New player who keeps on poking holes into my world economy

[Max_Killjoy]

This may be your impression, it isn't mine.


For many years I have been frustrated discussing works of speculative fiction because any time I would point out a plot hole or inconsistency, I would immediately get silenced by someone saying something along the lines of "There is magic / dragons / aliens / zombies etc., its all bull-poop anyway, why would you expect it to be realistic? Your argument is invalid!" I remember it really strongly when the first Matrix came out and people didn't like me complaining that it was an awesome movie, but the idea that humans generated more energy than they took in really broke my immersion.

I have also seen it used, by both sides, in gaming when someone comes up with a plan that wouldn't work, or that the DM doesn't want to work, like say filling a dungeon with oil or breathing underwater through a long bamboo pole. And I get it a hell of a lot when I say I prefer to play a character without supernatural powers.

For a more recent example, see the latest push to include magical wheel-chairs in D&D, where people who say things like "Why would the bad guys make their fortress wheelchair accessible?" or "Why would you go to all the trouble of creating a major artifact when you could just cast regenerate" are met with similar calls to stop bringing logic into their fantasy.

As Mark Hall has in its signature, many people seem to mix up verisimilitude with realism.

I was very glad when this fallacy was given the name "but dragons" as it put a name to a phenomenon that had been bugging me for years. Also, I really don't think there are that many named gamer fallacies. I can only think of three others (Oberoni, Stormwind, and Guy at the Gym) and the last one is really more of a concept than a fallacy.

That's pretty much where I'm coming from.

[BRC]

Once again, it comes down a lot to which side you're arguing.

Like, the fact remains that not every fictional world is going to stand up to a rigorous look at it's underlying systems, and I don't think it's fair to hold every worldbuilder, especially if it's just a GM making a game for their friends, to the standard of building a world with zero holes in it's logic, especially when a lot of that logic is coming from the underlying rule-set of a game like Dungeons and Dragons.

It's not wrong to expect a world to make sense, and people are looking for different things as far as a setting being grounded vs fantastical, but I think you DO owe the worldbuilder at least a good-faith attempt to engage with the world as it's presented before you start complaining that it's unrealistic.

Like, I think there are three levels that you really need to think about.

1) Is the setting contradictory, or is it just more fantastical than I like/ In ways I don't like?
If somebody says "This setting has Wizards and Dragons and Giant Anime Swords", and your problem is with the giant anime swords, then you can have that problem, but call it what it is, a difference in opinion about aesthetic/level of fantasy. This is where 'But Dragons" is the most applicable defense. If you can accept one impossible-but-cool thing, but cannot accept another, than it's not that the second thing is somewhow Worse than the first, you just personally don't like it.

Like, for example Archery takes a LOT of physical strength. D&D 5e makes Archery fully dex based, an 8 strength 20 dex character hits just as hard with a bow as a 12 str 20 dex character. This is SUPER unrealistic, and no amount of magic takes away from the fact that it takes a lot of arm strength to pull back a bowstring, and the heavier a bow you can draw, the harder your arrow will hit things.
But if you have a problem with low-strength archers, I'd say that's more about the setting not matching up to your standard as far as rigor than anything else. It's a common staple that's generally pretty harmless. Let people have fun in dumb ways. If it's a dealbreaker for you, then find another game before throwing a fit.

Fantasy isn't just "Here are a few fictional things", it can involve a genuine detachment from reality in the interests of telling a cool story.

Like, consider "The Hero is surrounded by a bunch of Mooks". Realistically, how many moderately skilled opponents could the Best Swordsman In The World defeat in open battle? But we can accept The Hero fighting five, ten, twenty faceless mooks without issue.

2) Are the "Flaws" In the worldbuilding Contradictions, or just not the most likely way for things to have gone?

There's a tendency to mistake "The most likely outcome" with "The only possible outcome" when talking about fictional worlds. This goes back to the OP, where the player in question said "These coins are from an era where the kingdom was more prosperous, therefor the current coinage MUST be debased and these old coins are worth more".

Sure, that's a likely outcome, but it's not guaranteed. The GM isn't obligated write you an essay on the cultural and economic factors that kept the percentage of gold in the coins stable even as the kingdom faced financial troubles, and just because something is likely to have happened doesn't mean it's guaranteed to have happened. If you're not calling out an actual Contradiction, but instead calling out something improbable, that's more on you than the world.

3) Are the flaws/contradictions crucial to the story being told, or are they minor background details.
So, let's say you've spotted a genuine Flaw, something that straight up makes no sense given the rules of the setting. Is that contradiction actually Important, or is it in some minor piece of background info. Once again, these worlds are just built for fun, the GM doesn't have time to think through every minor setting detail.

