Sure, but as I've stated, why do they then need mechanics? Its only when you reach some stage where you will 'generate pressure' (IE where there will be conflict) that you need a mechanical game system. You see this quite often in movies, where the travel, or the training, or the research, or whatever, is just basically a montage. Only when the plot actually travels forward, where there are changes in the fictional state (or as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] would call it, the fictional positioning or scene) that there is a resumption of story.
A lot to dig into here.
First, advancement of story and use of mechanics are not necessarily tied together: either can very easily happen without the other.
Second, the difference between a movie and an RPG is that a movie has to use a montage in order to keep within time limits where in an RPG there's time to play the montage out in greater depth and detail.
Third, a change in the fictional state might have nothing to do with advancing the story. In the game I play in, for example, it looks like we're just starting an arc involving the artifacts of Vecna (again); painting a castle pink during the pre-adventure downtime doesn't advance that story a millimeter but it does change the fictional state: the castle is pink, and some characters have changed their opinions of other characters due to the action and subsequent reactions.
This is an assumption and doesn't stand up to even casual examination. We could spend thousands of hours on RPGs or on movies, and in fact people probably overall spend at least as much time on the later (and on TV) as the former. It is drama-filled because that's what is truly entertaining in most cases. Not to say that slow pacing cannot be good, but it isn't somehow magically always the best way.
I would point to movies again. They are mostly pretty dramatic, and those are the most popular. People watch one after another and show no such thing as this hypothesized 'drama fatigue'.
Most movies - but by no means all - have enough sense of pacing to intentionally include valleys between the peaks.
But where is the conflict in library research? There's no pressure happening in a scenario where I am just going to the library to 'learn stuff' even if it is with a certain goal in mind. It can be simply summarized in a sentence and requires no dice or other mechanics.
It probably needs dice on the GM side in order to determine whether you find what you seek (and how much, and how quickly) or whether you find nothing, or whether you find false information that steers you wrong.
If it is going to 'mitigate risks later' that's fine, but again there's nothing to dwell on. Going on about the library, the details of the various books, etc. is just color. Its OK, where that color has some narrative function. Its fine if there's real information obtained, plans made, and resources expended in preparations. These are all still basically non-dramatic and don't need to take up useful table time to any great degree.
Perhaps not, but that's no excuse to skip these things entirely or, worse, deny them as legitimate actions. Who knows - there might not be any useful info obtained at all, but you won't know until-unless you do the research.
OK, so the rational character goes to the library, the GM says "you go to the library and X, Y, Z" and then you go on to the next scene.
Unless X or Y or Z brings up further questions and-or points to more research to do with A, B and-or C; elements or variables discovered during the first round of digging.
Guess what? Something dramatic will happen in that next scene. Sure, the character may trot out X and use it to overcome some problem, but if you are following any sort of narrative driven game then X will have been somehow keyed to something the player signaled before. So X might be a revelation that your great grandfather really was a vampire, on to the crypt scene! Guess who you meet? Lucky you brought that holy symbol along! Now how do you resolve your pride in your ancestry with the fact that your ancestor is an undead monster? THAT IS MEAT!
If X is a revelation that great-granddad was a vampire then Y, Z, and a bunch of other things are going to come from me digging a lot deeper into his life (and death!) history while putting all of it into a whole new light. With any luck I'll learn he's buried in that crypt before I ever go there, and thus be forewarned and (I hope!) prepared should I meet him there.
Or maybe learning he's buried in that crypt changes my mind about wanting to go there right now (or ever, for that matter), and I instead go off and find something else to do for however long it takes me to become confident that I'm tough enough to deal with a vampire should I meet one.
Or maybe on learning he's buried in that crypt I figure that if he's potentially a vampire I should probably recruit some trained professional vampire hunters (in D&D these would be high level Clerics) to go in there with me, 'cause if there's one potential vampire down there who knows how many others might be in there with him?
Skipping straight from the library to the crypt scene unfairly denies me - both as player and as PC - all these options plus whatever others might arise.
