Fantasy Immersion and the Things that Ruin it.

[Duke Bushido]

This is not a digression, precisely, but a revisitation to previous comments on this thread about multiple intelligent races being off-putting.

 

I used to balk a bit at that, too.  Not _much_, mind you, as I just took it as something of a story enabler.  But the more of the recent stuff I read regarding Neanderthals, Cro-magnons, and Homo sapiens points out a couple of things that seem relevant to the this entire "multiple races" line of thought:

 

at one point, we had that very thing going on right here where we live: three different sapient races.  Who knows what other less-spread-out people we might find here and there as research continues?  The most modern research indicates that the overlap period was far, far longer than we have previously believed it to be.  Just because we personally came along thousands of years after it does not at all negate the fact that not only is it possible, it was _the_ model on the one planet that we are reasonably certain _does_ contain life.

 

This also goes to the half-thing part of the conversation as well:  While I _still_ have issues with half this-and-thats (mostly because every single time I see it, it's less about "I have an idea for an interesting character" and more about "I've figured out how to cherry pick these two templates for all the best stuff of both worlds, now let's just assume that the gnome was my father and the hill giant was my mother, or this gets just a little weird....."

 

They _did_ interbreed and produce half this-and-thats.  According to some of the current sales-driving results of do-it-yourself DNA research, it's possible to find Neanderthal or Cromagnon in the modern Homo sapiens.   This suggests that inbreeding was at least passingly successful.

 

 

So....

 

The key here is to control the number of "intelligent" races in your game, if you're looking to control the number of half-things your players are tempted to create.  Alternatively, give them _very_ different types:  one is mammalian, one is reptilian, one is -- well, you get the idea.

 

Nope.  Not going anywhere with this; just some things I finally had time to mention that I believe to be relevant to certain parts of the discussion.

 

[Chris Goodwin]

One of the web serials I recently mentioned (Worth the Candle) has hundreds of intelligent species, ranging from the typical D&D standards to one-armed odd creatures who only sense the world via a gravity sense and communicate with one another via sign language to rare animals that seem to sort of spontaneously develop sapience.  

 

I... kind of want to play in something like that.  

[sinanju]

13 hours ago, DShomshak said:

Re: Elves and half-breed "races":

 

I don't think it's intrinsically a bad idea for That Fantasy RPG to provide many varieties of elves, if they are presented as options to help you customize your world. After all, elves have been presented many different ways in Fantasy fiction, as they have been in folklore. Do you want your elves to be elusive forest-folk? Haughty lords of magic? Sinister twilight folk? Here's a variety of elf. But trying to fit all of them in one setting risks feeling cluttered. D&D 5th ed. does a good thing in calling out some PC races as options not every DM might want, but it could do better at stressing that all the variations form a toolkit from which DMs pick what they want.

 

As for halfbreeds, I too saw this as a can of worms I didn't want to open. If half-elves and half-orcs, why not half-dwarves? Half-halflings? Could somebody be half elf, half dwarf? So I let my players know there are no half--anythings. The Five Peoples (humans, dwarves, elves, halflings, orcs) are all interfertile to some degree (though offspring might be sterile mules), but in game terms they use one template or the other.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

I've got this idea for a fantasy game (or novel, I suppose) in which all the classic fantasy "races" exist: elves, dwarves, goblins, orcs, giants, minotaurs, etc. Everything but humans. They're all the creations of a long-gone Ancient civilization. They were created at slaves, cannon fodder, "monsters" for hunts (the Ancients liked the most dangerous game), and playthings. Except humans. Because they're like breeds of dogs--unless you carefully police their bloodlines, they quickly degenerate into mongrels, i.e., humans. Given that the Ancients vanished long ago, there are a LOT of humans. They are, in fact, the majority of the humanoid population. All the other races exist as well, but mostly in their own lands, where they've carefully controlled their breeding for all these centuries. Sometimes they practice "exposure" of infants who aren't X enough. Sometimes they simply expel (or otherwise ostracize) someone who doesn't meet their standards. A lot of "elves" and "dwarves" wandering the world outside their own enclaves aren't *really* elves and dwarves, at least according to their own kind (though these individuals wi'l probably never admit it, and might even fight you for saying it). If you're sufficiently "off" from the ideal, you're a half-elf or half-orc or whatever. And even more reviled.

