New player who keeps on poking holes into my world economy

[Max_Killjoy]

Do you actually follow this principle? Do you, when you sit down to play D&D, really not assume that the myriad mundane aspects of reality that aren't specified in the rules are not the case until the DM says they are? I'm talking about things like water being wet or flowing downhill, injuries being painful, spices making food taste better, rain coming from clouds, humans typically having two parents, etc. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, because the playstyle you seem to be describing strikes me as being kind of crazy and not at all like anything I've ever seen or heard of.

Indeed, and this is one of the cracks that starts to show in the "but it's not Earth or our reality, so anything goes, no limits, no cause, no effect" fig leaf.

And generally, the "But Dragon's" "fallacy" is trotted out whenever anyone suggests that maybe the fictional universe doesn't conform strictly to Earth's history, physical laws, etc. Basically, it's used as a strawman. D&D does not claim to be our reality. And in fact is highly incompatible at first principles with our reality. As such, conformance with our reality should never be assumed unless specified.

You can't fault something for not being realistic when it doesn't ever pretend it wants to be realistic. Any resemblance to reality is entirely accidental. Sure, if you have a game that strictly defines its connection to reality (by claiming to be, say, historically accurate), it's perfectly ok to judge it on its accuracy. D&D does not claim that mantle or that burden. So saying "that's not realistic" is non-responsive and irrelevant. Of course it's not--it never tried to be.

If there's a strawman here, it's this thing you keep saying. The criticism here isn't "but it's not realistic" -- the criticism is "it's incoherent, inconsistent, and a shambles, don't use 'but it's not our reality' as an excuse."

"But Dragons!" isn't calling out "this breaks from reality in ways I've chosen", it's calling out "Once you've broken from reality in even the slightest way, you're a hypocrite for restricting or avoiding any other break from reality".

And more broadly, the problem in worldbuilding that succumbs to that fallacy is not that it breaks from reality in 1 or 100 ways, but that it does so in a just-so, faerie-tale way, in which breaks don't need to be coherent, consistent, or connected, there is no cause or effect, they're just there, and the only reasoning ever given is "but it's not our reality".

In my experiance, the "But Dragons!" fallacy, and it absolutely is a logical fallacy, is only used to cover the author's ass when their audience outsmarts them, be it in pointing out an inconsistency / plot hole, or when a player comes up with a clever plan and the DM wants to shoot it down (for example, off the cuff deciding you can't just smoke the monsters out of the dungeon because in my world combustion doesn't exist, camp fires just conjure rifts to the elemental plane of fire).

The other place I see it used is when a GM has a specific setting in mind and presented to the players, and one or more of the players wants to play something that is grossly outside the context and bounds of that setting.

This especially happens with D&D and similar systems, because the game is presented both as game-first, and the way in which the class-and-"race" system creates an implicit setting. "How dare you not let me play a Druid in your world without Druids!"

* Arguments that D&D is or has ever been fiction-first need not bother here, I've read the books and the authors' commentary, I don't need anyone to selectively quote them at me with cherry-picked "yeah buts!" that supposedly show otherwise.

[Duff]

I didn’t become a DM to have to create an economy for one player to exploit though….

Up until now, the “economy” in my world was secondary

This is really what you need to tell your player.
maybe with words like "I don't know enough about economics to properly GM a character using your level of knowledge. So any time you want to do that sort of thing, I'm just going to ask you to make a couple of rolls based on your character's skills and adjudicate based on that"

[PhoenixPhyre]

You have a few choices in a fictional world.

1. Keep everything literally identical to the real world. No fantastical elements at all, no advanced sci-fi elements either. Nothing that suggests that world X is different from our world.

2. Add any fantastical element or advanced sci-fi element. Completely rebuild the world from the ground up to account for this change, being willing to throw out all preconceptions.

3. As #2, but don't rebuild things. Just staple the element on top. This is the "real world except for X" choice.

#1 and #2 are doable and (can) create coherent worlds, but take effort. #3 is the easiest and most common choice, and is inherently incapable of creating a coherent world.

Yes, adding dragons (or magic, or any other fantastic element) requires that the entire foundation of the world change, at least if you want coherence. The baseline is no longer reality. Because reality is a harsh mistress--it's all tightly coupled. Any change that would allow dragons to exist also violates all the fundamental principles and symmetries on which the rest of the edifice rests.

