Local police probably won't have a teenage girl summarily executed for appearing out of the middle of nowhere. Realistic societies generally are not that batshit.
No, but they might lock her up for setting things on fire. And I'm less concerned about the police than I am with other governmental officials. Can you say 'black-site'?
*By the way, I think that "what if the fireworks dimension has a 'burn all magic-users' law" speculation is WAAAY more contrived than "what if the lake of blood with the familiar scent and the unseen voice singing about forgetting the fear was created by the sort of entity that might attack or otherwise harm people" speculation.
Okay, imagine someone who can do freaking magic appearing in our world. Or, worse, our world, but also with some sort of aspect that makes it more like a death-world. Yeah. They aren't necessarily going to end up dead, but governmental experimentation is definitely on the table.
Because, um... he's told us that just deciding to go there will not in and of itself be lethal?Do you have more reason than that?
Actually, Melia specifically said that each place she lands should be relatively survivable. That implies greater than 50% odds, and riddles are closer to...call it 80% chance of dying? Riddles, unless you have all the time you need to work it out, are a really terrible way of doing things. Because the logical answer isn't always the right one, and the amount of disagreement that would occur between the posters would be insane. I suspect we'd be pretty much screwed.
I mean, Alivaril has never, ever said that the places we're going are safe. I don't think he's ever said anything that can reasonably be interpreted as, say "I won't create any dimensions where Melia would have, say, a 30% chance of dying or being imprisoned and horribly tortured forever."
Oh, I'm sure those places exist. But our landing area shouldn't be one of the former. The latter is not really an option, with us. Our Anchor means 'forever' isn't going to happen. But I could see that happening, yes.
Your words imply that you believe that no such dimensions exist. I cannot understand why you believe this. All Alivaril promised is that just picking 'the wrong dimension' to go to won't kill us all by itself. It doesn't mean the places we go are safe, it doesn't mean there isn't great danger. It doesn't mean we can just skip the step of trying to rationally evaluate the hazards associated with the places we proposed to go.
I believe those places exist. I just don't expect us to be dumped into them any time soon. See, the thing is, the statement made was pretty much just about our landing area, and the immediate environs. We won't be dumped in such a location directly, but we could choose to go there.
Basically, where we land is relatively safe. Where we go may not be. That's what I got from what he said.
Well, I sympathize, but we've been discussing this issue all day, so this isn't exactly an impulse decision on your part. It's like, an impulse can lead two thirds of all men to do something stupid (touch the electrified bar). I can at least sympathize with that, because I can hardly pretend that two thirds of all men are just deeply defective.
At the same time, we've been arguing over whether to touch the electrified bar all day from my point of view. It's gotten a bit confusingly exasperating. And yes, as someone else pointed out, here there are potential rewards whereas with the electrified bar there are zero rewards other than "relieve boredom." On the other hand, the risks are a lot higher than "receive mild electric shock."
...No, they aren't. At worst, I will have to deal with some friends being disappointed, and maybe getting some crap from people for a while. But I won't actually be physically harmed. You won't be physically harmed. No one will be physically harmed. Because this is, in fact, a game, and not reality.
Like...if this quest fails, it'll suck, but life will, in fact, go on. That seems to be the key sticking point of our disagreement. I'm treating this as a game, you seem to be treating this as real-life.
So, us appearing in a place where we're attacked is bullshit?
Currently? Kinda, if it has higher than 50% odds do killing us. Actually, even 50% is pretty high. That's killer DM behavior. You set challenges that your players have a hope in hell of actually handling, rather than ones they can't. Alivaril is usually fairly good about that, unless we seek out a challenge that's too much for us. The whole disclaimer he made? That sounds to me like we're not going to be dropped on anything too outrageously dangerous.
Like...I hate to use this argument, but I know Alivaril. That sort of sh*t is something he despises. While his simulationist style does mean we can end up in over our heads, he tries to keep that to what we choose, rather than making it something we can just get screwed by inevitably.
If there exists some magical entity on the other side of the portal, reading our mind through the portal and crafting an illusion to lure us in, then Melia is screwed no matter which portal we pick, because that would be the one the monster crafted for us.
That...is actually a pretty good point.
You realise the world we're in right now has low mana levels according to Melia. We are still able to use magic and to call our elementals in a low mana location.
In addition, mana level of a location depends on population of magical things; a clearing or a road would naturally have low mana levels whereas a city would naturally have slightly higher and a magical creature lair obviously higher. We know, for example, that an abandoned human residence in the woods had slightly more ambient mana.
It seems vanishingly unlikely to get arrested at the fountain. There are elementals at the fountain, which means we are unlikely to be so out of context.
I'm less concerned about that, and more with being made a 'guest' of someone in power, who wants to take advantage of us, or a mage who wants to experiement on us. The city has pretty high mana levels, so I expect there are mages. Nothing says they're nice mages.
