What screams "the author didn't think of the implications"?

[MuddyAristocrat]

I'm asking mostly in terms of worldbuilding: author or screenwriter includes element x in the setting and doesn't notice what this entails for the rest of the world, or perhaps something is done for the plot that leads to you asking, "Why doesn't everyone do this," or "Why has this never been done?"

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Magic spells not being applied outside of combat for mundane solutions.

The Trails series are renowned for their worldbuilding and long running storyline, which irks me all the more that they don't use magitek in inventive ways. In Trails, instead of an industrial revolution, they had the Orbal Revolution. Basically instead of using electricity to power their appliances, they use elemental crystals, called "quartz", which is slotted into their technology, called "Orbments". Now in the Trails series, people can't cast magic innately, but they can use a device called a "Battle Orbment" that effectively lets them cast magic, called "Orbal Arts". This is in lore and repeatedly referenced during the stories of the games.

So why is that they only use orbal arts during battle? Why not use them for mundane purposes? For example, there are seven elements of orbal arts: fire, earth, water, wind, time, space, and mirage. Why not use time arts to speed up production processes? Why not use the time art Chrono Drive to speed up the growth of crops? Why not use water arts to water your crops in the middle of the desert? Why not use earth arts for construction, such as digging trenches or excavating dirt for the foundation of a building? If you can use space arts to banish enemies to another dimension, and can also use that very same art to bring that thing back, why not use space arts for portable storage you can access anywhere?

Also, there is a plothole regarding quartz. In the first Trails in the Sky game, the orbment mechanic, Mr. Melders, clearly tells you that quartz, in lore, regenerates orbal energy. And since there are orbal arts that can turn orbal energy into matter... well, then you pretty much have a post scarcity society right there, where you can create an unlimited number of materials and the speed at which you create it is only limited by how much quartz you have, which you can mine from underground...


Another thing that irks me: monsters and adventurer's guilds. What's to stop someone from catching a pair of monsters and having them breed, and then release the monsters out into the wild near a town or a village? Thus, the town puts out bounties on the monsters, and that someone can then kill the monsters (that they bred and released) and get money for it, and keep milking the system until they are caught. It's pretty much the cobra problem. I could see the adventurer's guild in some regions actually being a racket. Or why don't people weaponized monsters? If a country is at war with another country, why not send a couple guys over, have them buy a barn near town to keep their monster breeding operation in, and then during the night, release those monsters out into the fields near town, so that the monsters eat the lifestock? That way you can deplete your enemy's country's food supply and help tie up soldiers there as they try to deal with the monsters, and the country has to expend money trying to import more food. Or why not get those two guys into an enemy castle, and have them breed monsters in a house or a basement, and then unleash those monsters and kill lots of soldiers?

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Bleach

Is the afterlife only for Japanese people when evidently other countries exist? Chad's part-Mexican for one

 

[AnimalNoodles]

Another thing that irks me: monsters and adventurer's guilds. What's to stop someone from catching a pair of monsters and having them breed, and then release the monsters out into the wild near a town or a village? Thus, the town puts out bounties on the monsters, and that someone can then kill the monsters (that they bred and released) and get money for it, and keep milking the system until they are caught. It's pretty much the cobra problem. I could see the adventurer's guild in some regions actually being a racket. Or why don't people weaponized monsters? If a country is at war with another country, why not send a couple guys over, have them buy a barn near town to keep their monster breeding operation in, and then during the night, release those monsters out into the fields near town, so that the monsters eat the lifestock? That way you can deplete your enemy's country's food supply and help tie up soldiers there as they try to deal with the monsters, and the country has to expend money trying to import more food. Or why not get those two guys into an enemy castle, and have them breed monsters in a house or a basement, and then unleash those monsters and kill lots of soldiers?

How expensive would it be to raise up these monsters? Cobras are cheap, owlbears arent.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

D. Gray-Man

Thousands of LVL2-3 Akuma and later a bunch of LVL4's

Akuma level up via mass murder

So odds are they each have either murdered hundreds or as one guy on reddit theorized went off and killed "more important people with more worth" to go and "level up" faster

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

How expensive would it be to raise up these monsters? Cobras are cheap, owlbears arent.

Would depend on the monster ecology of the setting (another criminally overlooked aspect of worldbuilding). I'd imagine that your usual giant spider monster would grow pretty fast. Also, steroids and growth hormones/stimulants mixed in the food would greatly speed up the process too.

