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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fenris-77" data-source="post: 9852260" data-attributes="member: 6993955">A different set of considerations have to deal with genre. Some games, like dungeon crawl games for example, have very clearly definable and separate phases to the game. At the table you tend to see play broken up into larger segments of one or the other pillar. This is even more specific in some flavours of OSR that have a specific design principle that says combat goes in the dungeon not in the town (or some version of that). These larger chunks limit the number of shifts back and forth between various subsystems, mechanics, and for things that do shift often, like combat and exploration, those games tend to provide very clear guidance.On the other hand we have games like (just to pick a couple) Vampire or Monster of the Week. Those games still have play in all three pillars, granted probably more social and less exploration, but whatevs. What those do that is different is they (potentially) shift back and forth between the various pillars potentially much more frequently, even within specific scenes. The more you have to shift mechanics when you shift pillars they more those shifts have the potential to disrupt and bog down play. Unified systems, if well designed, probably handle this constant shifting better than games with more distinct subsystems and mechanics for each pillar. I'm generalizing, obviously, but hopefully in a useful way.</blockquote>