"The term 'GNS' is moronic and annoying" – well this should be an interesting interview

[Manbearcat]

That's important, though. Why else would I spend all this time working on these sick pythons, brah?

 

[Emberashh]

I dunno, I always see random encounters as time pressure and a way to spice up a journey. Having it 'make sense' is a secondary concern.

Personally I despise Gygaxian Naturalism, I'm an anti-simulationist kinda guy. I think it has lead to fun anecdotes and mostly overcomplicared lore and justification. Gameableness trumps realism, hell--aesthetic trumps realism for me. I'm so happy that it's been largely abandoned in modern DnD and most other rules system.

Realism reminds me of worthless survival sims on Steam and overly complicated rulesets trying to consider the bullet trajectory of a gunshot when it hits your biceps when you're wearing t-shirts. It reminds me of boring martials while casters get to casts Meteors and teleports willy-nilly.

You're confusing realism for verisimilutude, which is more what Gygaxian Naturalism results in.

And you're also hinging your thoughts on bad games. That doesn't really speak to the value of either thing so much as it does to those games not being very good.