There's a persistent argument that because there are a large number of fantastic elements in the game world, rules that seek to enforce any real-world condition or situation that doesn't have broad applicability is somehow "missing the point." In other words, that because clearly fantastic elements have been introduced, any assumption that any aspect of the game world follows how we would expect things to function in the real world is faulty.
I put forth that this presumption is backward. It's more rational, to my mind, to presume that everything works the way it would in the real world unless the game specifically tells us otherwise. Now, there's a very credible argument to be made that this wouldn't be true for various societal constructs - e.g. that magic, monsters, and interventionist deities would make for very different social, economic, and political systems than anything seen in the real world - but insofar as the basic nature of creatures and things that do exist in the real world are concerned, some presumption of fidelity to their real counterparts is certainly not a vice.
To help drive the point home, here's an except from the homepage of
Sean K Reynolds on this exact topic:
Sean K Reynolds said:
D&D is written for humans. It's written by humans from the perspective of humans, and when comparisons are made, they're made to a baseline human. Things that aren't outright stated in the D&D should be assumed to be human-normal. Huge parts of the game are built around the human as the standard, from armor class (the default AC of 10 is the AC of your average unarmored human) to attack rolls (your average unarmed human with no special training has about a 50% chance -- 10+ on a d20 -- of hitting another average unarmored human with a punch) to saving throws (default DCs are set according to what your average human could resist, dodge, or survive) to skill checks (DC 10 is something your average unskilled guy could succeed at about 50% of the time). With this humanocentric view, it should be clear that if there is no listed answer to a question, the answer almost certainly is the same as asking the question about a human.
How do bugbears poop? Just like a human.
Where do gnomes have body hair? In the same places humans do.
How good is an aboleth's sense of smell? About as good as a human.
How spicy is too spicy to an aasimar? About as much as a human would consider too spicy.
Of course, this comparison doesn't hold up to creatures that obviously resemble nonhuman real-world creatures. If asked about the sense of smell or taste preferences of a pegasus, I'd compare it to a horse. If asked what sort of meat owlbears prefer, fish or chicken, I'd find out what real bears like. But for undead, the closest comparison is to humans, since most undead are made from humans (or other humanoids, which bring the comparison back to humans again).
Now, I want to make it clear that Sean K Reynolds is not using this particular argument to advocate that we should have rules for sex-based differences in Strength scores. For that matter, I'm not advocating for it either - I'm pointing out that, insofar as the debate against them goes, the opinion expressed above by Ratskinner can be condensed down to "simulationism, at least to that degree, is stupid in a fantasy game."
I don't think that's true, at least any more so than any other personal opinion.
