[MUD-Dev] Expectations of in-game reality

[Lars Duening]

Marian Griffith wrote on Wednesday, November 14 2001, 12:44:40:
> On Tue 13 Nov, Lars Duening wrote:
>> Travis Casey wrote on Friday, October 26 2001, 10:35:30:
>>> Thursday, October 25, 2001, 4:40:26 PM, J C Lawrence wrote:

>>>> A 50 tonne dragon with wings the size of postage stamps flying
>>>> is not logically internally consistent, not unless you can also
>>>> fly by wiggling your ears.  It makes good story however.  Why?

>>> Can you point to any serious fantasy that has such a thing,
>>> though?  The only flying dragons with wings smaller than their
>>> body length that I've seen depicted are either (1) in children's
>>> fantasy, where they're trying for a silly appearance, or (2)
>>> Oriental dragons, who don't have wings at all.

>> Well, Erroll in Terry Pratchett's "Guards! Guards!" manages to
>> fly with his stubby wings by using them like airplane wings and
>> achieving the necessary lift through speed from his 'jet engine'.

> That hardly classifies as "serious fantasy" now does it? As far as
> I know, Terry Pratchett writes parodies, or something closely
> resembling it.

Just because Pratchett writes humouristic fantasy, that doesn't mean
that he is exempt from having to have plots, consistency, etc.

In my opinion, well-written parodies (I admit that there are only
few) like the early Discworld or Spellsinger books can be more
imaginative, more 'fantastic', than your average 'serious' fantasy
book. By leaving them out from considerations like this you do
yourself a disservice.

>Besides, realism is not about what is possible in our world but
>about what is consistent with the game world.

No argument about that, it is just nice to see when an author
actually thinks about the things he uses in their story. If dragons
can fly with too-small wings - shouldn't then humans be able to fly,
too, in Icarus style?

--
Lars Duening; lars at bearnip.com
PGP Key: http://www.bearnip.com/lars/pgp-lars.asc

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