropriate skills from actualizing their character / enjoying the game.

[Temperjoke]

In the situations I've been in, frankly, we've got a limited time to play, and a lot of playing to do. Going out of your way to make your fantasy world different than the world we're familiar with is fine, if it relates to what we're doing, otherwise, I'd rather focus on the actual plot. For example, "we have until the end of winter to figure out a solution for stopping this army, but winter is 6 months long in this world, so we can travel to that dungeon across the world that holds the solution to our problem" relates a difference in the world to the story line, therefore it's important.

Now, that isn't to say that you shouldn't have differences in your world. Maybe your players are interested in studying this information between sessions, so creating a different world and sharing it is fine. I just wouldn't go out of my way to point out those differences during the game if they don't relate to the plot at hand.

[Mutazoia]

A 96 hour day could be neat if you think about it-esp if. Humanoids are still on a 24 hour sleep cycle.

Dawn Day
Noon Day
Dusk Day
Night Day

All sorts of aspects/prestige classes etc could be based around focusing power in one part of the day. Let alone spell effects.

Plus. Equipment for sleeping in daytime.

High Latitudes would have less obvious effects (people already used to waking up to the same sun)

It isn't change I dislike-its is ignoring the consequences (like "closing time" would have a different meaning in such a world)

The problem with making your world's days 96 hours long is simply: It's still a "day" to your characters, and they would take no special notice of it, any more than you take special notice of a 24 hour day. The only people in the game that has to keep track of it is the players, and unless there is some specific need to remember that the days are 96 hours long, it's going to be forgotten almost immediately. In which case you might as well not bother with it. There will be no difference between saying "the next day" (24 hours) or "the next day" (96 hours).

"Different" does not automatically equate to "cool and useful".

[Efrate]

If a 5-year-old can beat your trap, you might not want to set the disable device DC at 35. Just saying

I feel I need to clarify this. Its not smack it with a hammer. It analyzing materials and stress fractures and calculating the most structurally weak point and apply a super thin focused force to render it useless by destroying a triggering mechanism. And its not usually the rogue, I could almost get behind that. Fighter McGee over here whose entire life before was a soldier in a minor kingdom doesn't know how to do that.

And hey, maybe it takes a pure child who is untouched by evil to bypass the trap, killing said child but then deactivating permanently. I like making my players make choices like that.

Its more about real world vs. in game knowledge and its a major gripe of mine. I run one of my games with a 17 year old and he does this constantly despite talking to him multiple times about it, and several others have as well in other games through the years.

All world building essentially comes down to whether or not the change effects the story. Is it relevant? A political intrigue game set in a single city with limited contact from any places not also large cities with similar systems doesn't need to know about how much melatonin they lose do to 6 year winters. It provides nothing. Its not needed. Similarly a survivalist system set in a harsh frontier where all resources are scare and the same winters need to know nothing about geopolitical alliances between neighboring city states and the tensions thereof, they need to store food and find some way to live. If your story uses both in the same world, and for some reason you need to go between the two, you only need much broader details. Winters up here are long, winters are harsh, people die often, is enough. How or why isn't important, just as mineral rights on the broader betwixt city A and city B and laws regarding such are not needed.

Does your change affect the story in meaningful way, or is it window dressing? If more the later, maybe mention it once briefly at the start of the campaign and then ignore it, your players likely will.

Is your story about finding out how and why these sweeping changes happened and how things still manage to function? Go nuts with them. Doesn't sound that interesting to me but I prefer more narrative games than sandboxes. YMMV.

Does any change directly or indirectly affect your characters, their plans, and their adventures? No? Then its all not needed. Murderhobo dungeon rats (as an extreme example) don't need nor care about that, nor usually about any consequences of their actions. Kick in the door, get the loot kill the bad guys, save the girls, go home, get drunk repeat after a days shopping and rest.

[2D8HP]

dungeon rats (as an extreme example) don't need nor care about that, nor usually about any consequences of their actions. Kick in the door, get the loot kill the bad guys, save the girls, go home, get drunk repeat after a days shopping and rest.

That set-up sounds perfect!
Do you want another player?

[sktarq]

The problem with making your world's days 96 hours long is simply: ... unless there is some specific need to remember that the days are 96 hours long, it's going to be forgotten almost immediately....

