Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1113148How would you categorize centaur or owlbear? I am curious.

Quote from: ffilz;1113152I see the argument that centaurs may be a natural part of a fantasy world. But I can also see an argument that they are still unnatural in some way and some kind of magic is involved in their existence. That magic may allow them to reproduce the same way natural animals do, yet still be an unnatural animal.

Also something to consider, does a spell like "Animal Control" work on humans? If not why? What is the logic of your setting? Answering questions like that will tell you if centaurs are a natural animal or not.

Also, druids need not oppose anything unnatural. And again, do druids special abilities work on humans? If not, why not? Again, does that help answer why the can or can not affect centaurs or owl bears?

Now I agree that various editions of D&D may not have really given thought to the answers to these sorts of questions, and a good GM will give these sorts of questions some thought and possibly change the lists of what is affected by certain magic and abilities.

First of all, I think the distinctions between magical vs non-magical and natural vs unnatural are inherently nonsensical because what qualifies is completely arbitrary. In real life we cannot universally define what is and isn't natural because different people have different definitions and nobody is right or wrong because "natural" isn't a quality that can be quantified by science. Similarly, distinguishing between magic and non-magic is arbitrary because magic doesn't exist in reality and there is no remotely comparable analogue for it either. Furthermore, in reality people who believe(d) in magic generally don't distinguish it as something apart from the natural/non-magical world. The idea that magic is distinct from natural/non-magical existence is a purely modern invention of people who grew up in a secular/Christian culture devoid of any teachings about magic other than prayer and demons. When you compare to (for example) Eastern mysticism involving qi, you don't see the same distinction between magical and non-magical existence because the "magic" comes from the natural world.

Long story short, D&D doesn't have a coherent magical theory or coherent world building in general. The inability to create a sensible taxonomy is a symptom of that. Naturally I'm going to limit myself to the taxonomy because world building a coherent magical universe is much harder.

Anyway, I wouldn't distinguish arbitrary nonsensical distinctions like "magical" or "unnatural." I would categorize monsters by common sense on a case-by-case basis, with as many taxonomic tags as required for their concept. (What qualifies as "common sense" depends on the observer, but that's neither here no there.)

I would consider centaurs to be people and owlbears to be animals. They may not exist on Earth, but they do exist in Fantasyland. It doesn't matter if they were created artificially, since if we're going to be serious about the fantasy then we have to acknowledge that every living thing was created artificially by the gods or that life arose spontaneously from the primordial chaos.

Part of this also ties into ecology. D&D often mentions ecology with regard to monsters and especially druids. The medieval peasants and classical philosophers who invented the basis of the fantasy genre didn't know ecology existed, or any other scientific facts that even the most uneducated US citizen takes for granted. They didn't know plants produced breathable air, they didn't know that it was possible to hunt plants and animals to extinction, they didn't know that their thoughtless actions destroyed every ecosystem they came into contact with.

Elf-games descend, through a game of Chinese telephone, from those ancient wrong-headed traditions. Which makes me wonder about world building. Do I want the fantasy world to have an ecology or not? If yes, how do I reconcile the fact that the pseudo-medieval technology level means that nobody in the fantasy world will know what ecology is? How do druids even know it exists? Their nature gods told them? Is there a friction between druids and civilization due to the druids preaching environmentalism that nobody else understands or cares for? That sounds like a pretty neat plot hook!

But I digress.

Anyway, pretty much any monster you encounter could conceivably be classified either as a natural animal or a natural person. Given that anything is possible in Fantasyland, how exactly do you distinguish an arbitrary nonsensical category like "monstrosity" from that? What makes the basilisk or hydra (or whatever) a "monstrosity" and not a natural megafauna of fantasyland? Plenty of speculative biologists have speculated that creatures like that could exist in real life on some alien planet, so at worst they'd be an invasive species which is innocuous in their home environment but a dangerous pest on the human planet. Even if they're a unique mutation or created by spontaneous generation, that's still natural to the physics of Fantasyland.