 

In fact, the only ones more reviled than half-breeds are complete mongrels--i.e., humans. Yes, they're the largest population, and they're not as strong as dwarves (on average), or as graceful as elves (on average), and so forth. But they're tough and overall pretty successful as a race, and they breed like rabbits. And with no regard for lineage--well, except the sad few who occasionally try to claim there's a Human standard, but even most other humans are like, "Dude--give it up. We're all mongrels. Embrace it."

 

Which handily explains why the various other races (or sub-races, if you like) all have fairly specific descriptions. If they don't meet that standard, they're not really that race. And why humans come in all shapes and sizes and colors (hair, eyes, skin). And why, of course, every race is convinced that *they* are the pinnacle of humanoid forms, and everyone else is inferior. Good enough for a traveling/adventuring companion, maybe, but you wouldn't want your sister to marry one. Especially those humans.

[Duke Bushido]

8 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

One of the web serials I recently mentioned (Worth the Candle) has hundreds of intelligent species, ranging from the typical D&D standards to one-armed odd creatures who only sense the world via a gravity sense and communicate with one another via sign language to rare animals that seem to sort of spontaneously develop sapience.  

 

I... kind of want to play in something like that.  

 

 

Consider Talislanta, my friend.     At least, consider the rule books and source books over the decades as source material to gut and toss onto Fantasy HERO running gear.   (as an aside, if things should align that you might ever hear me say it aloud, most of the folks I play it with-- myself included, tend to pronounce it "Talislantia."  That extra "i" is important to _any_ southerner who has ever been to Atlanta:  let's just get that 'atlanta' part right out of the name.  There ain't no way I'm devoting this much recreation to that God-awful place.     )  Avoid the d20 version.  It's....   it's less enjoyable.

 

 

The most remarkable part of Talislanta-- for me, anyway-- was the overwhelming number of races (to the point that I wondered just how there might have been _room_ for all of them).  Best part of Talislanta?  For all those races?  No elves.  None.  I recall the original rules bragging about that right on the cover, and newer editions marking the covers with "Still no elves!"  so I can't be the only one bearing irritation for Tolkien's race of Mary Sues.    Now bear in mind that in Talislanta, the biggest differences between races are narrative and cultural.  The only real difference mechanics-wise seems to be which characteristic you get to put your "+2" in.

 

 

6 hours ago, sinanju said:

Except humans

 

I did something similar many years ago:  there were humans-- in fact, it was my hope that Humans would be the most popular choice for PCs, but----

 

Briefly:  there were six known sapient races (and eight more waiting to be discovered-- possibly-- during the course of the campaign.  It wasn't important that they be discovered, so it depended entirely on player activity as to whether they were or not.  The players had no idea there were more races, as I didn't want to influence their choices). All races were reptilian, or insectoid.  In fact, all _life_ was reptilian, or Insectoid.  _All_ of it.  There was _wide_ range within those two categories ('reptile' could include tortoise-like through bird-like through amphibian-like, for example, but again: those were the choices.  (Gonna level with you:  I have a tendency in Fantasy to consider player suggestions on one or two interesting new races.  I have don't always allow it, but I have, and I will always _consider_ it.  All life is reptilian or insectoid?  Well, clearly elves ain't happening.  ) Not only this, but humans were unique because they were the _only_ warm-blooded life every known.  (I _seriously_ didn't want half-human half-half Karak's running around: it'd be like a six-armed Kratos.   )

 

Humans were a shock when discovered as primitive savages used as slaves and food by an insectoid race discovered during the first age of travel.  Discovered by the highly religiously-driven and incredibly arrogant (think of Whitey and his "burden" or "duty" to the "lesser peoples:"  there was nothing but good in their intentions, and nothing but wrong in the assumptions behind them) that had led the First Age of Exploration.  They saved these new creatures-- during their explorations, they saves a few thousand of them, and brought them back to their lands and spread them about their own communities to "civilize" them.    

