Inspired Unreality Redux - October 28, 2019 from hairylarry's blog

Initial topic - Keeping it real.

all gaming is on topic

The yeep is an alien pet. Very affectionate. When RobboG described it as being like a ferret then that made it real for us.
When the yeep yeeped the other alien to death we could accept that because it's an alien.
So comparing the yeep to a known animal made it real but we knew it was alien so we could accept strange behaviour/powers.
One of it powers was extreme charisma - everyone loved the yeeps except Dolf.

He was the level headed one. Who invites an unknown alien into their spacesuit? (We all did except Dolf)

In literature there is a thing called willing suspension of disbelief.
That's definitely a thing in gaming that the DM can use.
In literature and gaming it is possible to go to far.
In The Chronicles Of Amber (not to be confused with The Chronicles Of Ember) Roger Zelazney has his characters walk in shadow which can be thought of as walking through the interstices between realities in the multiverse.

There is one point where the protagonist walks so far into shadow that there is really no connection to reality anymore. That was a hard chapter to read and probably equally hard to write.

He was intentionally no longer keeping it real as a literary device.

Still, I was glad when he got back to more familiar territory.

In gaming the DM relies on tropes to keep things real.
The characters are familiar with fantasy tropes so as long as the DM bases his story around standard tropes or archetypes the players can follow where he's going with it.
Keeping the fantasy real, so to speak.
So when the DM or the PCs break the tropes it can lead to surprise and excitement.

Philip K. Dick was expert at leaving reality behind.

You would think you know where his story is going and then you realize that the surface reality you were projecting onto the story isn't really in the story at all.
Maybe it's just the protagonist's schizoid delusion.
This works in literature but not so much in gaming.
For one thing the shared reality around the gaming table involves multiple PCs being played by multiple players.
It is highly unlikely that their schizoid delusions will match.
In fact it is a challenge for the DM to be descriptive enough to keep the PCs in the same reality.
It would be a real hat trick to cater to multiple paranoid delusions around the gaming table.
And then try to do that without an accepted underlying reality.
Philip K. Dick as a DM.

Not recommended.

Life is too short to live it without a few delusions.