I think all three of them are bound together for several reasons. First of all, to my opinion,an imaginary world should have its cosmogony.World creation and reasons for that,Gods,godesses,demons,creatures existed sice ever,their state(good,evil,something else),rivalry between them,etc. After world creation comes creation of the minor creatures(there are always some of them aren''t there?). Then magic and physics should be defined. Magic is usually a connection between the minor creatures with the immortal Gods(good or evil) and their powers on the World. So it is bound very tight with the World''s Cosmogony. Thus it should be defined according to the powers allowed to the minors to have. Physics is something not very close to magic. However in every story both co-exist. People throw things,fall down,run,heal themselves when hurt,build machines,etc. So there must also be a definition of physics in a World. This must also be connected to cosmogony because physical laws were created by those who created the world. Well all these may seem weird and may ruin some of the mystery but is it better just to walk in a world you know nothing more about than that you can "use magic" and "kill monsters"? And isn''t it easier for the player to get bound with the game''s story if he knows more about it? Just thinking... Voodoo4

I think the more info you give the player about their world, the more they can feel a part of their world. The ancient Greeks or Egyptians didn''t know everything about science, but they had working models about how their world worked (even if many were wrong). This gave them the reasons for their actions, and made them make sense in context.

You can still have magic and mystery even if you explain the pantheon and put legend behind why the minotaur has the head of a bull and the body of a man. Is Medusa any less scary that we know how she was created? In fact, telling the player can make the world MORE magical.

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Just waiting for the mothership...

Well, in my game''s world there are no Gods, so I have to take another route.Magic in my world is far more complicated and far more important than just "a power from the Gods".Magic is a very important part of the universe.I hve created some laws for magic and have a written about 5 pages on how it works (brag, brag ).However, I don''t let the player know all that in the beginning.
Anyway, magic will be far more important in Athalon than just a very usefull skill that you and/or the bad guys have.
Has anyone read The Lord of the Isles ? That''s a cool example of how magic could be.

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My answer... Depends on what story you give to your own world =]

Since I agree w/ just about everything Voodoo4 said in that post, I''ll diverge a bit:

When you''re creating any kind of world that differs from the one we all know and love, ;P you need to create all of these things, to establish verismillitude but its not always necessary to explicitly state them. Alot of times, it feels alot more naturally to do the exposition throughout the game, giving the player only just enough explicit information at the start to orient him. Too many times, this sort of information is either tucked away in the manual or presented very explicitly in a way that feels like the Old Testament. If you allow the words to come from other characters, from their individual point of view, (a cynical old priest of Anarak complaining of his fellow''s pious thieving of the populous, etc.) you allow the player to draw his own conclusions about the "real" nature of the gods. (perhaps seeing the evidence firsthand at some point. . .note that this would come as a sudden revelation rather than an expected truth if the player had only heard of this entity second-hand, maybe through "old wive''s tales") Therefore, you are allowing the player to see your fantasy world in the same manner that we learn of the spiritual nature of this world: through fallible human eyes.

Its worth noting that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote nearly 200 notebook''s worth of MiddleEarth''s history before beginning the Lord of the Rings. Most of us don''t have this kind of ideal patience to craft an alternate world, but we can use the same techniques that he did. Alot of the richness of MiddleEarth comes through when characters reference old legends, passing off 50 pages worth of Tolkien''s notes in a single allusion. This kind of subtlety goes a long way towards drawing the player into your creation.

100% agree with that Anonymous post...

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