An example of a genuine Flaw might be something like this:

During the War against the Vampires, The Vampires used a cunning plan to assassinate King Frederick. Knowing that they could not overwhelm the Paladins in the Royal Guard, they instead captured the King's brother James and turned him into a Vampire, then sent him back to King Frederick with a story of how he Escaped from the Vampires. That night, James snuck through the castle and murdered his brother.

If the Royal Guard were Paladins, and they knew that James had been captured by Vampires looking to assassinate Frederick, I think it's a genuine flaw in the setting that none of the Royal Guards thought to check if James was a vampire, considering they would have had no shortage of methods for doing so. That's such a serious oversight that it goes from "Unlikely" to "Unbelievable", unless there's something else at play (Like a traitor within the Guard).
And, most importantly, this is a very important event. A lynchpin of the story, so such a blatant hole in the logic begs to be filled.

Now, by changing the event, we can make the exact same flaw in logic far less of a problem.

During the War against the Vampires, The Vampires tried to assassinate King Frederick with a cunning plan. Knowing that they could not overwhelm the Paladins in the Royal Guard, they instead captured the King's brother James and turned him into a Vampire, then sent him back to King Frederick with a story of how he Escaped from the Vampires. That night, James tried to sneak through the castle to assassinate the King, but was stopped by the Royal Guard. The King, outraged by this affront, swore to see the Vampires destroyed.

Yes, we have the same flaw: The Royal Guard failing to spot that James was a vampire, and that should be cleaned up, but it's less important now. Rather than the takeaway being that the Vampire's Plot worked when it should have failed, our takeaway is that the Vampires Tried, Failed, and the King is outraged. The fact that the assassination got farther than it should have (James should have been spotted as soon as he got to the Castle) isn't nearly as big a deal.

[Mechalich]

1) Is the setting contradictory, or is it just more fantastical than I like/ In ways I don't like?

Increasing the amount of fantastical content in a setting tends to produce contradictions. This is an extremely key point.

In particular it tends to product contradictions when the setting design attempts to hold elements derived from non-fantastical context (ie. real world history) constant in the face of added fantasy elements. This is often very clear when dealing with fantasy that isn't set in a secondary world but instead some historical period nominally on Earth and it quickly becomes clear that the fantasy elements should have prevented that history from ever coming to pass in the first place. My go-to example is Jet Li's Hero, a movie that's trying to make a complex point about the burden of power and the price of peace, but takes place in a Wuxia fever dream world where armies are pointless and only swordmasters matter, rendering the peace through overwhelming force the Emperor is trying to impose impossible.

However, the average tabletop campaign isn't trying to make a storytelling point of any kind. Most games, especially D&D-style games with a heavy emphasis on tactical combat, utilize story merely as a framing device for the purpose of a gloss of justification as to why you're murdering your way through all these funny looking creatures. Case in point, the most successful D&D story ever told is that of Baldur's Gate II and that story is so laser focused on the protagonist's conflict with their archenemy Irenicus it lets you buzzsaw your way through civilization altering-changes with a wink and a grin (the Sahuagin City bit is particularly notable in this regard). That the world makes no sense doesn't matter.

And this circles back to the OPs point about economics which is to say that at the low level of verisimilitude where the campaign is almost certainly operating none of those things matter, a GP is a GP, spend your money and move on. Demanding some isolated element of a setting meet a verisimilitude demand drastically in excess of that setting is just as problematic as when some isolated element drops drastically below the same. TVTropes has a, fairly well-known, Scale of Science Fiction Hardness that gives a decent idea of different broad levels of fantastical content in a given work. There's inherently better at being at any point on the scale, but in general a work should only be at one level.

[TexAvery]

Increasing the amount of fantastical content in a setting tends to produce contradictions. This is an extremely key point.

In particular it tends to product contradictions when the setting design attempts to hold elements derived from non-fantastical context (ie. real world history) constant in the face of added fantasy elements. This is often very clear when dealing with fantasy that isn't set in a secondary world but instead some historical period nominally on Earth and it quickly becomes clear that the fantasy elements should have prevented that history from ever coming to pass in the first place. My go-to example is Jet Li's Hero, a movie that's trying to make a complex point about the burden of power and the price of peace, but takes place in a Wuxia fever dream world where armies are pointless and only swordmasters matter, rendering the peace through overwhelming force the Emperor is trying to impose impossible.

In a fascinating coincidence, yesterday evening I was having a discussion with my MIL (HK immigrant) about the burying of scholars and burning of books, by the same emperor. And I told her about that movie, which I watched 20 years ago and never since, but did enjoy regardless of the challenges.

[Brother Oni]

In particular it tends to product contradictions when the setting design attempts to hold elements derived from non-fantastical context (ie. real world history) constant in the face of added fantasy elements. This is often very clear when dealing with fantasy that isn't set in a secondary world but instead some historical period nominally on Earth and it quickly becomes clear that the fantasy elements should have prevented that history from ever coming to pass in the first place. My go-to example is Jet Li's Hero, a movie that's trying to make a complex point about the burden of power and the price of peace, but takes place in a Wuxia fever dream world where armies are pointless and only swordmasters matter, rendering the peace through overwhelming force the Emperor is trying to impose impossible.

