I'm going to eat some of my words now. While I stand by my statements on your salty approach (no pun intended) it is worth responding to your criticisms directly.

I have spent my free time in the last few days reading and reading and reading. I came across this quote on a DriveThruRPG publication:

100 Pathfinder Cantrips is a finely crafted list of mostly historically accurate and verisimilitudinous cantrips collected by our semi-professional 0-level wizards. Official Pathfinder Role Playing Game Compatable product!

I note that the say "verisimilitudinous" cantrips instead of "realistic" cantrips. It's better to be more accurate. I'm sure you would argue that realism is the wrong thing, as you have done, but no, it's just incomplete. What I do newly accept after some consideration is that following unexamined realism is likely a dead end.

You mention that a simulation is not possible or desirable. I disagree with this, but it may be a definitional disagreement, and I am sure you are incorrect here.

Simulation assumes that we know the process, the underlying real process, and all we need to do is create a sufficiently useful micro abstraction and it can be operated upon as if it were real. That just doesn't work, for the most part. It definitely doesn't work for issues which involve human interaction like learning or the consequences of sickness and injury in anything but the loosest of abstract terms.

Very wrong. Simulation assumes we can model something well enough for a purpose. It's impossible to not acknowledgement of the limitations of simulating real world events, but this does not make them unuseful. are I go into this in detail in the ELI5 doc as it was a lot more relevant when I considered the game as a computer game.

In the context of an RPG I would say that a simulated thing is mechanically bound. You said mechanics does not lead to verisimilitude, or as you put it:

The ironic connection between mechanism and "realism" is that everyone thinks that the more mechanics that you have, the more complex the rule set, the more "realistic," but the opposite is true. More rules constrain human choice. More rules conflict with each other. More rules constrain the scope of what you can imagine doing. The more rules that you have, the more likely that you are to induce a state which has no verisimilitude to what any given player expects their actions to be able to accomplish or might ultimately accomplish.

I can see your point. Say I want to model how a character is affected when if the contract the influenza virus. We can use real stats on incubation times, appearance of symptoms, deaths per age group, etc. but how does it interact with other ailments, how contagious are they, etc.? The level of verisimilitude must end somewhere and picking that point is hard.

The question of fun in this is important. Imagine 100 small paragraph rules for things like flu, sprained ankle, concussion, measles, gun shot wound (50 types), and so on. Is that fun? It's definitely where I'm headed. But it might not be fun. I would be willing to risk it in some play testing but how to balance so many small incomplete models.

You clearly favor the less is more approach of RPG specs. This would leave much of these 100 ways to experience bodily discomfort (up to death) up to the players to work with at will. That feels too loose for me, too much in their hands to - dare I say it - cheat.

I don't think that you are ready to deal with that part of role-playing; the obsession with "realism," the crypto-cultism – it doesn't feel like you want the players to help tell a story together but instead want them to be constrained within a setting-architecture which you don't want challenged.

Pejoratives aside, you might be right. I very much do want to support players to tell a story but I want that to be bound by some reasonable expectations about the setting which are non-negotiable.

The more I think about it the more it might suit a board game with some roleplaying aspects. I think it would be a valuable exercise to sketch out both and see what it looks like:

1. Pick a good flexible "true" RPG core and write a scenario for it
2. Modify a similar board game (or write a simple on from scratch)

I looked at all the referenced games except Capes. Follow seemed pretty cool, though so so flexible and more about stories (as is your jam right?) Not dissimilar to Microscope, same author (I think?). I enjoyed Microscope and so I will give this a whirl either way.

While I know what I want the game to be about I have a lot of different ideas for what the goal of play could be. I'll gather my thoughts on this, it deserves a post of its own.

In conclusion thanks again. Your disrespectful and ungenerous manner does your criticism, advice and suggestion a huge disservice, but I appreciate it none the less.