 

[gral]

So why is that they only use orbal arts during battle? Why not use them for mundane purposes? For example, there are seven elements of orbal arts: fire, earth, water, wind, time, space, and mirage. Why not use time arts to speed up production processes? Why not use the time art Chrono Drive to speed up the growth of crops? Why not use water arts to water your crops in the middle of the desert? Why not use earth arts for construction, such as digging trenches or excavating dirt for the foundation of a building? If you can use space arts to banish enemies to another dimension, and can also use that very same art to bring that thing back, why not use space arts for portable storage you can access anywhere?

I had understood that they 'do' use it for mundane purposes, but it's more told us by characters or in-game lore than shown by the effects the use of Orbal Arts in the world. Besides, magic in these games, outside combat, it's more an excuse to have a world that is recognizable to present-day people without having the 'inconvenient' aspects of present-day technology(like the fact the overwhelmingly majority of gimmicks the authors come up with wouldn't work at all).

 

[MuddyAristocrat]

Here's an obvious sci-fi one: there's FTL that doesn't involve making space somehow smaller, but the most effective weapon isn't just a rock with an FTL drive behind it.

 

[Bear Ribs]

FASAnomics. Just FASAnomics.

 

[Aldarion]

D. Gray-Man

Thousands of LVL2-3 Akuma and later a bunch of LVL4's

Akuma level up via mass murder

So odds are they each have either murdered hundreds or as one guy on reddit theorized went off and killed "more important people with more worth" to go and "level up" faster

I actually believe implications for that one are fully thought out. They are just, well, horrifying.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

I actually believe implications for that one are fully thought out. They are just, well, horrifying.

The Millennium Earl has been living in a 7000 year eternity......I think he also wiped out the vast majority of Japan's population long ago

It's still a little bit of a mystery why the Earl hasn't swarmed the exorcists yet, he's got so many Akuma and just one of the Noah is more than a match for their Generals and there are so few Exorcists around

Bookman, who's implied to have had a hand in the past, maybe hiding stuff or thinks that the world will move on or not have that much damage

 

[UltimatePaladin]

Here's an obvious sci-fi one: there's FTL that doesn't involve making space somehow smaller, but the most effective weapon isn't just a rock with an FTL drive behind it.

Related issue: trying to have relevant planetary battles in a setting with starship travel and space combat. Fleets and armies are both needed IRL because as far as they can travel, there are still regions of the earth they can't really go (regions sufficiently inland, for example.) Ignoring the issue of actually holding those locations.

In contrast, when it comes to space, it's basically an ocean that's populated by a bunch of tiny island chains, no real "landmasses" to speak of. Sure, when conquering worlds you're going to need ground-based forces to hold territory, but you aren't going to see any major army-on-army battle. Mainly because any black-water navy capable of fighting in space is most likely capable of orbital bombardment. Conventional armored columns and bases on the ground have a good chance of getting hit and destroyed.

TL;DR, IRL a nation with a superior navy versus one with a superior army is not clear cut. In space, a nation with a superior (space) navy versus one with a superior army most definitely has the upper hand.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

Undertale and the monsters "biology". Just the mere Intention of harming a monster is enough to one shot them with a peashooter, and a 8-13 year old kid can wipe them out to extinction armed with nothing but a stick. All this yet we're supposed to buy that them leaving the safety of their underground city powered with futuristic technology and unlimited renewable energy is a happy ending. Sure as long as they don't run into any street thugs, or paranoid mobs...or Compton.


yeah sorry, You got one character that doesn't know the meaning of personal space, and two leaders with such high tempers they will declare war at the drop of a hat with one too cowardly to follow through. I give it about a month before darwanism has the final say on that one. just saying, there is a reason why nearly every Undertale AU including DELTARUNE makes monsters a bit more sturdy and treats the protagonist as an abnormal human with supernatural powers as opposed to just your average run of the mill human child.

Edit: I should add the only reason why sans can do as much damage to the player as he can is because the game assumes you as the player feel guilty about doing the genocide route. So yeah if a serial killer or a gang gets ahold of the monsters they are doomed. The Prime universe undertale monsters are more fragile than paper.

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

How expensive would it be to raise up these monsters? Cobras are cheap, owlbears arent.

Are cobras actually cheap to keep and breed?

Here's an obvious sci-fi one: there's FTL that doesn't involve making space somehow smaller, but the most effective weapon isn't just a rock with an FTL drive behind it.

I mean, theres loads of Sci Fi with good explanations as to why that's the case.

 

[UltimatePaladin]

Are cobras actually cheap to keep and breed?

In a vacuum, no, but never underestimate the power of government. What @Val the Moofia Boss was talking about was an incident in Colonial India where the British government was concerned about the snakes in the area. To solve it, they began offering bounties on dead snakes.

