Of course,
@hawkeyefan ! All you have to do is justify/rationalize every decision you make, ever, upon valid causal grounds, as per Micah Sweet's comment, and you can stay on the "simulating a living world" high ground, which as everyone knows, is the only place to be if you're a "real" roleplayer, and not one of those poncy "story gamers".
Pox be upon you and your house if you just "make stuff up just because it sounds fun and dramatic and appealing"! No no, we must always assiduously provide causation, even if it means creating stuff up on the fly and revising secret backstory, lest we fall prey to the curse of non-simulation, and ruin our benighted players' sense of immersion.
On a more serious note, I think the juxtaposition of these two comments side by side illustrate the problem
@pemerton and
@hawkeyefan are having.
And look, I don't have a problem with sim as an agenda. I LIKE sim and deep character immersion.
I just agree with
@pemerton, based on my own experience, that it does no good to mystify and put "living world sim" play on a pedestal, without really trying to come to grips with what the actual play process entails.
And in my experience, it's way, way, way harder to separate the "causal functionality" decisions as a GM from the "I really want to run engaging play" than we want to admit.