I'm not sure whether it's made clear in the translation, but most of the fantastical Wuxia elements in Hero are either mental battles (Nameless vs Long Sky), outright lies (any of the red scenes) or massive exaggeration (the Emperor's green scenes, most definitely the library scene).

The most absurd it gets is Nameless' 'Fatal Ten' technique and the respect/caution that the Qin soldiers give to the martial artists. If Nameless was that good, why all the lies to get within 10 paces of the king in the first place? Couldn't he just have slaughtered his way into the palace, much like Broken Sword and Flying Snow did?

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm not sure whether it's made clear in the translation, but most of the fantastical Wuxia elements in Hero are either mental battles (Nameless vs Long Sky), outright lies (any of the red scenes) or massive exaggeration (the Emperor's green scenes, most definitely the library scene).

The most absurd it gets is Nameless' 'Fatal Ten' technique and the respect/caution that the Qin soldiers give to the martial artists. If Nameless was that good, why all the lies to get within 10 paces of the king in the first place? Couldn't he just have slaughtered his way into the palace, much like Broken Sword and Flying Snow did?

That's really not clear at all in the English subtitled version, at least from my recollection of it.

(Hell, I don't recall if it was sub or not, even, now that I think about it, it's been a long time.)

[Mechalich]

The most absurd it gets is Nameless' 'Fatal Ten' technique and the respect/caution that the Qin soldiers give to the martial artists. If Nameless was that good, why all the lies to get within 10 paces of the king in the first place? Couldn't he just have slaughtered his way into the palace, much like Broken Sword and Flying Snow did?

Because he considers the soldiers themselves to be innocent and doesn't want to callously murder hundreds/thousands of people? Seems like a pretty good reason to me, especially considering the choice he ultimately makes.

And the key event in Hero is that Broken Sword and Flying Snow are able to storm the palace. That's the 'we have just decided armies are irrelevant' moment in the film. It's the complete failure to expand upon that which undercuts the premise, because war, peace, and conquest would have no resemblance to actual history at all in a world where such people could exist.

Now, one of the reason's Hero is a good example is that while it totally undercuts its own story premise, it's also a film for which the story is a fairly low priority. I think if you put the question to Zhang Yimou about it he'd shrug and go 'well, it's metaphorical' and move on, because the focus of effort on that film is almost entirely on the visuals and having a ridiculous premise doesn't really make any difference from that perspective. The film is trying to make a point, and it does fail to do so, but it wasn't trying all that hard, especially not compared to a bunch of the other stuff it was trying to do visually, most of which is quite successful.

Consistency in worldbuilding is one of those factors in production that varies immensely in importance based on what the story is trying to do, to the point that increased consistency can be actively detrimental to certain kinds of stories - in a very simple example, Roadrunner cartoons would be significantly less funny if they treated the laws of physics properly. TTRPGs, however, are a tricky case because they are necessarily collaborative, and that collaboration has adversarial elements because the GM and players are controlling in-universe actors in opposition to each other. This makes the worldbuilding vulnerable to acts of exploitation that may destabilize the game in a way that simply doesn't happen in single-author productions. The situation described by the OP is both a very obvious, and very mild, attempt to exploit system flaws in an adversarial environment (and because the move is so obvious the solution is pretty clearly for the GM to tell the player to cut it out OOC).

However, TTRPG settings are vulnerable to worldbuilding issues that are much less obvious. The most common and most troubling scenario is when a player recognizes something that the rules imply to be true about a setting that the GM (or in many cases the writer who published the setting in the first place) failed to realize and accommodate. The classic example here is 'Speak with Dead solves murder mystery.' After all, the fact that speak with dead renders murder mysteries irrelevant is probably either totally inconsequential or generally beneficial in a classic dungeon crawl as in 'hey, maybe we should ask this dead guard's corpse what killed him,' but the moment the party steps out of the dungeon and into a classic detective plot it breaks apart all over the place. The solution is a simple one - don't run murder mysteries in a system where you can talk to the dead, the problem is that when dealing with less obvious worldbuilding breakdowns the GM will often fail to anticipate that a story element they wish to choose has been rendered non-viable by the system.

The extreme case here is high-level (especially 17+) 3.X D&D, in which there's so much fantastical power at the character's fingertips that essentially all storytelling options have been rendered irrelevant and the setting is irretrievably broken.

[RandomPeasant]

Heming and hawing about how much you can give to players in a world that postulates dragons seems like it is entirely missing the point to me. A dragon is the equivalent of a modern attack helicopter at the low end, and a medieval army's only hope against such a thing is some variant on "wait for them to run out of supplies", which doesn't work on the dragon. Unless you are willing to cut out enough stuff that you are making a game that is better understood as "Crusader Kings Tactics" than any derivation of a D&D-type thing, you have to figure out a way to work with the fantastical.