 

Worked as badly as you expect when "civilize" means "be like us" instead of "here's how to clean yourself, build shelter, make tools, find water, now you guys have fun with creating your way of life."   As they became "civilized," they were clearly second (and third) classed, moved out en-masse over the end of the Second Age, with the Third age (setting for the game) finding a great many traditional relationships still in place (human children attend Amphii schools, for example), a number of "human" settlements and small cities scattered about the two Amphii-majority continents, and even two human strongholds growing in the ruins of the Lands of  Coldpain  (literally the Amphii word for temperatures approaching or dropping below freezing).

 

Problematically, the whole thing kind of fell apart (after quite probably my greatest amount of work and lore- and world-building _ever_: spent nearly five months putting it all together, back when I was young and time wasn't a luxury: it was just there for the taking!) because out of eight players, six wanted to make Legolas clones.  :-/

 

So they spent a few sessions trying to wedge various reptiles and insects into elves (I had taken great pains to make sure... well, "No friggin' elves!", so that didn't work.  Strangely, during all the work-up, I would include them into what they wanted to see, what they would like, and constant reminders that "no elves."   Everyone was _fine_ with it during the build process.  Then characters come in and--- "oh, he's from a hidden land the Amphii haven't discovered yet; he was blown here when his ship was lost in a storm.  He's from a land full of elves."  Or "the other races can't tell humans from elves; they are all warm-blooded with hair.  There are _lots_ of elves mixed in with the humans!" (who have, somehow, retained every trapping of Rivendell culture throughout their long period of ignorant barbarism and cattlehood.....) and on and on....

 

Anyway:

 

Yay, lots of races!  Use great care when allowing half-races.  Not from a genetic purity POV, but because their existence generally comes from players figuring out who to "double my racial bonuses" (something I am glad to say is harder to justify in HERO!) and because it can weaken certain cultural topes you may have gone to a great deal of effort to build.

 

On a final note: I _do_ prefer a smaller number of player races than do a lot of other fantasy players, but I do like a selection.  Interestingly, a lot of people I know who don't like having more than three, or two, or even "just the humans," have _no_ problem with thirty-thousand alien races in sci-fi.  :-/   The justification seems to be "well they aren't just tripping over each other!  They're on different planets, light years away!  It makes sense if you travel far enough, you'd run into another race!"

 

My thoughts on that are "step out of your house and walk to Africa.  Walk from Spain to Pattaya City.  Row a boat from Australia to Antarctica."

 

There's room.  In a wide-open world, there is _room_.  There is room for all these different tribes of men on the earth we inhabit now.  Suppose half (or more!) of these cultures were in fact intelligent species that weren't men?  

 

I am not saying you _must_ have multiple races.  I _like_ it, but don't _need_ it.  I'm just saying that there is room for each one to have had his native lands and nations, etc.

[Brian Stanfield]

8 hours ago, sinanju said:

 

I've got this idea for a fantasy game (or novel, I suppose) in which all the classic fantasy "races" exist: elves, dwarves, goblins, orcs, giants, minotaurs, etc. Everything but humans. They're all the creations of a long-gone Ancient civilization. They were created at slaves, cannon fodder, "monsters" for hunts (the Ancients liked the most dangerous game), and playthings. Except humans. Because they're like breeds of dogs--unless you carefully police their bloodlines, they quickly degenerate into mongrels, i.e., humans. Given that the Ancients vanished long ago, there are a LOT of humans. They are, in fact, the majority of the humanoid population. All the other races exist as well, but mostly in their own lands, where they've carefully controlled their breeding for all these centuries. Sometimes they practice "exposure" of infants who aren't X enough. Sometimes they simply expel (or otherwise ostracize) someone who doesn't meet their standards. A lot of "elves" and "dwarves" wandering the world outside their own enclaves aren't *really* elves and dwarves, at least according to their own kind (though these individuals wi'l probably never admit it, and might even fight you for saying it). If you're sufficiently "off" from the ideal, you're a half-elf or half-orc or whatever. And even more reviled.

