so...what is the reasoning behind considering treating magic as an alternate interface to the existing physical world rules as 'off limits' in established fantasy settings?

or in other words: why is that not a valid view for a player or a character to hold?

Umm. Context would be needed, since it's unclear exactly what you mean and no attitude about that is universal.

@Shalvenay That's not the problem I think people were having with your arguments. I think the problem is your assumption that 'existing physical world rules' apply, or even exist, in fantasy settings.

aaah. I think you're right on that point @Miniman; however, I am wondering why the settings don't spend time defining a proper set of replacements, either

@Shalvenay because that's not their focus

what do they expect to provide that information then, @Adeptus?

headtilts

@BESW conversation yesterday in main chat... 30kA lightningbolt spells, & using Manufacture spell to convert the salt in an Ooze to... something corrosive, I forget the details. Shalvenay wants to use player physics/chem knowledge in a medieval fantasy RPG.

Ahah.

@Shalvenay They don't expect the information to be used. That's what he means by "focus."

Every game, every story, has a focus: the things that it's about, and by implication the things it's not about.

conversation starts here if you feel like reading up

nods so...how should I reconcile my world-manipulative ways with the relative lack of rules in most fantasy settings about how the world can be repeatably and consistently manipulated?

Transformers doesn't have people curing cancer, Lord of the Rings doesn't explore the economic implications of immortality, and D&D doesn't expect people to use chemistry to solve problems.

@Shalvenay Find a game/system/group that matches your playstyle.

D&D is about using magic and weapons to solve problems.

Eclipse Phase is about using extreme body modifications to solve problems.

Ars Magica is about using outmoded elemental models to solve problems.

Feng Shui is about using fantastical martial arts to solve problems.

@Shalvenay In most fantasy settings, "how the world can be repeatably and consistently manipulated" = spells

And so forth. You need to find a game/group/system that's interested in integrating physics/chemistry into the problem-solving toolset.

@Adeptus: agreed -- I just define spells as ways to put energy into the world in places and forms where it wouldn't normally be

so a spell might push a chemical reaction over the activation-energy "hump" (take your average fireball, for instance: the fuel's right there in front of you if you can get that darn 729kJ/mol N-N triple bond apart)

So... you want a modern-day equivalent of Ars Magica.

The big problem I foresee is that as our physical models get more complicated it's easier to see the leaks in game abstractions of them.

Every game system has to choose where to focus on increased simulation, and where to allow abstractions to be leaky.

@Shalvenay Except you're trying to use a non-medieval, non-magical mindset to do it. Your character doesn't know the physics or chemistry of how/why a spell works. Magical energy creates a burst of fire. How? Magic. Atoms, molecules, what manner of creature are they?

Physics is super-hard to keep from being terminally leaky, and for many playstyles it's very unrewarding to have a low-leak physics abstraction.

(actually, rather than just "How? Magic", you could expand it to "channelling the essence of the plane of fire" or something like that)

@BESW: you probably are right in what I'm after -- and I'm not even after a quantum-physical level ingame -- mere Newtonian physics and basic college chem (redox, acid-base, salts, and organic rearrangement) is enough for me

I wonder if part of this is that I don't exactly vacuum up fantasy novels for pleasure, either: my reading tastes lean strongly technical

@Shalvenay A game-rec question about "Ars Magica but with modern physics/chem" might be an appropriate fit for the site, if you can narrow down your needs enough.

yeah -- I'll save that for later though

@BESW White Wolf's Mage is essentially a modern-day Ars Magica. Not heavy on the science, but you could argue it as character knowledge.

@Adeptus: yeah -- I find the handbook for that system to be a nightmarish read, though -- spends so much time being fluffy that it just turns into a grind worse than reading a textbook for me!

@BESW: side question: what do you do when other people complain about your physical combat RP being too detail-dependent for them to follow along with?

Never really ran into that problem, so I'd need more context.

it's mostly a problem for me in free-form RP...

basically, when I'm RPing a skilled fighter in that context, the combat moves I come up with are very precisely visualized and tactically aware, which in turn puts stress on the other player's visualization abilities and tactical thinking

Sounds like another playstyle clash, and the only real answer is to talk about it out of character and try to find a solution that everyone's comfortable with.

it might just be a case where the focus of the game shifted out from under me though...

In particular--using your real-world knowledge and understanding which confuses the other players, even if your character would reasonably know it, creates friction in the group.

and I have brought it up OOC: I'm willing to work with people on this, and will go as far as ICly having my character teach their character some combat to allow me to help them OOCly learn how to visualize moves ,etal

RP is collaborative play, and they can't collaborate with you if they don't know what you're talking about.