[Telok]

A dragon is the equivalent of a modern attack helicopter at the low end, and a medieval army's only hope against such a thing is some variant on "wait for them to run out of supplies", which doesn't work on the dragon.

Depends on the edition of the dragon. If 80 or 120 archers and a small keg of poison from a cultivated plant can cause significant harm in a single salvo before any dragon can get close enough the breathe fire/whatever then you have a different reality (where dragons are more whiney flying elephants with flamethrowers) than one in which dragons can turn invisible, change shape, and simply ignore non-magic arrows (where dragons can plausably claim to be divine before primitive tribes).

Putting flying elephants with fire breath in your world building and then writing stories & adventures where "dragons" are treated like Godzilla or Smaug is an open invitation to ridicule. But that's D&D for ya. Entire nations worth of nobility without any way to detect or deal with shapeshifters or mind control, yet its all been hunky dory for centuries of medeval stasis. Par for the course.

[Satinavian]

An example of a genuine Flaw might be something like this:

If the Royal Guard were Paladins, and they knew that James had been captured by Vampires looking to assassinate Frederick, I think it's a genuine flaw in the setting that none of the Royal Guards thought to check if James was a vampire, considering they would have had no shortage of methods for doing so. That's such a serious oversight that it goes from "Unlikely" to "Unbelievable", unless there's something else at play (Like a traitor within the Guard).
And, most importantly, this is a very important event. A lynchpin of the story, so such a blatant hole in the logic begs to be filled.

Now, by changing the event, we can make the exact same flaw in logic far less of a problem.


Yes, we have the same flaw: The Royal Guard failing to spot that James was a vampire, and that should be cleaned up, but it's less important now. Rather than the takeaway being that the Vampire's Plot worked when it should have failed, our takeaway is that the Vampires Tried, Failed, and the King is outraged. The fact that the assassination got farther than it should have (James should have been spotted as soon as he got to the Castle) isn't nearly as big a deal.

I disagree with the example.

If it was that inconceivable that the paladin guards would not have cought James, the vampires should have known as well and not committed to such a stupid plan in the first place. Your fix just moves the idiot ball from the royal guard to the vampires and nothing is won in plausibility. A better fix would have been to say that the vampires managed to hide the abduction of James to avoid any additional scrunity or questioning when he visits the castle or to say that James as royal family knew some secret passages to sneak in. Those could even be combined.

[BRC]

I disagree with the example.

If it was that inconceivable that the paladin guards would not have cought James, the vampires should have known as well and not committed to such a stupid plan in the first place. Your fix just moves the idiot ball from the royal guard to the vampires and nothing is won in plausibility. A better fix would have been to say that the vampires managed to hide the abduction of James to avoid any additional scrunity or questioning when he visits the castle or to say that James as royal family knew some secret passages to sneak in. Those could even be combined.

I mean, part of the point was that narratively the "Fixed" story was just as dumb and implausible as the original story. However, by shifting the big takeaway of the incident from "The King is assassinated" to "The King swears revenge on all Vampires", you lessen the impact of the inconsistency, since the big takeaway is no longer dependent on that inconsistency.

The second story works just as well if the Vampires didn't think the plan would work, they just wanted to piss off the King. It works just as well if James gets caught and decapitated by the Royal Guard at the castle gates. King Frederick would still be outraged that the vampires turned his brother, and would still swear revenge on all vampires. It's not a great story, but the purpose of such stories in worldbuilding is to provide context to later events. The context "King Frederick has sworn revenge on all Vampires" isn't reliant on a sequence of events that make no sense.

[Brother Oni]

Because he considers the soldiers themselves to be innocent and doesn't want to callously murder hundreds/thousands of people? Seems like a pretty good reason to me, especially considering the choice he ultimately makes.

Why would Nameless consider Qin soldiers to be innocent? Nameless is from the defeated kingdom of Zhou, which was crushed by the Qin army and their doctrine of using crossbows as artillery. If anything, uniformed soldiers of an enemy kingdom are even more fair game than the civilians of the same kingdom as clear enemy combatants.

The reason why Nameless didn't kill them, was because there was no point except being petty - he had spent years trying to get close enough to the king, only to be convinced by the King's ideology and purpose, a purpose that not even the King's most trusted advisors realise and think of him as a tyrant. Considering the Warring States period that the King ended, there's more than merit in the king's plans.
The king realises that there's people out there who understand what he's trying to achieve (ending the suffering of the people), but he's bound by his own laws to execute them as they're assassins.

And the key event in Hero is that Broken Sword and Flying Snow are able to storm the palace. That's the 'we have just decided armies are irrelevant' moment in the film. It's the complete failure to expand upon that which undercuts the premise, because war, peace, and conquest would have no resemblance to actual history at all in a world where such people could exist.

