Foraging and hunting rules are on page X51 of Cook/Marsh
Thanks! Though they seem to address only food and not water.
even if the game play of exploration is narrow and artificial, it's still about exploration.
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if you resolve a combat in 10 or 15 minutes, but then spend that amount of time or more on interaction with NPCs and monsters, then I think it's fair to say that combat is probably of lesser importance.
I don't think that's in disupte that the game can be about exploration. (At least, I'm not intending to dispute it.)
At about 4 am this morning, after having been woken by a sick child, my mind drifted back to this conversation. I think what I'm trying to convey is that there is a reason (or perhaps a collection of reasons) for the drift towards combat.
Looking at the Luke Crane play report, the resolution is mostly "say yes" (or "yes, but" in those cases where the player misread,s or has mistakes in, the map). But there is an implicit threat that drives it: the threat of being killed/eaten by monsters, which is a threat that the player can't just "say yes" his/her way out of (there are combat mechanics that dictate definite results).
You said upthread that combat mechanics are simply for reflecting randomness and a lack of real-world actualisation by the players (contrasting, say, to their ability to read a map) but I think that is not quite right. For instance, there are no comparable mechanics to reflect the chance of tripping and falling while running down a corridor (especially in the darkness, which is a good chunk of Luke Crane's episode of play).
In a game in which the crunchy mechanical threat that lurks behind, and drives, the "say yes" or "yes, but" play is combat, I don't think it is a mere accident of taste or teenagers love of gratuitous violence that leads to widespread drift towards a combat-focused game. (Of course not everyone drifted that way. Again, I hope that is not seen as being in disupte.)
If you want to frame the crunch in different terms - eg the consequence lurking at the end of the "say yes" or "yes, but" exploration is not combat but being forced to negotiate a trade deal with no guarantee of good terms - then D&D really leaves you on your own.
the rules are not meant as a simulation of real world phenomena, but rather to facilitate play as a game
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Combat in D&D is incredibly artificial. Especially in early D&D, when using the Combat Sequence and Morale (which is very much like the reaction roll mechanics). Why does magic always go off before missile fire, which always happens before melee combat? Why does a monster that fails its morale roll runaway?
I think the artificiality is comparable in some respects but not others. The combat sequence is analogous to the turn sequence for exploration, the metronomic character of wandering monster rolls, etc - that is not the artificiality I'm talking about. It is simply a game resolution device.
The artificiality I have in mind is the motivations and context for the actions being resolved. In the case of D&D combat, the biggest instance of this is the one that you have hit on - the fact that combat is so often to the death, which is an artefact of the hit point system but (as you note) produces very unversimilitudinous results in play.
it's up to the DM to fill in the blanks
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this is both emergent and explosive, despite being light on rules.
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A party can (and generally will) let a high-CHA character do the talking in order to get a bonus to the reaction roll. But they must still say what they are going to say to the DM, who will add whatever other modifier he thinks necessary (so a player who phones in the interaction, relying purely on his CHA bonus, may find the DM giving the roll a penalty that largely mitigates his bonus), and it's the DM who will make the roll and interpret the results.
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Essentially, decisions informed by the mechanics is still different from the mechanics being the player's interface with the game.
I even moreso don't disupte any of this! But to me what you describe here is not radically different (I'm not sure it's different at all) from resolution in Burning Wheel, Marvel Herioc RP, Rolemaster, or 4e (excepting the use of combat powers). In all those games, the player describes his/her action, the GM interprets it in mechanical terms, rolls the appropriate dice or tells the player what dice to roll, and then adjudicates (both via modifiers and in terms of narrated outcome) by reference to the fictional positioning. (This applies both to action resolution and content introduction - eg in RM a random encounter is rolled - the GM has to work out why it's there, which can produce all the results you decribe; in BW a circle check is made, and likewise the GM has to work out the logic and motivations of the appropriate NPC, having regard to the success or failure of the player's check.)
You can get more fine-graind descriptions that do distinguish between those various sytems, but at least at the moment I'm not sure that they're relevant to this discussion.
Most people make some pretty wild assumptions on the internet without being able to remotely back it up, but I'd be comfortable in saying you're a subject matter expert, and know what you're talking about in this regard.
