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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 8657215" data-attributes="member: 7023840">Why does geography matter in RPGs?I think part of it is because of history. As pointed out in the first response by [USER=50895]@gamerprinter[/USER] - it's just the way the games arose organically from the wargaming scene. If TTRPGs had, instead, arisen from the Second City Improv scene, geography might have a lesser importance.The second reason is it can help ground your play. For this, I am going to make an analogy on the fly (h/t [USER=6701124]@Cadence[/USER] ) to the Game of Thrones series. While I am not as ... severe ... on the last season as many people are, I think that one of the major issues as the series got into the latter parts is that it lost a sense of place. Even for casual viewers, the earlier seasons felt real, and felt like they existed in a real place with a place of scale. Traveling took time. Places were far apart.Toward the rushed end, the series lost that. Instead, everything moved at the speed that the fiction demanded. Which felt jarring and off-putting, especially given the much more grounded nature of the show that came before it. Even if you didn't know the exact distances involved, it would feel wrong to have characters suddenly show up in new places that you had been taught were far apart.In many RPGs, especially those that feature (or have) some sort of exploration component, the use of geography separate and apart from the fiction created during a game is important for a group- otherwise, it starts to feel arbitrary and capricious, which is uncomfortable for some people.</blockquote>

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