And yet Flying Snow wasn't able to do so by herself at any other point in the years since their first attempt. I think you're taking the film far too much at face value when there's multiple points which indicate the heroes aren't as powerful as the film would have you believe; see the multiple 'battles of the mind' and Nameless being an unreliable narrator. Nameless in particular; he isn't an army destroying high level wuxia hero - he's 'merely' a very good swordsman who still needs to get within 10 paces of his target to guarantee a kill. If he could storm the palace by himself, why bother with the deception? And it's not because he doesn't want to murder hundreds/thousands of enemy combatants.

In most wuxia fiction where these high powered heroes exist, they live in a sub-society, Jianghu, which exists tangentially to the real world. They tend not to get involved with the real world and there are plenty of equally powerful fighters in Jiganhu which can keep them in check. There may be some overlap, for example an army commander may have some standing in Jianghu as a minor martial artist of some note, or a powerful hero might also run a small business and be a person of some standing in his local real world community, but by and large, Jianghu and the real world don't interact much.

The film is trying to make a point, and it does fail to do so, but it wasn't trying all that hard, especially not compared to a bunch of the other stuff it was trying to do visually, most of which is quite successful.

Really? I think the film's point is perfectly clear - the ends justifies the means, all you need to do is to make the final goal a worthy one. I concede that the point of the film runs heavily counter to Western thinking, which also isn't helped by mistranslations of key phrases - 'Our Land' = '天下' (tianxia) being the main one.

The situation described by the OP is both a very obvious, and very mild, attempt to exploit system flaws in an adversarial environment (and because the move is so obvious the solution is pretty clearly for the GM to tell the player to cut it out OOC).

I think this is where we differ - in light of no further information, I'm still inclined to give the player the benefit of the doubt and say that they're making somewhat hamfisted attempts to inject their personal knowledge and interests into the game with no ulterior motive. Whether the GM takes the player at their world and uses them to inject some verisimilitude into the economy of their game, or the player is being malicious and needs to be told to stop, is on them as they have the most information about the situation.

[Talakeal]

Heming and hawing about how much you can give to players in a world that postulates dragons seems like it is entirely missing the point to me. A dragon is the equivalent of a modern attack helicopter at the low end, and a medieval army's only hope against such a thing is some variant on "wait for them to run out of supplies", which doesn't work on the dragon. Unless you are willing to cut out enough stuff that you are making a game that is better understood as "Crusader Kings Tactics" than any derivation of a D&D-type thing, you have to figure out a way to work with the fantastical.

This assumes that dragons care about human affairs.

I imagine most of the stronger dragons would be treated like a natural disaster; most of the time they are totally unconcerned with human affairs, but when they decide to make themselves known there is next to nothing humans can do to save their society.

[KorvinStarmast]

A dragon is the equivalent of a modern attack helicopter at the low end, and a medieval army's only hope against such a thing is some variant on "wait for them to run out of supplies", which doesn't work on the dragon.

But it did in the Original game, since their breath weapon was limited to three times per day. (Not sure if I made the point in this thread or another one, but the WoTC dragon 'recharge' breath mechanic is an amazing power boost).

I imagine most of the stronger dragons would be treated like a natural disaster;

Absolutely, particularly with the frequency of recharge on the breath. (Fizbans Treasury in D&D 5e takes it up another notch by introducing a Wyrm class dragon that's a bigger disaster than an Ancient Dragon). And somewhere in my deep memory, I think that either Bilbo, or Smaug himself, refers to Smaug as the great calamity or disaster or something like that. I'll try and find the citation... *greatest of calamaties*

[RandomPeasant]

Depends on the edition of the dragon. If 80 or 120 archers and a small keg of poison from a cultivated plant can cause significant harm in a single salvo before any dragon can get close enough the breathe fire/whatever then you have a different reality (where dragons are more whiney flying elephants with flamethrowers) than one in which dragons can turn invisible, change shape, and simply ignore non-magic arrows (where dragons can plausably claim to be divine before primitive tribes).

Even then, the dragon has an enormous advantage in strategic mobility. Maybe you can shoot down the dragon if it tries to raze your town, but what happens when it just burns your outlying fields night after night until the crop fails? It's not just power that warps the fantasy setting, it's any fantastical element. If you want a setting that would actually look like medieval Europe, you have to go even lower fantasy than Game of Thrones, and the market for that is pretty tiny.

This assumes that dragons care about human affairs.

And the complaints about spellcasters assume they care about human affairs. Which is in many respects a much stronger assumption, as unlike a dragon a Wizard of even modest skill can (in the editions where people are most concerned about this sort of thing) magic himself up a palace filled with cocaine and literal sex fiends, which Dragons are supposed to covet material wealth most easily obtained from mortals. I think "the powerful don't care about the powerless" is a pretty reasonable approach to dealing with high-end characters in D&D, but it doesn't only apply to monsters.

