Historical accuracy and Fantasy gaming

[Collective_Restraint]

Hi everyone,

is it me or the majority of GURPS fantasy gamers seem more preoccupied with historical accuracy in their fantasy games compared to say, D&D (or Runequest, etc.) gamers ? Is historical accuracy that important ? I for one, don't really care about historical realism in my fantasy games for 2 prime reasons :

1. I am not very good at history, I want to play games, not start studying how feudal system fully works, etc. I have always been very interested into history but simply was never good at it.

2. How can you really evaluate historical realism when we are talking about realism where dragons roam, magic exists, etc. ? Sure, I don't put television sets in my fantasy games (still, I know I could with magic existing an all) but since I am not very good in history, I'm sure if I had historians in my games they would start pointing me that this event doesn't make sense and etc, etc. How can you realistically evaluate how a realm would function with magic being present and all ?

My point is, is historical accuracy very important in your fantasy-themed games ? Is a good story more important than historical realism ? This is probably what turned me down into using Banestorm as my game campaign setting: too historical for my taste. I feel that if I don't understand fully how the medieval ages were, crusades, etc, I wouldn't run a "good" Banestorm game. One other thing that I don't like is that it is too close to what Earth is. I play fantasy games to escape to other worlds. I'm already tired of hearing about religious wars of catholics against muslims in newspapers that it's something I don't even want to start gaming. So I'm asking you, do you prefer games where everything is historically accurate or games where evil mages build lairs and fills them with traps and monsters and laughs maniacally about taking over the world ;) ?