"Different" does not automatically equate to "cool and useful".

automatically no, but it is the kind of difference you can build into those things that do matter.

business open in multiple shifts for 70 hours and then closed for 26 would change how rogues would plan a bank or jewelry heist. Or if a culture in which a political/espionage game is being played says that the midnight "day" is for being with family at home and parties are for "dawn" days it would matter if they are trying to get the chance to charm the ambassador's son in terms of availability. or for planning battles between armies with lightsensitivity/darkvision issues. or for number of attempts for a "noon light" a prophecy gets in a period of time.

[Mechalich]

Making the planetary rotation 96 hours instead of 24 is huge change with implications that range from freakish to outright uninhabitable, depending on how it interfaces with planetary temperature circulation, wind patterns, tidal forces, and a bunch of other stuff.

Building a planet that is otherwise Earth-like in every way except that the day is 96 hours long means rebuilding everything except the geology (and actually possibly that too because tidal forces) from the ground up. Such a prolonged day/night cycle totally changing the nature of photosynthetic organisms, of temperature patterns, of weather systems, and the cycles of higher organisms.

For a simple example: such a change makes the existence of small, high-energy expenditure endotherms - meaning pretty much any bird smaller than a crow - impossible in a temperate zone. This is a world where hummingbirds would die of starvation during the long nights.

You cannot simply tweak environmental parameters in isolation on an actual world. You can do that if you're operating in an explicitly magical environment like D&D Outer Planes or fantastical reality like Discworld, but authors who do that generally do indulge in crazy weirdness without real-world equivalence, and making a world explicitly absurd in this way tends to kill drama and promote comedy unless the creators are incredibly talented or chose to go purely for meaning in metaphor, which is what Planescape: Torment does.

[PersonMan]

This is a perfect example of the spectrum you can get with changes like this. Some people will shrug and assume a world identical to ours except with longer days and nights, others consider the cultural implications and then a third group says "uh, actually, this breaks everything".

A reason many people stick with a fairly generic historical-ish setting is because that lets you start five paces from the finish line. You have your world, now you add a few twists and turns to make it unique, then you work on the plot. Change the day/night cycle to last 96 hours and suddenly you have three and a half miles of consequences (and domino-esque lines of "if, then" scenarios) to work through just to arrive at a world nothing like the one you'd intended to make.

Then someone comes along and says "well, I'm an expert in X, and unfortunately you forgot to consider Z, Y and F" which means you now have to either explain that away, have a hole in your setting logic (which could result in the "this makes no sense, I can't take it seriously" player response from someone who can't ignore it) or spend even more time making that work.

[NichG]

There's a standard trick that helps here. If someone says 'wait, shouldn't X be a problem because of ...', rather than saying 'but there's Y,Z,... to fix it' or 'just ignore it', you can say: "Isn't that interesting?"

If you suggest that there's a hidden, important reason behind it then you get them thinking 'what could be making this work?' rather than 'can I figure out all the reasons this doesn't work?'. They'll use their level of expertise - whatever it may be - to come up with hypotheses to satisfy themselves.

[johnbragg]

Though there is still the justified question why people still keep mostly making very generic Standard Fantasy Settings?

How many generic Standard Fantasy Settings have been published lately, though?
Golarion, to give the PAthfinder writers a place to put their stuff. The 4E setting (Points of Light, I think?) likewise.
Eberron, which makes a number of deviations from Standard Fantasy Setting Greyhawk/FR/Middle Earth.

For homebrewed settings, don't think of the DM as "creating a new world." Think of it as taking out the Standard Fantasy Setting whiteboard and erasing Greyhawk/FR specific material to make room for new creations in the same world-system.

That assumption is false. But this is the reason why I prefer magepunk to a classical setting. If magic is a secure and easy way to make entire feudal systems obsolete then why would people continue to live like knights, peasants and farmers? Wouldn't they try and cultivate magic to ease their lifes? Of course conflict and destruction will still happen but if you imagine most sentient life on the same basis as humans (persistence hunters, omnivores, humanoid in shape) they will probably socialize and try to share their findings within a hierarchy.

It is just stupid to assume that if magic can create unlimited food that people will just ignore that.

Agreed in concept, but I have a major quibble--most magitech settings simply ape real-world or steampunk tech, swapping out magical powersources. I say that's reverse-engineering something based on centuries of development of real-world concepts that wouldn't have existed, or wouldn't have been prominent in a universe based on magical principles.

