D&D tends to be simulationist
Personally I don't find this to be the case.
Rolemaster and Runequest (and their various offshoots) are simulationist. Burning Wheel is simulationist in character building and in framing checks, but not always in establishing the consequences of checks (especially on failures).
But for me, at nearly every point where questions of importance for simulationist play arise (ie what is actually happening in the fiction, given that the rules tell me to roll these dice) D&D doesn't answer them (eg when I roll to hit, what is happening?; when I roll damage dice, or a saving throw, what is happening?; when I make a check to find a secret door, what is happening?; when my PC loses hit points, what is happening?; when my PC moves 30' on my turn and then, in the same 6 seconds, is able to drop a 25' R AoE centred on his/her starting position and not be caught by it, exactly how fast did s/he move?; etc).
3E introduced an unprecedented (for D&D) degree of simulationism into its skill system, its auxiliary combat manoeuvres (trip, grapple, etc) and its saving throws, but still left many of these core questions - attacks, damage, movement in combat, etc - unanswered by the system. So I wouldn't categorise it as a particularly simulationist system; and other versions of D&D barely at all.
The rules are not, themselves, the laws of physics. Rather, the rules reflect the natural laws of the game world, in the light of certain assumptions. This is the fundamental principle of any role-playing system, which precedes 3E by decades.
Consider the observations I've just made about D&D - its resolution procedures are often excellent for establishing outcomes in the shared fiction (eg is the PC or the orc the winner of the sword fight? do the PCs find the secret door?) but tend to leave the actual ingame process as an exercise in narration within the mechanically-established parameters. Those rules don't model ingame processes.
For a game which is even less simulationist than D&D - that is, the connection between the inputs to action resolution and the outcomes require even more narration to actually establish what happened in the fiction - consider Tunnels & Trolls. Or, for a modern game, HeroQuest revised.
Of course the outcomes of action resolution in all these games are
consistent with the natural laws of the gameworld, but that's because the participants make sure to narrate outcomes that don't contradict the established fiction (including any established natural laws).
You might be interested in Gygax's original logic for the way magic weapons interact with planes.
<snip Gygax quote>
One infers that the reason magic weapons decrease in plusses when plane-shifting is because the number of planes in which the sword exists simultaneously is being reduced somehow.
That's the in-fiction explanation. But [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] wan't talking about that - he was talking about the game-design reason. I'm pretty sure that the idea of creatures needing magic to hit, which is part of Gygax's in-fiction explanation, was itself invented first as part of the presentation of a challenging game, and then the fiction was invented retrospectively. (I haven't gone back to Chainmail and the original booklets to confirm this, but may do so if I get a chance.)
Fortunately for us, Mister Dresden lives in an interesting world, and he has bills to pay. He also has friends and enemies, who complicate things for him.
But everything that happens to him, it's just a result of him acting like himself, and everyone else acting like themselves. It is their world, playing itself out, without the intervention of outside entities. If there was ever a case where Harry was stuck in a tight jam, and the author reached into the world to solve his problems for him (or the reverse, and the author reaches in to paint a monster in his path where there was none before), then we would all mark that as the point where the series had truly jumped the shark
This is completely bizarre.
Everything that happens in a novel has been authored, more-or-less carefully, by a really-existing person who had really-existing motivations for doing so (they liked the sound of it; they thought it would sell books; it would let them show off another poem in their made-up language; etc).
Nothing happens in an imaginary, authored "world" except via the intervention of an "outside entity" (ie the author). Of course, unless you're talking about 4th-wall breaking novels the author won't be a presence in the story: but that's equally true of RPGing.
the conceit of an RPG is that you are really a bunch of elves who actually live within that world, and that there isn't such an outside force. You play the game by pretending to be your characters, rather than by acting as omnipotent outsiders. If you actually use any of your omnipotent powers, then you've violated the conceit, and there's no point in even playing.
And yet players make decisions all the time having regard to metagame considerations - from agreeing to join or stick with the party because otherwise the game can't work; to choosing option A rather than option B because it will be more fun at the table - and the game doesn't come to a halt. And the players don't feel that there was no point in playing.
Part of the issue is that the conceit of an RPG, at least as many play it, is not that the player is an elf; but that the
character is an elf and that the player has a special relationship to the character. Broadly speaking, this is a duty to declare actions in the course of play that further the ends or goals of the character. This can often require the player to "inhabit" the character. But it doesn't require the player to forget that s/he is playing a game. Spending a fate point or an inspiration point to boost a roll - which at least in some systems doesn't correspond to anything distinctive happening in the game but is a pure mechanical manipulation - doesn't stop the player inhabiting the character. (After all, players of D&D spell casters often don't have to roll dice at all to find out whether or not they are able to cast spells - they just declare it - and so how can spending a chit to improve a die roll be a problem yet having the ability to declare the fiction thus-and-so by fiat not be?)
