Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;995505Zip a dee doo dah, zip a dee ay...

OD&D is the game of "Explore the Fun House from Hell," and I wallow in it.

Now, I try my best to make sure players know BEFOREHAND that's what they're gonna get; the key to success is proper management of expectations.

Also, if somebody has an idea that might lead to a good adventure -- "Hey, I have an idea, if we can figure out how that gang of giants is getting their food..." --- I will HAPPILY come up with something "logical" or at least plausible enough for the purpose of an adventure.

But if somebody is busting my nuts because it's "unrealistic," I'll put a McDonald's on the seventh level of the dungeon.  "The monsters eat FUCK YOU, Phil, that's what they eat."

Though I did take the last step recently of setting it up such that Lord Gronan has deliberately built this nightmare dungeon complex as a Darwinistic training ground for heroes.

Yea, this...

That isn't to say that sometimes logic won't play a part, it's just with the game OD&D, I don't feel obligated to make any specific thing logical or not.

Actually, the same even applies to my Classic Traveller game. If I want a giant vacuum breathing squid...

Frank

Quote from: Elfdart;995167On top of that, sometimes the answers players come up with are so good, I'll include them in the game:

"How did the dragon survive in this cave for so long? How did it eat? I don't see an entrance big enough for a dragon. Why didn't the locals mention this, don't they know a dragon lives just a few miles away?"

Now as a DM, I might have forgotten theses details or simply not given a shit. HOWEVER, the imaginations of the players not only bailed me out, but set up future adventures:

"There must be a huge entrance concealed by magic."

"The dragon must fly out in search of prey. Since the local villagers never mentioned it, the dragon must roam far afield for victims."

I always love it when my players come up with something and I can go, "sure, that works." :-)

First and foremost, it depends on the game. If I am playing a space faring sci-fi, things generally should make sense (within the genre conceits of the specific sci-fi universe. Yes, future tech is conveniently anthropo-convenient, etc.). For a D&D-style games with actual dungeons, my players generally understand that the dungeon exists for me to run their characters through and that the entire game-universe exists to facilitate that. They tend to scrutinize the dungeons existence and population with the same fine toothed comb that allows them not to care that the economy of the town where they buy their gear doesn't mathematically add up.

The level of verisimilitude that tends to break for them is usually the same as for watching television-- you know that in the show nothing that doesn't actually appear onscreen actually happens, but it would be nice if the show doesn't advertise that fact (unless it is a comedy and it is deliberately subverting that).

Example: you know how occasionally in shows the primaries will talk about someone or something like they weren't there, because they aren't onscreen. And then the camera will pan, and show said person reacting to what they said, and the primaries are surprised, even though they should have been able to see the character in question? That's what I try to avoid. So if you make a big enough sound in a dungeon, the creatures behind a simple wooden door are going to hear it. That's the kind of realism I enforce. Where the denizens of the dungeon come from or how they eat (or where they poop, unless it'd be funny) are not of high concern.

Quote from: ffilz;995996Yea, this...

That isn't to say that sometimes logic won't play a part, it's just with the game OD&D, I don't feel obligated to make any specific thing logical or not.

Actually, the same even applies to my Classic Traveller game. If I want a giant vacuum breathing squid...

Frank

I find the key is to just assume and imply it makes sense and let the PCs do the work of figuring out how, if they care enough.  Players can rationalize almost anything if they think it actually is supposed to make sense.

Quote from: Dumarest;996105I find the key is to just assume and imply it makes sense and let the PCs do the work of figuring out how, if they care enough.  Players can rationalize almost anything if they think it actually is supposed to make sense.

So the answer is 'Yes, it DOES matter to your players'.  I would think, and I'm not being sarcastic here, that if the players make an effort for a Dungeon to make sense to them, ergo, they care.  As I understood the original question, it's not whether or not the players succeed at it, but rather that they find a need for the locale to make sense to them.

I could, of course, be wrong.

