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Author Topic: D&D Promotes Race Essentialism?  (Read 13584 times)

Pat
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Re: D&D Promotes Race Essentialism?
« Reply #75 on: June 01, 2022, 08:23:44 PM »
Even magic is usually treated like a science, and not like magic.

That's because to be a valuable tactical resource in a game, magic's effects have to derive reliably and predictably from the choices made by the player, and the player has to know what output he'll get from a given input. Magic that didn't obey any rules the players could actually figure out about how to use it would pretty swiftly be abandoned as a tool.
You're conflating rules with science. They're not the same thing.

Science is the process of finding the rules of magic.

If magic has any rules then Science can find them.
Like the rules of quantum theory?

No.

What makes magic a form of science in most fiction is they treat it like an energy, specifically an external force that's overlaid on the otherwise physics-following world. What makes magic in much of folklore and mythology magical and wondrous is that magic is integral to the world, often acts in a numinous fashion, and modern physics isn't the underlying paradigm. For instance, talking animals. They're a very common trope in folklore, where they act as messengers or omens. But they're otherwise normal animals. You don't need to give them ecologies and treat them as a different species, or give them cultures or explain why they still act like animals despite being able to talk. Because they don't stop being normal animals. It's just that normal animals sometimes take on a special role. You can come up concrete criteria why they do so, usually involving significant events or messages that need to be conveyed. It's not rules vs. no rules, it's a very different approach to thinking about the world.
« Last Edit: June 01, 2022, 08:26:42 PM by Pat »

Pat
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Re: D&D Promotes Race Essentialism?
« Reply #76 on: June 01, 2022, 08:25:29 PM »
We've been over this. If the magic system is too erratic, players aren't going to use it as much.
No, we haven't been over this. Don't fall into the trap of treating the strawman argument that Tannhauser created as a real argument someone in the thread made.

Shasarak

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Re: D&D Promotes Race Essentialism?
« Reply #77 on: June 01, 2022, 08:29:55 PM »
Even magic is usually treated like a science, and not like magic.

That's because to be a valuable tactical resource in a game, magic's effects have to derive reliably and predictably from the choices made by the player, and the player has to know what output he'll get from a given input. Magic that didn't obey any rules the players could actually figure out about how to use it would pretty swiftly be abandoned as a tool.
You're conflating rules with science. They're not the same thing.

Science is the process of finding the rules of magic.

If magic has any rules then Science can find them.
Like the rules of quantum theory?

No.

Quantum theory is not science now?

Maybe you are thinking of string theory.

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What makes magic a form of science in most fiction is they treat it like an energy, specifically an external force that's overlaid on the otherwise physics-following world. What makes magic in much of folklore and mythology magical and wondrous that magic is integral to the world, often acts in a numinous fashion, and modern physics isn't the underlying paradigm. For instance, talking animals. They're a very common trope in folklore, where they act as messengers or omens. You can come up concrete criteria why they do so, usually involving significant events or messages that need to be conveyed. But they're otherwise normal animals. You don't need to give them ecologies and treat them as a different species, or give them cultures or explain why they still act like animals despite being able to talk. Because they don't stop being normal animals. It's just that normal animals sometimes take on a special role. You can still have rules for that. It's not rules vs. no rules, it's a very different approach to thinking about the world.

Folk tales that people make up as an entertaining story are not magic.  That is many different people each telling a story about magic.
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Pat
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Re: D&D Promotes Race Essentialism?
« Reply #78 on: June 01, 2022, 08:41:10 PM »
Quantum theory is not science now?
I didn't say that.

Folk tales that people make up as an entertaining story are not magic. 
Didn't say that, either.

Are you reading what I wrote?


Stephen Tannhauser

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Re: D&D Promotes Race Essentialism?
« Reply #79 on: June 01, 2022, 11:05:35 PM »
You're conflating rules with science. They're not the same thing.

No, but anything that follows rules consistently -- as, I repeat, anything used as a player option in a game has to do -- is going to be used in practice more like science than like the magic of folklore, myth and legend, because science is also about figuring out what the consistent rules are and how to exploit them. Even quantum theory has rules about its parameters of unpredictability.

I should repeat at this point that I am talking strictly about magic as a player-controlled capacity for action in the game -- much of the atmospheric elements of a magical setting (which you rightly point out) represent things that are not in player control; it's the difference between knowing a unicorn horn can cure disease (which is about how the players respond to the plot of finding a wild unicorn and persuading it to cure a dying comrade) and figuring out exactly how much ground horn is required to cure which particular ailments (which is about the players figuring out how to exploit resources under their control).

