Aldarc
Legend
It's competitive play, Hussar. If there was any money in betting about whether the party at the table could make it in and out of the dungeon, then that would be a thing in D&D too. Or bet about which character will make it based upon the play expertise of the player. And the same could be said for board games too. Will the group win at Pandemic tonight? Who knows. Or how about Settlers of Catan? But you could probably bet on these things too and attempt to predict the outcome. The problem is that the gambling industry doesn't care about applying their efforts in these matters.Well, let's put it this way. I've been told you can't tell who is going to win in a sports game. I disagree. There's an entire industry devoted to predicting the outcome of sports. And, you know what? They're pretty good at it. Not perfect, true. But, pretty good. Right more often than wrong.
I think that you are trying to force this D&D exceptionalism a little too hard and are in the unfortunate position of being stuck scrambling to defend a sinking argument full of lots of holes. But when so little people find your argument compelling or sustainable, at what point do you abandon the ship?
Actually I don't know what is going to happen if you ask me to play 2 on 2 basketball. Are we playing for a set time? Are we playing to a certain win condition? Are we playing full court or half-court? Do we take the ball back to half-court and bounce the ball back into play? What constitutes a foul? How are fouls adjudicated and enforced? How high is the goalpost? How much time do we get in offense? Is there a shot clock? What are we playing for? What does a victory achieve? Am I doing this as a work out? Do I enjoy basketball? How competitive are you going to take this?If I ask you to play 2 on 2 basketball, or Monopoly, or NFL football, you have a very, very good idea what's going to happen. Sure, some of the specifics (as in who wins) will be undetermined. It is a game after all. But, the process from start to finish will be pretty predictable.
There is no real "order of play" in an RPG.
Likewise with Monopoly, Parker Bros. discovered through in-house research, much to their own surprise, that people rarely played Monopoly per the rules. It was only when they realized this that they essentially started printing common house rules in the instructions. Even then, I feel that everytime that I sit down to a game of Monopoly, the players frequently have to negotiate the rules and the agreed upon terms of play.
Saying that we're playing NFL Football is more akin to saying, "Hey we're running an Adventurer's League game of Tomb of Annihilation." And there will be more procedures in place here than in a standard "pick-up-game" of D&D.