It's not that any deviation from reality needs to be explained--every choice needs to be explained. Even hewing to reality is a choice--it doesn't come for free. And that explanation can be as simple as aesthetics. Whatever the new laws of reality are (in this fictional world), they're ones where (insert element of your choosing) work. It's effectively working backward--it's a fact on the ground in a D&D setting that studded leather armor is more protective than regular leather armor (which is a boiled cuirass and shoulder protections, coupled with lighter sleeves). That's not something contestable, it's fact. Just like the fact that all sorts of creatures exist that are flat out impossible in real life, in ways that implicate all the basic laws of reality. Now the question is "what else needs to change to make those elements work."

Of course you can take the lazy way out and not do the leg work. And for people content to simply play in a cardboard world, where the setting is just a set on a stage, that's fine. But if you care about consistency, any fantastic element requires the rewriting of reality and a willingness to follow where that leads, even if it means throwing out deeply held ideas about what's realistic.

[Talakeal]

snip.

I would say you aren't taking this nearly far enough.

Nobody has the knowledge or the patience to create a totally realistic work of fiction. For example, even the most mundane and grounded of stories will require completely rewriting all of human history to account for the lineages of the characters.

Further, nobody knows what the limits of our reality are, and nobody can say with absolute certainty whether any given "fantastical" element might be impossible, or what changes would be required to account for it.

To me, this argument comes across as a sort of nirvana fallacy, where the DM who just makes things up as they go along is actually somehow *more* correct than the one who tries to create a world with a feeling of predictability or consistency.

[Max_Killjoy]

I would say you aren't taking this nearly far enough.

Nobody has the knowledge or the patience to create a totally realistic work of fiction. For example, even the most mundane and grounded of stories will require completely rewriting all of human history to account for the lineages of the characters.

Further, nobody knows what the limits of our reality are, and nobody can say with absolute certainty whether any given "fantastical" element might be impossible, or what changes would be required to account for it.

To me, this argument comes across as a sort of nirvana fallacy, where the DM who just makes things up as they go along is actually somehow *more* correct than the one who tries to create a world with a feeling of predictability or consistency.

PP has a strict-to-the-point-of-silly concept of "realistic" that at this point is pretty obviously just a strawman standard against which all fictional settings are intended to fail. Something similar to "How can you claim to be free, when no matter how much you want to you can't fly by flapping your arms? Obviously, because you are not free to fly away by flapping your arms, you are not free at all." -- "If you can't rework physics from the ground up and make it work, then your setting is no better than something just made up randomly."


Your standard here, however, that "nobody knows what the limits of our reality are, and nobody can say with absolute certainty whether any given "fantastical" element might be impossible"... yeah, sure, magic and dragons are possible in our world, we just can't figured it out yet?


But, even if I were to run a game using D&D, I'd throw out studded leather, so... that would not be a "fact on the ground".

[InvisibleBison]

You have a few choices in a fictional world.

1. Keep everything literally identical to the real world. No fantastical elements at all, no advanced sci-fi elements either. Nothing that suggests that world X is different from our world.

2. Add any fantastical element or advanced sci-fi element. Completely rebuild the world from the ground up to account for this change, being willing to throw out all preconceptions.

3. As #2, but don't rebuild things. Just staple the element on top. This is the "real world except for X" choice.

#1 and #2 are doable and (can) create coherent worlds, but take effort. #3 is the easiest and most common choice, and is inherently incapable of creating a coherent world.

Coherence is a spectrum, not a binary. It's perfectly possible to have a world that is coherent enough for the purpose it's being used without providing a complete explanation of how its laws of physics work, or whatever you actually mean by "rebuild the world from the ground up".

[Talakeal]

Your standard here, however, that "nobody knows what the limits of our reality are, and nobody can say with absolute certainty whether any given "fantastical" element might be impossible"... yeah, sure, magic and dragons are possible in our world, we just can't figured it out yet?

Depends on how you define magic and dragons.

This all goes back to Clarke's laws, but I would say that any given application of "magic" or "fantasy" can theoretically be recreated in our universe using technology and materials we haven't even dreamed of yet, but I would never presume to be so arrogant I could say for sure which is which.

I mean, what is really so impossible about dragons? Every aspect of a dragon has occurred somewhere in nature before, and I can't see why I hyper advanced society with access to medical and material knowledge far beyond our own couldn't create something we would recognize as a dragon. The only challenge is the sheer size of some of the bigger dragons, especially if they are to fly, but I am not going to presume it is flat-out impossible for an organism to ever do what our machines do every day.