I like to take the sort of things that classical-and-eariler civilizations built--roads, pyramids, the Library and Lighthouse of Alexandria, canal systems--and explore what Alexander or Cyrus or Ramses or Augustus or PEricles or Shi Huangdi would have done if he had hundreds or thousands of low-level wizards and/or clerics. Have magic grow up alongside civilization, and imagine what directions it would go in.

So yes, the string of obelisks along the northern frontier of the Estruvian Empire used to keep the dragons and giants at bay--until the civil war in the Estruvian Empire broke the political consensus that was its power source.

[Cluedrew]

My default, if I am worried about people using science to poke holes in the setting, is to throw science out. I've never met anyone who didn't like Alice in Wonderland because the law of conservation of energy didn't hold. Put a different way, instead of keeping the base and changing the details, change the details and keep the aesthetics of reality (then change those as needed). Keeping most of the details the same gives the familiarity you need to jump into the setting but the change in the core allows you to change the details you want with relatively clean results.

Magitech is a good example of this. Yes it is coloured differently, but for the most part you just have the basic rules of the modern day (a few medieval aspects mixed in) coming from a very different source. So you have your default understanding of the world that comes from reality and stereo-medieval settings, but it is easy to mix in other weird details as well.

I also like exploring consequences of what if, but if those changes become too numerous (more so than significant) than it becomes harder to deal with.

[Yora]

There's a short and interesting post on Monsters and Manuals today.
Basically the idea is to have a handful of iconic elements that keep appearing all the time to give a fantasy world a strong distinctive identity. If these are weird, even better.

[sktarq]

Making the planetary rotation 96 hours instead of 24 is huge change with implications that range from freakish to outright uninhabitable, depending on how it interfaces with planetary temperature circulation, wind patterns, tidal forces, and a bunch of other stuff. . . . .

Yup. All that stuff is fascinating to me. But I don't expect it to be fascinating to my players. I quit reading Song of Fire and Ice to investigate the seed and esp seed size development of perenials and the implications for domesticatable choices.

During the investigation into wind patterns- developing group huddler hummingbirds-nocturnal beehaviors of earth diurnal birds, etc I'm looking for quirks I can build a culture/cultural event/plot hook/economical opppertunity (and use tthem as antagonists or patrons) from this the world grows more organically and that comes through in game. That's also why planscape etc does nothing for me

[Jay R]

...t', you can say: "Isn't that interesting?"

I can't say "Isn't that interesting?" unless I find it interesting. Random change for the sake of random change isn't particularly interesting to me.

Now a major change that is crucial to the storyline and background can be extremely interesting. In Game of Thrones, summers and winters last for years, and nobody knows when the will end. Winter is a long period of time when you can't grow much food, and running out is a serious threat. The fact that winter is coming during the current wars of succession adds a huge element of risk. In the second book season, armies were burning the crops to stop their enemies, without reckoning what effect that would soon have. It's a brilliant plot element.

This is a change with immediate effect on the story. It's fascinating. But a 96 hour day has no interest for me, unless there is a clear effect on the game.

[sktarq]

I'd call that a false comparison. On one side you have the effects of a change (interesting) to a change (not interesting). Long semi-random seasons are not inherently interesting by themselves to most people.

I'd call a change "interesting" if it has consequences that add to the game or story with lots of things to work with.

[Mechalich]

I've never met anyone who didn't like Alice in Wonderland because the law of conservation of energy didn't hold.

Alice in Wonderland is not a game setting or even a shared world novel setting.

The thing about settings for tabletop rpgs is that they need to present consistency across the vision of different people such that one game in the setting still feels recognizable as the same setting compared to another game in the setting. Material that might be great on its own but doesn't fit with that vision will be rejected out of hand as not matching. Heck, even without a setting involved this happened with D&D 4e, which was not evaluated principally on its merits, but on the fact that it didn't feel like D&D.

The more plotholes and inconsistencies a setting has the more difficult it is for that setting to function in the cooperative storytelling that is the heart of tabletop rpg play. oWod settings often fell apart on arguments about how to play the settings the right way, because the design was so lacking in coherency two gaming groups would almost inevitably devise completely unrecognizable visions of the world.

[Max_Killjoy]

Alice in Wonderland is not a game setting or even a shared world novel setting.

