I have similar gripes about RP and it usually stems from the "We really don't know where to go from here, but we have to post something..." category. Usually it is something completely outrageous, that leaves the other players and reader thinking "huh?" I don't know if it is necessarily realism as it is believability.

Do we believe this?

Even pure fastasy needs to have a air of believability about it just doesn't work. Same goes for fictional/historical RP. It has to ba believable. So how do we go about this in RP?