My point was that a fantasy world should restrict itself to a few fantastic assumptions, but otherwise remain faithful to the reality. You say that it isn't necessarily so and give an example of LOTR. However, LOTR was *not* built ground up, and it is *not* completely different from reality we live in. On the opposite, despite there being a large number of imaginary details, most of the LOTR world is based on our reality. Some examples, so that you can grasp the extent of things it borrows from the real world: logic, gravity, fire, water, vegetation, culture, the very idea of a language, alcohol, music - are all borrowed from the real world, mostly unchanged.
So a fantasy world always *is* the real world with some very minor (in the global scheme of things) modifications. Of course, you can push your fantasy as far as you want, but you'll have to explain every thing that you invent. So there is a natural limit to the amount of fantastic stuff you can introduce into your world before it becomes too heavy and starts cluttering your mind (like any large system does). No fun in that. Therefore it's much better if you concentrate your fantasy on a few key modifications, while keeping small things (such as arrow trajectory) realistic.
Last edited by neatfires; 15/02/11 05:40 PM.