The thing about settings for tabletop rpgs is that they need to present consistency across the vision of different people such that one game in the setting still feels recognizable as the same setting compared to another game in the setting. Material that might be great on its own but doesn't fit with that vision will be rejected out of hand as not matching. Heck, even without a setting involved this happened with D&D 4e, which was not evaluated principally on its merits, but on the fact that it didn't feel like D&D.

The more plotholes and inconsistencies a setting has the more difficult it is for that setting to function in the cooperative storytelling that is the heart of tabletop rpg play. oWod settings often fell apart on arguments about how to play the settings the right way, because the design was so lacking in coherency two gaming groups would almost inevitably devise completely unrecognizable visions of the world.

That "shared space" issue is important -- an RPG setting needs to function such that everyone can have the same general thing in mind without hours of exposition and discussion.

[Jay R]

I'd call that a false comparison. On one side you have the effects of a change (interesting) to a change (not interesting). Long semi-random seasons are not inherently interesting by themselves to most people.

I'd call a change "interesting" if it has consequences that add to the game or story with lots of things to work with.

Which is exactly why I described the consequences that are adding to the story - how the wars of succession are making the coming winter more deadly.

[Grinner]

Alice in Wonderland is not a game setting or even a shared world novel setting.

Funny thing, actually. That's not entirely true...

[Cluedrew]

Alice in Wonderland is not a game setting or even a shared world novel setting.

But that has more to do with its lack of consistency (as you mentioned) and not just the fact things were weird. (Ginner is there a Alice in Wonderland RPG?)

My main point still remains: Weirdness Begets Weirdness

And makes the new weirdness feel more natural because you have already (significantly) left reality behind.

[Grinner]

But that has more to do with its lack of consistency (as you mentioned) and not just the fact things were weird. (Ginner is there a Alice in Wonderland RPG?)

Several, actually. The one I'm most familiar with, and possibly one of my favorite settings, is JAGS Wonderland. It's been described as Lewis Carroll by way of H.P. Lovecraft.

[NichG]

I can't say "Isn't that interesting?" unless I find it interesting. Random change for the sake of random change isn't particularly interesting to me.

This is out of context. The point isn't that it's interesting. The point is that someone who says 'oh, you changed X without changing Y,Z,Q,aardvark,zebra,misfit, I caught you!' can be deflected by implying indirectly that it's intentional and for a hidden reason. The expression 'Isn't that interesting?' is used to say 'There's a reason, but I can't tell you' more indirectly. Even if there isn't actually a reason.

[veti]

This is out of context. The point isn't that it's interesting. The point is that someone who says 'oh, you changed X without changing Y,Z,Q,aardvark,zebra,misfit, I caught you!' can be deflected by implying indirectly that it's intentional and for a hidden reason. The expression 'Isn't that interesting?' is used to say 'There's a reason, but I can't tell you' more indirectly. Even if there isn't actually a reason.

Which is a douche move, because then your player, who wasn't necessarily trying to "catch you out" but was earnestly trying to understand this half-baked world you came up with and who still honestly trusts that you're not just yanking their chain... has to devote their mental energy to trying to untie the knots that you've tied yourself into, and you don't even know that they can be untied.

Worst case, they'll come to a blindingly obvious, clear, elegant solution that's way beyond anything you'd thought of, then use it to base some plan that's so cunning and subtle that it won't even occur to them that it might be a good idea to discuss it with you before they try to spring it. And then you'll have led them wayyyyy up the garden path and wasted everyone's time, just because you couldn't be bothered to work out the details of your "exciting" worldbuilding idea.

Been there, done that. Not cool.

[goto124]

Also, doesn't address the "forcing players to strain their brains' issue. If they spend so much effort remembering and keeping up with something that turns out to be utterly useless and meaningless for no reason other than "GM refused to speak up", that's not exactly enjoyable gameplay.

Actually, I'll defer to the post above me.

[Max_Killjoy]

This is why I have said previously that good worldbuilding is like an iceberg -- the players might not even see the majority of the details, but they're what's keeping the parts they can see afloat. Without all that "useless" stuff, the whole thing just sinks or flops over.

"Just make it up as you go" is why a show like Lost was ever so appropriately named.

[Mechalich]

Also, doesn't address the "forcing players to strain their brains' issue. If they spend so much effort remembering and keeping up with something that turns out to be utterly useless and meaningless for no reason other than "GM refused to speak up", that's not exactly enjoyable gameplay.

