“In a world with wizards and dragons…”

... in a world where dragons fly, wizards teleport, and warriors routinely survive hundred-foot falls, it’s not a big deal for a character to unlearn one ability and learn a different one in its place.

(Ok, it’s not really fair for me to pick on Sean K. Reynolds for three posts in a row. Truth be told, I think he's an excellent game designer, and I've been a fan of his work (e.g. on the Forgotten Realms sourcebooks for 3rd edition D&D) for a long time.

But if anything can motivate me to actually go ahead and write a blog post (and few things can), it's seeing someone be wrong on the internet. I've been reading through SKR’s blog archives lately. He’s right a lot of the time—but you’re probably not going to see me write any posts about that. So, with apologies…)

Just as with the sentiment described in my last post, I see this sort of thing all the time. Someone proposes that a fantasy RPG should contain some element—some game mechanic, some fantastic phenomenon, whatever. Other folks object: “this makes no sense”, they say. The proponents parry: “In a world where [some fantastic thing], why shouldn't there be [proposed thing]?”

I've seen this reasoning used to justify metagame mechanics (forgetting all the martial techniques you’ve spent years practicing, and learning completely different ones; PCs vanishing into thin air when a player is absent), setting-altering justifications for attempts at game balance (“sure it makes sense for fighters to throw fireballs—maybe magic radiation permeates everything and gives every person in the world innate magical superpowers”), and all sorts of weird game mechanics and fictional scenarios.¹

People tend to sense that there”s something wrong with this logic. They push back. But not very well; the responses to this kind of argument are rarely coherent. Sometimes people appeal to “realism” (more savvy or experienced gamers and designers might instead say “verisimilitude”); sometimes it’s setting coherence, game balance, fun, etc.

It rarely sounds very convincing. Oh, these may all be good reasons to reject the proposed element in any particular case. But they don’t really get at the underlying problem. And it often seems as if the objectors themselves don’t find the reasons they give for their objections very convincing. The truth is that, specifics aside, having the quoted logic deployed against you, in response to your objection to some proposed game element, feels vaguely like you're being conned—even if you can’t pin down just what the con is.

So let’s try and and pin it down.

Here’s a question. Take the following sentence:

“In a world with [ wizards / dragons / shapeshifting zombie dinosaurs / whatever ], it’s no big deal for there to be _________________.”

What can’t go in that blank?

In other words, is there anything that this reasoning can’t license? Is there anything at all that can still be excluded by appeals to "realism", "verisimilitude", "making sense", etc., after you’ve accepted the existence of wizards and dragons?

If the answer’s “yes”, then where do you draw the line—and how do you decide where the line's drawn? Perhaps by appealing to—setting coherence, game balance, fun...? But then those considerations are what’s doing the actual work. Why bother appealing to the wizards and the dragons?

But if the answer is “no”…

If you think this sort of logic can justify literally anything whatsoever…

Then you’re saying that once you allow wizards or dragons into the game, then you have to completely give up on your game / setting having properties like “coherence”, “predictability”, “comprehensibility”, “being consistent”, and “making any goddamn sense at all”.

Should the rivers in your game sometimes reverse course and flow backwards for no discernible reason? Why not! You’ve got wizards and dragons, after all.

Are children in your setting born in the usual way, or do they appear fully formed 1d6 weeks after conception? Why not! Because wizards and dragons!

Should humans have the ability to jump to the moon? Well, why not? Wizards, right? And dragons!

Should any warrior be able to conjure weapons out of thin air? Hey, in a world of wizards and dragons...

Does your setting's economic system need to make sense? Nah—wizards and dragons. Do the societies and cultures in your world need to be believable? Nah—wizards and dragons. Does the behavior of NPCs in perfectly ordinary situations need to even remotely resemble normal human behavior? Nah—wizards and dragons. In a crazy world of wizard and dragons, anything is possible, and nothing is impossible!

Wizards and dragons are pretty fantastic, it’s true—not to mention super cool. But it’s just possible that after hearing the above sort of reasoning one time too many, people will start saying, “you know what? If wizards and dragons are this much trouble—if they’re really instantly and totally destructive to my ability to have a game world or game system that isn’t a totally incoherent mess—then maybe they're not worth it.”

Because when you endorse this sort of reasoning, what you’re really saying is:

“As soon as you introduce any elements of the fantastic, your game forever forfeits the right to make sense.”