But it did in the Original game, since their breath weapon was limited to three times per day. (Not sure if I made the point in this thread or another one, but the WoTC dragon 'recharge' breath mechanic is an amazing power boost).

The breath weapon is only relevant insofar as tiny men with crossbows are a threat to the dragon. If they aren't (and in editions other than 5th, they basically aren't) using the breath weapon is just a time saver.

[KorvinStarmast]

The breath weapon is only relevant insofar as tiny men with crossbows are a threat to the dragon. If they aren't (and in editions other than 5th, they basically aren't) using the breath weapon is just a time saver.

It also sears in the juices and flavors of the meat, leaving that sweet rare center, when one is dining on various herd animals, as dragons are wont to do (Hmm, I guess ice/white dragons have other dining preferences, green dragons pickle their food, and so on).

[Max_Killjoy]

(Side note, searing does not seal in juices, there's no empirical evidence to support this. What it does do, is kill anything living on the surface of the meat, and add a host of flavor compounds through the Maillard reaction.)

[PhoenixPhyre]

(Side note, searing does not seal in juices, there's no empirical evidence to support this. What it does do, is kill anything living on the surface of the meat, and add a host of flavor compounds through the Maillard reaction.)

And actual empirical evidence that says it has no effect at all in either direction. Water or "juice" loss is almost entirely down to internal temperature, with side notes of "how/if it was salted" and "are there substantial temperature gradients" and a component of "how much fat was there to start with". But yeah. Searing it does kill surface things[1], but it's main job is to promote flavor by the Maillard reactions[2].

[1] although you don't need to actually sear it to do this--even just a regular cooking will easily kill anything on the surface. The fact that most of the bacteria in a solid chunk of meat are on the surface is why it's much safer to eat rare steak than rare ground beef--the grinding process distributes the "surface" contamination all the way through. Unless of course you trust the butcher and the preparer, in which case go ahead. I don't eat rare meat, because I don't like the texture.

[2] plural. It's not one reaction, but hundreds or thousands or more. Just being pedantic here.

[KorvinStarmast]

(Side note, searing does not seal in juices, there's no empirical evidence to support this. What it does do, is kill anything living on the surface of the meat, and add a host of flavor compounds through the Maillard reaction.)

When's the last time you ever had a blue steak? (Yeah, we are going off topic) Only had one once (have a crazy friend with like six different kinds of grill in his back yard).

Unless of course you trust the butcher and the preparer, in which case go ahead. I don't eat rare meat, because I don't like the texture.

As far as I'll go is usually medium rare. My brother is all about rare. He likes it {almost} raw and wriggling. Only rare I'll do is the above mentioned blue steak, and a filet mignon.

[Telok]

Even then, the dragon has an enormous advantage in strategic mobility. Maybe you can shoot down the dragon if it tries to raze your town, but what happens...

Not actually the point.

Point:

Putting flying elephants with fire breath in your world building and then writing stories & adventures where "dragons" are treated like Godzilla or Smaug is an open invitation to ridicule. But that's D&D for ya.

[Mechalich]

Even then, the dragon has an enormous advantage in strategic mobility. Maybe you can shoot down the dragon if it tries to raze your town, but what happens when it just burns your outlying fields night after night until the crop fails? It's not just power that warps the fantasy setting, it's any fantastical element. If you want a setting that would actually look like medieval Europe, you have to go even lower fantasy than Game of Thrones, and the market for that is pretty tiny.

The game market for extremely low magic fantasy is minimal, while the novel market is significantly stronger. For example, Guy Gavriel Kay and Joe Abercrombie are both very successful writing about - very, very different - fantasy worlds that are extremely low on magic, and there's plenty of other examples out there. Also, novelists have certain options that games - especially combat heavy games that expect a large number of combat encounters on a regular basis - don't really have. Games demand a modicum of frequency in the use of fantastical abilities and of durability on the part of their users (so that the magic using PCs don't immediately perish) that provide a floor to magical power that is already pushing the limits.

It is of course possible to raise the amount of viable magical power in a setting by upping the technology level. Firearms - cannon more than guns actually - really do help level the playing field. The gets to the point where in some renditions of modern urban fantasy, a lot of the commonly used magic is chronically underpowered (though there are usually OP strategic abilities that tend to compromise the worldbuilding).

It's also possible to limit magic mostly to tactical effects, which can be balanced reasonably well as tactical RPGs often do. If magic is simply another way of hurting people it's not really destabilizing. It's all the non-combat things magic can do that are really the problem.

[Satinavian]

The game market for extremely low magic fantasy is minimal, while the novel market is significantly stronger. For example, Guy Gavriel Kay and Joe Abercrombie are both very successful writing about - very, very different - fantasy worlds that are extremely low on magic, and there's plenty of other examples out there.

I disagree. There are many low magic games and many rare magic games and those do certainly not worse than the common or high magic non-d&d games.

