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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9230670" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Not just &quot;how,&quot; either; what kind of fun, what sort of information, what form of battle, these things also matter a great deal. &quot;What&quot; and &quot;why&quot; are as essential as &quot;how.&quot;It's lovely to have an excellent ability to teach integral calculus, but such skills are useless in a Spanish classroom. It is great to have excellent ability to command submersible battalions and leverage secret attacks, but that's not really helpful when you need to capture enemy land infrastructure or produce symbolic victories to rally the people.Likewise, it is great to be able to (say) craft an engaging and challenging combat...but useless if what your players would get fun from is a murder mystery. But it is equally a problem to bring excellent whodunnit-writing skills to the table if what the players would get fun from is a really kickass fight.Hence why I say that the question bifurcates. It is important to consider what each specific group wants and needs, and adjust one's efforts to fit these things. But it is also important, I would even argue more important, to build an underlying system that supports a GM to achieve highest success when doing such adjustment. Part of declaring that your game has &quot;pillars&quot; is so you can tell the GM what things the game is meant to be good at doing, not merely &quot;adequate and maybe better if you really work hard on it.&quot;And, unfortunately, one of the necessary parts of making any designed thing is that you will need to decide that some classes of answer to &quot;how&quot; and &quot;what&quot; (and, occasionally, &quot;why&quot;) are simply not well-supported. A perfectly comprehensive system cannot exist.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9230670, member: 6790260"] Not just "how," either; [I]what kind[/I] of fun, what [I]sort[/I] of information, what [I]form[/I] of battle, these things also matter a great deal. "What" and "why" are as essential as "how." It's lovely to have an excellent ability to teach integral calculus, but such skills are useless in a Spanish classroom. It is great to have excellent ability to command submersible battalions and leverage secret attacks, but that's not really helpful when you need to capture enemy land infrastructure or produce symbolic victories to rally the people. Likewise, it is great to be able to (say) craft an engaging and challenging combat...but useless if what your players would get fun from is a murder mystery. But it is equally a problem to bring excellent whodunnit-writing skills to the table if what the players would get fun from is a really kickass fight. Hence why I say that the question bifurcates. It is important to consider what each specific group wants and needs, and adjust one's efforts to fit these things. But it is also important, I would even argue [I]more[/I] important, to build an underlying system that supports a GM to achieve highest success when doing such adjustment. Part of declaring that your game has "pillars" is so you can tell the GM what things the game is meant to be good at doing, not merely "adequate and maybe better if you really work hard on it." And, unfortunately, one of the necessary parts of making any designed thing is that you will need to decide that some classes of answer to "how" and "what" (and, occasionally, "why") are simply not well-supported. A perfectly comprehensive system cannot exist. [/QUOTE]

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