There was an infamous exchange of articles and letters in the early days of Dragon magazine, about falling damage in Dungeons & Dragons. The gaming blog Grognardia has a good summary of the major plays in these articles, which make various assumptions about how much damage people (and elves and dwarves and so on) should take from falling, and what physical principles should, or should not, apply.

This is a good example of the obsession with "reality" that crept into roleplaying in the mid-80s, as expounded on by another post from Grognardia, which also mentions the falling damage articles.

Anyway, these articles are great fodder for bringing up as heartfelt mid-game discussions with your GM. Bonus points if you start the discussion while your characters are falling.

Transcript

[SFX]: bzzzzrzzrzz!!!
R2-D2: ... and it's great if they happen to be resistant to electrical damage.
GM: Okay, you fall 4 metres and take 4d6 falling damage.
Chewbacca: That seems a bit numerically arbitrary.
C-3PO: True. I land on top of Chewie, so I should take less.
Luke: Well Chewie would take more then, having a droid land on him.
R2-D2: By the same amount. Conservation of damage.
Chewbacca: Ah, but you forget my in-built padding.
Han: I twist like a cat and land on my feet!
GM: You're entangled in a net.
R2-D2: Where do you get the angular momentum from?
Han: Same place a cat does.
GM: You're not a cat!