It's the same difference between pulp fantasy stories, in which magic was largely an antagonist force belonging to villains or to wild nature and so could do whatever the author needed it to do, and Sanderson-type fantasy with extremely strictly defined rules so that magician protagonists can't simply circumvent all challenge and drama. (One of the critical elements of the Dresden Files, as a series, are the Laws of Magic which very specifically forbid the wizard hero from shortcutting around the typical problems of noir mysteries by reading minds, abusing mortals, etc.)
« Last Edit: June 01, 2022, 11:11:57 PM by Stephen Tannhauser »
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jhkim

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Re: D&D Promotes Race Essentialism?
« Reply #80 on: June 02, 2022, 12:05:19 AM »
You're conflating rules with science. They're not the same thing.

No, but anything that follows rules consistently -- as, I repeat, anything used as a player option in a game has to do -- is going to be used in practice more like science than like the magic of folklore, myth and legend, because science is also about figuring out what the consistent rules are and how to exploit them. Even quantum theory has rules about its parameters of unpredictability.

I think quantum mechanics isn't so much a model for non-scientific systems, as problems like "how to get a date" or "how to make a painting that sells for a million dollars". These can be concretely defined, but they aren't easily amenable to the scientific process, because there aren't repeatable with controlled environmental conditions - and further, publication of the answers may change how the systems work. i.e. Art collectors will read analyses of popular paintings, and it may change their valuations.

These are models for how magic of working with spirits might be. The spirits have their own behaviors and motivations, and there are rules to those, but the attitude that you take to them will determine how well you do - and they may be aware of the content of grimoires that direct magicians about how to talk to spirits.

A step further is if magic depends on the inner mental state of the practitioner. i.e. You can only cast spells if you can bring inner calm to yourself to tap into the mystic states needed. Then taking a scientific attitude of repeating may destroy the mental state needed for casting.

This is getting away from race - but it's relevant to how fantasy worlds don't have to work by the same sort of rules that the modern real world does.

Stephen Tannhauser

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Re: D&D Promotes Race Essentialism?
« Reply #81 on: June 02, 2022, 12:22:47 AM »
I think quantum mechanics isn't so much a model for non-scientific systems, as problems like "how to get a date" or "how to make a painting that sells for a million dollars". ...These are models for how magic of working with spirits might be. The spirits have their own behaviors and motivations, and there are rules to those, but the attitude that you take to them will determine how well you do - and they may be aware of the content of grimoires that direct magicians about how to talk to spirits.

Agreed, in terms of how the game events are described to or envisioned by the player. In terms of how such magic takes effect under the rules, in the end, it's still going to come down to "Player choice X modifies chance of outcome Y by Z measure of probability", and the values for X and Y and Z and how they mutually relate have to be at least somewhat specific and consistent, because that's what you need for the rules of a game to work.

(One could theoretically have the best of both worlds by confining everything mechanics-related solely to the question of whether a spirit actually shows up, and then resolve the matter of whether the spirit obeys the conjurer solely by roleplaying with the GM, but I tend to be suspicious of any rule set that explicitly gives the GM the power to declare all a player's efforts wasted by sheer fiat.)

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... fantasy worlds don't have to work by the same sort of rules that the modern real world does.

By the same rules or the same sort of rules, no, not necessarily. By some set of consistent rules, yes, or you can't have reliable drama and objectively fair challenges.

Which goes back to the charge of racial essentialism: a template that makes every character built with it similar enough to every other such character to usefully predict is ostensibly "good" by rules consistency, but can undermine both setting verisimilitude and tactical challenge. So templates have to walk a balance between reliable consistency and freedom-permitting flexibility.
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Pat
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Re: D&D Promotes Race Essentialism?
« Reply #82 on: June 02, 2022, 05:15:38 AM »
You're conflating rules with science. They're not the same thing.

No, but anything that follows rules consistently -- as, I repeat, anything used as a player option in a game has to do -- is going to be used in practice more like science than like the magic of folklore, myth and legend, because science is also about figuring out what the consistent rules are and how to exploit them. Even quantum theory has rules about its parameters of unpredictability.

I should repeat at this point that I am talking strictly about magic as a player-controlled capacity for action in the game -- much of the atmospheric elements of a magical setting (which you rightly point out) represent things that are not in player control; it's the difference between knowing a unicorn horn can cure disease (which is about how the players respond to the plot of finding a wild unicorn and persuading it to cure a dying comrade) and figuring out exactly how much ground horn is required to cure which particular ailments (which is about the players figuring out how to exploit resources under their control).

It's the same difference between pulp fantasy stories, in which magic was largely an antagonist force belonging to villains or to wild nature and so could do whatever the author needed it to do, and Sanderson-type fantasy with extremely strictly defined rules so that magician protagonists can't simply circumvent all challenge and drama. (One of the critical elements of the Dresden Files, as a series, are the Laws of Magic which very specifically forbid the wizard hero from shortcutting around the typical problems of noir mysteries by reading minds, abusing mortals, etc.)
Fair enough, though I still disagree with your use of "science". Using logic to find answers isn't science. Exploiting repeated patterns isn't science. Science is a specific (albeit hard to bound and open-ended) and formal set of processes for expanding knowledge, rather than all knowledge and logic. Though in this situation, I think it's more about the expression of science than the method.

