You're draing the wrong inference.
What it tells you is I don't like a game where the focus is on learning the pre-established fiction as opposed to changing the fiction.
Deciet by elements in the setting is fine, if it is the output of action resolution.
I'm talking about having deceitful elements as input rather than output; to wit, that the action declarations could be sometimes based on legitimately faulty information obtained or observed by the PCs. Examples:
- the person you've been talking to (and maybe preparing to attack) isn't the evil baron but is someone in disguise; the real baron is the third guard on the left
- the empty room you've just entered isn't empty at all, it just looks that way courtesy of a permanent illusion
- your contact in the thieves' guild (or maybe even one of the PCs!) is a double agent and has been feeding you false info to steer you away from your real objective
- the Mace of Terriann that you think you just picked up from beneath the throne is actually a fake (though it radiates magic); the real Mace still lies in a hidden hole just beneath where the fake one was
Each of these could lead to all sorts of action declarations that would have been different had the input information been true and accurate.
Given that this whole thread is about resolution techniques, why would I back off from discussing them?
You keep trying to make it about resolution techniques. It started as an in-game-realism v real-world-realism discussion and went from there.
Te content of the fiction is largely irrelevant to whether a RPG gives a good or bad experience. Proof: if it was otherwise, then it would make no difference whether the game proceeded in the typical mode of a RPG, or whether it proceeded by the players just sitting there and having the GM tell them a story. Because both things can produce excactly the same fiction. But the first might be fun while the second will almost certainly suck.
In your eyes, perhaps. But flip it around to the other axis: the exact same game/system (whatever it may be) can and likely will produce vastly different fiction from one campaign to the next, and fiction that utterly captivates one group could well leave another bored to tears.
This is all pointless and bizarre. Only a few bits of it are worth respoding to.
Running a race is not a combat. It's a competition.
A competition is a form of combat.
Making sure a starship engine doesn't fail during jump is not exploring anything. It's performing a mechanical task.
Yes, in and of itself. But look at it in even a slightly broader way and ask why it's being done, and the answer will in one form or another boil down to exploration. (remember, exploration includes movement within the world and in Traveller's case 'world' kinda means galaxy)
The only reason you "pillars" don't have a craft/repair element to them is because that's never been a significant focus of D&D play, because D&D is set in a pre-technological world. And the reason you label repairing a vehicle as "downtime" is because, in D&D, magic item crafting is framed as something that happens outside the main focus of dungeoneering play. This is why I described your classification as projection: you've so internalised the dynamics of D&D c 1980 or thereabouts that you seem to find it literally inconceivable that there might be RPGs which don't focus on dungeon-delving or bank robbing as the main part of play.
Again, look just a bit more broadly and ask why the vehicle is being repaired. Is the PC repairing vehicles as a means of filling time and making a few bucks between doing more exciting things? Is the PC repairing it because it's her only hope of getting off this dying planet? Is the PC repairing it because she just accidentally broke it and wants to get it fixed before anyone else notices?
In my Prince Valiant game, we played a scenario in which
the PC knights accompanied a crimson bull to a swamp, where it was to be killed by a pagan wise woman. On the way through they had some strange interactions with the bull, and wondered and debated what to do with it. In the end, one of them used his dagger blessed by St Sigobert to dispel a demonic spirit that was possessing the bull; and in doing so, so impressed the wise woman that she agreed to be baptised at the Shrine of St Sigobert.
Nothing was being explored. No maps were drawn by me as GM or by the players - we jointly looked at our map of Britain at the back of the Pendragon hardback to get a general sense of where the PCs were travelling to, and then the journey was simply narrated (
You walk for a day through the forest;
You arrive at the valley; etc).
Nothing new was being explored but the travel still puts it in the exploration realm.
There were some social elements to the scenario - eg talking to the bull - but that was not all of it. The hurling of the dagger into the mist of the demon as it left the body of the bull was not combat in any genuine sense - there was no fight going on.
No fight, perhaps, but throwing a weapon at a perceived enemy still sounds like combat from here.