Often, even in situations where there is an answer, presenting players with highly arbitrary rules variations from one place to the next is frustrating anyway. Planescape offers a good example. The original 2e Planescape rules had a whole bunch of variations of the performance of difference schools of magic and even individual spells from one plane to the next and they impacted arcane and divine spellcasters differently. Even though those rules were grounded in the weird alignment-based philosophy that governed most Planescape mechanics and were generally rather flavorful they were a gigantic pain in the petard to actually use and everybody drastically simplified and/or ignored them outright - something 3e came along and more or less canonized.

The thing is that all players, by the simple virtue of being human, intuitively understand how the rules of reality are supposed to work on a world that is functionally Earth. The more you move away from Earth traits the more effort they have to spend to learn the rules of the new reality and the implications of that world, and because energy investment is to some degree zero sum energy invested in learning to deal with those changes is energy not invested in dramatic storytelling.

Fantasy is generally much more about telling stories that express traditional tropes of romance or heroism or morality, and so forth, and not about the mechanics of strange and exotic ideas - which tends to be the ballpark of science fiction. Science fiction novels often move away from Earth base in shockingly bizarre ways because that's the point - the entire Dune universe exists as an exercise in worldbuilding, and there are award-winning novelists like Greg Egan who don't so much write stories as graft a story structure onto weird ideas about physics.

Generally, when trying to build an experience of characters that audiences will relate to and find familiar it makes sense to keep the world as familiar as possible. Game of Thrones is so effective because it is able to provide its characters with recognizable social experiences and that's because the problems are largely familiar problems and the solutions to those problems are largely - with a literally dragon-sized exception - ones familiar to human viewers. Compare that to the problems presented in high-concept science fiction or surrealist mind-benders and the problems are weird and the solutions may fit to vision presented by the author but they'll be very strange and they'll hit everyone differently.

Since TTRPGs are character-driven (at least ostensibly, if the GM can avoid power tripping and the players actually contribute to the story development), familiarity is immensely helpful. This is one of the reasons why fantasy RPGs are generally far more successful than science fiction rpgs (and Mass Effect, Star Wars and the like are still fantasies even if they have futuristic settings).

[NichG]

Which is a douche move, because then your player, who wasn't necessarily trying to "catch you out" but was earnestly trying to understand this half-baked world you came up with and who still honestly trusts that you're not just yanking their chain... has to devote their mental energy to trying to untie the knots that you've tied yourself into, and you don't even know that they can be untied.

If someone at the table really can't get into the game because they're worried about melatonin effects due to changes in the seasonal patterns compared to Earth, they're the ones tying things into knots. You can always, always pick apart anything if you look hard enough. But some people just can't help being like that - its how their mind relates to things. And rather than punishing them for that by saying 'you're wrong to be like that, just shut up and enjoy it', you can direct that tendency in positive directions which you can then reward and encourage. If they're spending the mental energy to pick at things that closely, its better for them to spend it fixing rather than un-fixing.

Worst case, they'll come to a blindingly obvious, clear, elegant solution that's way beyond anything you'd thought of, then use it to base some plan that's so cunning and subtle that it won't even occur to them that it might be a good idea to discuss it with you before they try to spring it. And then you'll have led them wayyyyy up the garden path and wasted everyone's time, just because you couldn't be bothered to work out the details of your "exciting" worldbuilding idea.

This is the best-case scenario. When the player comes up with a blindingly obvious, clear, elegant solution, you say 'yes, you figured it out!' and immediately adopt it and let what they came up with work perfectly.

This isn't about punishing players, this is about recognizing when someone is in a mental state where they're actively working against their ability to have fun, and then knowing how to turn that around so that they actively work to increase their ability to have fun instead.

[Jomo]

That's true. Now, the angle I would take with talking to the player would be a bit different. I would acknowledge that I didn't think through that part and ask if they'd like to think of a way to make it work.

[veti]

This is the best-case scenario. When the player comes up with a blindingly obvious, clear, elegant solution, you say 'yes, you figured it out!' and immediately adopt it and let what they came up with work perfectly.

No, it's not. Not if the idea is so elegant, so obvious, that it never so much as occurs to the player that it has, in fact, never occurred to you. And hence that all the further implications that follow from it - don't. Then the player takes it for granted that you and they are on the same page, whereas in fact you're reading entirely different books.

It's just stupid. And lazy. And don't do it.