I do agree that much of what makes the magic of folklore and myth so interesting comes from the DM's side of the table. It's about atmosphere, consequences, poetic justice, uncertainty, serendipity, omens and portents, and more.

But I do think the player-side version of magic can be rules-based without treating magic as a science. One good example in D&D proper is the Dark Powers checks in Ravenloft. It's a specific mechanic, but it doesn't feel like science.

Conversely, the very concept of anti-magic is antithetical to the magic of myth and folklore. Magic in folklore tends to be innate and part of the natural world. There are things that are more numinous or magical than other things, but it's as much about circumstance as it is about objects. A tree might be old and wise and partially sensate, but arranging a set of otherwise fairly ordinary objects in a particular way, say twining a piece of straw, is also magic. And the magic isn't in the ritual, the ritual just brings out the innate magic in ordinary things. You can't subtract magic from that world view, because there's not a mundane world underneath. It's turtles... I mean magic... all the way down.
« Last Edit: June 02, 2022, 05:19:16 AM by Pat »

Ghostmaker

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Re: D&D Promotes Race Essentialism?
« Reply #83 on: June 02, 2022, 08:10:33 AM »
We've been over this. If the magic system is too erratic, players aren't going to use it as much.
No, we haven't been over this. Don't fall into the trap of treating the strawman argument that Tannhauser created as a real argument someone in the thread made.
Actually, yes, yes we have. https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/magic-reliability-and-literary-precedence/msg1207355/#msg1207355

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Using logic to find answers isn't science.

I cannot even begin to address how silly this is.

Banjo Destructo

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Re: D&D Promotes Race Essentialism?
« Reply #84 on: June 02, 2022, 09:40:39 AM »
I don't think a game that sets forth rules for how to use fantasy, imaginary, monsters inside the context of a game that has you fighting monsters to get treasure, and using magic and other imaginary things to fight these monsters, had any bearing at all on real world people.

Only people who think about racism all the time will try to equate race essentialism to things like.. orcs being evil,  and things like that.

Stephen Tannhauser

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Re: D&D Promotes Race Essentialism?
« Reply #85 on: June 02, 2022, 09:57:44 AM »
Fair enough, though I still disagree with your use of "science". Using logic to find answers isn't science. Exploiting repeated patterns isn't science.

Granted, but logic, pattern recognition and probabilistic prediction are critical tools in the scientific method, and any approach to problem-solving which relies on them is going to evoke that feel. (Consider the popular inversion of Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from technology.")

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I do think the player-side version of magic can be rules-based without treating magic as a science. One good example in D&D proper is the Dark Powers checks in Ravenloft. It's a specific mechanic, but it doesn't feel like science.

I would suggest that that's partly because the criteria defining the severity of a Powers-attracting crime/sin are inherently subjective, so no two GMs are going to assess them quite identically, and partly because there's no explicit rules structure incentivizing the taking of that chance in return for a consistent benefit -- if there were ways for players to get regular mechanical bonuses to magic or combat effectiveness by risking Dark Power checks (cf. getting Force bonuses for taking Dark Side points in STAR WARS), I'll wager you would suddenly see a lot more analytical study of how to game those probabilities.
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Pat
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Re: D&D Promotes Race Essentialism?
« Reply #86 on: June 02, 2022, 10:55:54 AM »
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Using logic to find answers isn't science.

I cannot even begin to address how silly this is.
Your failure to understand is the silly part.

Logic and science aren't synonyms. One may be a prerequisite for the other, but saying they're the same thing is like saying all mammals are bears.

Ghostmaker

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Re: D&D Promotes Race Essentialism?
« Reply #87 on: June 02, 2022, 11:12:55 AM »
Quote
Using logic to find answers isn't science.

I cannot even begin to address how silly this is.
Your failure to understand is the silly part.

Logic and science aren't synonyms. One may be a prerequisite for the other, but saying they're the same thing is like saying all mammals are bears.
Except that's not what you said.

Lay off the tequila.

BoxCrayonTales

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Re: D&D Promotes Race Essentialism?
« Reply #88 on: June 02, 2022, 11:13:15 AM »
@Pat I would love to have RPG sourcebooks exploring that kind of casual folkloric magic. Modern D&D media feels completely disconnected from the old fairy tales and myths. Or even real occult traditions.

Stephen Tannhauser

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Re: D&D Promotes Race Essentialism?
« Reply #89 on: June 02, 2022, 11:25:13 AM »
@Pat I would love to have RPG sourcebooks exploring that kind of casual folkloric magic. Modern D&D media feels completely disconnected from the old fairy tales and myths. Or even real occult traditions.

Likewise down with this.
Better to keep silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. -- Mark Twain

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