D&D doesn't exhaust the possible range of fiction, nor the possible range of play techniques, that can figure in RPGing. It adds nothing to our understanding of how RPGing works to try and cram everything into D&D's categories.
Well nothing exhausts the possible range of fiction, so this one's a bit of a red herring. D&D ceratinly does not exhaust the possible range of play techniques. But taking a concept (the pillars) that just happened to come from a D&D edition and applying it universally certainly can and in my case does help understand or clarify how RPGs (can) work; all 5e did was clarify and codify something that's always been there in the background probably without a lot of us realizing it was there.
Had this clarification come from some other source whose words you value more highly we probably wouldn't be having this discussion.
This is so backwards it's hard to put into words.
It's a bit like saying that all road transport can be explained in terms of steering wheels, drive shafts and carburetors. And then insisting that a motorcycles handlebars and chain are really a streering wheel and a drive shaft.
Not quite.
Perhaps it's more like saying that self-directed ground-based transportation always has a few key elements to it: a surface that will allow travel (be it roads, rails, trails, whatever); a means of propulsion and acceleration (engine, feet, pedal-chains-gears, or whatever; and this would also include fuel); a means of slowing or stopping movement (brakes, usually, or feet); a means of setting and-or altering direction of travel (steering, feet, etc.); and things related to the comfort and-or safety of the traveller(s).
Everything to do with ground-based travel can be broken down into, and explained as being a part of, one or more of those five elements: surface, propulsion, deceleration, direction, and safety/comfort. (propulsion-deceleration might even be combinable)
And even though I've never owned a motorbike I can still say which basic parts of it fit in which of the above elements; ditto for a locomotive (which I've also never owned, except in HO-scale model form) or my feet (of which I still have two).
In my Prince Valiant game, there is no difference between the narration of "downtime" (OK, seasons pass, you hear rumours of Saxon invasion) and the narration of travel (OK, you travel for a few days, and you arrive back at Warwick).
No difference in narration, sure. Difference in pillar, though.
In my Burning Wheel game, the action resolution for recovering resources, or recovering health, over an extended period of ingame time is no different from the action resolution for buying a sword or for bluffing a guard or for climbing a fence. There's no notion of "downtime", because there's no notion of the adventure or the dungeon expedition as there is in D&D. There are different things that players might have their PCs do, that take different amounts of ingame time, and are resolved via different ratios of ingame to real-world time.
Right, I get this.
But how the action is being resolved (mechanical) doesn't remove it from why it's being done (pillar of play).
There may not be a notion of between-adventure downtime in BW, and depending how it's run the PCs might never get a chance to sit back and relax for a bit - but that doesn't deny that downtime as a universal aspect* of RPG play, it only says that this particular table has chosen to exclude it.
Same thing as running an RPG without any combat. It can be done, and has been I'm sure, but the doing of such doesn't remove combat as a universal aspect of RPG play.
We've already established that breaking interpersonal conflict out into distinct "combat" and "social" categories means that athletics competitions can't be accounted for;
You've tried to establish this; from here athletic comptitions are a form of combat. They might not use the same mechanics, but the idea of striving to defeat someone else (or several someone elses) is still combative.
in Cortex+ Heroic there is no difference between these things at all, and - for instance - a character can cause another to wilt in shame by besting him/her in swordplay. Similarly, in the example of play for Marvel Heroic RP we see Wolverine using his Adamantium Claws in a dice pool used to inflict Emotional Stress (ie scaring off some enemy NPCs). This sort of thing is omething that D&D doesn't easily allow for. (Hence the recurrent discussions of why it is that bards are more intimidating than barbarians.)
Both of these examples mix elements of combat and social together - the swordplay one in particular uses combat as an action to generate a social result on success. Seems fine from here.
As [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] said not far upthread, why not start trying to think about other RPGs, and the techniques and approaches they involve, on their own terms rather than through this narrow and distorting lens of 80s-style D&D.
Because the aspects-of-play idea goes way, way beyond just 80's style D&D.
* - if I call them 'aspects' instead of 'pillars' does that help?