 

In fact, the only ones more reviled than half-breeds are complete mongrels--i.e., humans. Yes, they're the largest population, and they're not as strong as dwarves (on average), or as graceful as elves (on average), and so forth. But they're tough and overall pretty successful as a race, and they breed like rabbits. And with no regard for lineage--well, except the sad few who occasionally try to claim there's a Human standard, but even most other humans are like, "Dude--give it up. We're all mongrels. Embrace it."

 

Which handily explains why the various other races (or sub-races, if you like) all have fairly specific descriptions. If they don't meet that standard, they're not really that race. And why humans come in all shapes and sizes and colors (hair, eyes, skin). And why, of course, every race is convinced that *they* are the pinnacle of humanoid forms, and everyone else is inferior. Good enough for a traveling/adventuring companion, maybe, but you wouldn't want your sister to marry one. Especially those humans.

Wow! I love this idea. Next time I run a fantasy campaign, I very well might steal this idea! (Nothing publishable, though, so your IP for your novel is still safe!  )

[IndianaJoe3]

On 2/18/2020 at 2:11 PM, PhilFleischmann said:

* And speaking a little more of races, I also never liked another thing in D&D that I call, "The Star Trek School of Reproductive Biology" - that any two races can make a cross-breed, and that cross-breed constitutes an entire separate race.  That any two sentient creatures can have sex and make a viable offspring.  And if the father has pointed ears and the mother has forehead ridges, then the child will have pointed ears and forehead ridges.

 

One of my settings explained this rather neatly. Humans were the ancestors of both elves and orcs, so were interfertile with both. However, the offspring would not breed true, and would revert to humans or orcs within a generation or two. (Half-elves would only revert to human.)  

[DShomshak]

Exalted manages to sort of have it both ways. Humans are the dominant mortal intelligence of Creation. But humans vary widely. Especially since the Exalted lords of the First Age created variant humans to settle new environments or as specialized slaves; and the Lunar Exalted can breed animal-hubrid offspring, resulting in everything from halkmen to sharkmen; and the influence of Chaos leaking in from the edge of the world can produce damn near anything. But they are all theologically human, in having souls, meaning that their prayers supply supernatural power to whoever or whatever they pray to; and they can all Exalt. Humans are meant as the default PC option, but that's hardly limiting.

 

(Exalted has elves and dwarves, sort of. The Fair Folk are soul-eating monsters from primal Chaos. Masks that pretend they have fades behind them. The Mountain Folk, a.k.a. the Jadeborn, are more difficult to explain. There are also the reincarnating reptilian Dragon Kings, who owe their inspiration more to Land of the Lost's sleestak than anything else. All technically playable, but the game chiefly supports humans -- notably, because only humans Exalt and the game is, after all, Exalted.)

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

Any time you have a setting featuring mighty wizards, and beings of godlike power, you're bound to get some of them who want to "play god" and tinker up some more exotic creatures -- as Bill Gates used to say about the latest MS OS, "because it's cool."

 

When I've used a world set in Earth's past, like Hero Games's fantasy worlds, I use that explanation for the plethora of sapient races and bizarre creatures running around (well, that, plus alien gene-meddling, and beings transplanted from other worlds). But because these creatures aren't part of the natural order of the planet, they ultimately can't adapt to their environment as well as those which are, such as Man; hence they eventually die out.

[Lord Liaden]

On 2/23/2020 at 1:24 AM, Chris Goodwin said:

One of the web serials I recently mentioned (Worth the Candle) has hundreds of intelligent species, ranging from the typical D&D standards to one-armed odd creatures who only sense the world via a gravity sense and communicate with one another via sign language to rare animals that seem to sort of spontaneously develop sapience.  

