Fantasy Nerds

[Arcanist]

Take the way we argue about D&D rules here. The meticulous intricacies of RAW wordings and the wide-sweeping RAI.


Now make that discussion about the Word of God, as put down in His Holy Text. RAW is the literal interpretation ("God put it down this way, so that's what he really wants"), RAI is the liberal interpretation ("It's a typo! It doesn't make sense! There's no way he'd want us to kill people just for disagreeing with him!"). See how long it takes for a schism to happen.

High-ranking clergy's opinions are FAQ (irrelevant to RAW, relevant to RAI), oracles are custserv (almost completely irrelevant, and completely opaque and incomprehensible. They might be false oracles anyway), the first holy texts are the primary source (like DMG/PHB/MM1, considered to override any other rules source). Additional widely-accepted "third party" texts (like Dante's Inferno would be a real world example) are sometimes used where the "first party" text is unclear.

tl;dr: Angry nerds theologians arguing about religion.

Take all of my Yes, Want, a cookie and 3 internets

[LibraryOgre]

Mostly, "In a world where there is magic, magic is part of physics".

[Eldan]

OH, absolutely. I completely agree with that one. That's why they were a weird esoteric discipline and no one took them seriously. And I didn't call them "Physicists".

It was just a small joke anyway.

[Prime32]

Try a collector. Could be coins, weapons, lizards, anything.

[Darius Kane]

Wizards are nerds, Sorcerers are jocks.

[hiryuu]

Wizards are nerds, Sorcerers are jocks.

I always figured the sorcerer was that one kid who never showed up to school except for the tests, aced them all, goofed off, and had the soul patch if they were a dude.

[tbok1992]

I'm now thinking of a convent of female clerics dedicated to what is essentially writing shipping fanfics for the gods, for some obscure theological reason that would take about an hour to explain. And it is glorious.

I especially like thinking of the theological schizm resulting from the debate over Grumuush/Lolth OTP Vs. Corellon/Lolth OTP. And don't get me started on those who think that Lolth/Tiamat is the one true way.

[snikrept]

Sufficiently advanced nerds are indistinguishable from mages.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Sufficiently advanced nerds are indistinguishable from mages.

Got that backwards. As a nerd, I can assure you that I have no ability to throw fire with my bare hands, much as I wish that wasn't true.

Nerds can't tell physicists to "suck it," mages can.

Unless of course physicist and mage are interchangeable, as Mark Hall put foward a few posts back.

[Fhaolan]

Honestly, if this was set in a society like RL medieval period, nerds would be scribes and monks. Copying books, living in commune-like conditions, etc.

In D&D terms... cloistered clerics maybe?

[Craft (Cheese)]

I'm now thinking of a convent of female clerics dedicated to what is essentially writing shipping fanfics for the gods, for some obscure theological reason that would take about an hour to explain. And it is glorious.

I especially like thinking of the theological schizm resulting from the debate over Grumuush/Lolth OTP Vs. Corellon/Lolth OTP. And don't get me started on those who think that Lolth/Tiamat is the one true way.

Oh please, you know fangirls never write het pairs. Corellon/Gruumsh OTP!

[Ravens_cry]

Wizards are definitely my go to choice for scientists of sorcery, and science is a pretty nerdy pursuit.

[snikrept]

Got that backwards. As a nerd, I can assure you that I have no ability to throw fire with my bare hands, much as I wish that wasn't true.

Nerds can't tell physicists to "suck it," mages can.

Unless of course physicist and mage are interchangeable, as Mark Hall put foward a few posts back.

I was mangling Clarke. I think it's apt.

Bat guano and sulphur and True Speech; gunpowder and steel and precision optics. Depends on how your world works, really.

[hiryuu]

I was mangling Clarke. I think it's apt.

Bat guano and sulphur and True Speech; gunpowder and steel and precision optics. Depends on how your world works, really.

That's not a bad idea to think about. What's nerdy is entirely based on our cultural context. Shop class and smoking used to be nerdy. Roger Bacon and and Newton and Linnaeus were nerds in their day.

[Lix Lorn]

I'm now thinking of a convent of female clerics dedicated to what is essentially writing shipping fanfics for the gods, for some obscure theological reason that would take about an hour to explain. And it is glorious.

I especially like thinking of the theological schizm resulting from the debate over Grumuush/Lolth OTP Vs. Corellon/Lolth OTP. And don't get me started on those who think that Lolth/Tiamat is the one true way.

I love it. May I sig this?

[Water_Bear]

Nerds can't tell physicists to "suck it," mages can.\

You kidding? I always stop by my local Physics Department to flip them the bird. Biology FTW!

[Eldan]

Biology high-five!

I mostly make fun of the engineers across the road.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Biology high-five!

I mostly make fun of the engineers across the road.

Interdepartmental rivalries are so juvenile.

Unless, of course, you're making fun of prescriptivist grammarians. What idiots!

[Water_Bear]

Interdepartmental rivalries are so juvenile.