[KorvinStarmast]

Man, that was an unpleasant read. So much outdated information presented in such a condescending manner. It was like being lectured to by the neck-beardiest of grognards.

Given that it was one Sci Fi author speaking to his peers, you are (1) not the intended {original} audience. He was encouraging his peers, and those trying to get into the SF F writing biz, to stretch their muscles a bit and not make the same old tired mistakes. He was also providing some I'd like to see someone fold this into SF/Fantasy some topics that get no treatment. His other bottom line was to do with better verisimilitude being a good idea.

Nobody has the skill or time to make a wholly fictional world, let alone on that players will understand and / or care about.

Nobody? Incorrect. Besides the person who hosts these forums having done precisely that, and a lot of DMs I have played with having done so, numerous authors have done that as well.

At the same time, nobody has the skill or knowledge to make a perfect simulation of the real world, let alone one that people would care to read / play in.

Yes.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Coherence is a spectrum, not a binary. It's perfectly possible to have a world that is coherent enough for the purpose it's being used without providing a complete explanation of how its laws of physics work, or whatever you actually mean by "rebuild the world from the ground up".

Sure. No one[1] expects explanations for everything. But realizing that everything has changed means that you're no longer taking the (false) baseline that it's just the real world + magic. The idea isn't that everything has to be explained, it's that you can't tie yourself to the idea that it's just reality + magic. Because that is terminally incoherent. You have radically unrealistic demands on the laws of nature themselves; everything we call reality is premised on those laws being identical. Just accepting "the laws are probably different, even if the surface looks similar" gives much more wiggle room to accept all sorts of things without verisimilitude breaks.

Depends on how you define magic and dragons.

This all goes back to Clarke's laws, but I would say that any given application of "magic" or "fantasy" can theoretically be recreated in our universe using technology and materials we haven't even dreamed of yet, but I would never presume to be so arrogant I could say for sure which is which.

I mean, what is really so impossible about dragons? Every aspect of a dragon has occurred somewhere in nature before, and I can't see why I hyper advanced society with access to medical and material knowledge far beyond our own couldn't create something we would recognize as a dragon. The only challenge is the sheer size of some of the bigger dragons, especially if they are to fly, but I am not going to presume it is flat-out impossible for an organism to ever do what our machines do every day.

Square cube law says no. Breathing elemental energy says no (the existence of "elemental energy" contradicts all sorts of physical laws just by itself). Flying on something that size says no. The amount of food you'd need says no. Even being able to talk in a human language with that mouth structure is just right out.

So unless you radically depart and just make a (slightly) oversized lizard, you're stuck.

And D&D-style magic is right out, due to violating tons of conservation laws. Most advanced sci-fi falls into this category, especially anything involving FTL travel or communications.

[1] except that's the core of the invocations of this "fallacy"--the demand for isolated rigor in explaining all of the departures from reality, while letting the fact that most of the adherences to reality are even less probable in a world with magic.

[InvisibleBison]

Sure. No one[1] expects explanations for everything. But realizing that everything has changed means that you're no longer taking the (false) baseline that it's just the real world + magic. The idea isn't that everything has to be explained, it's that you can't tie yourself to the idea that it's just reality + magic. Because that is terminally incoherent. You have radically unrealistic demands on the laws of nature themselves; everything we call reality is premised on those laws being identical. Just accepting "the laws are probably different, even if the surface looks similar" gives much more wiggle room to accept all sorts of things without verisimilitude breaks.

I don't see why saying your setting is "just reality + magic" is terminally incoherent. Why can't the fantasy laws of physics fall out so that in the absence of magic things work the same as they do in reality?

[Mechalich]

I mean, what is really so impossible about dragons? Every aspect of a dragon has occurred somewhere in nature before, and I can't see why I hyper advanced society with access to medical and material knowledge far beyond our own couldn't create something we would recognize as a dragon. The only challenge is the sheer size of some of the bigger dragons, especially if they are to fly, but I am not going to presume it is flat-out impossible for an organism to ever do what our machines do every day.