While people were incentivized to provide dead snakes, they were also incentivized to begin breeding the snakes (because ultimately the reward was worth more than the cost it took to raise the cobras.) Eventually, this was found out, the British stopped, and the snakes (now worthless) were released to the wild, leaving them worse off than when they started. As a side note, there was a similar situation in Colonial Vietnam under the French - just replace cobras with rats.

As for this discussion in general, it depends on the economics. If the reward for killing an Owlbear is substantially greater than the cost (in time and money) to raise one, then you'd see the same thing happening.

EDIT: Realized I never quite answered your question. Whoops. Cheap is relative - if the reward is disproportionately greater than the cost, it becomes cheap. Sure, on its own, doing something that needs me to invest a thousand dollars sounds expensive. But if I get a million dollars in the end it's cheap by comparison. Which was the situation with the Cobra Effect, if to a lesser degree.

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

Another thing that irks me: monsters and adventurer's guilds. What's to stop someone from catching a pair of monsters and having them breed, and then release the monsters out into the wild near a town or a village? Thus, the town puts out bounties on the monsters, and that someone can then kill the monsters (that they bred and released) and get money for it, and keep milking the system until they are caught. It's pretty much the cobra problem. I could see the adventurer's guild in some regions actually being a racket. Or why don't people weaponized monsters? If a country is at war with another country, why not send a couple guys over, have them buy a barn near town to keep their monster breeding operation in, and then during the night, release those monsters out into the fields near town, so that the monsters eat the lifestock? That way you can deplete your enemy's country's food supply and help tie up soldiers there as they try to deal with the monsters, and the country has to expend money trying to import more food. Or why not get those two guys into an enemy castle, and have them breed monsters in a house or a basement, and then unleash those monsters and kill lots of soldiers?

Notably, in DnD, the setting 99% of japanese fantasy is crudely copied over from, actually doesn't share in these video-gamey problems.

1. Guilds are either mercenary companies or... companies, like, an actual guild. "The Adventurers Guild" isn't a thing.
2. Weaponized monsters are extremely common in a variety of roles.
3. A guild running an extortion racket on the peasantry would be in direct competition with either the Nobles or the local Church (Churches are extremely powerful organizations), or other guilds.
4. Sort of an aside to 3, a disturbingly high number of settlements, from twenty man thorps to cities, are either quietly or blatantly run by some kind of foreign monster. One book gives a percentage for it, it's one of those "Minority but still incredibly disturbing to consider large scale" things. In other words, a given area might "already" be on the protection racket of a dragon or something that will notice if too many of "their" serfs (or food) go missing at once.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Monster Hunter International

Admittedly I kinda stopped at Book 3 but I’m of the opinion that the PUFF or Perpetual Unearthly Forces Fund cannot possibly have that much cash without major inflation or making use of large amounts of secret leprechaun gold

Killing a single zombie can give you a few hundred dollars and killing a werewolf can give you thousands of dollars

Sure, the number of Monster Hunters are relatively low, they either get killed or get crippled or leave after they get a really big paycheck

But even if it’s Cthulhu, I say there can’t possibly be enough money to sustain these bounties on a daily basis

I’m frankly not sure about Earl Harbinger’s idea of going public and thinking that getting paid like Heroes-For-Hire would be good enough to pay for all the medical bills, all the armor, all the weapons, all the training, all the vehicles and so on

And that’s not taking into account how if the shellshock and panic is over, people might carry guns and silver bullets around themselves more often and take more precautions or have an increase in amateur monster hunters who’d compete with MHI

 

[Von_Lohengram]

Moon Tea existed for The Seven knows how long and is appearently both easy to make and has no issues with side effects or the like, yet sexual mores are still like Medieval Europe.

 

[LifeisTiresome]

Notably, in DnD, the setting 99% of japanese fantasy is crudely copied over from, actually doesn't share in these video-gamey problems.

1. Guilds are either mercenary companies or... companies, like, an actual guild. "The Adventurers Guild" isn't a thing.
2. Weaponized monsters are extremely common in a variety of roles.
3. A guild running an extortion racket on the peasantry would be in direct competition with either the Nobles or the local Church (Churches are extremely powerful organizations), or other guilds.
4. Sort of an aside to 3, a disturbingly high number of settlements, from twenty man thorps to cities, are either quietly or blatantly run by some kind of foreign monster. One book gives a percentage for it, it's one of those "Minority but still incredibly disturbing to consider large scale" things. In other words, a given area might "already" be on the protection racket of a dragon or something that will notice if too many of "their" serfs (or food) go missing at once.

Isn't DnD basically adventurers going around doing jobs for money that end up with them even saving the world or town or village?

At least thats how I have seen some games played.

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

Moon Tea existed for The Seven knows how long and is appearently both easy to make and has no issues with side effects or the like, yet sexual mores are still like Medieval Europe.

What do you mean specifically?