The most coherent explanation I ever found was by using flavors of magic (like classical elements, used to define the composition of reality), to which all PCs/NPCs/monsters are tied. All natural animals are linked to nature magic. All unnatural monstrosities are linked to chaos magic. By changing the magical flavor that dominates them, an animal may become a monstrosity or vice versa.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1113211First of all, I think the distinctions between magical vs non-magical and natural vs unnatural are inherently nonsensical because what qualifies is completely arbitrary. In real life we cannot universally define what is and isn't natural because different people have different definitions and nobody is right or wrong because "natural" isn't a quality that can be quantified by science. Similarly, distinguishing between magic and non-magic is arbitrary because magic doesn't exist in reality and there is no remotely comparable analogue for it either. Furthermore, in reality people who believe(d) in magic generally don't distinguish it as something apart from the natural/non-magical world. The idea that magic is distinct from natural/non-magical existence is a purely modern invention of people who grew up in a secular/Christian culture devoid of any teachings about magic other than prayer and demons. When you compare to (for example) Eastern mysticism involving qi, you don't see the same distinction between magical and non-magical existence because the "magic" comes from the natural world.

Long story short, D&D doesn't have a coherent magical theory or coherent world building in general. The inability to create a sensible taxonomy is a symptom of that. Naturally I'm going to limit myself to the taxonomy because world building a coherent magical universe is much harder.

Anyway, I wouldn't distinguish arbitrary nonsensical distinctions like "magical" or "unnatural." I would categorize monsters by common sense on a case-by-case basis, with as many taxonomic tags as required for their concept. (What qualifies as "common sense" depends on the observer, but that's neither here no there.)

I would consider centaurs to be people and owlbears to be animals. They may not exist on Earth, but they do exist in Fantasyland. It doesn't matter if they were created artificially, since if we're going to be serious about the fantasy then we have to acknowledge that every living thing was created artificially by the gods or that life arose spontaneously from the primordial chaos.

Part of this also ties into ecology. D&D often mentions ecology with regard to monsters and especially druids. The medieval peasants and classical philosophers who invented the basis of the fantasy genre didn't know ecology existed, or any other scientific facts that even the most uneducated US citizen takes for granted. They didn't know plants produced breathable air, they didn't know that it was possible to hunt plants and animals to extinction, they didn't know that their thoughtless actions destroyed every ecosystem they came into contact with.

Elf-games descend, through a game of Chinese telephone, from those ancient wrong-headed traditions. Which makes me wonder about world building. Do I want the fantasy world to have an ecology or not? If yes, how do I reconcile the fact that the pseudo-medieval technology level means that nobody in the fantasy world will know what ecology is? How do druids even know it exists? Their nature gods told them? Is there a friction between druids and civilization due to the druids preaching environmentalism that nobody else understands or cares for? That sounds like a pretty neat plot hook!

But I digress.

Anyway, pretty much any monster you encounter could conceivably be classified either as a natural animal or a natural person. Given that anything is possible in Fantasyland, how exactly do you distinguish an arbitrary nonsensical category like "monstrosity" from that? What makes the basilisk or hydra (or whatever) a "monstrosity" and not a natural megafauna of fantasyland? Plenty of speculative biologists have speculated that creatures like that could exist in real life on some alien planet, so at worst they'd be an invasive species which is innocuous in their home environment but a dangerous pest on the human planet. Even if they're a unique mutation or created by spontaneous generation, that's still natural to the physics of Fantasyland.

The most coherent explanation I ever found was by using flavors of magic (like classical elements, used to define the composition of reality), to which all PCs/NPCs/monsters are tied. All natural animals are linked to nature magic. All unnatural monstrosities are linked to chaos magic. By changing the magical flavor that dominates them, an animal may become a monstrosity or vice versa.

You make some excellent points. I would add though that D&D (and many other fantasy RPGs) has a detect magic spell, so magical energy is something identifiable as different from other sources. And some systems identify that there can be magical flames and normal flames (so a dispel magic spell would put out a fire of magical flames, but would not affect a campfire), and then in many cases, magical flames can ignite things to burn with non-magical flames. Now I don't know if any systems detect magic identifies any creatures as magical (except maybe things like golems). Many systems certainly identify undead as something special (but note for example, the OD&D shadow is NOT undead while it became undead in AD&D) that can be detected and is affected by certain spells and not affected by other spells. The Cold Iron system I played in college (a friend's home brew system) has a table for mapping between size and strength for creatures, it has two columns, natural and magical but detect magic doesn't detect the magical creatures, so in that system some creatures are of magical origin though they aren't actively magical. Many systems acknowledge that dragons ability for flight is something different from a hawk's ability.