Also, novelists have certain options that games - especially combat heavy games that expect a large number of combat encounters on a regular basis - don't really have. Games demand a modicum of frequency in the use of fantastical abilities and of durability on the part of their users (so that the magic using PCs don't immediately perish) that provide a floor to magical power that is already pushing the limits.

In low or rare magic games the magi users are actually competent in the mundane stuff as well and solve most problems without magic. That works fine enough.

It's also possible to limit magic mostly to tactical effects, which can be balanced reasonably well as tactical RPGs often do. If magic is simply another way of hurting people it's not really destabilizing. It's all the non-combat things magic can do that are really the problem.

You only need to do that if you insist on doing your worldbuilding without magic and then still have magical elements in the game. I vastly prefer to have a good understanding about what magic can do and how difficult that is and integrate magical solutions in the daily life of societies that should use them.
Honestly, combat magic is usually the kind of magic least plausibel as there tend to be more than enough alternative ways to kill people around, the caster can't be much more useful than a fighter for balancing issue and thus the magic would be better spent elsewhere for things less easy to do without.

If you really want to copy real world societies 1:1 and still have magic, you should stick to "magic is super rare" or "magic is successfully kept secret".

[SpanielBear]

Just a thought, but without mentioning any specific details for many thousands of years societies *did* run, worldwide, on the assumption that magic was real and required meaningful government policy to utilise or defend against. Saying a magic using society couldn’t look anything like our own, runs into trouble if you consider, e.g., witch hunts. And it’s not that this was an assumption of low magic either, we’re talking raising storms and sinking entire fleets.

[RandomPeasant]

The game market for extremely low magic fantasy is minimal, while the novel market is significantly stronger. For example, Guy Gavriel Kay and Joe Abercrombie are both very successful writing about - very, very different - fantasy worlds that are extremely low on magic, and there's plenty of other examples out there.

I'm not sure Abercrombie is really the example you want. It's true that his setting is low-magic, but it's also very much a setting that changes dramatically over the course of the series. And, of course, the most successful parts of the genre are still things like Sanderson or Rowling, who are far from any conception of "low magic".

It's all the non-combat things magic can do that are really the problem.

As always, there's not really the distinction people want there to be here. Unless you kick verisimilitude to the curb entirely (in which case I would argue you're compromising your nominal goal), something as simple as the healing spell you need to be a combat medic means that the wealthy and politically connected will no longer die in childbirth or of infected wounds. That's a pretty enormous shift from anything like "historic reality".

I disagree. There are many low magic games and many rare magic games and those do certainly not worse than the common or high magic non-d&d games.

I'm sure the long tail of RPGs has plenty of low magic games in it, but the biggest names after D&D are Vampire and Shadowrun, neither of which I would call particularly "low magic".

You only need to do that if you insist on doing your worldbuilding without magic and then still have magical elements in the game. I vastly prefer to have a good understanding about what magic can do and how difficult that is and integrate magical solutions in the daily life of societies that should use them.

The whole thing where we're supposed to be trying to get "medieval Europe" to work, and figuring out the maximal amount of magic you can layer in without breaking that just seems wrongheaded to me. Because that's a really small amount of magic! In fact, it's a really small amount of almost everything people want out of a fantasy game. Just postulating that there are Orcs or Elves or Goblins in your setting is already going to mean huge changes, let alone any amount of actual magic. People don't want something that is functionally medieval, they want something that is aesthetically medieval, and that's a much easier target to hit.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The whole thing where we're supposed to be trying to get "medieval Europe" to work, and figuring out the maximal amount of magic you can layer in without breaking that just seems wrongheaded to me. Because that's a really small amount of magic! In fact, it's a really small amount of almost everything people want out of a fantasy game. Just postulating that there are Orcs or Elves or Goblins in your setting is already going to mean huge changes, let alone any amount of actual magic. People don't want something that is functionally medieval, they want something that is aesthetically medieval, and that's a much easier target to hit.

This. And frankly? Most people don't care about "historical inconsistencies". They don't know, and don't care even if they do. We're (mostly) nerds here. But most people aren't. They want something that doesn't grossly offend them on a surface examination. Which even D&D does mostly ok[1]. And something that looks, on the surface, recognizable from their fantasy books or shows or whatever. Yes, this means mostly races that are humans with funny faces and "hats". The market for truly alien races as playable characters is quite niche.

Of course, I don't think most people want to necessarily play in a "we're gods and casually bend the universe to our whim" game either. There's a balance to be struck--neither the top of high magic nor the depths of gritty "dark ages" (scare quotes intentional) realism are part of the mainstream. They're playable, don't get me wrong. Just not mainstream.

[1] except the Forgotten Realms. But that's entirely my own bias.

[Mutazoia]

A brief note to the original point of this thread:

Point out that the fantasy world has elves that live for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and have their own currency. Why would anyone pay extra for an 80-year-old coin when the elf who came through town just paid for his lunch with a 300-year-old one?

