the very pretty maps had obviously been scaled to suit the specific goals of the adventure designer in different parts of the adventure...resulting in two specific locations being x distance apart on one map and y distance apart on another, according to the scales on the maps - where x and y differ by a factor of about 4.
Obviously the adventure designer wanted travel time between these two sites to be short when dealing with local stuff but much longer when dealing with regional travel.
As a trained geographer, I see this as abhorrent!
As
@Campbell has said, maintaining consistency of the fiction is pretty much GMing 101. It's not a distinctive technique or particularly well-adapted to one rather than another sort of play experience.
But being relaxed about times and distances isn't about inconsistency. It's about not being needlessly specific. In the particular bit of play that I described, it was established that the castle was an easy ride from the coastal village in the night-time. This certainly does not preclude it being a comfortable walking distance from the coastal village by daylight. Are we talking 2 miles? 5 miles? Even a little further than that? It doesn't matter.
The events that took place while the characters went to the lighthouse included some parleying, a joust with 3 lances but resting between each lance, and then a pitched battle between 100+ soldiers that ended with one side fleeing. How long exactly did all that take? Again, it doesn't matter.
No one at the table had any sense of inconsistency or spoiled verisimilitude.
Agreed. I read
@pemerton's example and could imagine it being really dramatic, or really boring. Regardless of system. The difference has almost nothing to do with the rules. IMO, anyway.
The discussion I'm having with Lanefan shows one way that rules matter. If the rules for establishing distances travelled and time taken involve maps and measurement - which is the default for D&D - that has implications for how events can unfold within the fiction, which in turn has implications for dramatic pacing.
It can also be seen in the reply I posted upthread to your question about consequences for tying knots. My reply was an actual play example that is pretty close though not identical - it involved a sleeping potion rather than knots.
The way that I used the waking up of the drugged character as a consequence for the failed check to move successfully through the catacombs depended on holding time and distance flexible in the way I've just been talking about (eg how far through the catacombs? taking how long? and how long would the drug last? all this is addressed in pacing/narrative terms, not in terms of measuring sticks and clocks).
Adjudication of time and distance isn't the only way in which different rules might be better suited to exploratory or "heightened drama" plauy, but in my view is one of the more obvious ones.