...the problem comes when I send them off to research some concept, and they just say 'nope, not going there', though

Yeah, not everyone wants to have homework for their hobby.

I can understand 'oh, you've never heard of such-and-such before' -- we've all been there, and that's why we have things like Google

but not wanting to learn strikes me as a much more serious offense

I'm a terminally curious person, but even I think that RPG abstractions exist for a reason.

Many people play RPGs because they want to do or be stuff they can't in real life.

@Shalvenay Er, what? Just because you want them to learn something doesn't mean they have to want to learn it.

If you need real-life knowledge to do it, that kinda defeats the point.

If you told me to go learn vector calculus I'd say "No way, I hate vectors."

@BESW: I agree with you re: doing/being stuff one can't be IRL

but the RL knowledge I'm talking about is higher-level, abstract knowledge

And--yes, @Miniman's got the other half of this. Not everything is interesting to everyone.

I love learning about obscure film genres, but I won't go anywhere near gorn.

so yeah, it's a problem I have as a programmer too -- I slide up and down the abstraction stack readily, almost too readily for some

(the reason why it's a problem is because many programming environments aren't designed with that in mind)

I like knowing about theoretical astronomy, but I don't have the head to study the maths behind it on a casual basis.

and that's where all my trouble with magic comes from -- most magic is designed for people who view the physical world primarily in terms of their own perceptions

which serve as abstractions in and of themselves

@Shalvenay Well, and even our understanding of the physical world is, in a sense, an abstraction. To really simulate the world, we'd wind up using a system more granular than our understanding of it. I suspect your challenge isn't actually related to physics or chemistry at all, really.

You've chosen a problem-solving domain that's a little out of synch with most RPG playstyles, but because your chosen domain is "realistic" it's easy to be convinced that this problem-solving style can and should be contained within other playstyles.

It's not; in fact, it's frequently at odds with other playstyles and trying to shove it into them --like systems which are actively disinterested in the ways magic interacts with physical laws-- interferes with the fun of people who want that system's playstyle. That's why you get pushback: it's the same as playing a pacifist who goes to ridiculous lengths to bypass combat in a combat-centric game.

yeah, I think it boils down to me seeing verisimilitude as not worthwhile @BESW

@Shalvenay It kinda sounds like verisimilitude is your main priority.

aaah: to me, realism works from the inside out

i.e. the whole notion of 'verisimilitude' doesn't work for me @miniman, because the appearance of realism is meaningless to me

@Shalvenay Wait, you're saying you will accept no less than absolute realism from your RPGs? [Rolls around the floor laughing]

or at least something logically connected and plausible

@Shalvenay Like...something that appears realistic?

no...that's not the same as appearing realistic!

Ok, so you're objecting to things that appear realistic but actually aren't?

yes!

ever heard of the Coconut Effect trope?

Nope.

If you want something that is actually realistic, reality is pretty much it.

basically, it's the idea that a not-quite-true special effect (in the original, apocryphal case: the use of coconut halves to make a sound similar to horse hooves) can wind up being seen as more realistic than the real sound of horses' hooves thanks to repeated exposure to the special effect

What does that have to do with this conversation?

basically, it's saying that someone's perception of realism doesn't necessarily have anything to do with reality, or even plausibility

An abstract system attempting to model certain aspects of reality can only ever appear to be realistic. For actual realism, we have reality.

hrm...I don't think I'm expressing myself well enough

the way I see it...I shoot for consistency of my internal world-simulation first (i.e. plausibility)

There's a huge difference between consistency and realism.

then deal with reality in specific places (i.e. avoiding absolutely forbidden scenarios)

the problem I have is when the world is designed in such a way that the simulation ends on a contradiction

I have to go, I have tutoring this afternoon. It's probably just as well, cos as far as I can tell verisimilitude is exactly what you want.

yeah, I'm confused :P

@Shalvenay It seems you lack "suspension of disbelief"

to some extent, yes I do

the abstractions most worlds are built on aren't just leaky, they're transparent to me

and when I see an abstraction -- a theory, if you will -- which cannot be backed by the underlying data, I reject it out of hand

the problem is that most settings material is not written from a data-driven standpoint

(While that article is framed in the context of GamerGate, I'm linking it because it's talking about much more fundamental issues of prejudice and dehumanisation that I, and the youth I work with, encounter regularly. They crop up in the RPG community, too.)