Almost everything in FRPG play is realistic to some degree. Swords are typically made of steel, have an edged blade, a hilt, do damage, etc. There are trees, bushes, fish, air, etc. All of these things are connected in some way and in varying degrees to reality. That is realism.
Right know in D&D longswords have edges, hilts, are made of metal, deal damage, etc. That's a level of realism. If I say that in my game you have to sharpen them periodically, because they get dull with use and/or nicks in the blade, that would be more realistic. If I further say that they rust and need to be oiled and cared for to keep them from rusting, that would be even more realism.
This is one reason why I tell [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] that he doesn't play a game that's as realistic as mine.
Guess what: my games have as much of this realism you describe as yours. In fact, probably more of it, because at least some of the systems I run have rules and options for degrading armour, sharpening weapons, etc.
In my Traveller game a wild animal crawled on board the PCs' shuttle. A faceplate was shattered by a sword blow. A NPC was caught coming out of the shower while a PC stole her powered armour. Those are all things that might happen in real life. (If real life included powered armour.)
If I say that something in the game happens because I saw a pink bunny in my dreams, that's completely unrealistic. If I say the same things happens in the game because of a random die roll, that's less unrealistic, chance plays into events even though the odds will be weighted in the real world far differently than a die roll. If I know in a general way how things usually go in the real world and decide to approximate various chances of the same event happening, and then roll, that's even more realistic. I don't need to know the exact math for these things in order for the above to be true.
<snip>
It's not a matter of what makes more sense. It's a matter of what is more realistic. That things that are more realistic also often make more sense is just happy circumstance.
This is all nonsense.
Suppose that the GM has to deicde what the PCs find in the evil overlord's zoo. The GM had a dream the previous night of a pink bunny, and so decides that that's what's in the zoo. That's no less realistic than rolling the result on the Random Zoo Enclosure Table; nor than deciding based on the GM's theory of what's more or less likely to be found ina a zoo.
Which is my whole point. Decision-making based on what the GM thinks is realistic does
not produce outcomes that are more realistic, or true to life, than decisions made using other processes. The fiction doesn't become less realistic because it includes cultists in the teahouse on the basis of a Streetwise roll rather than a GM decision.
And as per my post about there being more in heaven and earth - I think GM decision-making as the sole or primary system actually makes the fiction
less realistic because more predicatable (unsurprisingly, given that
GM decides makes it all prediction!).
hawkeyefan said:
Why would the GM picking the left branch be more "realistic" than the right branch? Perhaps the game calls for a roll from the players, and then based on the results of the roll, the GM narrates things accordingly. The player rolls well, so the GM decides that the character is capable of accurately determining that the left branch sees more traffic
This style of play doesn't lend itself well to decisions based on realism.
This is mere assertion. You have no evidence for it from your own play. There's no evidence for it in the play of others. And it's obvious just from the example that your claim is wrong. A style of play in which the GM decides the more trodden road on the basis of a check rather than prior decision-making
doesn't produce a result that is any less realistic. There's nothing more realistic about any particular track being more travelled than any other.