The 'dragons' of Pern are in fact the product of a society with access to medical and material knowledge significantly in advance of our own (and access to an alien evolutionary tree in which helps with that pesky '6 limbs on a tetrapod' issue). While that series includes some profound BS (the the dragons can teleport through time and use telekinetic powers), the fundamental anatomy and even the, limited, fire breathing using a chemical catalyst is reasonably well accounted for (certainly by the standards of the late 1960s). There are still major problems with weight ratios and the wings being too small compared to overall body size (especially in the art), but you can see some of the steps.

You can actually broaden this in a fantasy setting, by saying that the various 'monsters' are the result of ancient genetic engineering. This can't account for magical abilities, but you can get around a lot of restrictions that way. Heck, you can even have giant insects and spiders, they just won't look like insects and spiders on the inside (D&D even went there once, the 2e Thri-Kreen book describes a crude system of alternate internal anatomy that tries to justify how a praying mantis the size of a small horse might actually work).

So unless you radically depart and just make a (slightly) oversized lizard, you're stuck.

You can get a lot further than slightly oversized lizard. A four-limbed dragon (six-limbed means an alternate evolutionary tree, which isn't impossible, but is a lot of extra work), is basically a pterosaur that went in for bat-style wings as opposed to pterosaur-style wings, which is mostly a difference in finger-bone structure. You can scale up pretty far from there, as the largest pterosaurs managed to crack an estimated 200 kg, and if you postulate superior biology in the form of better bones, muscles, or blood (all of which are quite reasonable, especially if the animal was engineered as opposed to evolved naturally) you can get further. The result would be very spindly and have huge wings compared to most traditional dragon art, true, but a big, flight-capable, saurian is absolutely doable.

You can't do elemental energy, but spitting superheated liquid is possible. Speech is also possible, with a bird-like syrinx just like a parrot (roaring, admittedly, is out, unless vocal chords are grafted on, this is a common error with regard to archosaurs, T-Rex can't roar). Yes spellcasting is out, but that's only an inherent trait in a small portion of dragon portrayals.

[Mr Beer]

Yeah our hypothetical dragon can't breathe fire from an internal furnace but it can spit venom, strong acid or even some bombardier beetle type of binary chemical weapon that ignites in air. Actual bombadier beetle spray is boiling not burning but if one combination can basically explode and scald, then I guess others must be plausible. Maybe our dragon spits a self-igniting sticky mixture similar to napalm. A litre or two of that to the face would mess up your day even if it's not quite Smaug-grade destruction.

[Satinavian]

You have a few choices in a fictional world.

1. Keep everything literally identical to the real world. No fantastical elements at all, no advanced sci-fi elements either. Nothing that suggests that world X is different from our world.

2. Add any fantastical element or advanced sci-fi element. Completely rebuild the world from the ground up to account for this change, being willing to throw out all preconceptions.

3. As #2, but don't rebuild things. Just staple the element on top. This is the "real world except for X" choice.

#1 and #2 are doable and (can) create coherent worlds, but take effort. #3 is the easiest and most common choice, and is inherently incapable of creating a coherent world.

No one ever really rebuilds the world from the ground up. There will be some effort to explore implication but writing a complete and consistent new set of natural laws as extensive as our understanding of reality is utterly impossible for one person or even a few.

If #3 is out, then #2 is out as well.

You don't get to handwave the changes for number 2 and insist that all deviations have to be understood and resolved for number 3.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yeah our hypothetical dragon can't breathe fire from an internal furnace but it can spit venom, strong acid or even some bombardier beetle type of binary chemical weapon that ignites in air. Actual bombadier beetle spray is boiling not burning but if one combination can basically explode and scald, then I guess others must be plausible. Maybe our dragon spits a self-igniting sticky mixture similar to napalm. A litre or two of that to the face would mess up your day even if it's not quite Smaug-grade destruction.

Two glands, hypergolic combination. Perhaps a combination of materials somewhat less explosive and toxic/corrosive than the various rocket propellant materials.

[KorvinStarmast]

Yeah our hypothetical dragon can't breathe fire from an internal furnace but it can spit venom, strong acid or even some bombardier beetle type of binary chemical weapon that ignites in air. Actual bombadier beetle spray is boiling not burning but if one combination can basically explode and scald, then I guess others must be plausible. Maybe our dragon spits a self-igniting sticky mixture similar to napalm. A litre or two of that to the face would mess up your day even if it's not quite Smaug-grade destruction.

