Quote:
Originally Posted by RyanW
For me, personally, I prefer a setting that is like our own except where explicitly different. I like having a reasonable expectation that things will be somewhat predicable, and I don't like having to guess which set of rules the scenario designer wanted to apply in the next room (Is this room dictated by the internal logic of the setting, or did the writer think of something kewl?). Establishing the rules is a big part of making a consistent setting, and is absolutely critical (IMO) to making a setting that can be interacted with rather than merely observed (or flat out ignored, as in most hack-and-slash games). If a setting has advanced clockwork that can operate flawlessly for centuries, I want said clockwork to be doing something other than trying to shoot me in the face (though if it exists, and someone has a good reason to want to shoot me in the face, that's different).
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Sure, but I think it's essential to accept that in settings with gods, magic, and wonder materials, "silly" traps are exactly what you're talking about
: They're a small facet of a broader effort to say that, for consistency's sake, all those spells, miracles, and extraordinary substances must change the face of economics (e.g., a cash economy at nominal TL3, and even the poor trading in minted silver and gold) and technology (which ends up pushing TL(3+1)^ or TL(3+2)^). They can't just result in fireballs, healing spells, and mithril armor for adventurers.
The traps are part of "changing technology." They're internally consistent with healing potions and elven carriages, no doubt. It's just that it's a
ton of work to map out exactly how one leads to the other, and what the precise made-up pseudoscience and wild technology underlying them is. I firmly believe that GMs with limited time budgets and authors with limited pages can be excused for hand-waving this mapping as part of the +1)^ or +2)^ that I mentioned. Standing in the real world and trying to define exactly how divergent and superscience tech works is a bit like standing in the present and trying to predict the future: If you could really do it, you'd have that tech in the real world! But you can't.