An eternal debate, right?
Well, maybe not, but I bet some people talk about it a lot. And honestly, there is only one answer, unless you have wet dreams about excel spreadsheets.
Playability wins over realism every time, the story takes precedence over “is this possible?” every time. Unless, again, you want to get bogged down in minutiae.
I for one feel like it is more fun to have a frantic race away from a dragon, carrying a good chunk of treasure, without having to break out the trigonometry textbooks to check if that bridge is actually able to hold the weight of 4 adult adventurers and three sacks of gold. (It probably can’t hold them, but it’s a bit anti-climactic, isn’t it?)
And even then, what decides what realism should be part of the game, and what should not? Gravity is a common realistic thing to have in games. Every time a character needs to go to the toilet is not.
For me, realism belongs in miniature games, in simulationist board games, not in storytelling. Put me at the table with a giant hex map and I’ll argue the plausibility of Italian troopers being able to traverse that height at that time of day, why doesn’t the rules account for the granularity of the sand at this particular wadi and…
But I get carried away. This post doesn’t have much of a point, except that I should get to writing more. Because it’s fun. And it doesn’t have to be realistic.
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