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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9348345" data-attributes="member: 4937">Why the heck do you think I'm missing that possibility?  I'm basically assuming EVERY system you'd want to play in the modern era has a single broadly applicable and robust challenge resolution system.  I have already repeatedly mentioned the existence of a "core resolution mechanic" that probably occupies no more than 30 pages including in the post you are quoting!Sure!  I absolutely concede the truth of that.  So what?  Do you think the sort of situations you find yourself in are always covered just by a core resolution mechanic?  The only mechanical support you need for your games is just a core skill system mechanic?   Everything is just process simulation referencing a core skill system, and that's the whole of your problems and verisimilitude issues?   You never find the need to tack on sub-systems?   For example, your reference BRP.  If that's so, then you are telling me that you don't need say 2000 words worth of rules describing a secondary system like CoC's Insanity rules that tell you concretely what sort of shocks and terrors impact the fragile reasoning of the heroes because you can just infer that and by rulings and fiat build it out of a core skill/challenge resolution system?  Why have SAN rules for CoC at all then? The thing about a skill/challenge resolution system is that it might can tell you pass/fail or occasionally even degree of success, but it can't really tell you how the profit you make carving a stool differs from smithing a crown.  It can't tell you whether you want to be close or long range against the balrog.  It can't tell you how reasonable it is to rip the doors off the hinges of a carriage versus the prison door, or how much more unreasonable it is for the superhero to punch open the warehouse door versus the vault door.  In combat resolution systems you start wanting to deal with time and space and terrain in ways that are easy visualized.   Suddenly as a designer you have to deal with battlemats or abstract maps or relegate combat just to theater of the mind, and that matters in the tactical richness of the system in a way fiat resolution or a simple challenge resolution can't.   Challenge resolution on its own can't tell you whether the outlaw biker in the wasteland should drive up the left or right side when fighting the semi turned war machine.   It can't tell how much more difficult it is to inflict some grappled condition on an ox relative to a pixie.  It can't tell you which is faster the - PX38 Lighting VII or the SoroSub Super-Slasher.  It can't tell you whether the shotgun is a better weapon in this situation than the battle rile.  Core 30 page resolution mechanics can't describe a menagerie of creatures each with their own imaginative wrinkles on how they impact combat.  That's why game designers build rich and interesting subsystems and document in detail the setting that they are envisioning.       The reality is that there are routine situations that arise in play that require a wrapper of rules around the core system that provide a framework to imagine out that situation in a way is more concrete and engages more different aesthetics of play.  Combat is the most obvious such system, and in most games that intend to highlight it occupies a special subsystem of at least another 30 or so pages that is built around the core challenge system but deals with the specifics of weapons and positioning and terrain that form the basis of a tactical challenge.  The same core system that tells you how to spout lore and pick a lock probably doesn't integrate the effects of distance and positioning on those rolls, so that you know when a bow or a knife is better to attack with.  Combat is just one of several pillars of play that you can as a designer or game master want to specifically highlight as a fun part of the experience of play.  I won't get into again why combat is so frequently a featured system, but it isn't the only possible system.  And there are a lot of things out there that may seem niche to you that turn out to not niche if you change the assumptions of play.  Crafting items may seem niche to you in a typically fantasy setting or a super spy setting, but that perception totally changes if the fantasy setting is a stone age survival game where nothing can be purchased.  Suddenly the robustness of our crafting system matters and we might not just want to leave it up to a pass fail core conflict resolution system.Aside from the fact that I'm pretty sure in this thread I've already expressed familiarity with like a half-dozen systems, I wonder why you think your assumptions about my experience constitute a rational argument?  It's almost like you can't imagine another person disagreeing with you except out of ignorance.</blockquote>

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