FWIW, the US Army and Navy (a few decades ago) were experimenting with an artillery propellant that was two tanks: each inert on its own (gasses) that feed through pipeps/manifolds/tubes into the artillery piece's combustion chamber such that it blew up and propelled 155mm and 5-inch artillery rounds (army howitzer and navy rifled gun respectively) the desired distance. An advantage of that combo was (1) ship board safety and (2) less chance of mishaps in artillery ammo dumps. (Also being pursued was a finer mixture/distance control aspect, not sure if that was achieved).
Memory is foggy, but I don't think it reached 'fielded' (I am too many years out of that loop to know if they finally succeeded).
A dragon could do something similar to that biologically: two different bladders that store two different kinds of 'spittable' bile /fluid that when they meet in the stream outside of the dragon's mouth, ignite.
Also, in my world dragons are very lean with very large wing spans. They are not the beefy dragons of the illustrated MM. (A modest nod to the cube square law).

Two glands, hypergolic combination. Perhaps a combination of materials somewhat less explosive and toxic/corrosive than the various rocket propellant materials.

Said m ore elegantly than I put it for the artillery illustration. Thank you.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Two glands, hypergolic combination. Perhaps a combination of materials somewhat less explosive and toxic/corrosive than the various rocket propellant materials.

Except that
a) those hypergolic combinations also are all incredibly toxic and reactive to biological materials. Seriously, we know all of the options. And there aren't any biologically plausible ones.
b) that gets you something that if you squint, could plausibly possibly look like a fire breath. Doesn't account for all the other dragon options.
c) the energy requirements are massive if you want to be able to do that more than once every really long time. Which doesn't mesh well with the astronomical requirements to fly.

A combination of implausibilities (even if each one is theoretically possible) is also so implausible as to be unrealistic. More so than "the authors, not being experts in everything, didn't describe what they meant by "studded leather armor" well."

And @Satinavian--I don't expect anyone to explain everything. For anything. But option 2 is honest--you admit that the underpinnings are different, in whatever (not described unless necessary) ways to produce the desired effects. #3 is a lie--you claim coherence for something where coherence is absolutely ruled out. Reality (unchanged) + magic is contradiction. The laws of physics do not allow it. No matter how you explain it, you have inherent contradictions. There is no explanation that can make #3 coherent. It's not about explaining, it's about honesty.

And being honest also allows freedom from nit-picking from people who vaguely understand bits of things. As to the main topic, this is the only answer that works. "It doesn't work that way. I'm not good enough to do all the explanations, but I know how it works at the level we care about for this game." It also allows much more productive and interesting solutions--I've often found that leaving the underlying metaphysics a bit flexible, while realizing that they're not bound by real life at all (only the surface level is pinned to "something vaguely earth like") has allowed me to discover pieces of the setting that work together much more coherently than trying to play the "magic is an exception to real life physics" card. Because that way you end up with a stack of exceptions all the way down and nothing fits together at all, anywhere. And knowing one exception doesn't help you with other ones--everything's ad hoc. Understanding that there is an underlying order, despite that not being the same as the earth-like order, lets you (the setting designer and the player) play scientist and discover what this order must be.

[Max_Killjoy]

Two glands, hypergolic combination. Perhaps a combination of materials somewhat less explosive and toxic/corrosive than the various rocket propellant materials.

Except that
a) those hypergolic combinations also are all incredibly toxic and reactive to biological materials.

Typical. Oh well.

It's not about explaining, it's about honesty.

OK, accuse people who don't adhere to your agenda-driven definitions of "realistic" or "coherent" of being dishonest.

{Scrubbed}

[Max_Killjoy]

Given that it was one Sci Fi author speaking to his peers, you are (1) not the intended {original} audience. He was encouraging his peers, and those trying to get into the SF F writing biz, to stretch their muscles a bit and not make the same old tired mistakes. He was also providing some I'd like to see someone fold this into SF/Fantasy some topics that get no treatment. His other bottom line was to do with better verisimilitude being a good idea.

It's also worth considering that it was written in 1978.

In the intervening decades since it was first written, a lot of stories and settings have come to be that have, intentionally or not, taken the advice of that essay.

[TexAvery]

The "because dragons fallacy" is itself fallacious because it is not "because only dragons". The people complaining about it are misunderstanding "because magic, therefor dragons (and lots of other stuff)" as "because dragons, therefor other magic". Unless the setting promised "reality except for dragons", the problem lies with the reader leaping to conclusions and trying to feel snotty by correcting the author.