[KorvinStarmast]

Just a thought, but without mentioning any specific details for many thousands of years societies *did* run, worldwide, on the assumption that magic was real and required meaningful government policy to utilise or defend against. Saying a magic using society couldn’t look anything like our own, runs into trouble if you consider, e.g., witch hunts. And it’s not that this was an assumption of low magic either, we’re talking raising storms and sinking entire fleets.

That rarity and danger is a part of where the whole Cthulhu (and the CoC game) start, isn't it?

Point out that the fantasy world has elves that live for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and have their own currency. Why would anyone pay extra for an 80-year-old coin when the elf who came through town just paid for his lunch with a 300-year-old one?

Good point.

I'll take that a step further: The "it's worth more to a collector" may be true, but the 80 year old quarter still spends like a quarter. I used to work as a cashier (in the 70's, high school job). I would now and again get silver coins in change / payment, and I'd (as often as I had loose change in my pockets) swap them out for non-silver all the time. Had a collection of over 80 of them, pre 1964 dimes and quarters, that were part of what got stolen from my apartment during a break in (late 80's). The initial premise that the "economist-player" asserted is somewhat flawed for a variety of reasons, and one is that there is by default a market for coins older than X years.
That is entirely a world building matter for the DM (or an anachromism imported from our modern world to their game world as the clock on Bilbo's mantle was).

[kyoryu]

A brief note to the original point of this thread:

Point out that the fantasy world has elves that live for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and have their own currency. Why would anyone pay extra for an 80-year-old coin when the elf who came through town just paid for his lunch with a 300-year-old one?

I don't think lifespan would impact much? We have plenty of things that are rare that are less than average human lifespan years old.

Coins tend to change hands fairly frequently - what you have on hand was probably given to you within a few months, at most. Sure, there are some people socking stuff away in a jar, but those also tend to be socked away in a jar, and I don't see how that changes much.

Where you'd see old coins entering circulation is a "hermit leaving the woods" kind of situation, where someone went into the woods a long time ago with some amount of currency, and then coming back to civilization. They'd have no way to spend money in that scenario, and no way to get new money, so the coins they'd use would be dated close to when they entered "the woods". And of course as soon as they were in civilization for any period of time, their coins would circulate through as well.

Look at Korvin's post about the rarity of coins from '64 or so - there are plenty of people alive that were born before then, and they don't pay in coins from 1964.

[Mutazoia]

I don't think lifespan would impact much? We have plenty of things that are rare that are less than average human lifespan years old.

Coins tend to change hands fairly frequently - what you have on hand was probably given to you within a few months, at most. Sure, there are some people socking stuff away in a jar, but those also tend to be socked away in a jar, and I don't see how that changes much.

Where you'd see old coins entering circulation is a "hermit leaving the woods" kind of situation, where someone went into the woods a long time ago with some amount of currency, and then coming back to civilization. They'd have no way to spend money in that scenario, and no way to get new money, so the coins they'd use would be dated close to when they entered "the woods". And of course as soon as they were in civilization for any period of time, their coins would circulate through as well.

Look at Korvin's post about the rarity of coins from '64 or so - there are plenty of people alive that were born before then, and they don't pay in coins from 1964.

But the people that were borne before '64 live in a world without elves. Much of the elven/dwarven currency would be passed around elven cities for centuries before an elf ventured out into the human lands. Chances are he/she would carry a bunch of coins from various eras because they would have been in circulation that long. Coins are not subject to the kind of wear and tear that paper money is. Hell, I still find wheat-head pennies in the cash drawer at work (still haven't found a steel penny though). They're not worth any more because they are old.

[Saint-Just]

But the people that were borne before '64 live in a world without elves. Much of the elven/dwarven currency would be passed around elven cities for centuries before an elf ventured out into the human lands. Chances are he/she would carry a bunch of coins from various eras because they would have been in circulation that long. Coins are not subject to the kind of wear and tear that paper money is. Hell, I still find wheat-head pennies in the cash drawer at work (still haven't found a steel penny though). They're not worth any more because they are old.

First of all modern currency being fiat has no bearing on the discussion.

If you start with the premise that in human lands currency is valued by it's precious metal content and is subject to debasement like it was IRL then existence of long-lived people changes nothing. If they truly live in extremely separate communities that interact with human lands once in a century then an "elf" paying with old coins would not be enough to lower the value of old coins, instead he would either be a fool who overpays for everything before his supply of old coins runs out or just would find himself unexpectedly wealthy if he wisens up to the situation. If "elven" communities are not isolated then there would be precious little centuries old coins within them - they will be either spent or melted down as soon as somebody - whether an elf or a human - realizes the situation.

And in any case you can have one country/people debasing its currency while the other doesn't do that in which case, an old human coin will be worth more but an old elven coin wouldn't.