My dungons always make sense.  If there are traps some one put them there.  And that some one is either obsessive compulsive and increadibly disaplined.  Or has an easy way to avoid the traps.  Everything that eats has a food source.  Every inteligent, and semi inteligent creature knows about every other creature and has a plan to deal with it.  It could as simple as the cat knowing there is a rat living under the shead and planing to eat it one day if it gets a chance.  Or it could be a formal written alliance between Orc's and Gnolls.  

Even eleamentals, deamons and undead come from some place.  

As a player I expect everything to make some kind of sense.  I will start to have a bad time if it doesn't.  Gonan I think you would find me insuferible in your games.  I would have a real hard time controling my frustration with the random illogic of your dungeons.  Until I found the MacDonalds.  That would solve it all for me.  That would be the key.  Actually that would just help me aligne my expectations with the game we were playing.  I would put aside a whole section of problem solving mental activly and just kick down the doors to bash in some monsterskulls.  

Actully I would propose we set up an ambush out side the Micky D's.   Everything gotta eat right?

I care a lot so my players really don't have a choice. I want it to make sense so it's easier for me to get into the game. When things are so out of control and don't make any sense within the context of the game world then it starts to bother me.

Quote from: RPGPundit;995084How nonsensical can a dungeon be without your players complaining? I don't mean having goofy monsters or comedy, I mean things that are illogical: a Giant creature in a room with no doors big enough for him to get out of, an animal locked away in a room it can't open a door to that somehow hasn't starved to death, a dungeon that had been completely sealed for 10000 years that somehow has a bunch of non-undead intelligent monsters just living in it, a mishmash of creatures living right next to each other without killing each other, etc?

Do they allow a certain amount of irrationality? None at all? Or do they really not care about this kind of thing?

I just realized that my previous answer ignored one thing. The players seem to spend a lot of time thinking about the logic of my campaign world. However, once they go underground into the caverns and the excavated and constructed areas that we infest about ten percent of the time, they are pretty accepting of the common game conventions. On the other tentacle, I remember a PC explaining to the other PCs that an area that they had entered was excavated long ago by Trolls and that she, as a Dwarf, would know that kind of thing. I had never told the player that and they had not encountered any of the clues about the area yet. The other PCs accepted her pronouncement because she is a Dwarf and should know these things. The scary thing is that she was right.

Quote from: Headless;996206My dungons always make sense.  If there are traps some one put them there.  And that some one is either obsessive compulsive and increadibly disaplined.  Or has an easy way to avoid the traps.  Everything that eats has a food source.  Every inteligent, and semi inteligent creature knows about every other creature and has a plan to deal with it.  It could as simple as the cat knowing there is a rat living under the shead and planing to eat it one day if it gets a chance.  Or it could be a formal written alliance between Orc's and Gnolls.  

Even eleamentals, deamons and undead come from some place.  

As a player I expect everything to make some kind of sense.  I will start to have a bad time if it doesn't.  Gonan I think you would find me insuferible in your games.  I would have a real hard time controling my frustration with the random illogic of your dungeons.  Until I found the MacDonalds.  That would solve it all for me.  That would be the key.  Actually that would just help me aligne my expectations with the game we were playing.  I would put aside a whole section of problem solving mental activly and just kick down the doors to bash in some monsterskulls.  

Actully I would propose we set up an ambush out side the Micky D's.   Everything gotta eat right?

I have no problem with the fact that some people don't like that style game.  Also, I try my best to make sure people know what they are in for before the game starts.

I'm in the dungeon needs to make sense camp.  I like a little weird though, but too much weird ruins it for me.

I'm mostly in the 'don't care' slot myself. Except when it's something extremely absurd in a campaign that isn't supposed to be totally absurd (for example, a creature too impossibly large to leave the room it's found in, with no explanation of how it got there or how it's still alive).

But I definitely don't need to explain the subtle details of the ecology or sociology of a dungeon. And I DEFINITELY don't need to have a product do that for me.