Since I enjoy these games and don't want to tear down their assumptions, I accept that while some cultures might treat what we call as magic as something that's naturally part of the world, and thus the so called magical creatures are natural, clearly many fantasy worlds treat magic as something special, and I don't have a problem with that. Really a lot fantasy (and science fiction) can be torn apart if apply logic to deriving implications and consequences of how they are set up.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1113148How would you categorize centaur or owlbear? I am curious.

Owlbears were Fey in 4e. I'd probably keep them both Fey.

Quote from: ffilz;1113217You make some excellent points. I would add though that D&D (and many other fantasy RPGs) has a detect magic spell, so magical energy is something identifiable as different from other sources. And some systems identify that there can be magical flames and normal flames (so a dispel magic spell would put out a fire of magical flames, but would not affect a campfire), and then in many cases, magical flames can ignite things to burn with non-magical flames. Now I don't know if any systems detect magic identifies any creatures as magical (except maybe things like golems). Many systems certainly identify undead as something special (but note for example, the OD&D shadow is NOT undead while it became undead in AD&D) that can be detected and is affected by certain spells and not affected by other spells. The Cold Iron system I played in college (a friend's home brew system) has a table for mapping between size and strength for creatures, it has two columns, natural and magical but detect magic doesn't detect the magical creatures, so in that system some creatures are of magical origin though they aren't actively magical. Many systems acknowledge that dragons ability for flight is something different from a hawk's ability.

Since I enjoy these games and don't want to tear down their assumptions, I accept that while some cultures might treat what we call as magic as something that's naturally part of the world, and thus the so called magical creatures are natural, clearly many fantasy worlds treat magic as something special, and I don't have a problem with that. Really a lot fantasy (and science fiction) can be torn apart if apply logic to deriving implications and consequences of how they are set up.

I believe a simpler way to put it would be that I prefer to world build from first principles, whereas D&D just throws a bunch of fantasy stuff into a blender and pretends those things play well together.

The idea that magic is measurably distinct from nature is a purely modern conceit that is generally absent from fantasy fiction written prior to comic books and roleplaying games. Not only that, but it makes zero sense when you analyze it critically. Most writers seem to imagine "magic" as some alien force that lets you cheat physics, and therein lies the problem: it makes no sense for the universe to be structured this way.

If the universe arose spontaneously, then magic would be just as integrated as the four fundamental forces and attempting to create anti-magic would cause the universe to implode. If the universe was created by gods, then it makes no sense they would invent a uniquely distinct force of magic that could be separated from the rest of the universe without causing everything to implode.

To use an example, the RPG Nephilim operates on the premise that real world scientific knowledge is wrong (by contrast, D&D generally assumes real world scientific knowledge is accurate and magic is tacked on to cheat it). Rather than atomic theory and periodic elements and so forth, the world as we know it is composed of "ka" or magical forces. In our Solar System, there are eight types of Ka that compose the material and spiritual components of everything. Human beings, body and soul, are composed of Solar-Ka. Elemental or "magical" creatures are composed of all the other Ka. Indeed, the titular Nephilim consider the word "magic" a vulgar misunderstanding: what they do isn't magic, but science. Their magic skills are literally called "occult sciences" (a term burrowed from Blavatsky, btw). While they have mechanics similar to "detect magic" and "anti-magic," these don't work the same way as D&D. Since both the mundane and magical realities are composed of the same thing (Ka), characters using mystic vision actually have to use critical thought to distinguish whether a particular concentration of Ka is natural or artificial. One of the elements has its whole shtick as "anti-magic" since it destroys the other Ka on contact (with a couple exceptions), and the downside is that sufficiently high concentrations of it would literally destroy the world.

To use another example, the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender doesn't have concepts like "detect magic" or "anti-magic" because "bending" (the setting's equivalent of magic, basically element-based telekinesis) is a natural part of the world. The same goes for the similar cartoon The Dragon Prince, since all magic is that setting draws it power from the natural world.

