"Is Science Magic?" Topic

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. – Arthur C. Clarke

So, the short word "is" is in the short title. But I am asking in TTWG (and RPGs, if you want), do we treat advanced science like it is magic?

I see a trend to just assume advanced science can do anything. So we can just plop something in a SF setting by fiat. No build up to it. No legacy.

It reminds me of the alien apologists (I love watching George Tsoukalos. A communications major, who started in pro wrestling, I believe.) who say things like "microchips had to come from an alien chip because they just appeared from nowhere." (This is an actual argument from one of those Ancient Aliens like shows.)

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with that. I can accept a conceit, like we're going to have FTL. But when you do too many assertions without a background, you end up with massive inconsistencies. This already happens in TTWG (I loved Murphy's Rules.), but I think we end up with too many inconsistencies across the big picture.

What we end up with is, say, energy weapons that seem to follow radically different laws of physics depending on who is using them and what the target is. Of course you can backfit anything with an explanation, but that seems to make things diverge too much where they should converge.

I refuse to comment in the abstract. I will note that the effect of AT guns in various rules depends on who's firing them and what the target is.

IIRC the old GammaWorld RPG used this as its premise. Dave Arneson's vision of D&D was this as well.

In a game, none of it is Science. That's not what Science is. Science is a method of determining understanding of the functioning of reality via observation, experimentation, deduction and conclusion— and that only happens on the tabletop in reference to the rules of a game and the tactics of the players. Otherwise, there is no actual Science going on. On a tabletop, even the most intense simulation is a gross abstraction of reality, built on the assumptions of the gamers and rules designers, in an attempt to take what is infinitely complex— the actual scientific function of the real world— and define it in extremely broad (yet also narrow) abstract ways that "feels right" to the designers and the participants.

Thus, even the most rigorous and complicated definition of the capabilities and functionings of a specific military device, soldier, or body of troops, is based on broad assumptions that this or that example of the same will function exactly as any other example of the thing. So at some point we're waving away situational distinctions which happen in reality and embracing a generalization of some sort and a workable abstraction of some sort. And that's not Science.

Now, if we go into the realm of so-called Science Fiction, we're defining "science" in much broader terms— as either "something which might be achievable by technology according to our understanding of physics" (lasers as viable weapons, powered armor suits for soldiers, spaceships (not FTL), and the like) OR as "something which is argued to be technologically possible or appears to be based on scientific concepts, but really isn't— or may even be functionally impossible"— as FTL starships, transporters, psionics, instant long-range communication across stellar distances, artificial non-momentum-based gravity, "laser" swords, and any other space opera trope you can think of.
In which case, much of it might as well be magic— it's fiction that looks vaguely like science, but involves no actual science at all.

So the answer to the question is "yes," "no," and "maybe." It depends on the game, the goals of the game, and the ways in which the games function.

Which maybe makes the answer— "I dunno. It's just a game, dude. Let's play."

Quantum mechanics are literally magic (action at a distance etc), however I can't think of many quantum Wargames.

Parzival +1
Distinction
- science as we understand it today,
- unrealistic science to tell a story, such as Faster than Light Travel

#Martin Rapier
Quantum mechanics are still science. Just weird and generally hard to observe. Action at a distance could be from electromagnet effects for instance

John

Parzival – What you are describing is experimental science, or what we sometimes call "the Scientific Method". Science has a broader scope in terms of the systematization and organization of knowledge (tSM is one way we gather source material for that).

Wargaming is an analytic science, like operations research, or modeling and simulation.

So there is inherent structure in what we do. (A lot of people seem to thing that their preferred level of systematic organization means no organization and anything more is "simulation" and thus, bad.)

I feel like sometimes we skip a lot of the intermediate organization, especially for "cutting edge" science or scifi. This leaves us with science that feels too much like its based on the explanation "it just it", or the tried and true part of the proof … "magic happens".

For me, the rules are the rules, period. For historical rules, I might argue ranges, speeds, penetration and unit frontages. But once the author says "it's magic" or "it's science beyond your knowledge" there's no way to argue the point.

Possibly the questions might better be "SHOULD magic be different from advanced science in wargame rules, and if so, in what way?" (I think Arthur C. Clarke will win that argument, by the way.)

The one that I think really has possibilities is colonial warfare. It would depend on the "natives" of course. But I can imagine a set of rules in which "regular" firepower had an elaborate set of factors for particular range, cover, target density and such with little or no randomness and "native" fire rules were more along the lines of "roll a D6 per man and hit on a six." Melee rules might be the reverse of this--or might not.

But I refuse to go to a rules writer and say either "your force fields are too weak" or "only highly advanced magicians can cast a fireball at that range."