"Itza Viddy O'gaym" = "it's a video game"... things don't always have to make sense. In fact, there is a great deal that is pure fiction. We already throw basic rules of Newtonian physics almost completely out the window... so why not the other sciences.
It only has to loosely make sense within its own universe... which itself is still being defined, thus malleable, and also doesn't want to have all of its mystery ruined. After all, it could turn out that all of this talk about magic energies is just the way the characters in the game have found to describe what's happening in practical terms.
To the other, if you die because you run out of life force then your body is technically still viable but there is nothing left to motivate it to do so. The other implication is that plants with life force must be piercing the same plane.
I mean, I appreciate the discussion, definitely. But no matter which way we slice this thing, at some point there is going to be a layer of impenetrable fiction involved... because without it, we'd just have 'real lilfe' and no magic at all.
I knew what you said, but the thing is... I think(and a great deal of others do, too) that a video game isn't exempt from making sense. You need an element X for scifi or fantasy, I get that. That's perfectly understandable, and certain scientific conventions have to be altered to fit the universe... Altered, not discarded or destroyed. A world that has magic can make sense, and it does. It's about creating new laws amd adjusting old ones, rather than discarding them, however. If you break newtonian laws, you don't break reality, you simply disproved it in the context of this universe. I could rewrite every law of physics in a world of my own creation, but it would make sense because it's defined, and adheres well to the laws I have on paper.
That's probably hard to understand, so let me see if I can't make an example.
"Newton's law of universal gravitation states that any two bodies in the universe attract each other with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them."
I create a gravity hammer using an element X that is only found in universe B. It creates a field that reverses the attractive forces of gravity when exposed to kinetic energy, so it breaks newtonian laws(Which are, really, his descriptions of "what's happening in practical terms")... But that doesn't mean that the phenomena is impossible or irreconcilable. It simply means that Newton's discovery was limited to things outside of element X's interactions. Make an addendum to the law and the world, thus, makes sense again, and is reconcilable fiction, a real life that contains entirely novel, but entirely valid interactions within the bounds of the world's own physical laws. Really, alot of the magical interactions can be easily reconciled with what we already know about it.
There will have been physicists in this world for over 1,000 years if you're modelling things after the middle ages, so it would follow that there is more effective theory than "If you're an elf and focus really hard, you can make fire with your mind". In fact, the physicists would even have compound microscopes at their disposal since it was invented sometime in the mid 1600's and the technological developments wouldn't be likely to diverge such that the sciences slowed in development. There is technology, electronics, if you will, already at the disposal of this society. These physicists would likely concur that the energy in the living elf that produces fire is also present in the log. When we get to this point, it's not even really about modelling the sciences, but the society, accurately. The society would have made these inferences; realistically, SOMEONE in this world would ask these questions and find logical answers to them. Would it be 100% complete? No, it won't, the same way we won't know what happens when a person enters a black hole. It's a base requirement to loosely make sense, as you say, but to make real people in this game you'll need to ask yourself questions that they would want to ask. You'll have Newtons in this time period, or pascals, or liebniz's, and those people will have written about this world's phenomena, they will have theories like the revised newtonian law of gravity.
Hell, there'd already be anatomical drawings and this society would already have a basic understanding of most of the vital organs in the body do. Empirical sciences would be in their infancy, but already, there would be a bastion of modern science. It's a game about magic and fantasy and realistic NPCs, but from what I've seen you want to create a
world, not just a game. Worlds have scientists in their cities, even in the middle ages.
By introducing a real society, this dilemma has arisen. There does not exist a society that fails to ask why, nor does there exist a scientist that would stop when they have a practical theory. In creating a complete society, said society will seek answers even after finding ones. It would start as "What is energy?", then become "How do we interact with these energies, how do they interact with us?", then become "Where does it come from?" and "What counts as energy?", then "Can we categorize these energies?", then "how do these energies interact with eachother?", then "How do the energies behave?". And at some point in this string of asking and answering, the question would be asked, "How do logs burn if all they have is life energy in them?". The answers themselves would be questioned and, in time, the same questions would be answered again differently . In a way, I don't ask for myself, but for this society you'll create. It's the nature of life to ask, after all. To make a living world, you'd need to foresee these questions.
Anywho, I got my answer.