Does that make sense?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1113211Elf-games descend, through a game of Chinese telephone, from those ancient wrong-headed traditions.

They descend much more directly from the Modernist post-Christian American fantasy/swords & sorcery of the mid-20th century. So you have a Natural World (of God & Darwin) vs an Unnatural World creeping in from 'outside'. Poor old Hippogriffs don't have a comfortable place there!

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1113229I believe a simpler way to put it would be that I prefer to world build from first principles

OK, but let's say you did that to exactly what you wanted.  Would you consider it valid for someone to come along with a different set of first principles, and say that you botched something because you didn't design according to their first principles?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales....I fail to see how griffins and owlbears and centaurs and whatever are unnatural abominations that have to be destroyed, but house-sized spiders and Indominus rex are vegan-certifiedTM.

Monsters are any creature that is a potential threat (DMG 1e, p. 229).

I assume that normal animals are the product of evolution and fantastic creatures are creations.

From a Christian/clerical perspective, unnatural neutral- and evil-aligned creatures are perversions of God's creation. So "monster" is a reasonable colloquial name (but not to be confused with the game term).

From a Christian/good-clerical perspective, both the neutral and evil alignments are evil, it is simply a difference in culpability, which is reflected in our modern laws (an example being second and first degree murder).

Druids however are not interested in moral philosophy. When as DM I am role-playing the gods of druids (or the anthropomorphic manifestations of trees, the sun and the moon, if one wishes) I would much rather that druids spend their free time drinking and indulging in carnal pleasures than thinking too much about philosophy -- if their wisdom gets to 17 there is always the chance they might "see the light" and switch professions to cleric. Each druid is free to have his own opinion on the matter as long as they are morally pragmatic.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales....If you actually read medieval bestiaries, then you will notice that 1) medieval naturalists believed in tons of completely wrong things about nature, and 2) they believed all sorts of ridiculous fancies like unicorns, manticores and bonnacons were real natural creatures and not unnatural magical abominations....

Science was in its infancy of course. The Church itself was very conservative about accepting new scientific ideas and demanded coherent explanations and proof, as well as time to digest the spiritual meaning and implications of such ideas (which is often today misconstrued as an anti-science position) and also condemned the practice of superstition, such as believing in reincarnation, witches, faeries, or the like. In any case, unnatural creatures could certainly be misconstrued as natural and vice-versa. If the game world is in some post-apocalyptic future, as in the Dying Earth series, then bad science isn't going to be an issue.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTalesFirst of all, I think the distinctions between magical vs non-magical and natural vs unnatural are inherently nonsensical because what qualifies is completely arbitrary. In real life we cannot universally define what is and isn't natural because different people have different definitions and nobody is right or wrong because "natural" isn't a quality that can be quantified by science. Similarly, distinguishing between magic and non-magic is arbitrary because magic doesn't exist in reality and there is no remotely comparable analogue for it either....

Science is quite literally the study of that which can be quantified. Anything outside of the material realm is not quantifiable by definition and is therefore outside the scope of science. We can therefore say that "magical" or "unnatural" is anything that is beyond the scope of science -- unquantifiable. Scientists and religious invariably make fools of themselves when they stray into the other's territory. Scientists are not qualified to talk about spiritual matters and religious are not qualified to talk about science, and they should avoid doing so. There is neither overlap nor conflict between the two -- seeming conflict results from conflating the two.

The natural world, whether as understood by scientists or as envisioned by religious, has laws that must be obeyed. From a scientific perspective, these laws are inviolable. From a religious perspective, the Creator can do whatever he wants, and the anti-Creator can pervert those laws. Further, Man can attempt to circumnavigate the Creator's intended reality by the use of magic. Thus magic is in a sense unnatural. Natural creatures are those that live and die in accordance to those intended laws.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales....Furthermore, in reality people who believe(d) in magic generally don't distinguish it as something apart from the natural/non-magical world. The idea that magic is distinct from natural/non-magical existence is a purely modern invention of people who grew up in a secular/Christian culture devoid of any teachings about magic other than prayer and demons....

Empirical thinking is relatively new.

