[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
As long as part of your argument is grounded in reality, then realism always applies, or else you must simply change your argument to "There is no reason other than because I feel like it."

I'm very sympathetic to this argument but would put it a bit different. As a large part of the game is fantasy combined with the fact that our understanding of reality is only partial alot of the time we are not talking about realistic so much as plausible. You can come up with extremely different worlds to ours were things work very differently as long as there are plausible explanations for things. A Ring world is one example of this. The thing you should avoid is abandoning reaoson and just saying well this is like that because this is how I feel it should be. Godo fantasy is very believable and has an internal logic which strengthens all the elements.

I believe there is always a place for reason in determining what the realism of your fantasy enironment is. As fantasy environments are inspired by historical societies and their myths and legends it is history we draw much from - but also our understanding of geography, physics chemistry - of people, the world, and how it all works.

Cheers

Keir