[MUD-Dev] Alright... IF your gonan do DESIESE...

[Adam Wiggins]

> >There are lots of problems, the most
> >signifigant being that the building blocks of the universe are all constant.
> >Atomic bonds have a set strength (for our purposes, anyways) and gravity
> 
> Huh? What the hell does an atomic bond strength have to do with the
> possability of very large lizards?

Flesh, bone, etc etc are all constant density, material, makeup and so
forth.
Here's some more questions on these same topics (I'm not a scientist,
nor do I have any formal education beyond high school) -
Why are the largest sea creatures so much larger than the largest land
creatures?
Why are there no 50-ft insects?  It would seem that since insects really
can live much longer except for their size (ie, you drop them from a height
of 50 times their body length and they happily scurry off) that if you
just made a version of them that was several times larger they could
pretty much rule the earth.  So why is this not the case?

> matter of gravity and mroe a matter of the square/cube law-- to wit, as an
> obejct increases in size its surfgace increases by the square while its
> mass increases by teh cube.  

Yeah, as I mentioned.  It's not actually mass that increases by cube,
really, it's volume - but as I said before, all the building blocks
stay the same (density of flesh bone etc) and the volume just increases
cubicaly.  Things get nasty.
At any rate, without getting to in depth into something that I doubt
anyone really cares about - I find the idea of incredibly intelligent,
viscious, flying lizards which dwarf the size of any creature ever
known to exist on this planet (land based or not) to be improbably
to the point of disturbing my suspension of disbelief.  Even given this,
the idea that a knight armed with a sturdy lance and a good shield can
take one out before lunch I find pretty laughable.

> Thsi has relevance when dealing with a foot's ability to hold up a body,as
> we as, far more importantly, the surface area available to release heat
> through or absorb it in through.  Large size proves a problem in heat
> management, thsi is expecially true with creatures who depend on the
> outside to regulate their body temerpatures, such as cold blooded
> lizards... but most dragon biology attempts Ive ever seen make then warm
> blodded and in fact, there is a deabte right now over wheterh or not some
> of the dinosaurs were in fact warm blooded.

Good point, I haven't even considered this.

> >> On top of this, they are meat-eaters.
> >The T-Rex is probably the best direct comparsion on this, and it had problems
> >at a mere 6 tons or so with keeping itself fed.  The massive amount of energy
> >(== prey) which it takes to keep that sort of a body in motion is damn
> >near impossible to maintain...
> 
> To quote a good point from a bad movie "life always finds a way".  The
> Hummingbird has a far greater problem then your big creatures. In order to
> sustain its mdoe of flight it needs a rediculously high metabolic rate.  If
> the humingbird stops eating, it immediately starts starving.  To overcome
> thsi and allow down times, humingbirds go into deep hibernation EVERY NIGHT
> when they go to sleep.

Yes, hummeringbirds are pretty amazing creatures, but they do exist,
which is (all other conjecture aside) give them a pretty good
believability factor.

> >now imagine a creature four to ten times larger.
> >(A T-Rex is roughly the size of what...a very, very small D&D dragon?)
> 
> Um, nope.  Ild say a T-rex is the size of a full adult dragon based on all
> the illustratiosn I've seen and my own experiences standing under a T-rex
> skelleton.

Well, I've never liked D&D, nor am I all that familar with the creatures
which populate it, but I have quite a few friends that are pretty into
it.  In particular one had a very nicely painted poster (by Jeff Easly I
think) with the relative scale and measurements for all the various
colored dragons, and I recall seeing quite a few on there which clocked
in at 250 ft.  A T-Rex is what, 16 feet tall at the shoulder?  (Course,
things get a little zany here if you start meassuring tail length in
with the height.)  In addition, I recall quite clearly adventures where
our party of 6 or 8 people would run into a "baby" dragon (50-100 feet)
and we'd win, without any casualties.  It's like, "Dragon breathes
lightning.  My 7th level dwarven warrior with a 19 con makes his saving
throw and takes 30 points of damage, down to 35 hitpoints.  Dragon smacks
you, dice roll...does 20 points of damage."  I suppose this is supposed
to be analagous to the dragon's breath just sort of clipping me, then
the dragon's stomp/bite/claw kind of glancing off as I dodged out of the
way.  Just have trouble envisioning this, that's all...and on top of this,
the rest of my part is happily pumping arrows into this thing and smacking
it with their weapons (which, thanks to a nice big thac0, easily "penitrate"
the dragon's scales), meaning the poor thing only has a few rounds to
live, if that.

> >The worst part is that D&D dragons usually have a 50 strength or so.
> >This would seem to imply that a couple of good human warriors (18 str)
> 
> This is athe problem witha linear scale., Note however that NOWHERE in the
> AD&D ruels doies it actually SAY strength is a linear scale.  COudl be its
> not, in which case your math is fallacious.

T'was just conjecture.  The point is that every RPG which has followed
after uses this same sort of setup.  Thus you end up with an ogre
with a giant growth and 10 strength spells being able to armwrestle
a dragon and win.  The system wasn't set up to handle this sort of thing
correctly, so it's not any big surprise that it...doesn't.

> >strength chart wasn't linear, but it just doesn't work this way.
>
> Um.. show me where it says it linear.  Page number, book, and paragraph #
> please.

What I said was not, "The D&D strength scale is linear."  What I said
was, "I assume that the strength chart wasn't linear, but it just doesn't
work this way."  Note keyword: "work".  The D&D strength scale does not
correctly model non-humanoid creatures, regardless of what it may "say"
it does.

> >Any descently experienced character can expect to live at least one
> >shot from a dragon.  
> 
> AD&D is balanced aroudn the cocnept of the myth of St. George and the
> Dragon. ie one fulyl decked out high levle fighter with war horse, alnce
> and luck can take a dragoin down.

Yeah, and that's fine.  I'm just bored as hell of this, and I never
liked it much to begin with.  The whole point of my post was stating
that what you've said above is the case, and why I find it both ridiculous
and bad for overall gameplay.

> There is a very good quote on thsi dichotomy in the literature in "The
> Glass Harmoica" (also published as The Book Of Wierd) a totally UN ad&d
> related encyclopedia of fasntasy cocnepts.  It defines a drago nas
> "That most fiercesome, terrible, and pwoerful creature that, ocne actually
> encountered, proves suprisingly easy to kill."

*grin*

> Part of your mistake ofcourse is that you are treatign AD&D characters as
> normal peopel. Theya re not, at high levels they are epic heros.

Yeah.  I'm bored as hell of this is all.

> >The part I just *cannot* stomach is the idea of two or three well
> >equiped adventurers taking one out.  If we assume that dragons have the
> 
> Then design your own. Noone is stopping you.  Everything  in the monsert
> manual is a sugegstion.

Yeah.  Keep in mind, however, I'm not targeting D&D...that's just a nice
big bullseye for me, and a good place to draw examples from that I'm
pretty sure everyone can relate to somehow.  My main complaint lies with
everything *since* then which has ripped off the D&D system without
addressing fundamental problems in the changeover from a small, customizable,
human-run game with handmade campaigns and small parties of adventures, to
a computer-run system containing hundreds of players with ongoing adventures.

I *still* don't like D&D, and I wish that muds had chosen a better
model (RuneQuest, for example) at the start.  Unfortunately it didn't
work out that way...as a result I frequently find myself doing things
a certain way just because it's the exact *opposite* of the way D&D (and
subsequently, a large number of muds) did it.