Most people are not trained scientists, they do not know how to think empirically and have no background in philosophy. Such people rely on cognitive models, which are embodied with regard to their content, which among other things means they can employ ideas without being able to define them or understand how they work. Distinctions within cognitive models are fuzzy.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales....Long story short, D&D doesn't have a coherent magical theory or coherent world building in general....

Not anymore it doesn't. One of the problems of game design is when it strays too far from reality, because then it has to rely on its own internal mythology, which normally becomes more convoluted and nonsensical as time goes on. OD&D and AD&D are for the most part only one step away from reality, so one can always fall back on real world mythology, which is built up over many generations and is therefore very well thought out. AD&D's magic system for example is based on a combination of Dying Earth stories and real world sympathetic magic, so there is lots of source material to fall back on.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales....Anyway, I wouldn't distinguish arbitrary nonsensical distinctions like "magical" or "unnatural." I would categorize monsters by common sense on a case-by-case basis, with as many taxonomic tags as required for their concept. (What qualifies as "common sense" depends on the observer, but that's neither here no there.)....

Cognitive modeling.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales....Part of this also ties into ecology. D&D often mentions ecology with regard to monsters and especially druids. The medieval peasants and classical philosophers who invented the basis of the fantasy genre didn't know ecology existed, or any other scientific facts that even the most uneducated US citizen takes for granted. They didn't know plants produced breathable air, they didn't know that it was possible to hunt plants and animals to extinction, they didn't know that their thoughtless actions destroyed every ecosystem they came into contact with....

That's partially true, but also partially false. People have had millions of years of experience, plenty of time to develop wholly functional cognitive models. They didn't understand ecology empirically, but they understood it and stored that information in the form of religion, myth, and story. What disrupted ecosystems is rapid population growth, because growing human intelligence allowed people to become better at manipulating their environment, which means that over the last few thousand years we have been having to learn new ways to live. We have been stumbling around learning by trial and error what works and what doesn't work, and then storing that information as we build new myths and stories.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1113211Part of this also ties into ecology. D&D often mentions ecology with regard to monsters and especially druids. The medieval peasants and classical philosophers who invented the basis of the fantasy genre didn't know ecology existed, or any other scientific facts that even the most uneducated US citizen takes for granted. They didn't know plants produced breathable air, they didn't know that it was possible to hunt plants and animals to extinction, they didn't know that their thoughtless actions destroyed every ecosystem they came into contact with.

It seems like you have a pretty poor grasp of what our ancestors did and did not know.  Even the Romans knew about making plants extinct and the Greeks could calculate the circumference of the Earth so what makes Ecology such a hard nut that it could not be understood by the "ancients"?

Meanwhile in modern day Physicists have to invoke "magically undetectable" dark matter and dark energy to explain Astronomy.

Quote from: EOTB;1113243OK, but let's say you did that to exactly what you wanted.  Would you consider it valid for someone to come along with a different set of first principles, and say that you botched something because you didn't design according to their first principles?

Are we talking two distinct self-consistent worlds built from different first principles? Then I would consider it nonsensical for either to be judged as better or worse by the standards of the other. That's like saying baryonic matter was botched because it isn't non-baryonic matter.

D&D doesn't have first principles. That's my entire point.

Quote from: Cloyer Bulse;1113246Monsters are any creature that is a potential threat (DMG 1e, p. 229).

I assume that normal animals are the product of evolution and fantastic creatures are creations.

From a Christian/clerical perspective, unnatural neutral- and evil-aligned creatures are perversions of God's creation. So "monster" is a reasonable colloquial name (but not to be confused with the game term).

From a Christian/good-clerical perspective, both the neutral and evil alignments are evil, it is simply a difference in culpability, which is reflected in our modern laws (an example being second and first degree murder).

Again, the problem I am complaining about is that D&D doesn't have first principles. As a result, the taxonomy mechanic is arbitrary, contestable, and inconsistent with itself. I've listed numerous examples of this in the past and I can provide more on demand, including thought experiments.

Not only that, but the taxonomy mechanic is fundamentally broken: there's no sensible reason why a monster couldn't have multiple types or change its type depending on circumstances. For example, the 5e will-o'-the-wisp is typed [undead] but the 3e version is typed [aberration].

