Beyond Real-World Physics

Reality can cope with more detail than virtual worlds ever can because it has more resources. However, there are two cases where the scope of virtual world physics extends beyond what reality can offer.

The first of these is that the virtual world interacts physically with a meta-world (reality), whereas reality does not ¹. Players in the real world can become personae in the virtual world, therefore a virtual world can influence the real one through its players (and vice versa). The commands that best illustrate this are those concerned with communication. There are four types:

• Within the world, within the fiction. Commands based on real-world physics are implemented within the context of the virtual world. Examples: “shout,” “say,” “whisper,” “pose”/“act”/“emote.”

• Within the world, without the fiction. Commands in the virtual world have functionality beyond what’s possible in the real. Examples: “tell,” “mail,” group channels.

• Without the world, within the fiction. Material that concerns what goes on in the virtual world is created in the real and presented in-context. Examples: newspapers, criers.

• Without the world, without the fiction. Material that concerns events in the virtual world is presented apart from it. Examples: IRC, email, rant sites.

The second example of where virtual physics can go beyond real physics is in the area of ultraphysics. This concerns things that people are prepared to accept as extensions to mundane physics, whether or not they’re actually compatible with it. Examples include faster-than-light travel, psychic powers, cybertechnology, prayer, time travel, and (everyone’s favorite) magic. None of these phenomena can be demonstrated today with any reliability, and for some it’s unlikely they ever could be. However, sufficient numbers of players have an understanding of the tropes that it’s possible to accommodate these ideas into virtual worlds. It’s sometimes necessary to produce a fiction to indicate which of several sub-tropes a virtual world is adopting (does this magic work using mana, spell memory, gesture programming, and so on), the decision having been made for gameplay reasons. As long as it’s something that fits into the players’ naïve ultraphysics, though, it’s acceptable to them.

Any ultraphysics needs to be implemented with the same rigor as regular physics. Players will not flinch while telling you that vortex-breathing dragons are unrealistic, whereas fire-breathing ones aren’t. In the same way that your virtual physics must adhere to players’ naïve physics, your virtual ultraphysics must adhere to players’ naïve ultraphysics. Ultraphysics is not as supportive of immersion as real physics, but jarred ultraphysics is every much as unsupportive of it as jarred real physics.

The level at which ultraphysics is implemented is determined by the commands that use it (as spells, through skills, using artifacts), which in turn depend on the same kind of properties as real physics. There is great scope for experiment here. Just because every other virtual world implements magic in terms of one-off, powerful spells, that doesn’t mean you have to. Why can’t mages cast spells as often as archers shoot arrows? Why can’t spells have continuous, streaming effects, so you can direct your healing stream towards whoever needs it? Why can’t magic take time to work, so you have to guess who’ll need the effect when it finally hits? There are many dimensions along which changes can be made, all of which can be adapted into the vague notions that players have of the ultraphysics that deliver it. You cast a spell, a fireball appears; how you cast the spell and how the fireball appears is for the virtual world to determine—players don’t care, so long as they get the fireball.

An awkward consequence of ultraphysics is that it doesn’t mesh well with genres that are based on real physics. Fantasy books may be able to ignore the consequences that winged horses have on castle construction, but they don’t have to deal with airborne cavalry units landing troops behind fortified walls and wreaking havoc. Player characters may take advantage of the inexpensive healing and curing facilities of temples, but if NPCs did then the world would be a very different place.

A final point to mention about ultraphysics is that it allows for hyperdimensionality. Graphical worlds are less capable of handling this than textual ones, because they have to present a view of the virtual world that’s rendered in the real one. Textual worlds can have objects inside themselves, objects bigger inside than outside, sounds you can pick up, and so on. Graphical worlds can have some hyperdimensionalities that textual worlds traditionally find difficult (such as portable holes), but on the whole they’re not as flexible.