We have different definitions of "real" in mind. Supposing some play lacked world facts beyond the characters, then I'd call it less real just in the sense that I am defining. I wouldn't necessarily call it less plausible.
There is no such play, to the best of my knowledge. (Perhaps Toon, which sits at the edge of my knowledge.) Even Over the Edge has "world facts" that are beyond the characters - eg it is set on Earth, circa the mid-to-late 1980s, and so it has all sorts of facts about (eg) Canberra and Buenos Aires.
If one really accepts the sorts of arguments you and others are making, then my definition of "real" puts the work in the right place. To make the imagined world facts external to player purposes is to put the world on a "realistic" - physicalist or as it used to be called materialist - metaphysical footing from the perspective of their characters.
World facts that are external to and independent of player goals do not suit the purposes of dramatism.
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Meaning that if there is a form of realism that exists in setups where world facts are adopted without regard to characters, then that is clearly distinct from dramatism.
In the first quoted sentence we have "external to player purposes". Given that
someone has to have a purpose, I assume therefore the "world facts" serve some GM purpose (eg aesthetic pleasure in creation of a work of fiction).
Then in the last quoted sentence we have "adopted without regard to characters". But of course "world facts" can't be adopted without regard to
anything - so again, I assume the GM has some reason for adopted them, again most likely some sort of aesthetic reason.
I don't see the connection between
setting that reflects the GM's purposes and motivations and
realism.
I think I am misunderstanding what you are critiquing. So far as I am concerned the players drive play. That there be world-facts external to and not contingent upon them does not stop them being the spotlight. Nor that a dramatic narrative arc is not pursued.
One of the real joys of the mode is emergent drama. Your idea is an example of players forming "their goals within the context of those [independent world] facts".
What you seem to be describing here is the players establishing their goals for play out of the material the GM has presented to them (what you call "independent world facts"). I don't really see how this is more realistic than any other way the players might establish their goals for play.
The mystery of Middle Earth is straightforward. In the Silmarillion and other works, and in the maps by his son, Tolkien supplied an abundance of information that fits the criteria for realism. Those can be supplemented from books such as the superb Atlas by Karen Wynn Fonstad. Tolkien undertook multiple projects in Middle Earth. Some of those projects were dramatic stories.
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Taking Middle Earth as an example, the path of the Deeping Steam is an externally true fact regardless whether players ever go to Helms Deep. I find that delightful and in some subtle sense powerful. I accept that you do not.
I suppose it depends on whether those facts are contingent or not. If they will warp around player characters then under my account you wouldn't be prioritising that facet of realism.
I don't know what you mean in saying that "the path of the Deeping Stream is an externally true fact regardless of whether players (characters?) ever got to Helms Deep.
Nor by the related remarks about facts being "contingent" or "warping". When I think of "warping" facts I think of dreamscapes and strange dimensions of the sort that Dr Strange often seems to visit. I have included such things in my FRPGing from time-to-time, but they are not typical of the sorts of setting I use in RPGing.
In combination with the previous blocks of quotes, the implication seems to be that where the fiction is
not authored by the GM having regard only to their own motivations, but instead is authored by the players or in any event having some regard to players' purposes, the fiction is a "warping" one in which the "world facts" are "contingent". This implication is obviously false. The reality of the stone that the PC kicks to one side as they trudge along the road doesn't change depending on who authored the scene, the stone or the kicking.
Anyway: there is an "externally true" fact that JRRT drew something on a map. I've used that map in RPGing, though not the Deeping Stream. I've used other maps too - maps of places on earth, maps of Kara Tur, maps of the Grand Duchy of Karameikos, most often maps of the World of Greyhawk. Yet I am being told in this thread that my methods of scene framing and action resolution produce less "realistic" fiction than others. So presumably maps are not the key to "realism".
It's not about what the GM wants to do. It's about the effect of what he's doing. The method chosen denies players' the ability to drive play.
Now, if the players are indifferent to that, then it's all good. But again, I wish people would set aside the appeal to realism and call it what it is... "this game is about my world, not your characters".
I also wish that people would talk about decision-making processes. Eg how do we resolve the action declaration "I head west, hunting for the Orcs who slew my family!"
The fact that we resolve that via (say) a Wises check or a Spout Lore check, rather than via the GM checking their map and notes and from those extrapolating what happens next, doesn't mean that one fiction has "world facts" beyond the characters and the other doesn't!
Calling it the DM's agenda implies that DM has decided that the campaign will be about goblins attacking the party. If the DM is trying to force what he wants to happen, then yes it's an agenda. That's not what simulation does. Simulation looks at the area and if the party is walking two miles away from a goblin village that the DM knows is there when a random encounter is rolled, it's realistic/simulation to choose goblins to encounter.
You are describing here are method of answering the question "What happens next." In the method you describe, the GM resolves certain action declarations by reference to a map, a key, and associated random encounter tables. I'm pretty confident everyone posting in this thread is familiar with this method, which has been in use for close to 50 years.
The fiction that this method creates is not more
realistic than the fiction created using other methods. Here's a concrete example: my Prince Valiant game, which uses a different method to create the fiction, is more realistic than any D&D or RM campaign I've ever played. Years pass. The warrior PCs have built up a war band. The PCs accrue castles by strategic marriages, by diplomacy, by clever tactics and bold strokes. You can read the actual play threads on these boards - where is the ostensible lack of realism?
the problem I'm identifying is people saying that my game is less realistic than theirs. That's not what should be the distinction that separates the two games. Both games present plausible events (such as they can be considered so in a fantasy world of some sort). What's real is what is decided to be real.
I think this is especially fraught when people are saying that having things related to the PCs happen to the PCs is unrealistic because the basis for their evaluation is a trad approach where the GM presents things for them to do as they wander through his setting. So if he's always presenting things that are relevant to them, it seems to push credibility.
But what if a game didn't work that way?
This too. When characters are deeply embedded in the context of the shared fiction, when the GM is framing scenes that speak to the concerns that are evinced in this way, it is not "contrived" in any particularly remarkable way that the PCs' lives revolve around the things they care about.