 

I... kind of want to play in something like that.  

 

Duke Bushido's recommendation of Talislanta, above, is an excellent one; and that world's creator, Stephen Michael Sechi, has made almost all the copious Talislanta game books available in PDF form for FREE, LEGAL download: http://talislanta.com/

 

But for something in that vein that's already Hero-fied, I recommend the magnificent website for the long-term, post-apoc fantasy campaign of our long-lost forum colleague, Keith Curtis: The Savage Earth.

[Shoug]

I think at this point it would be worth giving OP and many others in this thread a new name for their genre, "Historical Fantasy." Almost every single piece of source material that inspires my generation diverges completely away from historical precedence. In none of the video games, shows, movies, or books that I consumed growing up did anybody ever worry about a horse throwing a shoe, or having a chamber pot emptied onto their heads, or getting poisoned by heavy metals in the food and water and dying around 45 from it. These things just don't come up. We're trying to emulate the genre we acquired The Taste for when we grew up, which is largely based on video games and anime. This is what's so great about Hero. Me and my friends can build the Rage Meter from WoW, or the Assassin's Rush spell from Fable, or Mana that's limited but recharges quickly, or whatever. 

If I want to play some lowdown fantasy where my players' characters are dying every few sessions from a lucky arrow to the heart, I'll play TFT thank you.

[Gnome BODY (important!)]

1 hour ago, Shoug said:

Almost every single piece of source material that inspires my generation diverges completely away from historical precedence. In none of the video games, shows, movies, or books that I consumed growing up did anybody ever worry about a horse throwing a shoe, or having a chamber pot emptied onto their heads, or getting poisoned by heavy metals in the food and water and dying around 45 from it. These things just don't come up.

I've never seen that in any Fantasy I've consumed.  Heck, I can only remember one horse de-shoeing in any genre or medium ever.  I really think it's not about "video games and anime", it's about "realism" being taken further in TTRPG than in fiction. 

[Duke Bushido]

8 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

But because these creatures aren't part of the natural order of the planet, they ultimately can't adapt to their environment as well as those which are, such as Man; hence they eventually die out.   escaped to populate hidden lands in the antarctic and within the hollow earth. (except the elves, who suffered horribly as their skin withered and cracked and their bones turned to dust, blown away as if they had never sullied the earth with their nasty feet.)

 

Fixed that for you!

[Gauntlet]

Had a GM once run a Fantasy Hero game where we all were slaves in the arena. All the game was just fighting in the pit, nothing else. Not even any chances to escape and absolutely no option to roleplay at all either.

[Shoug]

3 hours ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

I've never seen that in any Fantasy I've consumed.  Heck, I can only remember one horse de-shoeing in any genre or medium ever.  I really think it's not about "video games and anime", it's about "realism" being taken further in TTRPG than in fiction. 

I think you're right. My point is that, as "Realism" is already being taken further in TTRPG than in fiction, why push more into Realism than the game already is structured for. It would be very tedious to write up complications for riding animals that make you roleplay out realistic horse handling (even if you didn't have to write up the complications and instead decided to just roleplay it out), when in almost no genres are those details relevant. My point is, it is neither relevant to the genre nor easily supported by the system. So it's not a matter of "TTRPGs just tend to be more realistic than fiction," when such compunctions don't necessarily originate from the system, and also aren't represented by source material.

[BNakagawa]

7 minutes ago, Gauntlet said:

Had a GM once run a Fantasy Hero game where we all were slaves in the arena. All the game was just fighting in the pit, nothing else. Not even any chances to escape and absolutely no option to roleplay at all either.

it's a way to learn how the combat system works. Not much more than that, though.

[Shoug]

8 minutes ago, Gauntlet said:

Had a GM once run a Fantasy Hero game where we all were slaves in the arena. All the game was just fighting in the pit, nothing else. Not even any chances to escape and absolutely no option to roleplay at all either.