See, for example, people having an issue with GoT when Melisandre creates the shadow. The cold (ha!) open is undead on the far side of an impossible ice wall. Then comes dragons and a woman surviving a pyre. Then other stuff. Then... "oh no, this isn't our world?". No no, it's really not, and you're just seeing more of it. You were never told that only dragons and wights exist beyond our world. The books have even more.

Honestly, I get frustrated that most worlds don't go anywhere near fantasy. It's magic... but it's a tilted round rocky world spinning and rotating around a single sun in 24 hours and 365 days to produce days and seasons exactly like ours, surrounded by space and stars that are more suns. But we renamed the months and days of the week for you. Hooray. I feel so fantasized. Where's something like Discworld, which is actually different, or where the stars are really pinholes in the curtain of night, or the day is really produced by Apollo riding his chariot across the sky? It's like there's no imagination.

Putting "fallacy" after a phrase and repeating it doesn't make it correct. I call it "the fallacy fallacy".

[Max_Killjoy]

The "because dragons fallacy" is itself fallacious because it is not "because only dragons". The people complaining about it are misunderstanding "because magic, therefor dragons (and lots of other stuff)" as "because dragons, therefor other magic". Unless the setting promised "reality except for dragons", the problem lies with the reader leaping to conclusions and trying to feel snotty by correcting the author.

See, for example, people having an issue with GoT when Melisandre creates the shadow. The cold (ha!) open is undead on the far side of an impossible ice wall. Then comes dragons and a woman surviving a pyre. Then other stuff. Then... "oh no, this isn't our world?". No no, it's really not, and you're just seeing more of it. You were never told that only dragons and wights exist beyond our world. The books have even more.

Honestly, I get frustrated that most worlds don't go anywhere near fantasy. It's magic... but it's a tilted round rocky world spinning and rotating around a single sun in 24 hours and 365 days to produce days and seasons exactly like ours, surrounded by space and stars that are more suns. But we renamed the months and days of the week for you. Hooray. I feel so fantasized. Where's something like Discworld, which is actually different, or where the stars are really pinholes in the curtain of night, or the day is really produced by Apollo riding his chariot across the sky? It's like there's no imagination.

Putting "fallacy" after a phrase and repeating it doesn't make it correct. I call it "the fallacy fallacy".

And, you know, never mind all the other ways posters have described the fallacy being invoked by players and readers, that have been detailed in this thread.

It's more common to see it invoked as a demand to include something that's been excluded from a setting, than it is a criticism of something that's already been included -- and in that form, it is "because Dragons, then ANYTHING".

But it also does come up as a defense of bad worldbuilding.

The example you give... the question is not one of "when was this introduced?" but "was this planned from the start?" It's OK to introduce things along the way as long as they're part of the intended world or fit. The problem comes when things are just piled on as things go along, with no preplanning and no thought as to what does or does not fit.

[KorvinStarmast]

The example you give... the question is not one of "when was this introduced?" but "was this planned from the start?" It's OK to introduce things along the way as long as they're part of the intended world or fit. The problem comes when things are just piled on as things go along, with no preplanning and no thought as to what does or does not fit.

At this point, I point to the D&D spell list. Like a cancer it grows and grows ...

[Max_Killjoy]

At this point, I point to the D&D spell list. Like a cancer it grows and grows ...

Some RPGs like D&D, or multiple editions of L5R, suffer from the push to create more sellable content, to the point that adding any stuff to new books for sale matters more than adding material that fits, or having a framework in place from the start into which new material can fit when it comes along.

L5R 4th edition is a great example... there was no consideration of counter-magic in the design of the original magic system, it was added in a splatbook later, and it shows.. there was little consideration taken for crafting in the original rules, crafting "powers" were added in a different splatbook, and it shows.

This affects setting more with games like D&D and L5R, because all new system material is tied to something in the implicit or explicit setting (respectively).

[Talakeal]

Square cube law says no.

Mechalich already answered the rest of this post adequately, but I have to say, what about the square cube law? We have found the remains of dinosaurs on Earth that we estimate weighed over 100 tons, which is significantly more than most dragons. True, they aren't shaped quite like dragons, but these are just animals that we have found remains of who evolved by chance on real Earth (and its almost certain there are bigger ones we haven;t found), are you really saying that it is impossible for anything to be bigger (or shaped more like a dragon at similar sizes) even given different physiology, materials, or environment to work with? Even if intentionally designed but a much more advanced rare of genetic engineers?

