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

[Nathan Yospe]

On Wed, 18 Jun 1997, Jeff Kesselman wrote:
:At 09:26 PM 6/18/97 PST8PDT, you wrote:
                              ^^^
                              Who, Jeff, WHO?

:>For starters, the mere idea that a land creature of that size could actually
:>exist is pretty preposterous.  Most of the D&D dragons clock in at a size
:>that would dwarf just about every dinosaur to ever walk this earth, and
:>we all know how well THEY did.  

:Extremely well, actually.  Dinosaurs ruled the landscape for a number of
:orders of magitude more time then human beings have existed.  The filled
:every ecological niche occupied by some other creature today.  Thsi is why
:the questio nof why they died out has always been such a mystery-- the
:assumption is that a dramitic event caused a catastrophic change in the
:environment.

Most dinosaurs had either metabolic or skeletal problems, and none of the
large ones were, based on skeletal architecture, particularly fast. None
of this getting chased down by a T-Rex like in the Jurassic Park movies.
They were not very good at turning when they got up to speed, you see.
Dodge left, run fast, dodge right again, etc, etc, and pretty soon you've
lost the beastie.

:Oh, and no AD&D Dragon I know of dwarfs that thign that they finally
:figured out a brontosaurus really is (turns out the bronto was a mistake,
:wrong head on the body.)

I seem to recall things with 80+ ft wingspans from AD&D. Ah, well.

:>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? Or for that matter, gravity?  Its less a
: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.  

Both are quite signiificant. Bone density vs bone strength, for example,
and the fact that muscles have to be much larger in larger creatures for
similar relative strength, due to the bond structure of musculature. And
gravity is significant mainly because, as you said, mass is going to be
increasing cubicly... which means gravitational force will as well. Which
doesn't have much to do with surface area, apart from wings and feet...
and muscular attatchment regions. Which is quite significant. It means
bones have to get thicker, or at least the parts where muscles anchor
(we'll forget for now the problems of calcification and shear stress
across bones.) and muscles bigger... which increases mass, so its not a
simple first order calculation.

: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.

There isn't much debate, actually. Dinosaurs... most of them, at least...
WERE warm blooded. This can be pretty easilly determined from some of the
more intact embryonic fossils, skin samples, and bone cores. On the other
hand, they don't seem to have had a perspiration system, and probably
exhaled most of that heat via their lungs. Not particularly effective. But
that aside, the real problem with size, as far as internal systems go, has
always been circulation, not heat. Nothing with heat problems survives to
reproduce, you see, because reproduction is threatened a lot faster than
life. Circulation is a major problem, though, and most of the larger
dinosaurs had exagerated chest cavities. Check the skeletal fossils. You
can see this quite clearly. The adaptations they needed to make to survive
made them far more clumsy, physically, than most people would like dragons
to be. (My GURU dragons are about the size of large crocodiles. They are
still the nastiest things you ever don't want to mess with.)

:>> 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...

Just a point... there is now a known carnivore, similar in structure to
the T-Rex, but about 40 something percent larger. There is also something
considerably larger than the Aptosaurus (Bronto body) or Brachiosaurus
(previous largest, by 10% over Apto) of similar quadropedal construction.
One of these is the Megalosaurus, one is the Gigantosaurus, or something
like that. I can't remember which is which.

: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.

That's only two specific species of hummingbird. Most don't have that
problem. Then again, most don't stay airborne as much as those two. Anyone
remember Goldman's Princess Bride? The book, not the movie. Remember the
zoo of death? I liked the inclusion of hummingbirds among the fleet.

:>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.

Depends on the version. Most portrayals I have seen make dragons far
longer, but without the mass of body. Or chest, which suggest circulatory
problems. Then again, dragons ARE pure fantasy.

:>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.

It is, actually. Or was, in the original D&D, and this was never actually
corrected in AD&D, that I know of.

:>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.

*shrug* Somewhere in the Gamer's Manuel for d&d, pre ad&d times, is where
I saw it. I was developing my own system at the time.

:>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.

Hey, even in Tolkein, a lucky archer could take a dragon down. Wasn't St.
George an achilie's heel case as well? A weak spot in the chest armor? And
that dragon was only 17 ft tall on its haunches. 

: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."

I remember The Book of Wierd. And the original quote, I believe, was
attributed by that book to some fantasy book many years before. Wish I
could remember where.

: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.

Which is rather odd. A world with a hundred epic heroes running around all
the time... bleah. AD&D does not translate well to muds.

:>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 sugeg

I always hated that monster manual. Then again, I despised AD&D as well.

   __    _   __  _   _   ,  ,  , ,  
  /_  / / ) /_  /_) / ) /| /| / /\            First Light of a Nova Dawn
 /   / / \ /_  /_) / \ /-|/ |/ /_/            Final Night of a World Gone
Nathan F. Yospe - University of Hawaii Dept of Physics - yospe at hawaii.edu