I've wanted to do this for a long time with TFT, except with an escape built in. I made it as an introductory 1 shot for TFT. Everybody wakes up in an earthen pit with high walls and are told to fight. They only remember their name, but the wizards remember all their spells. The players don't know that they've been injected with an experimental superserum called Bloodlust, but as they fight to survive in the pits (probably with many death which will just be fixed by throwing them in with a new character, there are many slave here), they will be growing. 1 attribute point (which is a damned lot in TFT) per killing blow landed. Escape from the fighting pits would be so difficult that it would require very high attributes (the walls are so tall they take 17 DEX to climb, the gate so heavy it'd take 15 STR to lift, and any spells that could get you out would be at higher IQ levels). After that, I would have them face some guards, leveling up even more, but ultimately be captured. They wake up in the dungeons leveled up one more time, locked in the belly of a mad wizard's labyrinthine lair. 

They might never find out about the nature of Bloodlust, but if they do, they will understand their doom. They eventually start taking damage proportionate to the amount of kills they made during the labyrinth, because Bloodlust is so unstable that every dose the wizard has administered so far has been lethal. They're growth tears them apart and they die. It was meant to be a tutorial for all the mechanics of the game while also giving you a taste of all the different power levels. 

[DShomshak]

23 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

Dean Shomshak's recommendation of Talislanta, above, is an excellent one; and that world's creator, Stephen Michael Sechi, has made almost all the copious Talislanta game books available in PDF form for FREE, LEGAL download: http://talislanta.com/

 

But for something in that vein that's already Hero-fied, I recommend the magnificent website for the long-term, post-apoc fantasy campaign of our long-lost forum colleague, Keith Curtis: The Savage Earth.

 

I'm not the one who cited Talislanta.

 

And in my previous post about Exalted, I left out the most important points: that these variant human races exist for well-defined, in-setting reasons, and the game supports them as potential PCs in a fairly parsimonious manner. They contribute to the inner logic of the world, rather than being arbitrary add-ons.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

Noted and corrected. Thanks, Dean.

[PhilFleischmann]

I think we're getting rather far afield here.  Has anyone actually had their suspension of disbelief spoiled because they didn't have to spend game time replacing a horseshoe?  Horse poop has been mentioned, but what about human poop?  I assume elves and dwarves and orcs and giants and dragons also poop.  Did it spoil your fantasy immersion to not have to deal with these things?  Yes, all this stuff would happen, but that doesn't mean it has to happen "on screen".  It doesn't need to be dealt with in the game session.  Why not?  Because it isn't interesting.  It isn't fun.  Just like all the monetary accounting that old Deendee used to require wasn't interesting or fun - which is part of the reason why I don't play B&D anymore.  And I don't include all those monetary details in my fantasy games, either.  Slaying dragons is fun.  Solving mysteries is fun.  Rescuing fair maidens is fun.  Keeping track of every copper coin I found in the pockets of every orc I've killed is not fun.  Figuring out exactly how many flasks of oil I can buy with the coins I've accumulated is not fun.

 

Do any of you find all these little "realistic" details necessary to deal with in-game?  Does it spoil the immersion if you don't?  Does it ruin the fun if you don't?  Is it OK with you if these things happen "off screen"?

 

12 hours ago, Gauntlet said:

Had a GM once run a Fantasy Hero game where we all were slaves in the arena. All the game was just fighting in the pit, nothing else. Not even any chances to escape and absolutely no option to roleplay at all either.

Was it fun?  Did the players enjoy it?  Was "immersion" a factor?

