“Your character must be 30 years old”

The Text

We were playing tabletop D&D set in the Forgotten Realms setting, when I wanted my character to have been born in a country about 2,000 kilometres away from the adventurers' base-city, and with a good road along most of the way. As a result, the dungeon master told me that whereas human characters usually started as 16-21 years old, mine “must be 30 years old”. I thought it was unnecessary as the travel should not have taken so long. I noted that I watched a TV documentary about a man for whom it took 3 years to encircle Earth on a wheelchair.

Nevertheless, the dungeon master was not convinced, and the other players convinced me it was not a worthwhile battle, so I let it slide. Later on, as a hiking enthusiast, I learned that a bad hiking speed on bad trails was 2-3 kilometres per hour.

A case of innumeracy.