Well, the notion that a RPG is a point in some "coordinate space" defined by "does it use aspects?", "does it use fortune in the middle?", "does it use map-and-key" etc is just hopeless. And nothing more useful will come from this notion by making the coordinates "rankings of degree" rather than on/off toggles.I'm pushing against your 'landscape' concept, which is describing, mathematically, a continuum of possible game elements, which implies they can simply be juxtaposed and you could then assign a 'coordinate' in your landscape to each one like it has X amount of A, Y amount of B, etc. It is much more accurate to portray games instead as being like, say, watches. Sure, there are MANY arrangements which could function, but only specific discrete arrangements of gears will make a watch, all the other random assortments of gears which happen to mesh, or variations in the size of the different gears, leads to non-functional or misfunctional outcomes.
As you say, that's just not how a RPG works. The successful analysis of how RPGs work has already been achieved - by Edwards and Baker - and so I don't know why we would need to reinvent that particular wheel.
100% this.I don't think these sorts of analogization, yours or mine, are really worth much. Play of specific games, and the specific experiences garnered from that play is fundamentally the only useful standard. Again, as I have said before, this was the 'Forge Rule', you HAD TO talk about actual play, or Ron et al would just kick you off the forum. It was a powerful rule, instead of the EnWorld 20 years of endless kvetching about this or that spherical cow, an entire genre of games arose out of that discussion in a matter of 4 or 5 years, and most modern RPG design still references those ideas heavily.
This also relates to my post upthread in reply to @Crimson Longinus: if you read Edwards's essays, or a game like DitV or AW or BW, and find nothing of interest that you're not already finding in your (non-4e) D&D rulebooks, then I conjecture - tentatively at least - that you're not especially interested in "narrativist" play. I infer that you probably are playing, and are happy playing, in a high concept sim appproach.