[ScottishFox]

16 minutes ago, PhilFleischmann said:

I think we're getting rather far afield here.  Has anyone actually had their suspension of disbelief spoiled because they didn't have to spend game time replacing a horseshoe?  Horse poop has been mentioned, but what about human poop?  I assume elves and dwarves and orcs and giants and dragons also poop.  Did it spoil your fantasy immersion to not have to deal with these things?  Yes, all this stuff would happen, but that doesn't mean it has to happen "on screen".  It doesn't need to be dealt with in the game session.  Why not?  Because it isn't interesting.  It isn't fun.  Just like all the monetary accounting that old Deendee used to require wasn't interesting or fun - which is part of the reason why I don't play B&D anymore.  And I don't include all those monetary details in my fantasy games, either.  Slaying dragons is fun.  Solving mysteries is fun.  Rescuing fair maidens is fun.  Keeping track of every copper coin I found in the pockets of every orc I've killed is not fun.  Figuring out exactly how many flasks of oil I can buy with the coins I've accumulated is not fun.

 

Do any of you find all these little "realistic" details necessary to deal with in-game?  Does it spoil the immersion if you don't?  Does it ruin the fun if you don't?  Is it OK with you if these things happen "off screen"?

 

Was it fun?  Did the players enjoy it?  Was "immersion" a factor?

 

Good points there.  The Sunday game I play in requires us to track our money, but we tend to hand-wave food & shelter costs and ammunition tracking.

 

Really depends on the tone of the game.  Just because it's Fantasy - even medieval Fantasy - doesn't mean the games will look at all like one another.  Like Game of Thrones vs. The Hobbit vs. 5th edition D&D vs. Old School (high lethality) D&D.

[Gauntlet]

18 minutes ago, PhilFleischmann said:

Was it fun?  Did the players enjoy it?  Was "immersion" a factor?

 

I sucked majorly, but that's what the GM wanted to run and at the time there were no other GMs. But even that didn't stop most of us from quitting his game and deciding it was better not to play at all then play in his games.

[smoelf]

I think I have only ever once come close to something that was 'immersion breaking' to the point of taking me out of the game. We were playing in my GM's world, where he had designed a few different religions. One was modelled after the medieval Catholic Church while another was basically a powerful sorcerer-god and ruled his nation of worshippers as king. I played a D&D barbarian and had decided to play into a kind of zealot with a long term goal of uniting the religious leaders of the former religion to bring order to the world - and perhaps eventually invade the neigbooring heathen nations. At least, so was my thought. But the premise of it was quickly snuffed out, when my barbarian (IC) expressed his view that this sorcerer-god was not really a god, but simply a pretender. A reasonable conclusion for a religious zealot. But at that point our GM just basically said (OOC to me as a player) "No. He really is a god."

 

We never got far enough in the campaign for me to really discuss it with our GM. I'm sure he would have accepted my reasoning (he's a reasonable guy), if we had had the time, so this is not just about being told no. Where the immersion breaks is where the concept of 'a theology' is simply removed from the world building and replaced with metaphysical realities that are identifiable with their dogmas. Working with historical theology is a big part of what I do, and seeing how dogma and theology evolve and develop over time, it has become impossible (or at least very difficult) for me to accept the idea that the dogma(s) of a religion should be identified with the metaphysical reality of 'the god(s)'. This is also why I'd rather build my own world before playing in a D&D-based world again, such as Forgotten Realms; which I had previously LOVED.

 

I suppose another part of it is also the interaction itself, where an IC-development is met with an OOC response of "No, you can't do that." That in itself can really take you out of a game. Sometimes it's probably needed, if there is disagreement on the premises of the game, but I think it works better if those are solved either IC or after the game - unless they are of major importance. 

[Lee]

53 minutes ago, PhilFleischmann said:

I assume elves and dwarves and orcs and giants and dragons also poop.

 

Nope. They just explode once they reach a certain age.

[Duke Bushido]

Yeah, I think I'd have let that one play out.  A  barbarian thinking a god is a false God doesn't really hurt anything in the game, and gives a character a motivation.  Let it ride. 

[Ninja-Bear]

As for poop. One way to use it interestingly would be if you’re out in the forest tracking an animal. That is a legit way to know if an animal is in an area.