Given that it was one Sci Fi author speaking to his peers, you are (1) not the intended {original} audience. He was encouraging his peers, and those trying to get into the SF F writing biz, to stretch their muscles a bit and not make the same old tired mistakes. He was also providing some I'd like to see someone fold this into SF/Fantasy some topics that get no treatment. His other bottom line was to do with better verisimilitude being a good idea.

I get that. Its just he comes across as very hypocritical as he leans super hard into lots of outdated stereotypes such as "the dung ages", Orientalism, and misogyny which make the type of stories he is advocating for seem, to me, to be even worse than what he is criticizing.

Nobody? Incorrect. Besides the person who hosts these forums having done precisely that, and a lot of DMs I have played with having done so, numerous authors have done that as well.
Yes.

We aren't talking about just creating an original fantasy world, we are talking about creating one from scratch rather than using reality as a basis. Which, imo, is impossible. OoTS certainly doesn't try, in any given panel I can point out dozens of things that require no explanation because they work just like they do in real life.

Seriously, we know all of the options.

No, we do not.

To me, your argument comes across as very naive and somewhat arrogant. We are not even close to understanding all of the laws that govern our universe, let alone all of their applications.

I have little doubt that in centuries to come we will find that a great many of our laws are partially or maybe even entirely incorrect, or at the very least will find clever ways to subvert them.

I don't really have a problem with studded leather, but IMO it is much easier for me to say "this alien device works under principles that we do not understand and seems impossible, yet it exists" than "this mundane object which we understand performs differently than it should because it looks kewl".

And @Satinavian--I don't expect anyone to explain everything. For anything. But option 2 is honest--you admit that the underpinnings are different, in whatever (not described unless necessary) ways to produce the desired effects. #3 is a lie--you claim coherence for something where coherence is absolutely ruled out. Reality (unchanged) + magic is contradiction. The laws of physics do not allow it. No matter how you explain it, you have inherent contradictions. There is no explanation that can make #3 coherent. It's not about explaining, it's about honesty.

All fiction is, well, fiction. It is by its nature dishonest.

Nobody has the time or knowledge to fully map out all of the details of a fictional world, or even to perfectly report real life events for a non-fiction narrative.

That doesn't mean that verisimilitude cannot exist. Just because dragons are impossible doesn't mean it isn't a plot hole if I have my 50 meter fire breathing black dragon motivated only by greed become a 50 foot poison spitting wyvern motivated only by hunger in the next chapter because I couldn't be bothered to keep my notes straight.

[TexAvery]

And, you know, never mind all the other ways posters have described the fallacy being invoked by players and readers, that have been detailed in this thread.

It's more common to see it invoked as a demand to include something that's been excluded from a setting, than it is a criticism of something that's already been included -- and in that form, it is "because Dragons, then ANYTHING".

But it also does come up as a defense of bad worldbuilding.

The example you give... the question is not one of "when was this introduced?" but "was this planned from the start?" It's OK to introduce things along the way as long as they're part of the intended world or fit. The problem comes when things are just piled on as things go along, with no preplanning and no thought as to what does or does not fit.

Cool story bro. All I've seen is an insistence that a fantasy world conform to a restrictive reader's expectations. Your final point is also a fallacy - there is no rule that a fictional world must be completely set from the start with no room for expansion or further imagination. Not everything new is a deus ex machina.

Let's call that the "genesis fallacy". Man it's fun to call everything you disagree with a fallacy. I should do that more.

[Max_Killjoy]

I get that. Its just he comes across as very hypocritical as he leans super hard into lots of outdated stereotypes such as "the dung ages", Orientalism, and misogyny which make the type of stories he is advocating for seem, to me, to be even worse than what he is criticizing.

As noted, the essay was originally written in 1978... roughly 44 years ago... almost half a century. A lot of scholarship on those details has occurred between then and now, and I'm much more concerned by people who push those ideas in material written now, still, in 2022... and I'd hate to miss the forest of that essay for the trees of those details.

[KorvinStarmast]

I get that. Its just he comes across as very hypocritical

You lack context. Suggest you read some of his Sci Fi/Fantasy. Operation Chaos is a good one to start with. Unlike (too many) modern fantasy writers, he didn't write phone book sized novels.

Nobody has the time or knowledge to fully map out all of the details of a fictional world, or even to perfectly report real life events for a non-fiction narrative.