Quote from: Cloyer Bulse;1113246Science was in its infancy of course. The Church itself was very conservative about accepting new scientific ideas and demanded coherent explanations and proof, as well as time to digest the spiritual meaning and implications of such ideas (which is often today misconstrued as an anti-science position) and also condemned the practice of superstition, such as believing in reincarnation, witches, faeries, or the like. In any case, unnatural creatures could certainly be misconstrued as natural and vice-versa. If the game world is in some post-apocalyptic future, as in the Dying Earth series, then bad science isn't going to be an issue.

Yes, but my point is that D&D world builds backwards from the nonsensical assumption that the fantasy world operates according to modern scientific knowledge (or more accurately the writers' almost certainly non-professional education in those subjects) with magic tacked on to let you cheat physics when convenient.

The rules/fluff go on to make the even sillier assumptions. Among other things, the average zero-level commoner has the same basic education as the writers and therefore understands the modern concept of ecology and evolution and so forth, the rampant magic doesn't completely rewrite those transplanted scientific laws simply by existing and interacting with them, multiple contradictory concepts like young earth creationism and old earth creationism and geological scale evolution and so forth are all mutually true about the same planet, other contradictory concepts like classical elements and periodic elements are mutually true, the definition for what constitutes magical/unnatural/etc vs nonmagical/natural/etc is based on (the writers' understanding of) our own real world even though that is arbitrarily and nonsensical, the different interpretations of different writers somehow aren't contradictory when they totally are, etc.

Basically, D&D's fantasy land doesn't operate according to any kind of coherent cosmology but to writer fiat and the writers can't stay consistent with each other or themselves because they don't operate according to a consistent framework in the first place. The moment you start analyzing it critically the world falls apart under its own blatant contradictions.

Quote from: Cloyer Bulse;1113246That's partially true, but also partially false. People have had millions of years of experience, plenty of time to develop wholly functional cognitive models. They didn't understand ecology empirically, but they understood it and stored that information in the form of religion, myth, and story. What disrupted ecosystems is rapid population growth, because growing human intelligence allowed people to become better at manipulating their environment, which means that over the last few thousand years we have been having to learn new ways to live. We have been stumbling around learning by trial and error what works and what doesn't work, and then storing that information as we build new myths and stories.

Point taken. However, humans can disrupt ecosystems without the runaway population growth seen in the last few centuries.

The indigenous tribes of North America engaged in a massive amount of clear cutting that altered the global climate. When they were devastated by European diseases, the overgrowth of trees caused the Little Ice Age.

In a fantasy world with the typical pseudo-medieval tech level, most people shouldn't have any understanding of ecology or human effects on the environment and climate while at the same time devastating the world around them. Assuming that the existence of magic doesn't tip the balance one way or the other, since depending on its power and availability magic would completely alter any society.

Quote from: Shasarak;1113261It seems like you have a pretty poor grasp of what our ancestors did and did not know.  Even the Romans knew about making plants extinct and the Greeks could calculate the circumference of the Earth so what makes Ecology such a hard nut that it could not be understood by the "ancients"?

The Greeks also thought that grain spontaneously turned into mice. While the ancients certainly knew a lot of true facts, they also believed in a lot of bunk.

Recording that a plant used for birth control is no longer found compared to the writer's access to historical records does not equate to the ancients understanding the concept of extinction or other aspects of ecology the way that people do now. We know that at least some classical philosophers believed no such thing, since they recorded that they argued whether the world was eternal and unchangeable. Kind of hard for extinction to occur if you believe that the world and its species have always existed in their present form and always will, or that life spontaneously germinates from non-living material every so often.

Not to mention that this only applies to educated people. In the sort of pseudo-medieval setting typical of D&D, the average person is a zero-level commoner whose lack of education is incomprehensible to anyone who went to a public school in the United States.

On a tangent, if non-real physics like spontaneous generation are true in the fantasyland then the whole concept of ecology and other real world knowledge breaks down. If the existence of magic didn't already break it.

I didn't mention it before, but if wizards and monsters and whatever can use magic, then it should be possible for any organism to evolve to incorporate magic into its physiology. Magic offers such a huge competitive advantage that the first unicellular organisms to evolve magic should have taken over the planet billions of years ago.

