[evileeyore]

To me, when a Player says "I prefer more realism in my games", what they mean most of the time is 'consistency'.

By this I mean: If gobbos always break and run when they stop outnumbering the PCs and one time they don't, this means something must be affecting them, there must be a reason they've hardened their resolve to die on the PC's blades. If every third loot stash the PCs find contains a cursed item, and they go 7 loot stashes in a row without finding one, something is afoot! If every tomb/dungeon has at least one trap and the PCs have fully searched a tomb and not 'found' any traps, they must have missed something!

Now those are a bit ludicrous and perhaps a bit extreme ('always'), but you get my drift. The Player means "I want a world that makes sense, despite being a Fantasy, regardless of fidelity or verisimilitude, I want things to make sense".



Of course I'm now half expecting one of my Player to pop and complain "But you don't care if things make sense!" Which is true. I sometimes don't give reasons to things, they just happen and most often I don't even bother with backstorys for NPCs or locations or whatever*. I'm a 'quirky, seat-of-the-pants' GM that way.


* If the Players are never going to discover it, why am I wasting my time developing it in advance?