Unless, of course, you're making fun of prescriptivist grammarians. What idiots!

Oh, man those guys are so obnoxious; whenever they tell me not to end sentences with prepositions, I really like to give'em what for.

[Eldan]

Interdepartmental rivalries are so juvenile.

Unless, of course, you're making fun of prescriptivist grammarians. What idiots!

I do it because I'm jealous of their amazing robots. Seriously, our university is winning international engineering contests of some kind or other all the time.

We don't have any grammarists. The university is science and engineering only.

[Joe the Rat]

And this thread pretty much shows what you need for a nerd in any setting: Passion, Enthusiasm, and Too Much Information.

So load up on Knowledge ranks in your thing or related things, talk incessantly about it, and you're golden.

[Kelb_Panthera]

You kidding? I always stop by my local Physics Department to flip them the bird. Biology FTW!

Addendum: mages can tell physicists to "suck it" because they can bend physics over the nearest bar-stool and do very bad things to it, even when they're "half in the tank" at the afformentioned bar.

Nerds can only do so as a means of saying, my field is better/more important/more useful, when this may or may not be quantitatively true, and can't be proved (un)true in any case.

Other nerds make physicists angry. Mages just make them cry.

[SuperPanda]

Basically, make Ducky from NCIS and your good.

-Incredible skill at what he does, first to be called when his skills are needed, full of actually interesting stories that he goes on about at all the wrong times.

[tbok1992]

I love it. May I sig this?

Yes! Yes you may!

[Slipperychicken]

Other nerds make physicists angry. Mages just make them cry.

Mages would make engineers fall in love, that's for sure. 99 different ways to make infinite free power forever, solve all the world's problems by waving some bat guano around.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Mages would make engineers fall in love, that's for sure. 99 different ways to make infinite free power forever, solve all the world's problems by waving some bat guano around.

They sure could. Especially when you think about the fact that a permanent wall of fire around a boiler is pretty much the exact same thing as the reactor in a nuclear power-plant.

The perpetual energy thing is one of the reasons mages make physicists cry. That and summoning creatures that are made of solid fire.

Think about that. It's fire, basically ionized plasma and the aerosolized products of a chemical reaction, but it has no fuel source and behaves in all ways as though it were a solid object; plus its a sapient creature that can talk to you. I'm not even a real physicist* and that makes my brain hurt.

*Just an amateur with a solid interest.

[hiryuu]

They sure could. Especially when you think about the fact that a permanent wall of fire around a boiler is pretty much the exact same thing as the reactor in a nuclear power-plant.

The perpetual energy thing is one of the reasons mages make physicists cry. That and summoning creatures that are made of solid fire.

Think about that. It's fire, basically ionized plasma and the aerosolized products of a chemical reaction, but it has no fuel source and behaves in all ways as though it were a solid object; plus its a sapient creature that can talk to you. I'm not even a real physicist* and that makes my brain hurt.

*Just an amateur with a solid interest.

Well, why? I mean. That's how fire works in D&D, doesn't it? It's got a different set of rules. Under those rules, wizards are physicists. They're good enough at physics they can make it do the sorts of things that can clearly happen naturally: lots of undead just happen when certain conditions are met, but wizards are better at making them. Lots of magical phenomena are assumed to happen in the default setting, wizards can force them to happen.

It's important to remember that D&D is not "like our world, but with magic attached" but rather "totally alien physics model that happens to look similar to ours." Wizards do not break the laws of their physics model, they make the laws behave as desired.

[Tengu_temp]

Not every nerd in fantasy is a wizard, just like not every nerd in real life is a scientist. In fact, most aren't.

[Akal Saris]

Oh, man those guys are so obnoxious; whenever they tell me not to end sentences with prepositions, I really like to give'em what for.

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put!

[Kelb_Panthera]

Well, why? I mean. That's how fire works in D&D, doesn't it? It's got a different set of rules. Under those rules, wizards are physicists. They're good enough at physics they can make it do the sorts of things that can clearly happen naturally: lots of undead just happen when certain conditions are met, but wizards are better at making them. Lots of magical phenomena are assumed to happen in the default setting, wizards can force them to happen.

It's important to remember that D&D is not "like our world, but with magic attached" but rather "totally alien physics model that happens to look similar to ours." Wizards do not break the laws of their physics model, they make the laws behave as desired.

I very much get that. I was talking about real physicists there, not in-game physicists (a thing that may or may not exist).

Making the concious decision to treat in-game physics as though the classicists (the guys that thought everything was a blending of the four classic elements) were right was the only way I could make sense of the game and not have my mind snap under the weight of the dissonance between fantasy and reality.

Acid isn't a blending of chemicals that have too much oxygen and consequently is highly-reactive. It's just what happens when the elemental energy of water is changed by an angry or hungry water spirit. Earth isn't a hodge-podge mix of crumbled silica and other minerals, it's just earth. Metal is what happens when earth is inhabited by a particularly doughty earth spirit.