Quote from: Shasarak;1113261Meanwhile in modern day Physicists have to invoke "magically undetectable" dark matter and dark energy to explain Astronomy.

This is a popular misconception. Dark matter and dark energy aren't observably real, that's why we call them "dark" in the first place, but jargon for the mismatch between our equations predicting the behavior of the universe and the observed behavior of the universe. There are plenty of competing hypothesis that discard dark energy and dark matter by simply assuming that our equations are wrong.

Which makes more sense: that 1) the mismatch between the behavior of the universe and how our equations predict the universe should behave are due to magically undetectable dark stuff, or that 2) our equations are wrong?

I imagine that if Einstein never developed special relativity we would have invented dark stuff to explain why Newton's centuries-old equations fail to predict the observed behavior of the universe. Instead of saying that the speed of light is a universal law, we'd be saying that some magically undetectable "dark highway patrol" stops us from exceeding light speed. (I know the analogy doesn't make sense, it's just meant to give a rough idea.)

It does build off of a first principle, it's just a principle many RPGers don't want an RPG to have.

QuoteAPPROACHES TO PLAYING ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS
A few brief words are necessary to insure that the reader has actually obtained a game form which he or she desires. Of the two approaches to hobby games today, one is best defined as the realism-simulation school and the other as the game school. AD&D is assuredly on adherent of the latter school. It does not stress any realism (in the author's opinion an absurd effort at best considering the topic!). It does little to attempt to simulate anything either. ADVANCED DUNGEONS 8 DRAGONS is first and foremost a game for the fun and enjoyment of those who seek to use imagination and creativity. This is not to say that where it does not interfere with the flow of the game that the highest degree of realism hasn't been attempted, but neither is a serious approach to play discouraged. In all cases, however, the reader should understand that AD&D is designed to be an amusing and diverting pastime, something which can fill a few hours or consume endless days, as the participants desire, but in no case something to be taken too seriously. For fun, excitement, and captivating fantasy, AD&D is unsurpassed. As a realistic simulation of things from the realm of make-believe, or even as a reflection of medieval or ancient warfare or culture or society, it can be deemed only a dismal failure. Readers who seek the latter must search elsewhere. Those who desire to create and populate imaginary worlds with larger-than-life heroes and villains, who seek relaxation with a fascinating game, and who generally believe games should be fun, not work, will hopefully find this system to their taste.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1113357This is a popular misconception. Dark matter and dark energy aren't observably real

They are observably real. Dark matter can be observed through its interaction with gravity. For instance when two galaxies smash through each other, it has been observed that their gas clouds collide and combine velocities, while the dark matter sticks with the baryonic matter and goes straight on through (so you end up with 2 dust-poor galaxies that retain their DM). Different galaxies have observably different amounts (ratios) of dark matter; spiral galaxies rotate at different rates depending on how much of it they have. It's 'dark' because we don't know what it is, but we can observe it and see it has some characteristics.

Dark energy is just the energy of the void that pushes it apart; that makes the universe get observably bigger over time. The effect is certainly observable. I guess you could call it something other than 'energy' if you wanted.

Quote from: EOTB;1113359It does build off of a first principle, it's just a principle many RPGers don't want an RPG to have.

Greetings!

I always have loved this commentary by Gygax. It succinctly destroys those that want to drag the game into painful jerkfests of minutia.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Animal encounters occur more often in my D&D games than monster encounters. I have giant animals too, about 20% of the time (roughly). Also have a great collection of dinosaurs for D&D and some areas in some of my game worlds have lots of dinosaurs, both plant eaters, and carnivores of all sizes. Judges Guild ready ref sheets have the definitive animal encounter tables I have used since 1977.

Natural animals are a regular feature in my game, typically as livestock, pets or wildlife. While they might be hostile in any of these roles, I seldom use them as enemies. In other words, my adventures don't revolve around fighting/killing a wolf in the forest, a farmer's dog or the horses of a band of brigands.

That said, I did have one scenario where a group of low-level PCs had to defend a village from a man-eating tiger. It was a real nail-biter, especially since the tiger usually attacked at night.

In my Lion & Dragon campaign, I use them fairy regularly. Wild Boars are particularly scary.