I doubt anyone demands that. What is desired is a reasonably consistent mesh between the primary and secondary worlds. (And this is part of why good science fiction is very hard to write).

We aren't talking about just creating an original fantasy world, we are talking about creating one from scratch rather than using reality as a basis.

You are talking about that. Actual world building involves getting the mix of primary and secondary world about right.

To try and steer this back on topic, if that's even a hope now:

The initial concern was how much economics one might want to try and model in an RPG, or more concisely, in a given setting, or in a world that a DM is building.
The only good answer to that is "however much is fun for the whole table" - since economic models are darned hard to put together even by experts in the field trying to emulate any given economic system is already fraught with peril.

[Max_Killjoy]

Cool story bro. All I've seen is an insistence that a fantasy world conform to a restrictive reader's expectations. Your final point is also a fallacy - there is no rule that a fictional world must be completely set from the start with no room for expansion or further imagination. Not everything new is a deus ex machina.

Let's call that the "genesis fallacy". Man it's fun to call everything you disagree with a fallacy. I should do that more.

I did not say "a setting can't ever expand".

What I criticized is settings expanding in an ad-hoc, just-so manner, with no thought given ahead of time and no thought given to what came before.

Need to start reading what you're responding to, before you post... but don't feel bad, you're not alone in that on this thread. I'd hate to think that this is deliberate strawmanning, but... it seems more likely each time it happens.

Still... "cool story bro" and your "fallacy" crack are putting you really close to the same ignore list that others have been ending up on, I've completely lost patience for the snotty, crappy, derisive, demeaning, condescending attitude that's dominating around here lately.

[Max_Killjoy]

I doubt anyone demands that. What is desired is a reasonably consistent mesh between the primary and secondary worlds. (And this is part of why good science fiction is very hard to write).

At least one person has been demanding that, as noted in some of my posts above, as a standard that will be automatically failed by ideas about worldbuilding competing with his own.

The initial concern was how much economics one might want to try and model in an RPG, or more concisely, in a given setting, or in a world that a DM is building.
The only good answer to that is "however much is fun for the whole table" - since economic models are darned hard to put together even by experts in the field trying to emulate any given economic system is already fraught with peril.

IMO, as with most things, it's a matter of "don't present actively contradictory details".

I don't need to know exactly how much gold to the ounce comes out of the Mines of Westplacia each year... but don't show/tell me that alchemists can make as much gold as they like cheaply and easily, and show/then tell me that gold coins are still the most stable and common currency, unless there's an very good third fact to reconcile the two.

[Talakeal]

You are talking about that. Actual world building involves getting the mix of primary and secondary world about right.

I was responding to PhoenixPhyre. I do not disagree with you about trying to find a proper mix.

[KorvinStarmast]

At least one person has been demanding that, as noted in some of my posts above, as a standard that will be automatically failed by ideas about worldbuilding competing with his own.

I think something is being, somewhat, misplayed here. Earlier in the thread the point of the 'thin layer of what looks like our world' plus 'under the hood a lot of stuff has to work differently than ours' and the important third point 'we don't necessarily have to know how it all works since our objective is to play a game.'
That third part is kind of important for any speculative fiction setting, not just mid to high fantasy or swords and sorcery. (Fritz Lieber's Lankhmar setting is but one example of juxtaposing gritty medieval stuff with magic and strange phenomena and even SciFi allusions)

Note that I have the advantage of playing in that person's created world. It has (1) a good primary world/secondary world mix (2) no presumption on anyone's part that anybody knows it all, but there is (3) sufficient world building done to go a few layers down from the aforementioned surface-layer for those interested. (The world building has been ongoing for over 7 years, and is well documented).

IMO, as with most things, it's a matter of "don't present actively contradictory details".

That's a nice standard to meet.

I don't need to know exactly how much gold to the ounce comes out of the Mines of Westplacia each year... but don't show/tell me that alchemists can make as much gold as they like cheaply and easily, and show/then tell me that gold coins are still the most stable and common currency, unless there's an very good third fact to reconcile the two.

Concur.

@Talakeal

I do not disagree with you about trying to find a proper mix.

Hurrah, we have an accord. How many layers of veneer are applied (primary world) on top of the secondary world is a creator's choice.

(One of my favorite examples of this is the spec fiction novel Tumbling After by Paul Witcover. The primary world is easily recognized and entered - 20th century Delaware - while the secondary world effects are woven in with considerable skill).