So, I will try one final time. The only way I can make sense of what you are saying is that you believe the term "metagaming" is a bad thing, you believe that metagaming includes understand the rules for the game that you are playing, and you have some how constructed this edifice to effectively define everything you do as "not metagaming." Which seems ... effortful?
You seem earnest in your intent, so I won't take this as the insult it would appear to be, were it coming from anyone else. Yes, I consider meta-gaming to be a bad thing, and I think it's weird that anyone would disagree with that (but I'm used to it by now). I do not believe that understanding the rules of the game requires anyone to meta-game, because the rules of the game (at least, the rules that the player would ever interact with) are effectively observable to the character. They see the outcome of those rules, whenever they look at the world around them. It does not require any effort, for me to view the rules in this way; it makes perfect sense to me, and I've been doing it since the late nineties.
1. This is a game that we are playing. We are agreed on that, right? Regardless of the exact nature of the "game," it still requires "rules" that we, the players, are aware of in order to play. Even if it's just something as basic as "You need to roll that funny looking dice to see if your character hit the bad bad man."
Right.
2. The game happens to portray a different world, one that doesn't exist. While the whole "gamist/simulationist debate" was tired by 1980, I think that all people agree that D&D, as a game, and as a role playing game, does not "simulate" any kind of imagined reality, but rather makes some approximations, most of which are chosen for fun and gamist reasons. In other words, the design of a D&D world isn't meant to mimic any reality with fidelity, but is supposed to be a game that can be played.
It's hard to pinpoint D&D on any sort of GNS graph, because it varies so wildly between editions. I would posit that both 2E and 3E are closer to the S pole than other editions are, and that the approximations are actually reasonable, given certain assumptions (where the DM is there to adjudicate in situations where those assumptions no longer hold).
3. Okay, but what about your climbing question? So, here's the thing; even if we accept that our reality (with our advanced knowledge of statistics etc. and science) maps on to this imagined game world, repeated studies show that we humans are TERRIBLE at understanding both our own capabilities as well as consequences and limitations. Over time, we do get better at things we do, which leads to ...
Are you honestly telling me that you can't look at a wall, and even begin to guess at whether or not you could try to climb it? That seems a little disingenuous. People may be terrible at guessing, but they have something to go by. They aren't entirely clueless.
So I guess my question is- why does this matter to you? I am trying to understand why this matters to you. So using your favorite example of falling, in the magical gamist world we have created, falling does limited damage compared to heroes' hit points. So let's say there is a 1000' foot chasm. You, Saelorn, happen to know that the fall can cause no more than 20d6 damage (max. 120, average 70).
The topic of this thread is immersion, and that's why this matters to me. It damages my immersion, if I don't have any clue as to what might happen, because it's an unreasonable assumption for my character to not have any clue. Maybe they've never encountered a chasm this deep before, but they've surely observed the effects of falling from a couple of different heights in their lifetime, either first-hand or second-hand, and would know that longer falls mean greater injury.
The character would definitely have a working knowledge of ... however the current DM describes the effect of HP damage. If he can understand the difference between the in-game reality associated with being hit by a goblin, and being hit by a giant, then he can understand the in-game reality associated with an experienced adventurer falling 20' and not getting as injured as a novice would from the same fall.
See what I mean? It's a game- I would accept either:
a) Rolf wouldn't make the jump because that's out of character; or
b) Rolf would make the jump because it's fun and a game; BUT
Saying Rolf makes the jump because that's what Rolf has learned .... seems a bridge to far, for many reasons. I'm just not seeing how you can transfer all rules knowledge to the characters in the game?
The B option is right out, because that's meta-game thinking. You're making the decision as a player at the table, rather than from Rolf's perspective.
The A option is more reasonable, except it hinges on the fact that Rolf is making an incorrect assessment of the facts at hand. I think you're not giving Rolf enough credit, given all that he's been through and what he's seen. If it's a true fact that the greatest of heroes can survive any fall, then there would be no stories of any of them falling and dying from it. I wish I had time to give an anecdote, but unfortunately I'm in a hurry. I'll come back and finish this post, when I get a chance.